By Paul Goodman MP
The Hannan America NHS rumpus (H.A.N – or, better still, D.A.N) was, in at least one sense, absurd. As has been noted, Dan is a backbencher sitting in an Assembly abroad who has no influence on the Party’s health policy in Britain.
In another sense, however, D.A.N – a conflation of media mania, Labour malice and summer season silliness – was telling, because it raised a important question, namely: does modern politics in general, and the Party in particular, have house-room for heretics?
The challenger of orthodoxies, the man prepared to fly solo, the rebel with a cause, is indispensable to progress. This isn’t because he’s always right (for what it’s worth, I think Dan is wrong about the NHS, for both political and policy reasons), but because he’s always necessary.
Not so long ago, it was unacceptable in polite society to claim that printing money causes inflation, or that incomes policies don’t work. Now, these views are commonplace. The change wouldn’t have happened if the arguments hadn’t been put by senior Conservative politicians – Keith Joseph being perhaps the best example. As someone or other put it, heresy is the gadfly which makes the horse trot.
It’s never been easy to expound new ideas from the Shadow Cabinet (or the Cabinet itself). Trying to do so may have cost Keith Joseph the leadership. The media environment has got far harsher since his day – more manic, turbulent, punishing and fast-moving. As I’ve argued before, the next election will be the YouTube election.
Dan, of course, is not even a Member of Parliament, let alone of the Shadow Cabinet. He didn’t craft his answer to a question on American television about the NHS to stir a media frenzy, any more than he planned his speech in the European Parliament about Gordon Brown to create a viral sensation. He was simply putting a view which is, in the current political climate, heresy.
He wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last. The Party’s bound to view such incidents with two eyes – one tactical, one strategic. From a tactical point of view, heresy’s nearly always a bad thing. It risks media attention, Labour malice, opinion poll damage and electoral harm. But from a strategic point of view, heresy’s often a good thing, at least from backbenchers. It can challenge cosy consensus, break new political ground, prepare for progress. Under a Conservative Government, the presence of backbench heretics would be evidence of a reviving legislature – and proof, too, that to vote for party politicians is to do more than send in the clones.
The Party’s response to D.A.N (and indeed to Dan) was, broadly, to say that he’s entitled to his views, but that they aren’t always right. This response was as careful as it was correct. It will be hard to sustain under a new Government if backbench MPs (both old and new) begin, ideas-wise, to push the boat out – when the cry goes up from Labour, and its media supporters, for denunciation, condemnation, the withdrawal of the whip…
