The Green Party stood in Haltemprice and Howden on a clear platform of being ‘to the left’ of David Davis on freedom in general and on civil liberties in particular. David Davis did all he could to marginalise and exclude us. The media didn’t help, painting the by-election as a freak show, because neither the LibDems nor Labour were standing while a huge field of also-rans were standing.

And yet we have come through well. The Green Party last night scored our highest-ever percentage in a by-election (beating our previous high, back in our best-ever-yet year of 1989), and claimed an unprecedented second place (see the full result and a pertinent comment from our impressive candidate candidate, Shan Oakes, here).

The Party's decision to stand has clearly been vindicated by this result. The way it was announced on the 8 a.m. news on Today this morning said it all, really: "David Davis has been re-elected in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election; the Green Party were in second place." A headline well worth having...

What does this mean in terms of the Green Party’s electoral prospects? It is a strong sign of momentum. It suggests that we should be on track to win in our target seats, places where we are now very strong, such as Brighton Pavilion and Norwich South. We had hardly any members or local Party in Haltemprice & Howden, and hadn’t stood in the constituency for a generation; and yet, from nothing, we came through to prove that the voters were identifying with our message of a serious challenge to David Davis’s message, not from the direction of greater authoritarianism, but from the direction of greater freedom. And that helps answer the question in turn of what this means for the debate that Davis helped to energise: We asked, in this by-election, why 28 days (Davis’s preferred number) was so infinitely better than 42, and suggested (as Liberty believe) that it cannot possibly be just in a civilised society to keep someone for more than a week without charge — that habeas corpus is incompatible with 28 days, let alone 42 days.

And this is what is so gratifying about the election result: that, while Davis was supported by a long list of celebs and of politicians from the old Parties — by Bob Geldof, Anthony Barnett, Martin Bell, Bob Marshall-Andrews etc. --, and naturally (with new- and old- media complicity) he romped home, the second place didn’t fall to someone (such as Jill Saward, an Independent who attracted a good deal of press coverage and tacit Labour support — but who lost her deposit badly) to Davis’s authoritarian ‘right’ on this issue, but to us, who took the risk of arguing that Davis wasn’t going nearly far enough.

As I have argued in my previous posts on this by-election, Davis ought to be thanked for providing this opportunity to change the terms and the momentum of the debate around civil liberties in this country. He and those who supported his stance ought to thank us too: for taking that debate in a more radical direction, and making clear that there is an appetite in this country not just for New Labour authoritarianism, but for true liberty and freedom, as in Green Party policy...

The Greens are on a by-election roll, now: 3rd place in Henley (smashing Labour into fifth), 2nd place (incl. a saved deposit and our highest ever percentage in a by-election) in Haltemprice and Howden... Roll on Glasgow East, I say!