Sophie Morris: Trust no one – except your GP

Is it any surprise that Totnes doctor Sarah Wollaston pulled in the votes?

In Sarah Waters's excellent new novel, The Little Stranger, a struggling working-class GP tries to improve his status in rural Warwickshire by befriending the local gentility, whose own position in the community is slipping fast in the post-war years. Meanwhile he worries about the imminent arrival of the NHS, which he fears will usurp the standing of local doctors.

As it turns out, he had little to worry about: the status of GPs as revered authority figures in their localities has gone from strength to strength in the past half-century, compounded by the triumph of Sarah Wollaston in the Totnes Primary this week.

Wollaston, a 47-year-old GP, lecturer, wife, and the mother of three children, has little political experience. She won the Tory candidature race by means of an unprecedentedly democratic postal ballot, in which every voter in the Totnes constituency was given a say in who should replace MP Anthony Steen.

Given the bashing GPs have received in recent years over their escalating salaries and dwindling surgery hours, should we be surprised that almost half of the 16,639 Totnes residents – a quarter of the electorate – pledged their support for Wollaston? Britain's 33,000 GPs are often painted as the pariahs of the NHS, but Wollaston's win suggests they are as respected as ever in their communities. Their daily toil with ageing patients, cancer sufferers and sick children has been remembered and rewarded by those who have benefited, in Wollaston's case at least.

Given the alternatives, plenty of other GPs should be shoo-ins for political posts. The typical triumvirate of MP, local business leader and vicar has dissolved, leaving a power vacuum best filled as constituents see fit. MPs' fall from grace following the expenses scandal was swift and severe. The popularity of local business leaders has been squeezed along with the largesse they have to sprinkle around in this recession. The vicar struggles to reach beyond his congregation.

The GP, then, should be the obvious authority figure to turn to in these times of political confusion, with a government in disarray and widespread mistrust of party politics. The growing number of independent candidates announcing their intention to run for Parliament is proof of this.

Wollaston's success is not the first of its kind. In 2001, the retired physician Richard Taylor won a seat in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire, following his involvement in a campaign to keep Kidderminster Hospital open. Setting out his stall as an independent candidate enabled Taylor to continue to campaign on the local issues he believed in without recourse to corrupting career politics or a responsibility to kowtow to party whips. The successes of Wollaston and Taylor (who has said that his job in politics is far more family-friendly than medicine ever was) also show a privileging of health over other matters – pertinent given the paranoia over swine flu.

In today's climate, Waters's GP would no doubt have been wise enough to court his regular patients over the local landowners.

sophielouisemorris@gmail.com