A driver, travelling at considerable speed, has the handbrake yanked on by his passenger. Do you end up clinging, shaken, to the seat, or hurtle through the windscreen?
Andrew Lansley could be forgiven for reflecting on such a proposition as he accepts the enforced “pause” to the NHS reform programme he was driving through with such alacrity.
This is a health secretary with set ways of operating and hardened opinions on the best cure for the NHS. After seven years leading his party’s health strategy, he will find the brakes being exerted in a personal and professional slight that will bruise badly.
But will he be able to stomach the changes to his vision? Failure to do so could mean he has to take an even bigger hit.
And yet, such is the nature of the Health Secretary, that one adviser, on visiting his office a few weeks ago, found him in a state of “almost other-worldly calm”.
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“He seemed totally oblivious to all the stuff crashing in on him,” the adviser told The Times. “It was really quite strange.”
Such is Mr Lansley’s conviction that he knows the NHS, and knows the best prescription for its problems. He is widely regarded as the most knowledgeable of MPs on health reform.
His grasp of detail is meticulous — “he can outwonk the wonks”, as one colleague put it — but has also conveyed an air of stubborn certainty.
To some, such as the unions who found that their submissions to his Bill consultation carry almost no impact, it is seen as arrogance. To others, such as his party strategists, it can cloud and clutter the message of why a health plan might be good for the public.
Finding other hands now on the wheel of the NHS juggernaut will be a humbling, even harrowing, experience for the Health Secretary.
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He may still be the best person qualified for the job in terms of NHS experience, but if he does not bend to the politics, presentation and competing passions evoked by the health service, he may yet find himself pitched out of the driving seat.
Profile Andrew Lansley