Last Friday I sat down with David Davis to discuss his by-election campaign on the day Bob Geldof joined the campaign, here's what he had to say:

Shane Greer: Forty-two days is a massive issue, but for some reason the press seems more interested in things like the ‘John Lewis’ list. Do you think we’ve lost a sense of importance in politics today, and where do you think fault lies?

David Davis: Very much so, although to be fair we’ve had 300 articles in the last three weeks or so about issues relating to the by-election and most have been in whole, or in part, on 42 days. The press properly focus on bread and butter issues; the cost of living, mortgage costs and, I know it’s appropriate to their readership, but also there’s a certain amount of froth and dross of politics. The John Lewis list is important, but I think the liberty of the country is also important. We have to fight the battle and find ways of doing it, just as we’ve had today with Bob Geldof speaking, and that’s designed to grab attention, and drag it back to the issue we’re talking about, and we’ve been reasonably successful with that.

SG: How much of a problem has the lack of a serious opponent been for the campaign given the press’ love of pitched battle?

DD: That makes it more difficult. Frankly I guessed they might take this tactic before we started. The reason for this is that they’ve lost every argument they’ve had on 42 days, I mean we’ve had three major debates in the Commons and they’ve been short of a slam dunk each time, a complete disruption of the Labour case, on three different counts, with three different lines of argument. So it wasn’t that surprising, which meant that we had to go down a different route. The different route was to hold other debates, for example the Observer debate with Dennis MacShane and David Aaronovitch, who were good enough to come and fight the Government’s cause for them, as it were. So we have had to do it a different way, nevertheless it has still worked, and we still get reportage of it, albeit perhaps not as much as otherwise, but that’s the government’s strategy. At the end of the day, the public will draw a conclusion about a government that says: ‘this policy’s very popular, which at least on the surface it’s supposed to be, it’s very important, we’re absolutely certain of it but we don’t dare defend it.’ I think they might draw a conclusion that there’s an inconsistency there which either comes from cowardice or from a lack of belief in their own case.

SG: Looking back at Bob Geldof’s speech, countries such as Russia and Spain only hold suspected terrorists for five days. Why does our government feel that such a large, custodial sentence of 42 days is necessary?

DD: More than half the public believe that it’s done for straight political reasons, that the government wants to look tough on terror and us to look weak on terror. Broadly speaking it doesn’t work, it may work at the margin, but it doesn’t work. The Tory Party has had a policy down the years and has been very tough, and you have to be smart and proactive on terror. For example, the use of intercept evidence in court, we’re the only country in the world that doesn’t do that properly. I want to see the use of post-charge questioning; I want to see the use of plea-bargaining to close cases off more quickly. All those are things we can offer, and people know that, and they also know we have tradition. They know about Tory MPs and Ministers being on death lists and some of them being killed such as Airey Neave and Ian Gow, a friend of mine and I’m sure that Norman Tebbit is still in pain from the bomb blast in the Brighton hotel. We have memories of this, so the likelihood of us ever being weak on terror is non-existent. What we won’t ever be is dumb on terror, which is what the government’s being.

SG: How have you encouraged volunteers and young people to get involved? Was this difficult considering you’re not directly linked to the party?

DD: Well it’s quite interesting, as we have a slightly different complexion for volunteers. They’re more youthful actually, as a lot of young people think this is a very important issue. Some volunteers are non-party, and a couple of Labour and Lib Dem members have come to support us. So it’s a whole series of differences and, of course, we’ve had financial support, with about small 40,000 donations, and a large number of those are from non-Tory voters and those not really interested in politics.

SG: Given the results you’ve had with fundraising, do you think more focus should be put on issue-based fundraising in politics?

DD: I think there is a possibility here. Clearly it’s engendered a response on a grand scale, so people want to put their hand in their pocket or fill out a cheque and put it in an envelope. So I think that it shows that it’s possible. But whether we can match the American scale, I don’t know, to do so I think we’d have to become a lot more effective in web activity. I mean we do have a PayPal site and so on. I think if I was to do this again, creating the PayPal site would be the first thing I’d do, whilst enthusiasm is hot! So yes there is a possibility here and in terms of the legitimacy and the image of politics it would be a very good thing if we could raise big chunks of money for green issues or individual issues like this one, or even in health care where people have really got special interests.

SG: If you are successful on the 10 July, what role will you play? Do you see yourself as becoming a sort of champion of these freedom issues and taking those on as a sort of quasi-shadow ministerial role?

DD: I don’t see myself spending all my time on this. It is an important issue to me and I can see a significant chunk of time being spent on it, but I’m not by nature a single issue politician. I mean I have interests in foreign affairs, financial matters and the public services, all of which I’ve had positions in. So there will be a range of things that I’ll be keeping an interest in, but there’s no doubt that this campaign does not stop on the 10 July, and I’ll be watching the government like a hawk, including which way it goes on many of these repressive issues.

My general view is that what the government does is offer false bargain, and that bargain appears to be more security for less liberty. What in practice it turns out to be is no more security, and sometimes less security for less liberty. The easiest example of this is ID cards. They are supposed to make our identity more secure but putting the data with everybody’s identity into one place, completely biometric data, makes it very attractive for people to steal by hacking in.

And if they can beat Microsoft, what chance do the Home Office have? Second, once you lose that identity, it’s not like losing your bank account details, its biometrics, and you can’t get them back. So there’s a really serious risk to securing privacy there.

With regard to the sorts of issues where a bogus bargain is offered, I can see myself spending quite a lot of time exposing them over the next few years, as well as driving the general issue of freedom as a political cause. It appeals right across the board, but it is a natural Tory issue. I remember Margaret Thatcher talking about liberty under the law, which at the time I thought was a cliché. Now I realise it’s an important reality that we have to defend. So one, it’ll be essentially a Tory issue, but two I think it’ll one which might attract people from other parties or no parties into our fold, and that can’t be a bad thing.