Brown accused of 'gutlessness'

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The former shadow home secretary, who stunned Westminster last week by announcing he was resigning as an MP to fight a by-election over plans to extend the pre-charge detention of terrorism suspects to 42 days, said the Prime Minister was treating his constituents with "contempt".

Labour has said that it will not decide whether to contest the election in Mr Davis's Haltemprice and Howden constituency until he has formally stood down later this week, although all the signs are that it will not field a candidate.

Mr Davis said that the failure to put up a fight would be an act of extraordinary weakness on the part of Mr Brown.

"This is a man who bottled it on the general election, bottled it on a referendum and now he is going to bottle it even on a by-election where he could bring the full resources of his party to play against me and argue this," he said during an interview on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show. "I have not seen quite such an example of gutlessness in my political career. This is an issue that matters. All my constituents - or the massive majority of them - think this was a thing worth doing, they think this was an argument worth having, and the Prime Minister is treating them with contempt."

Mr Davis insisted that he would bring the campaign to life even without a Labour opponent, saying that some Labour rebels and Iraq war veteran Colonel Tim Collins had promised to support him.

One such rebel, Bob Marshall-Andrews, said he was "very sorry indeed" that Labour looked like they wouldn't put up a candidate.

And he claimed he would be speaking for "a very large part of the Labour party" by backing Mr Davis's campaign.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg - who shares Mr Davis's opposition to the 42 day extension - defended his decision not to put up a candidate in order to give Mr Davis a free run.

"There are certain issues that go beyond party politics, which go beyond trying to seek narrow party political advantage and I judged that this was one of those occasions," he said.