David Davis .... touching a nerve in the country

The resignation of David Davis has shaken the kaleidoscope.

It is far too early to clearly understand the timing of the decision, the reasons for the decision and it's short and long term consequences.

The summer is a bad time for politics. The media are swamped with pictures of busty ladies in funny hats at weddings, horse races and garden parties. Men are off watching rowists, shooting pheasants or catching the dwindling fish species our polluted rivers still support.

Increasingly the TV / Press will praise to death the few Olympians amongst us , ready for their eventual slaughter when they so nobly fail in Beijing.

Not a good time to raise concerns about brown men in beards given an extended opportunity to read their Korans in the comparative ease of Paddington Policer Station whilst Plod ploughs through terabytes of trash.

Whilst Davis is not a loner, his name does not conjure up a tightly knit cabal of like minded souls anxious to slot into an alternative posse of Shadowy Ministers, ready to lever out the toff persuasion.

There is little evidence of planning - when he faced a bemused press to tell them of his decision, he appeared to have no Press release, no supporters, straining every sinew to leap into action to unfold the master plan. No Billionaires, millionaires or modestly wealthy car traders have heard the clarion call. There was no itemised list of the incursions on our liberties - which is just as well because a "bi-partisan" approach to terrists means he and his party were happy to vote for most of them.

The Press, forced to think, are consequently all over the place ... Rupe the Poop however has sprung into action and is ready to spend the odd shilling to promote as candidate, in the late summer by-election his Performing Monkey, the absurd Kelvin McKenzie (proud inventor of the News Bunny and Naked darts) - although the call is even now, sounding a little uncertain.

In the short term, Cameron and his gang of monied shysters are safe - David Davies will not unseat him , soon or easily, although his actions will unnerve him and his callow gang. It may even make them improve their act.

What is certain however is that David Davis has sniffed the faint scent of a hunted , disaffected and numerous crew. There is out there, beyond the world of the Metropolitan mutterers a less than gruntled class of sturdy voters. Over 50, educated, capable not only of reading the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail but also completing the crossword. They listen to Radio 4, Radio 7 rather than Five Live and Kiss FM, they mourn Humph and Alan Coren, would like to meet Ed Reardon and whilst earnest readers with a well used library ticket and keen on self improvement have never read a Booker Prize winner.

There is out there, an ageing , solid middle class who are feeling increasingly dispossessed, harassed, as they slide into the necessary clutches of the state through the NHS. As they and their family become entangled in the many and insanely bueaucratic branches of what are laughingly called the social services ,their concerns mount.

Bewildered, they watch the breakdown of marriage, many of their their own children, the remorseless rise in abortion, illegal drug use, urban squalor, alienation in their own home towns swamped in unwanted multiculturalism.

In Lord Patel's patch , a prosperous urban retreat on the edge of the Pennine moors , in one of the northern Greater Manchester Metropolitan Boroughs, returning Conservative councillors for periods of geological time - a BNP candidate forced the Liberals into third pace in the May elections.

They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
...

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
......

...we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

Are some lines from G. K. Chesterton which seem somehow appropriate. Probably not what Blunkett, Charles Clarke, kebab eating, plump Mrs Smith understand by Englishness..or even Britishness.

It would be a fool who writes off the maverick David Davis. There is in the hinterlnds a voiceless throng, Mr Brown and Mr Cameron ... and even Mr Clegg would be unwise to dismiss their concerns.