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.