David Davis, the shadow home secretary in the United Kingdom (that is, the prospective attorney general should the Conservative Party take power), has resigned his seat in the House of Commons to protest Parliament’s approval of a bill that would allow the government to hold terror suspects up to 42 days without charges.

Davis, generally regarded as a Thatcherite, said:

Until yesterday I took a view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because for centuries of forebears we defended the freedom of people. Well, we did, up until yesterday.

This Sunday is the anniversary of Magna Carta, a document that guarantees the fundamental element of British freedom, habeas corpus. The right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason.

But yesterday this house allowed the state to lock up potentially innocent citizens for up to six weeks without charge.

He denounced the bill as “the one most salient example of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedom” and went on to cite ID cards, “an assault on jury trials,” and “a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has” as other elements of that erosion.

Davis said he would run in a special election to reclaim his seat by campaigning “against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government.” Observers expect him to win handily, as the Labour Party has fallen dramatically in the polls. But Conservative leader David Cameron has already appointed a new shadow home secretary, so Davis may have forfeited his leadership role.

I’m reminded of Phil Gramm, a Democratic congressman, who worked with President Reagan and the Republicans to cut taxes and spending in the early 1980s. When the Democratic leadership removed him from the Budget Committee, he switched to the Republican Party. Saying that the voters of his district should have the chance to decide whether they wanted a Republican representative, he resigned, ran in the special election as a Republican, was easily elected on Lincoln’s birthday, and the following year waltzed into the U.S. Senate.

Will Davis find such success by resigning and giving the voters a chance to assess his performance? Only time will tell… In the meantime, you can watch the video of his five-minute speech here.