David Davis is a natural contender to replace Liam Fox:

Been hearing that David Davis was trying to shore up support on Sunday to take over from Fox should the need arise.—
Alex Forrest (@alexforrestitv) October 11, 2011

And it seems he is well aware of this fact…

UPDATE: The cracks are starting to show –  Patrick Mercer, who would love the job, has told the World at One:

“The Secretary of State for Defence is running a ministry which is under serious financial strictures but much more imp is fighting certainly one hot war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the remains of a campaign in Libya and with all sorts of difficulties and problems and further campaigns and involvement on the horizon.The last thing that busy civil servants need and busy uniformed staff inside the Ministry of Defence is this sort of distraction with their boss.”

David Davis together with wily old Jack Straw has led a backbench campaign to block votes-for-prisoners. After Basher’s impulsive walk-out over civil liberties he was written-off, his political romance with Shami Chakrabarti looked a little silly and was the subject of much derision. With this successful campaign – MPs voted 234 to the ayes, 22 against – he has won over people and many Conservatives will be re-appraising him. And Shami, well that political infatuation will have come to an end. Liberty campaigned for votes-for-prisoners…

It’s a five years and a day since David Cameron beat David Davis for the Tory leadership, and still DD can prove a headache for his young usurper. Davis left the PM a delightful anniversary present in his announcement last night that he will be voting against the Tuition Fees rise on Thursday.

While many are whispering it’s typical of Davis to be looking for headlines and trouble, as it’s his second nature, Ben Brogan argues that Davis sees a gap as Leader of the Opposition, however some are  just pushing ridiculous lines. The former staffer who thought portraying Davis’s one man rebellion as something that might help the coalition, as it will take some heat off the LibDems, needs to go back to spin school…

Ephraim Hardcastle draws to Guido’s attention that there is an innocent explanation for the Shami and Basher late night Tuesday over-the-candles chat. Liberty had given David Davis their “Independent Voice of the Year” Human Rights Award on Monday. So Basher would have seen Shami two nights in a row…

Do you remember the mini-furore over Andy Burnham’s scurrilous innuendo-rich suggestion of some kind of seduction of Basher Davis after “late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with” Shami Chakrabarti? In the last month they have appeared on Question Time together and Basher was coincidentally in the audience to ask Shami a question when she was on the panel at an Intelligence Squared event last week.

Last night they lingered long after everyone else at the Political Studies Association Awards at 1 Great George Street. (Clegg and Cameron jointly won politician of the year, Liberty and, errm, the Southall Black Sisters won the award for setting the political agenda. Sir David Frost got Best Political Satire – only 40 years late.)

You know how it is, you can’t bring yourself to leave the restaurant, the candles are melting low, you make small-talk about detention orders only to steal one more delicious moment of time with a soul-mate.

Basher and Shami had switched seats earlier in the night and left together only after everyone else had gone.

David Davis was overheard explaining…

“The corollary of the Big Society is the smaller state. If you talk about the small state, people think you’re Attila the Hun. If you talk about the Big Society, people think you’re Mother Teresa.”

The Boot & Flogger in Southwark is the perfect place for a free-marketeer to conspire, since it was until recently the only hostelry in the land that had the right to sell wine without having a licence, thanks to a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1567.

The FT’s offices are nearby and it was David Davis’ misfortune that an FT hack was there on Thursday to overhear him referring to the “Brokeback Coalition”.

Hardly startling revelations that right-wingers are not overjoyed that Downing Street seems to care more about fifty odd LibDem MPs than two hundred Tory MPs. Just read ConservativeHome and you will see the same sentiments there almost daily…

At last night’s Spectator debate on grammar schools David Davis said he owed everything to the opportunity given to him by his grammar school.  He described the failed forty-year comprehensive scho0l system experiment as a catastrophe.

“…out of this catastrophe there was only one winning group. Do you know who they were?  Yes, the public schools. Who teach just 7% of the population.”

The handicapping of the intellectual capacity of the country has definitely given the  children of the privileged who were able to buy a better education, great advantages.  Can’t help thinking he has a particular public school in mind…