How important is the Prime Minister's health?

The blogosphere is alive with rumour of a new government conspiracy, that Gordon Brown is hiding a serious illness and is no longer fit to govern. Although the queue of people waiting to deride the Prime Minister as unfit to lead the country (most of them within his own party) grow longer by the day, this rumour, it would appear, has legs. What started as a random blog post by journalist John Ward has now escalated into widespread media speculation, drawing in the likes of Paul ‘Guido’ Staines, Matthew Norman of the Independent, Simon Heffer of the Telegraph, and even Andrew Marr.

The rumours started when an absent minded civil servant allegedly disclosed to Ward a long list of food items that the Prime Minister was strictly forbidden from eating on doctor’s orders. Ward ran a check on the list and quickly discovered that doctors commonly forbid their patients from eating such foods whenever they administer a certain type of anti-depressant known as Monoamine Oxide Inhibitors or MAOIs. These are among the strongest anti-depressants available and are so potent that if combined with the forbidden foods, they can be fatal. Ward also suggested that Brown was losing the sight in his right eye (he is already blind in the left).

As a result, Brown of late has found himself bombarded with questions on his health with many speculating –or hoping- that he might resign before the next election due to health reasons. Brown has promptly denied all charges, insisting that he is not depressed and not on any medication and also that the sight in his right eye is as good as ever. While his sight is unlikely to remain a big source of contention as, let’s face it, total blindness is neither an easy ailment to hide, nor a reasonable disqualification for office, media interest in his mental health is unlikely to go away.

Only Gordon Brown’s doctor, and perhaps his family, knows whether he is genuinely suffering from an illness of any sort, mental or physical, and I don’t intend to join the ranks of bloggers and journalists who have decided they won’t let the absence of medical expert opinion stop them from making wild accusations of a government conspiracy to hide the true state of the PM’s health. However, the story has undoubtedly raised the question, and not for the first time in British politics, of whether democratic accountability should extend to the health of our elected representatives, even at the expense of doctor patient confidentiality.

David Owen, who was a neurologist before he became a Labour MP and eventually foreign secretary in the 1970s, recently published an intriguing book, ‘In Sickness and in Power’, in which he catalogued all the most notable cases of world leaders who have covered up their health problems over the last hundred years, from David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson to Francois Mitterand and Tony Blair. He clearly identified many cases in which a leader’s failure to disclose the true state of their health had seriously affected their ability to govern, often with wide-ranging ramifications for international affairs too. The problem, he further argued, was that the absence of any law formally requiring them to undergo an independent medical assessment during their time in office, meant any decisions to disclose any illnesses were ultimately left down to the discretion of power-hungry politicians alone.

I couldn’t agree more with Owen and, while some may reasonably argue that the popular stigma associated with mental health issues in particular would mean that no politician would ever be fairly judged, I contend that the public interest (including national security) must ultimately outweigh any leader’s right to patient confidentiality. Moreover, I believe that the only way to counter the kind of stigmatisation that led Guido Fawkes to lead with the title ‘Is Brown Bonkers’ for his story, is for the detailed nature of such illnesses to be openly presented to the public for what they really are – treatable medical conditions. More importantly, a Prime Minister with nothing to hide will not hesitate to bring in the best medical professionals for treatment whenever necessary. One with a secret illness, fearful of drawing public attention, would be more likely to pretend nothing was wrong leading to the worst case scenario of their health deteriorating in the middle of a crisis.

Stop and Search - Are the Police too powerful?

Are the Police too powerful? Are the Police racist? Do they abuse their powers? These are the questions that immediately surface whenever the words "stop and search" are uttered, recalling memories of the infamous SUS laws and their application in Brixton prior to the explosion of the 1981 race riots. However, the issue has been re-ignited of late by the rise of Section 44 anti-terror powers which allow police officers to search anyone without the need for reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Yet stop and search held no real significance for me until I too was searched by police under Section 44, three years ago.

It was a hot Summer day in July 2006 and I was waiting for a friend of mine to arrive at my local tube station so we could go on together to another friend's house for a barbecue. I planned to stay the night there so had come prepared with my sleeping bag stuffed into a big rucksack on my back. My friend was late, unsurprisingly, but as he was coming in by tube and only needed to cross platforms to begin the second leg of the journey, I went through the ticket barriers and waited for him just behind them in anticipation of what turned out to be his not so imminent arrival.

Suddenly, two burly men, both over 6ft and kitted out entirely in leather (in 30 degree heat), approached me and showed me their police ID. They asked to search me and the contents of my rucksack under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act - I say asked, but it's not like I really had the option of saying no. Next, they asked if there was anything in my bag that could harm them if they opened it, which sounds as ludicrous a question today as it did then. After going through my rucksack, they made me turn around and put my hands up against the wall as they 'comprehensively' frisked me in front of other passing passengers, which now included my friend who had turned up just in time to catch the show. I even distinctly remember a man with a shaved head and several tattoos, dressed like a Hell's Angel, tutting at me disapprovingly as he walked through the ticket barriers. They then filled out a form taking down all my details: white, male, early twenties etc. It was a long list that also included my height, eye colour, description of the clothes I was wearing along with my home address. Finally, they gave me a copy of the form and headed off, sweating profusely in their Knightrider-esque attire.

Most of my friends that day reacted with horror when I told them this story. I chose to take a different perspective, however, mainly because I was technically loitering just behind the ticket barriers for about half an hour with a big rucksack on my back, almost exactly a year after a major terrorist attack was carried out on London Underground by guys wearing big rucksacks on their backs. More importantly though, I actually felt heartened that the police had stopped me because they were genuinely suspicious I might be a member of a secret Hampstead enclave of Al Qaeda, as opposed to singling me out for the colour of my skin or the length of my beard (which was short, albeit a tad unkept). This surely was progress since the days of the SUS laws with plain clothed officers on every street corner in some parts of London, regularly searching vast swathes of the black community without warning and often without reason.

Alas, an independent review of terrorism legislation in the UK, carried out by Lord Carlile QC in June of this year, found that the police have been carrying out "self-evidently unmerited searches" on thousands of people simply to give "racial balance" to their own stop and search statistics. In other words, it was far more likely that the reason I was subjected to an embarrassing search in broad daylight was so the police could report they were at least now searching as many whites as ethnic minorities. Furthermore, according to Home Office figures, the number of Section 44 searches carried out by Police in 2007/08 increased to 124,687 from 41,924 the year before, with less than 1% resulting in an arrest. Almost 9 out of 10 of those searches were carried out in London, with the entire capital designated a blanket Section 44 zone by the Metropolitan Police.

Perhaps they haven't made that much progress after all.