The vote was passed with the support of the government by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who had nine elected MPs. Speaking after his resignation, Davis stated that he intended to induce a wider public debate, and stop "the insidious and relentless erosion of civil liberties in Britain", in which the detention vote was a "watershed" in the debate, which also encompassed recent legislation about the increased use of CCTV, the Identity Cards Act 2006 and the expansion of the DNA database, which represented "the slow strangulation of fundamental freedoms by this government". Timeline Davis's resignation announcement came on 12 June 2008, a day after the passing of the initial vote on detention. Davis gave a post-resignation press conference outside parliament, having been refused the opportunity to do so in the House of Commons by the Speaker. His resignation speech came on the back of a similar newspaper column written by previous Conservative Prime Minister John Major a week earlier. Davis would be the official Conservative candidate. Critics initially described Davis's decision as an emotional and knee-jerk reaction, however Davis later stated that the idea to resign if the vote was passed came as early as the previous weekend, and he had discussed standing down with his local party earlier in the week. On suggestions that the Labour Party might not field a candidate because of the nature of the campaign, the safeness of the seat, and the previous bad result for Labour in the 2008 Crewe and Nantwich by-election, Davis stated that "we will have the campaign anyway, and find people to argue on both sides of the debate". On 13 June, the former editor of The Sun newspaper, Kelvin MacKenzie, announced that he was 90% certain to contest the election, should Labour not stand. He would stand on a pro-42-day detention platform, stating: "I have been associated with The Sun for 30 years. The Sun is very, very hostile to David Davis because of his 28 day stance and The Sun has always been very up for 42 days and perhaps even 420 days". MacKenzie did not end up running. On 16 June, an official campaign website, www.daviddavisforfreedom.com, and a YouTube channel daviddavisforfreedom were launched. Davis formally stood down as an MP on 18 June 2008, by accepting the position of Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, which he immediately renounced in order to be