Tom Harris is the mild-manned Labour MP for Glasgow South who was unfairly sacked as railways minister by Gordon Brown last year.
So when Harris speaks out, it is worth taking note. But he has today strayed into deeply sensitive territory on his blog, where he warns that an "army of teenage mothers" living off the state is a "national catastrophe".
This is the key paragraph: "I'm a Labour MP, so some will undoubtedly be surprised, and shocked that I'm writing this. But I can no longer pretend that the army of teenage mothers living off the state is anything other than a national catastrophe."
Harris decided to raise the issue after a teenager was given the bed next to his wife, Carolyn, in hospital after the birth of their son Reggie. The MP asked whether it was right for the teenager's father to be proud. He wrote:
It's great that this young girl had such a loving dad to support her. But proud? Proud that his teenage daughter was not only sexually active but was now a mother? Proud that any chance of a decent education, followed by a decent job, was now remote at best? Proud that she was, in all likelihood, about to embark on a lifetime of depending on benefit handouts for her and her child?
Harris, whose blog is timely after the claims that a 13-year-old boy recently fathered a child, insisted that he is not embarking on a "back to basics" crusade.
"I'm not remotely interested in what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and I'm not sounding the rallying cry for Christian or religious morality. But when the actions of others has such a debilitating effect on the rest of society, it's time to stop being polite. It's time to stop worrying about how people's feelings might be hurt if we question the choices they've made. Because very often, those choices are wrong. And it's about time we said so."
Labour colleagues will be divided by the Harris blog. Some will wince at his strong language, believing that it will be exploited by the Tories, who believe that social dislocation has created a "broken Britain".
Other Labour colleagues will praise Harris for having the guts to speak out on such a sensitive matter. They will say the Labour party will lose the support of Middle Britain if it backs away from the belief that people need to take greater responsibility for their actions.
