By-election fails to excite voters

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By Ben Wright BBC News political correspondent

Beauty queen Gemma Garrett is among the 26 candidates"So what are your policies then?" the man in the Elvis costume asked his neighbour at the bar.

Supping half a pint of bitter at the White Horse pub in Howden, David Pinder from the New Party sketched his plans for less government and less tax.

The Church of the Militant Elvis Party did not seem to have any policies but its candidate, David Bishop, had the better threads.

Their genial lunchtime pit-stop over, they hopped off their bar stools and headed back into the town, just two of the 26 candidates in this bizarre by-election.

Miffed

Outside, the sun shone on the Minster that looms over Howden. Elvis prowled one end of the street while Gemma Garrett, the reigning Miss Great Britain, charmed shoppers at the other.

But there was no other hint that there was an election on. Windows did not have posters, lampposts did not have boards and many of the voters seemed miffed by the whole thing.

At the butcher's shop, 24-year-old Sarah Turner said she was stumped by David Davis's stand.

"I've voted Conservative since I could vote" she said. "He's more concerned about this one big issue than all the smaller issues his constituents actually care about. I think he's totally lost it."

David Cameron came along to support his former frontbench colleague

Outside, another lifelong Conservative said Mr Davis's resignation was grandstanding and "a complete waste of time".

But another man planned to back him. "All our civil liberties are disappearing", he said. "It's 'big brother' watching you the whole time. I will be supporting him."

Mr Davis wanted this race to start a national debate about civil liberties and the power of the state.

But without the Lib Dems (who support his stand) or Labour (who think it is a stunt), this by-election has a very long and unusual list of candidates.

One of them, Jill Saward, is standing because she opposes Mr Davis's views on CCTV and the DNA database.

Yet to ignite

But the rest of the ballot is a cauldron of different causes. The debate about civil liberties and Magna Carta has yet to ignite.

With the main opposition parties not standing, the Green Party spots an opening here.

At a pub in Cottingham, its candidate, Shan Oakes, mingled with drinkers.

"The end of oil can be quite exciting if we look at it in a positive rather than a negative way," she bravely told people hacked off with the price of petrol.

Ms Oakes wants this by-election to be about much more than civil liberties.

"There are huge issues like the end of oil and the devastation of the planet that he's not talking about," she said.

David Icke also thinks Mr Davis is ducking the big issue. At a press conference in the Willerby Manor Hotel, he pounded his way through a Power Point presentation on what he believes is a global conspiracy to create an Orwellian superstate.

'It's massive'

With his silver hair curling over his collar, the former sports presenter explained that the real 'big brother' went far beyond anything Mr Davis could imagine.

"It's massive," he cried. "When you connect the dots it's global.

"I don't care if I get no votes. It's irrelevant. Big brother's here. The question is how deep we go into it."

Later in the day Tory leader David Cameron arrived to show Mr Davis, the former shadow home secretary, his support.

He said he would come so he had to.

Mr Davis must be confident of returning to the Commons after polling day but what his time away has achieved is not clear.

He cheerily chortled at Sarah Turner's suggestion that he has "lost it".

He thinks the question about civil liberties and the state's power is one the British people have to start thinking about.

"If I manage to move this issue up the agenda then I'm happy," he said. "Labour could have had a really serious debate on this issue but they ran away from it."