“A man with a mind of his own”: Tribute to Lord Horam
Lord Horam: 7 March 1939 – 24 July 2026 | Image courtesy of UK Parliament
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The only postwar MP to represent three political parties in the Commons, John Horam had the rare distinction of serving as a minister in both Labour and Tory governments. Generous and kind, he was an exceptionally sensible, independent-minded man. Words by Lord Johnson
Much has understandably been made of the fact that John Horam was the only postwar MP to represent three political parties in the Commons.
He had first been elected to Gateshead West in 1970, aged just 31, as a Labour MP. Disillusioned by Labour’s move to the left, he joined the SDP in 1981, before moving on again to the Conservatives in 1987, attracted by what he saw as the success of Margaret Thatcher’s economic reforms. Four years later he was selected for Orpington on Ivor Stanbrook’s retirement, winning the seat in 1992 and holding it through the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005.
It was a trajectory that gave his opponents plenty of material. Dennis Skinner famously called him a “dirty double-rat”. John preferred Churchill’s observation that it was better to change your mind than to be wrong all the time.
When I succeeded him as MP for Orpington in 2010, his political journey towards the right was all long in the past. By then, he had represented the seat on the south-eastern edge of London for 18 years and his Conservative credentials were seldom questioned even within a characterful local association. “They’re good people,” he would tell me.
John thought about things for himself and was willing to follow an argument wherever it led him. He disliked ideological excess, whether it came from left or right.
He was not a convert who felt any need to prove his orthodoxy with performative posturing
Politics sometimes rewards tribal loyalty above intellectual independence, but John’s judgement and seriousness were recognised across party lines, and he achieved the rare distinction of serving as a minister under both Labour and Conservative governments.
He changed parties because the parties changed, because circumstances changed and because, occasionally, he changed his own mind. There was nothing frivolous about that. It reflected a belief that politics should be an exercise in judgement rather than dogma.
That independence did not disappear when he became a Conservative. He opposed his party on the Iraq war, spoke out against VAT on fuel and was an early Conservative opponent of joining the euro, notwithstanding the party’s wait and see policy. He was, in other words, not a convert who felt any need to prove his orthodoxy with performative posturing.
John also brought to politics an unusually broad experience of life outside it. Before Westminster he had worked at Rowntree’s – where he had a hand in the development of the After Eight mint – then at the Financial Times and The Economist, and had co-founded a consultancy of his own, the Commodities Research Unit. He understood business, economics and journalism as well as politics.
He changed parties because the parties changed
That breadth made him an exceptionally sensible parliamentarian and explains why David Cameron appointed him to the Lords shortly after he stepped down as an MP.
When I succeeded him, what struck me most was something less visible from Westminster: the affection in which he and Judith were held locally. Orpington is an exacting constituency, “a marginal in tough Tory times”, he warned me, and rewards hard work from its representatives. John had survived some tight contests thanks to his diligence.
In 2001, when the party was struggling to recover from its 1997 drubbing, John held on by just 269 votes, in a contest the Liberal Democrats had convinced themselves they might win. They even brought Eric Lubbock, by then Lord Avebury – the original ‘Orpington Man’ of the famous 1962 by-election – back to the count, presumably in the hope of anointing his successor.
John emerged stronger from the scare, rebuilt his base steadily and handed on a seat with a majority of almost 5,000.
To me, as his immediate successor, John could not have been more generous. There was no proprietorial attitude towards “his” seat and none of the slight froideur that can sometimes exist between generations of politicians. He offered encouragement freely, helped me handle a range of hot potatoes, from threatened hospital closures to airport expansions, and remained interested in Orpington long after leaving the Commons.
John gave more than four decades of service to Parliament, in two Houses. I will remember him above all as a kind and generous predecessor, a thoughtful colleague and a politician who retained that most precious quality: a mind of his own.
Lord Johnson of Marylebone is a Conservative peer
