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David Davis and Tony Benn at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

David Davis and Tony Benn have spoken together in public before, but before now Tony Benn has been the star, the cuddly old relic everyone decided, at some point in the 1990s, that they loved, and who always has a witty line ready to back his radical views. David Davis has inevitably been the prosaic Tory making up the numbers to some extent. But not last night. With Davis having stood down only weeks ago from his post on the Tory front bench, and the Haltemprice and Howden by-election only days away, most of those who came to this packed meeting were surely here to see Davis on Democracy.

It was disappointingly short (the two men were only on stage for about 80 minutes) but apart from that it gave reasonable value for a tenner. The problem, if it could be called that, was the large measure of agreement between the two men about what Davis calls the "slow strangulation" of traditional liberties under the New Labour government. Davis I'm glad to say went a little beyond the familiar argument that compromising liberty concedes the battle to the terrorist; he argued pretty  impressively that all our recent social progress, from improved health to sex equality and prosperity, have been the result of our democratic institutions and that no one knows at what point cutting back on freedom will kill the goose. He also linked his view of freedom clearly to a conservative vision of a small state, citing Jefferson (although Wikiquote reckons this is wrongly attributed: Gerald Ford said it, apparently):

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have.

I don't think the audience pressed him hard enough (to be fair, we didn't have enough questioning time to press him) on the tensions and contradictions in his position. Yes, someone challenged him on his opposition to the Human Rights Act, and although he said he backed a British Bill of Rights it's clear he can't square this with his early suggestion that the lack of fundamental constitutional guarantees is a problem in the UK. And someone challenged him on his support for detention of terror suspects up to 28 days without charge. But there was nothing on CCTV cameras and the fight against crime, nothing on DNA and women's safety. Davis did give an interesting answer to a question about proportional representation, though. While he opposes change for elections to the Commons, on the sensible grounds that our current system delivers clear results and strong governments, he suggested he'd back the single transferable vote or at least some proportional system for an elected House of Lords. I've been arguing for this for years, so I'm glad an influential politician has taken this public stance. I'm glad, too, that his reasoning is the same as mine: there is no point in electing a second chamber as a check on government if its electoral system means it replicates the majority the government has in the Commons, he said. I'd add another, related argument, that PR for the Lords would also avoid a mid-term landslide for the opposition resulting in legislative gridlock. Proportionality makes sense for the Lords because it will help it in its function of making government think again through taking critical stances based on broad consensus.

As for Tony Benn, well, he appeared as himself. He was, as always, very funny: he got big laughs, especially for his remarks about the Church of England, which he called our oldest nationalised industry, and he pointed out that the Prime Minister, in effect, can appoint anyone as Archbishop of Canterbury - even a lesbian. I can understand why he's told, as he said, that he's a national treasure, because even I find myself agreeing with much of what Benn says. And you can't helping warming to him because of his skill as a raconteur.

And yet, and yet. I seem to be one of the few who remember what Tony Benn used to be like, before he became cuddly; when he was trying to become leader of the Labour Party, undermining Michael Foot and opposing Neil Kinnock; before he took on the role of democracy's doyen. How democratic was it for him in the early eighties to successfully commit Labour to withdrawal from Europe without a referendum, only a few years after the British people had overwhelmingly voted to stay in? Last night of course he called for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. How democratic was it for him to support Arthur Scargill's refusal, at the beginning of the 1984-5 miners' strike, to hold a ballot of his members? I wanted to put points like this to Benn, but I wasn't called.

One questioner asked both men whether MPs should have to pass some form of regular performance assessment, or else lose their jobs. Davis answered that MPs should be accountable only to the electorate. Benn turned away from the question with an irrelevant witticism; unsurprinsingly since at the high tide of Bennism (or Bennery, a word I'm especially fond of) he and his supporters wanted Labour MPs to have to apply each Parliament for reselection by local Labour activists - not all members, note, Benn never supported one member, one vote - and to be discarded if found ideologically unsatisfactory, regardless of the views of constituents.

A good event; made all the more fun for the occasional whiff of a real political meeting, like the question from the man who wanted to bomb Pakistan and from the old lefty at the back who criticised Benn for sharing a platform with an unreconstructed Thatcherite. The man sitting in front of my friend Amanda was reading a leaflet: "Questions David Icke would ask David Davis if he weren't banned from his meetings".