I've long harboured a deep hatred of Howard Flight. Some time ago, I saw him speak on (then) Shadow Treasury policy at an event in London. When the applause at the end was still dying down, he lit up a cigarette. OK, so this was before the ban, but it was still so, well, uncouth.

Not that long thereafter, he got caught briefing supporters before the 2005 election that the Tories would actually cut taxes by more once they were in power. Michael Howard was deeply unhappy with all this and deselected him. While he'd clearly created a shitstorm for the Tories out of nothing, this did feel unreasonably harsh, even at the time. It couldn't be admitted back then, but it did feel like Labour was out of control on spending and Flight offered a hope that their party would get us back on course earlier than Howard felt he could admit.

Perhaps it's how politics has to work. Five years on, Flight has his reward for going (fairly) quietly: a peerage. However, he's managed to upset people again by stating, in rather indelicate terms, that poor people respond to child-related benefits by having more children. Mindful that he doesn't actually have his peerage yet, Flight has beaten a hasty retreat.

But while I don't like the man himself, I admire his determination to say what he thinks, even if it's not politically correct or easy listening. Politics has become appallingly anodyne of late, where every minor misstatement becomes a significant gaffe thanks to stray microphones and Twitter. If politicians are forced to censor vast swathes of political debate because it's "nasty" then we are at risk of making terrible policy errors. So, rather than shouting down Flight or complaining about the way he said
it, shouldn't we worry about the impact of child-related benefits on people's decisions about timing and number of children? Indeed, wouldn't it be astonishing if it wasn't a factor in that decision?

As the saying goes, we should play the ball not the man. Like so many in the UK right now, I don't much care for the man. But I'll concede he's got good balls.

Written on my Android mobile phone. Article may be edited later.

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Filed under: Current issues, Politics with tags child benefit, conservatives, deficit, howard flight, smoking, twitter, welfare benefits