Last week I mentioned an article in The Economist suggesting that disgruntled Libertarians might be a danger to John McCain. I wasn’t entirely convinced by their argument, but you could have knocked me down with a feather yesterday when Libertarianism raised its head in the House of Commons, causing a fair amount of trouble for David Cameron along the way.

For the benefit of my non-British readers, a brief explanation is in order. Yesterday our beloved Socialist government passed a bill that basically says that anyone can be locked up without trial for 42 days for the heinous crime of “looking like a Muslim on a day when the government feels the need to show that it is ‘tough on terror'”. The vote passed by a narrow majority, and only because Gordon Brown did a deal with the nastiest right-wing group in Parliament: Ian Paisley’s DUP. The Conservatives voted against the bill because a) they are the Opposition and voting against the government is what the Opposition does, and b) because most of them probably thought that 42 days was way too short. No one seriously expects a Tory government to repeal the legislation, should it become law, and should they win the next election.

And then the bombshell. David Davis, the Conservative Home Affairs spokesman, has resigned his job and his seat in Parliament so that he can fight a by-election on a civil liberties platform. The general view in Westminster is that Mr. Davis must be barking mad. Alex Massie has a rundown on the various ways in which politicians and political correspondents have characterized the idea of a politician actually having principles as lunacy. Meanwhile other parties are struggling to decide how to deal with this unexpected development.

The Liberal Democrats who, having little chance of ever getting into power, are more free to take a stand on principle, apparently offered Davis their support before he made his announcement. Labour is trying to pretend the whole thing isn’t happening. They are afraid to stand up for their own policy at the ballot box, and probably won’t contest the election. And into the void has jumped Rupert Murdoch. He is apparently leaning on his former employee, Kelvin MacKenzie (ex-editor of The Sun), to stand against Davis on what will probably be a “we hate everyone who looks different or talks different” platform. Murdoch is presumably hoping to bring Fox News style hate-based politics to Britain. It does, after all, make a lot of money for him.

And if that wasn’t complicated enough, there is Mr. Mackenzie himself to deal with. You see, he’s not actually a “hang ’em and flog ’em” conservative, or even a populist rabble-rouser like Enoch Powell. He is the leader of the Red Mist Party, a fringe political group dedicated to helping the little guy against bureaucrats. He actually has a lot in common with the “I demand the freedom to shoot anyone I don’t like” wing of the Libertarian party.

This, I suspect, will all be terribly confusing for Britain. Goodness only knows how it is going to play out.