David Michael Davis (23 December 1948-)
David M. Davis is a British Conservative Party politician. Raised on a council estate in South London and attending a grammar school, he went on to gain a Master's degree in business when he was 25, and went into a career with sugar company Tate & Lyle.
Before he was forty he became Member of Parliament (MP) for the Boothferry constituency in Yorkshire, England (1987). He later became MP for the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden (also in Yorkshire). Davis was sworn member of the Privy Council in the 1997 New Year Honours List, having previously been Minister of State at the Foreign Office from July 1994 to April 1997.
Between 2003 and 2008 he was the Shadow Home Secretary in the shadow cabinet, under both Michael Howard and David Cameron. Davis had previously been a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2001 and 2005, coming fourth and then second.
On 12 June 2008, in a surprise and controversial move, Davis announced his intention to resign as an MP, and was immediately replaced as Shadow Home Secretary. This was in order to force a by-election in his seat, for which he intended to seek re-election by mounting a specific campaign designed to provoke wider public debate about the erosion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. Following his formal resignation as an MP on 18 June 2008, he officially became the Conservative candidate in the resulting by-election and won it on 10 July 2008.
