The good knight

I attended a drinks reception on Wednesday to belatedly celebrate the investiture, last year, of Sir Philip Davies.

In March 2024 the former Conservative MP for Shipley was awarded a knighthood by Rishi Sunak in what was described as a ‘surprise’ honours list.

Elected in 2005 before losing his seat at the 2024 general election, Philip was unusual for a politician because he stuck rigidly to his principles, even when they conflicted with policies being introduced by his own party in government.

I witnessed this first hand when he voted against plain packaging of tobacco. He also voted against other anti-tobacco measures introduced by Labour and the Conservatives.

He missed the second reading of Rishi Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill last April but sent us a message to say he would be voting against it at the third reading.

Of course, the third reading never happened because Sunak called an election, but I have no reason to think Philip wouldn’t have kept his word.

As it happens he never made a secret of the fact that he disliked smoking, but he also took the view that it was not the job of government to dictate how people live their lives.

If I remember, our paths first crossed in 2008 when he hosted, on behalf of Forest, a small tea party in the House of Commons. Writing about it I commented:

Exceeding our expectations, 17 MPs and five peers turned up. Of the MPs, there were eleven Conservatives, five Labour, and one Lib Dem …

Our host, Philip Davies, gave a short, well-received speech. I announced the launch of our new Amend The Smoking Ban campaign. And Trevor Baylis told a joke involving smoking and sex.

The following year (2009) he took part in a panel discussion hosted by The Free Society, Forest's sister campaign, in the Freedom Zone at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

I can’t remember what the subject was but that was the year Labour introduced legislation to ban the display of tobacco in shops so I’m sure that was one of the issues we addressed.

The other panellists were me, Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Alex Deane (Big Brother Watch), and Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas).

The next year we invited Philip to take part in another discussion (‘Big Government Is Watching You: the surveillance society and individual freedom’) that was one of a series of events organised by Forest/The Free Society at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Delivering a passionate defence of surveillance cameras, he argued that they act as a deterrent to crime and many violent criminals would not be caught without them.

The event was chaired by political blogger and broadcaster Iain Dale who tweeted, ‘Philip Davies MP making superb anti civil liberties speech, even if I disagree with virtually all of it.’

Famously, Philip voted against the Tory whip over 250 times during his parliamentary career, which made it a little surprising that Rishi Sunak should personally award him a knighthood.

Then again, they both represented Yorkshire constituencies and they seem to be good friends.

Sunak was unable to be present in person on Wednesday so he sent a video message instead. In response Philip was so fulsome in his praise of the former prime minister I was genuinely gobsmacked. I had no idea he was such a fan boy!

Present in the room were members of what Philip called his various ‘families’. These included his actual family, personal and political friends, his current colleagues in the betting industry, and his GB News ‘family’. (He and his wife Esther McVey, who is still an MP, co-presented a show on the channel for two years.)

Faces I recognised included former Conservative leaders Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, and former Tory Chancellor Lord Lamont.

I spoke very briefly to another former Conservative MP David Nuttall who back in 2010 tabled a private member’s bill to amend the smoking ban to allow smoking rooms in pubs and private members’ clubs.

I also spoke to political journalist and self-confessed ‘leftie’ Michael Crick (Newsnight, Channel 4 News) who revealed he is writing a short biography of Edward Heath.

To be honest, though, I didn’t know many guests and when I arrived I didn’t know a single person, apart from our hosts.

Twelve years ago something similar happened when I attended a drinks reception prior to the Political Book Awards in London and I spent the longest hour of my life wandering around, glass in hand, speaking to no-one.

Even now I have nightmares thinking about it.

This time, older, wiser and less diffident, I marched up to two guests - complete strangers - and introduced myself.

One was a finance director, the other described himself as a ‘techie’. We started chatting and ten minutes later I was giving them my business card (at their request, I should add).

In the unlikely event they read this I’d like to thank them because without them the evening might have triggered an old and rather painful memory!

Instead, I ended up speaking to some interesting people as well as paying my respects to one of the good guys in politics.

Below (left to right): Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Alex Deane (Big Brother Watch), Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas), Philip Davies and me at a fringe meeting organised by Forest at the Conservative party conference in Manchester in 2009