IN DEFENCE OF TREASON
Leo McKinstry says that politicians should
not be ashamed of changing their minds and 'betraying' their parties
'CONSISTENCY is contrary to nature, con- trary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead,' wrote Aldous Huxley in 1929. Yet his words are rarely applied to politics, where consistency of party alle- giance is prized as a great virtue. As the Tory defector Ivan Massow has discovered, those who change sides are usually subject to a barrage of accusations about treachery, with their motives impugned and their past record traduced by erstwhile colleagues.
One way of responding to such attacks is to boast of a higher political consistency, a loyalty to sincerely held principles that goes beyond the party label. 'I'm not the one who has changed. It is my party,' is the usual line in such circumstances. Ivan Mas- sow used it when arguing that the Tories had become increasingly 'nasty' under William Hague, as did another recent Tory defector, Shaun Woodward, who said that his move to the Labour benches was prompted by the Conservatives' abandon- ment of one-nation politics. Given that both Massow and Woodward joined the Tory party in the Eighties, when Mrs Thatcher was leader, such claims can be treated with a heavy dose of cynicism.
Nevertheless, the urge to trumpet adher- ence to lifelong convictions is common among defectors. The founders of the SDP in the early Eighties, such as David Owen and Shirley Williams, were always keen to Stress how little their own moderate views had changed in contrast to the radical left- ward shift in Labour policy. Similarly, when Reg Prentice joined the Tories from Labour in October 1977, he said his move was not the result of a change of heart but because of the growing influence of mili- tants in his local party.
Yet where is the shame in saying, 'Yes, I used to believe all that, but now I think it's a lot of nonsense'? This is certainly the journey that I have undergone. When I was at Cambridge University in the early Eighties I was a passionate supporter of CND, joining in marches through London and protests at American airforce bases. I became a member of the Labour party in 1985 and was so committed to the Labour cause that I worked as a party researcher at Westminster and served as a councillor in Islington. Yet by 1995 my left-wing out- look had almost completely disappeared. It was through an article in this magazine five years ago that I made a very public declaration of my decision to leave the Labour party.
In making this move I could not pretend that there was any consistency of convic- tion on my part. Indeed, writing in the Independent last week, the columnist David Aaronovitch said that my defection was hardly credible, for 'Leo McKinstry sud- denly discovered that he possessed the brain of Norman Tebbit trapped inside the body of an Islington Labour councillor. What kind of operation did it take, one wondered, to entirely remove that useless, dangling appendage, his social conscience?'
Aaronovitch is adopting there the char- acteristically smug, arrogant and wrong- headed liberal belief that only people on the Left can have a social conscience. After all, it was Islington Council, with all its sup- posed superiority in social concern, that had presided over one of the most sicken- ing child-abuse scandals of modern times, had produced the worst examination results in the country, and had dismal ser- vices for the most vulnerable people in the community. It was precisely this level of failure that shifted my views to the Right, for I no longer had any faith in the efficacy of state action for every social problem.
Both personal and political circum- stances are changing all the time, yet MPs and activists feel they have to remain utterly constant in their attachment to their chosen groups throughout their life- times. Beyond the narrow world of party politics, such thinking seems absurd. If someone had liberal views on crime, then was badly beaten up and, as a result, adopted a much tougher attitude, no one would accuse them of a 'betrayal of princi- ple'. Nor is the home-owning professional expected to have the same views on taxa- tion as he might have done when he was a student living off the state. Indeed, there would be something grotesque about cling- ing to a label or an ideology that contra- dicts one's own personal experience. The refusal by outfits such as the Socialist Workers party to recognise that the world has dramatically altered since the fall of the Berlin Wall is not admirably consistent. It is just pigheadedly foolish.
In reality, though, our mainstream politi- cians do change their views much more than they admit. Most of the born-again Blairites on the front bench were happy only 15 years ago to go along with the worst extremes of Bennism — indeed, Blair himself was a sup- porter of CND. The crusaders for state con- trol in the Eighties are now the friends of big business. In the same way, a host of interven- tionist Heathites suddenly discovered the joys of the free market after the electoral tri- umph of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.
But, even if opinions change, party alle- giances rarely do. This is because the cul- ture of our political organisations is so tribal. Blind loyalty to the cause is far more important than any particular philosophy. Our political discourse is full of the lan- guage of conflict, with terms such as 'the battleground', 'big guns', 'first shots in the campaign' and 'the front line'. When poli- tics is seen as a form of war, it is not sur- prising that those who leave their posts should be branded as 'traitors'. The great- est hate figure in the history of the Labour party is Ramsay MacDonald, whose will- ingness to work with the Tories in the eco- nomic crisis of 1931 was seen as collaboration with the enemy. The National Labour government was the political equiv- alent of Marshal Petain's Vichy France, The case of MacDonald might be seared into the minds of all Labour MPs, but some of our greatest politicians have changed alle- giance, willing to put their beliefs before party, Gladstone (Tory to Liberal), Joe Chamberlain (Radical-Liberal-Unionist) and Churchill (Tory-Liberal-Constitutional- ist-Tory) being three of the most obvious cases. Because of the strength of internal party machinery and the growing breed of professional politicians who owe salaried advancement to the whips, such switches have become much less likely today.
Yet the case for open-mindedness above tribalism remains as powerful as ever. For our democracy is founded on the need for political inconsistency. The very reason for campaigning is to persuade members of the public to change sides. Swing voters are the absolute opposite of party deserters. Far from being treated with contempt for inconstancy, they are the most cherished figures in the election process. If politicians could treat each other with the same matu- rity, then we might have more honesty and less party posturing in our public life.
Previous page
