Of all the complaints that voters make against politicians, one is delivered with especial vehemence and frequency. "Why won't they ever give a straight answer?" I'll tell you why. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's because their opinion diverges from the party line. And so, not wanting to tell a lie, they affect to misunderstand the interviewer, or answer a different question to the one that was put, or use a lawyerly formulation. They don't do these things because they are dishonest. They do them, rather, because of the wretched – and relatively recent – doctrine that no two members of a political party can reasonably disagree. For most of our history, it was understood that MPs sat in their own right and were answerable chiefly to their local electorate. This meant that, in order to get their programme through, ministers had to humour and cajole the House of Commons, which in turn meant that the legislature was an effective check on the executive. True, all members of the Cabinet were bound by collective responsibility. But the notion that such responsibility should extend to their backbenchers would have seemed outrageous: the whole purpose of Parliament was to hold the administration to account. Then, around about 40 years ago, journalists began to develop the idea that if Person X disagreed, on the record, with Person Y, it was a "gaffe" (a word that exists only in newspapers, never in ordinary conversations). As parties solidified, and politics became professionalised, MPs were increasingly treated by the media as representatives of their parties rather than their constituencies. This shift has several baleful consequences. First, and most obviously, it encourages the perception that politicians say one thing in private and another in public. Second, it retards the development of new thinking. If current media norms had applied throughout the 20th century, it would have been a terrible "gaffe" to suggest that Britain ought to rearm in the Thirties or that the state shouldn't set prices and incomes in the Sixties. Worst of all, insistence on conformity prevents Parliament from doing its most important job, namely to constrain the Government. When MPs contract out their opinions to their Whips, they cease to represent their constituents. It is this tendency that led, for example, to Labour and Lib Dem MPs voting – in defiance of their commitments, their constituents and, in most cases, their consciences – against a referendum on the European constitution. Twice in recent weeks, I have come under fire for trying to answer questions honestly. On a visit to the US, I was asked by an interviewer whether I would recommend a British-style health-care model, paid for out of general taxation. I replied that all three parties were devoted to the NHS, and that it had public support (although I added that this was at least partly the result of the inaccurate belief that free health care for the poor is a unique attribute of the British system). But I didn't want to dissemble: I have for years argued that Britain would be better off with a Singapore-style system of personal health-care accounts. So I cautioned against nationalisation, citing international league tables on survival rates and waiting times. When a Labour researcher found the interview, I was accused of "insulting our hard-working doctors and nurses". (For the record, what I said was "I don't want to imply that, because we have a bad system, it doesn't contain good people. A lot of very generous, very patriotic people become doctors and nurses, because they have a calling to help others.") Then Labour found a clip in which, asked who my political influences were, I included, in a list ranging from Friedrich Hayek to Thomas Jefferson, Enoch Powell, whom I praised for his prescience in understanding the threat that European integration posed to national democracy. This promptly became a "Tory race row". There is something surreal about these media storms. When Barack Obama said, last week: "I don't want a British health-care system", no one accused him of "insulting our hard-working doctors and nurses". When Tony Blair described Powell as "one of the great figures of 20th-century British politics, gifted with a brilliant mind", no one called it a "Labour race row". But that isn't really my point. My point is that we seem to have lost the notion that a backbencher speaks for himself. I like David Cameron, and want him to be Prime Minister, not least so that Britain stops racking up debt. But the idea that I therefore agree with him on every issue is, when you think about it, silly. For what it's worth, David Cameron understands this better than the media. He has promised a series of reforms that would disperse power: referendums, an end to Crown Prerogative, a recall mechanism. And open primaries will do more than anything else to make his MPs independent. It is a measure of David Cameron's confidence that he is prepared to tolerate dissenting voices. No one could say the same about Gordon Brown. Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East EnglandThere is no harm in agreeing to disagree
Let's return to the good old days when MPs didn't always toe the party line, says Daniel Hannan.
Friday, 28 August 2009
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