Sometimes in politics, as in life, it may be necessary – or unavoidable – to offend somebody. It’s not ideal, of course, and most of us would like to avoid doing so, provided there’s another way to do what needs to be done. But there are times when squaring that particular circle isn’t possible. Sometimes you have to say what needs saying, despite sensitivities, because truth (or practicality) trumps tip-toeing around people’s feelings.
To go further, who one offends, and how much, can at times be instructive. Back when I was campaigning to reveal and reform MPs’ expenses, I used to check what the most obtuse and entitled parliamentarians thought was justified, and then advocate the opposite.
In even rarer situations, choosing to offend particular people for a specific purpose can be politically beneficial. It’s risky, but it can be done. Sir Keir Starmer has been deliberately rough with Corbynites, and with antisemites, in his party because he believes it’s deserved but also to signal to voters that he embodies change. At various times in David Cameron’s leadership, his team picked fights with Tory traditionalists, to communicate “modernisation” to voters.
Giving offence might sometimes be inevitable. It can also be instructive. Sometimes, used carefully, it can be helpful.
However, none of that makes it a good idea for its own sake. In politics, offending to gain lessons or send signals is sometimes privately referred to as “offending the right people”. That’s clunky shorthand and easy to misinterpret as meaning that causing offence to those you disagree with is worthwhile in itself. In reality, it’s harmful.
It feels like Lee Anderson has made just that illogical leap – seeking out people to offend like it’s a personal mission, as though treading on toes is a cause. He seems to play to an audience who might cheer him on and slap him on the back for sticking it to whoever is in his sights. It’s vice signalling (the mirror image of virtue signalling), pure and simple.
Anderson, who was the Conservative Party’s deputy chair until last month, was suspended on Saturday for refusing to apologise for saying Islamists had “got control” of the London Mayor. Today, he stood by his comments, admitting his words had been clumsy but were “born out of sheer frustration at what is happening to our beautiful capital city”.
Before now, at times, a more thoughtful Anderson could be briefly glimpsed (it would be intriguing to hear more from him, whether one agrees or not) but the temptation to thumb his nose or chase a bit of attention reliably shouts that man down.
Measuring success by controversy caused is easy – this is edgelording, not campaigning, and more useful to building up a YouTube channel than changing a nation. (Coincidentally, Anderson now earns more from going on TV than he does from sitting in Parliament.)
Offending without necessity or purpose is the emptiest of political junk food: briefly satiating, lacking nourishment, and prone to inspire an unquenchable appetite for ever greater self-indulgence.
A political party should contain multitudes. There ought to be room for contrarians, for firebrands, even for controversialists or outright clowns within each of our mainstream parties. Our political system is accomplished at absorbing all of the above, along with factionalists, ideologues, pragmatists, compromisers, sell-outs, careerists, brainiacs, backwoodsmen and all sorts of fabulous and flawed individuals, and harnessing them to the peaceable, democratic service of our society. That’s what the cliche of “big tent” politics means, and it generally works pretty well.
But a problem develops if a party either becomes completely intolerant of that odd and chaotic variety, and tries to insist every MP must be a polished drone replicant of the carefully disciplined front bench, or gives total licence to one of the odd or chaotic varieties, convincing itself that one person is so valuable they can be forgiven any transgression.
The Conservative Party risked the latter mistake with Lee Anderson. It believes, rightly, that someone of his politics – a former Labour man, who found his social conservatism and opposition to the EU was not welcome on the left – can have a place in the big Tory tent. It helped him into Parliament, as the Red Wall was toppled by voters who had been on a similar journey to the newly elected MP for Ashfield. But then, somehow, it made the error of assuming that Lee Anderson wasn’t just of the Red Wall, or from the Red Wall, or a by-product of winning the Red Wall, but that he actually was the Red Wall.
Perhaps some of those to whom these constituencies were new foreign territory just didn’t know any better, but they fell hard for the hype. They didn’t just accept Anderson, they decided they needed him. They made him deputy chairman of the party, put him on the payroll and then the TV. They concluded they couldn’t afford to lose him – and so he began his rampage, leaving the party to clear up after him.
That power imbalance was unsustainable, and was bound to get worse as he pushed ever more boundaries. It was also unjustified. While Anderson could be part of an effective campaign, speaking to one part of the wide Johnson Conservative coalition, his most self-indulgent excesses had increasingly little to do with what made that 2019 campaign effective.
The Red Wall wasn’t won by pessimism and doom, or dire predictions of the demise of Britain, but by what was at heart an optimistic pitch to people who felt worried and frustrated. The Conservative Party campaigned to level the country up, but not by talking the country down.
It never made any sense to conclude that the spokesman for voters who backed that positive campaign was someone who seems dedicated to being unremittingly negative – and his elevation exacerbated his taste for causing controversy at any price.
Eventually he found his party’s limit, even if he is yet to find his own.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group
