In Nick Herbert, Conservatives in Arundel could not have found a better prospective MP to replace Howard Flight. In choosing a radical thinker who successfully led the all-party “no” campaign against the euro, and who then created a think-tank that makes a forceful case for lowering taxes, the constituency has backed a serious candidate. The fact that he is also gay makes the constituency’s choice a loud and clear statement that the Conservative Party hosts a diverse range of candidates and views.

It would be ludicrous to confine political discourse to wrangling over whether public spending should be 42 per cent or more (it was 37.4 per cent in 1999-2000). Mr Herbert has eloquently made the case that this is a staggering proportion, and that the money is inevitably used less efficiently in the public sector. The Labour Party’s attempts to savage any suggestion that taxes could be lower are becoming a serious brake on intelligent debate. It was absurd for Gordon Brown to claim yesterday that the Arundel episode proves that the Tories are plotting “massive” spending cuts. Mr Brown should spend less time tilting at windmills and more time considering how to return money to the taxpayers, the engine of the British economy.

Howard Flight’s view that the Conservatives should develop a plan for more spending cuts was reasonable. What was unreasonable was his suggestion that the leadership had a secret plan to do so. He broke party discipline in the most flagrant way, despite being warned by Michael Howard’s office to watch his words. The severity of the party leader’s response was, as we said at the time, “excessive”. But it was, as we further argued, understandable within the chaos of an election campaign. It would be quite wrong, however, to conclude that members of one political party must share identical ideas. Britain is not North Korea.

It is a vital part of the Tory creed to aspire to lower public spending, and never more so than when taxes, both patent and stealth, keep rising. With almost one worker in four employed by the State, Britain is hardly the Wild West of leftist imagination, plundered by capitalist rednecks. Far from being the beachhead for a government-free economy railed against by President Chirac, Britain is burdened with government at every turn. Businesses struggle under a growing mountain of misguided, often poorly drafted, overweening regulation that attempts to determine everything from door widths to inflexible flexitime.

Tax and regulation are thus issues for Labour as much as for the Tories. Two weeks ago, Mr Herbert wrote in The Spectator that the bottom 20 per cent of earners pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than those on average incomes, because they pay disproportionate amounts of indirect taxes. He questioned why the lowest earners should subsidise means-tested benefits, such as the Working Tax Credit which is available to people earning £55,000 a year.

This is a proper subject for debate, and one which should be keenly felt by a Government seeking social justice through redistribution. Labour’s instinct for censorship is damaging. Its refusal to join the debate is foolish. Indeed Mr Brown seems to be gradually realising that he must adjust his orientation on these issues if he is to be electable in the future. He is surely Labour’s next leader, but will he ever be Labour’s next elected Prime Minister?