the wilted rose

I was looking back over some old Wilted Rose blog posts to clarify my thinking a little bit and the penny dropped.

One thing that people just don’t remember about the events of last summer – the Brown bounce, the credit crunch, the social breakdown crisis – was that it was David Davis who started the Tory recovery in the opinion polls.

Davis brilliantly captured the public mood on the social breakdown and gun/knife crime issue, while Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown hid away from the public glare. Davis has now captured the public mood on our freedom and liberty, although the press and media (and some prominent Tories) don’t realise it yet.

Brown came in as Prime Minister and it made me and many others despair. I noted that, “the Conservatives on 33% – David Cameron who alongside David Davis stood tall against crime and social breakdown at the weekend.”

So, although the credit crisis was also starting off, social breakdown and gun crime – so tragically highlighted by the brutal murder of an 11-year-old boy in Liverpool – with feral youths running wild on our streets. The social breakdown crisis was dealt with brilliantly by David Davis, so much so that the Conservatives starting seeing an improvement, particularly winning the ‘key demographic, the over 65s, as the Brown Bounce deflated.

And the polls climbed upwards, and all along David Davis has been a superb Shadow Home Secretary which has given the Tories consistently high ratings on law and order.

Dominic Grieve may be well entrenched in his new post as Shadow Home Secretary. But actually, once the by-election is over and Davis returns with a huge majority and vindication of his much-criticised move, Cameron should bring him back into the Shadow Cabinet.

And what’s more: he should promote this enormous talent. In line with a radical shift towards a lower-tax policy and an abandonment of the crazy ‘commitment’ to match Labour’s spending plans, Cameron should appoint Davis as the Shadow Chancellor.