Who is David Davis?

Melissa Kite authors a compelling profile (not available online) of David Davis in this morning's Sunday Telegraph.

Here are a few highlights of that profile:

> Winston Churchill's 'there is a limit beneath which no man may fall, but no limit to which any man may rise' "encompasses me to the core" says Davis.

> Known as a proponent of capital punishment, less well known is that one of his first acts as an MP was to rebel against Margaret Thatcher's charges for eye tests.

> Davis' father deserted him and his mother at birth. He grew up in "a family of hunger-marchers, union officials and staunch Labour voters". His grandfather was a member of the communist party.

> His nose has been broken five times - often on the rugby pitch, for which he has a passion - but also when he slipped in a swimming baths and once when taking on a mugger.

> He joined the territorial regiment of the Special Air Services, 21 SAS before studying molecular and computer science at Warwick University.

> A keen pilot, DD recently flew around America and every year walks 192 miles from Bees Head, in the Lake District to Robin Hood's bay in N Yorks.

Comments

[James Hellyer]

That was quite a nice character piece. It certainly does a good job of humanising David Davis.

It was interesting to see that he scored so well with the ICM focus group.

With all this coverage you'd think the Telegraph is already naming its man!

[Wat Tyler]

One very interesting new (to me) bit of info is that his maternal grandfather, Walter Harrison, was a Communist Party activist, and a well-known agitator in York where he lived. In fact, he led the 1936 Jarrow Hunger March on the leg from York to Aldermaston.

Now things like that don't just happen, and it tells us something important about DD. He might have come from humble surroundings, and he might have crossed the political street on the way. But what we're being offered here is the very cream of what used to be called the working class.

See more at http://daviddavisleader.blogspot.com/2005/05/dds-grandad-is-watching.html

[Jack Stone]

The reason the party had the first women Prime Minister, had more candidates at the last election from ethnic minorities than the Labour Party and as gays at the top of the party is that Conservatism is all about judging people on there merits not on there background.
As someone born and bread working class I find the view that just because David Davis was born and brought up in a council house he should be leader. David Davis like all the other contenders should be judged on there merits not on there background.

[Julius]

"David Davis like all the other contenders should be judged on there merits not on there background."

Not that I particularly care, but surely when it comes to getting votes, having a working class background IS a merit for a Tory, just as having a middle class background was a huge electoral asset for Blair?

[Bill Maudlin]

I agree with DD on some things. I am for capital punishment for murderers, for example.

I fear, though, that DD cannot or will not take the moral stand that is needed in British politics, in that he seems to accept homosexuals as viable candidates and somehow of good character.

I don't know that he has ever acknowledged God either for all his many words. For a great many of us that is inexcusable and symptomatic of our basic problem of being an increasingly Godless society.

He can't help being illegitimately born but he could take a clearer stand on morals; he cannot imo take a stand for the family and support homosexuality.