2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election that if elected he would refuse to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen in order to take up his seat. He opted to declare neither a party affiliation nor "Independent", so appeared on the ballot paper with no party label. Icke told the VoteWise website he had "no politics", and David Davis had a "lot he doesn't yet see". Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that his party would not field a candidate in the by-election as the issue of civil liberties transcended party politics and the Liberal Democrats supported Davis's position on the issue,
Civil liberties in the United Kingdom world wars. Since then, the United Kingdom's relationship to civil liberties has been mediated through its membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. The United Kingdom, through Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, led the drafting of the Convention, which expresses a traditional civil libertarian theory. It became directly applicable in UK law with the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998. The relationship between human rights and civil liberties is often seen as two sides of the same coin. A right is something you may demand of someone, while a liberty is freedom from interference by another in your presumed rights.