British Politics
What shall we do with this bauble? There, take it away.
Oliver Cromwell, dismissing Parliament, 1653
SIR,
I have received your letter with indignation and with scorn return you this answer … I scorn your proffer; I disdain your favour; I abhor your treason; and am so far from delivering up this island to your advantage, that I shall keep it to the utmost of my power, and, I hope, to your destruction. Take this for your final answer, and forbear any further solicitations; for if you trouble me with any more messages of this nature, I will burn your paper, and hang up your messenger.
DERBY
The Earl of Derby, a Royalist holding the Isle of Man, to General Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s son in law
… consider into the commission of what crimes, impieties, wickednesses, and unheard of villanies, we have been led, cheated, cozened, and betrayed, by that grand impostor, that loathsome hypocrite, that detestable traitor, that prodigy of nature, that opprobrium of mankind, that landscape of iniquity, that sink of sin, and that compendium of baseness, who now calls himself our Protector. What have we done, nay, what have we not done, which either hellish policy was able to contrive, or brutish power to execute? We have trampled underfoot all authorities; we have laid violent hands upon our own Sovereign; we have ravished our Parliaments; we have deflowered the virgin liberty of our nation; we have put a yoke, an heavy yoke of iron, upon the necks of our own countrymen; we have thrown down the walls and bulwarks of the people’s safety; we have broken often repeated oaths, vows, engagements, covenants, protestations; we have betrayed our trusts; we have violated our faiths; we have lifted up our hands to heaven deceitfully; and that these our sins might want no aggravation to make them exceedingly sinful, we have added hypocrisy to them all; and … like the audacious strumpet, wiped our mouths, and boasted that we have done no evil …
Anabaptist address to Charles II, attacking Cromwell shortly before his death
Sir, the atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of those who continue ignorant in spite of age and experience … Much more, Sir, is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and become more wicked with less temptation: who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country.
William Pitt, speech, after entering Parliament, to Horace Walpole, who had mocked his youth
Gentlemen, I received yours and am surprised by your insolence in troubling me about the Excise. You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don’t know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody Else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God’s curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation. Yours, etc., Anthony Henley
Letter from Anthony Henley, MP for Southampton (1727–34), to his constituents, following their protests over the Excise Bill
Mr Speaker, I said the honourable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable member may place the punctuation where he pleases.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan on being asked to apologise for calling a fellow MP a liar. Attrib.
Therefore I charge Mr Hastings with having destroyed, for private purposes, the whole system of government by the six provincial Councils, which he had no right to destroy.
I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing.
I charge him with not having done that bribe-service which fidelity, even in iniquity, requires at the hands of the worst of men.
I charge him with having robbed those persons of whom he took the bribes.
I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the fortunes of widows.
I charge him with having, without right, title or purchase, taken the lands of orphans and given them to wicked persons under him.
I charge him with having removed the natural guardians of a minor Raja, and given his zamindary to that wicked person, Deby Singh.
I charge him – his wickedness being known to himself and all the world – with having committed to Deby Singh the management of three great provinces; and with having thereby wasted the country, destroyed the landed interest, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that country.
Edmund Burke, peroration on Warren Hastings, 1788
As he rose like a rocket, he fell like a stick.
Thomas Paine on Edmund Burke
When I get into Parliament, I will pledge myself to no party, but write upon my forehead in legible characters ‘To Be Let’.
Tom Sheridan to his father, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
And under it, Tom, write ‘Unfurnished’.
Richard Sheridan’s reply
With death doomed to grapple
Beneath this cold slab, he
Who lied in the Chapel
Now lies in the Abbey.
Lord Byron on William Pitt
… two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, similes for two political characters of 1819 – the Home Secretary Sidmouth, and Foreign Secretary and Leader of the Commons, Castlereagh
Why is a pump like Viscount Castlereagh? –
Because it is a slender thing of wood,
That up and down its awkward arm doth sway,
And coolly spout and spout and spout away,
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood.
Thomas Moore on Viscount Castlereagh
I met Murder on the way – He had a mask like Castlereagh …
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
Posterity will ne’er survey
A nobler grave than this;
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop here traveller, and piss.
Lord Byron on Viscount Castereagh, who killed himself
Honest in the most odious sense of the word.
Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone
I don’t object to the Old Man always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that God Almighty put it there.
Henry Labouchere on W.E. Gladstone
An old man in a hurry.
Lord Randolph Churchill on W.E. Gladstone
Gladstone … founded the great tradition … in public to speak the language of the highest and strictest principle, and in private to pursue and possess every sort of woman.
Peter Wright on W.E. Gladstone
Mr Peter Wright,
Your Garbage about Mr Gladstone in ‘Portraits and Criticisms’ has come to our knowledge. You are a liar. Because you slander a dead man, you are a coward. Because you think the public will accept invention from such as you, you are a fool. GLADSTONE
I associate myself with this letter.
H.N. GLADSTONE
W.E. Gladstone’s son
The Right Honourable Gentleman’s smile is like the silver fittings on a coffin.
Benjamin Disraeli on Sir Robert Peel
… the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.
Walter Bagehot on Sir Robert Peel
Mrs Thatcher is a woman of common views but uncommon abilities.
Julian Critchley on Margaret Thatcher
If a traveller were informed that such a man was the Leader of the House of Commons, he might begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped an insect.
Benjamin Disraeli on Lord John Russell
He has committed every crime that does not require courage.
Benjamin Disraeli on the Irish agitator Daniel O’Connell
He is a liar. (Cheers) He is a liar in action and in words. His life is a living lie. He is a disgrace to his species … He is the most degraded of his species and kind; and England is degraded in tolerating or having upon the face of her society a miscreant of his abominable, foul and atrocious nature. (Cheers)
Daniel O’Connell on Benjamin Disraeli, at a meeting of trades unions in Dublin
London, May 6 [1835]
Mr O’Connell:
Although you have long placed yourself out of the pale of civilization, still I am one who will not be insulted, even by a Yahoo, without chastising it … Listen, then, to me. If it had been possible for you to act like a gentleman, you would have hesitated before you made your foul and insolent comments … With regard to your taunts as to my want of success in my election contests, permit me to remind you that I had nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people … I am not one of those public beggars that we see swarming with their obtrusive boxes in the chapels of your creed …
We shall meet at Philippi; and … I will seize the first opportunity of inflicting upon you a castigation which will make you at the same time remember and repent the insults you have lavished upon
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Benjamin Disraeli to Daniel O’Connell
As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench, the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coast of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes, not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest, but the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.
Benjamin Disraeli on the Liberal Government
There is not a criminal in an European gaol, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged; which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it, and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeking in blood, and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once, is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that a door should be left open for their ever-so-barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole …
W.E. Gladstone on the Turks, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East
He made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.
Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone
… What should we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations and the people who suffer under the yoke, the cruel yoke, of Daesh?
… We know that in June four gay men were thrown off the fifth storey of a building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. We know that in August the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra, Professor Khaled al-Assad, was beheaded, and his headless body was hung from a traffic light. And we know that in recent weeks there has been the discovery of mass graves in Sinjar, one said to contain the bodies of older Yazidi women murdered by Daesh because they were judged too old to be sold for sex … Given that we know what they are doing, can we really stand aside …?
Hilary Benn MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary, defending air-strikes on Syria in a Commons Speech on 2 Dec 2015
He has not a single redeeming defect.
Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone
If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if anybody pulled him out that, I suppose, would be a calamity.
Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone asked to distinguish misfortune and calamity
He was without any rival whatever, the first comic genius who ever installed himself in Downing Street.
Michael Foot on Benjamin Disraeli
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination, that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments, malign an opponent and glorify himself.
Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone, parodying his style
Gladstone … spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the question.
W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman in 1066 and All That
Mr Gladstone speaks to me as if I were a public meeting.
Queen Victoria on W.E. Gladstone
If you weren’t such a great man you’d be a terrible bore.
Mrs W.E. Gladstone to her husband
Mr Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.
Winston Churchill on W.E. Gladstone
He spent his whole life in plastering together the true and the false and therefrom extracting the plausible.
Stanley Baldwin on David Lloyd George
Not even a public figure. A man of no experience. And of the utmost insignificance.
Lord Curzon on Stanley Baldwin
A lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.
Stanley Baldwin, referring to the post-First-World-War Commons
English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions.
Lord Salisbury
He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill on Stanley Baldwin
Like a cushion, he always bore the impress of the last man who sat on him.
David Lloyd George on Lord Derby; also attrib. to Lord Haig
This goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and uncharted woods of Celtic antiquity.
John Maynard Keynes on David Lloyd George
He aroused every feeling except trust.
A.J.P. Taylor on David Lloyd George
The tenth possessor of a foolish face.
David Lloyd George on any aristocrat
When they circumcised Herbert Samuel they threw away the wrong bit.
David Lloyd George. Attrib.
He could not see a belt without hitting below it.
Margot Asquith on David Lloyd George
The Right Honourable gentleman has sat so long on the fence that the iron has entered his soul.
David Lloyd George on Sir John Simon. Attrib.
It is fitting that we should have buried the Unknown Prime Minister by the side of the Unknown Soldier.
Herbert Asquith at Andrew Bonar Law’s funeral. Attrib.
For twenty years he has held a season-ticket on the line of least resistance.
Leo Amery on H.H. Asquith
If I am a great man, then a good many of the great men of history are frauds.
Andrew Bonar Law. Attrib.
I must follow them; I am their leader.
Andrew Bonar Law
I met Curzon in Downing Street, from whom I got the sort of greeting a corpse would give to an undertaker.
Stanley Baldwin. Attrib.
One could not even dignify him with the name of a stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air.
George Orwell on Stanley Baldwin
I would rather be an opportunist and float, than go to the bottom with my principles round my neck.
Stanley Baldwin
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
Winston Churchill on Stanley Baldwin
He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind … Listening to a speech by Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth’s; everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.
Aneurin Bevan on Neville Chamberlain
The people of Birmingham have a specially heavy burden for they have given the world the curse of the present British Prime Minister.
Sir Stafford Cripps on Neville Chamberlain
There but for the grace of God goes God.
Winston Churchill on Sir Stafford Cripps
Well, he seemed such a nice old gentleman, I thought I would give him my autograph as a souvenir.
Adolf Hitler on Neville Chamberlain
He saw foreign policy through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.
Winston Churchill on Neville Chamberlain; also attrib. to David Lloyd George
He was a meticulous housemaid, great at tidying up.
A.J.P. Taylor on Neville Chamberlain
WANTED! Dead or alive! Winston Churchill. 25 years old. 5 feet 8 inches tall. Indifferent build. Walks with a bend forward. Pale complexion. Red-brownish hair. Small toothbrush moustache. Talks through his nose and cannot pronounce the letter ‘S’ properly.
Jan Smuts on Winston Churchill
I thought he was a young man of promise; but it appears he was a young man of promises.
Arthur James Balfour, writing in his diary of Winston Churchill’s entry into politics
His style … is not very literary, and he lacks force.
The Daily News on Winston Churchill’s Maiden Speech
His impact on history would be no more than the whiff of scent on a lady’s purse.
David Lloyd George on Arthur Balfour
Wherever Sir Stafford Cripps has tried to increase wealth and happiness, grass never grows again.
Colm Brogan, in ‘Our New Masters’
I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities; but the exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.
Winston Churchill on Ramsay MacDonald
Sit down, man. You’re a bloody tragedy.
James Maxton, Scottish Labour leader, heckling Ramsay MacDonald during the latter’s last Commons speech. Attrib.
Winston had devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches.
F.E. Smith on Winston Churchill
Tell the Lord Privy Seal I am sealed to my privy, and can only deal with one shit at a time.
Winston Churchill when interrupted on the toilet in his wartime bunker and told the Lord Privy Seal wished to see him. Attrib.
A glass of port in his hand and a fat cigar in his mouth, with a huge and bloody red steak which he puts in his mouth in big chunks, and chews and chatters and smokes until the blood trickles down his chin – and to think this monster comes of a good family.
Joseph Goebbels on Winston Churchill
A sheep in sheep’s clothing.
Winston Churchill on Clement Attlee
A tardy little marionette.
Randolph Churchill on Clement Attlee
Dear Randolph, utterly unspoilt by failure.
Noël Coward on Randolph Churchill
A triumph of modern science – to find the only part of Randolph that wasn’t malignant and remove it.
Evelyn Waugh on Randolph Churchill after an operation
An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened Attlee got out.
Winston Churchill (attrib.) on Clement Attlee. But Kenneth Harris (Attlee, 1982) says Churchill denied the quote.
He will be as great a curse to this country in peace as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war.
Winston Churchill on Aneurin Bevan
Christopher, I don’t think Mr Mikardo is such a nice man as he looks.
Winston Churchill to his parliamentary private secretary, Christopher Soames, about Ian Mikardo, who was a famously ugly MP
He has a brilliant mind, until he makes it up.
Margot Asquith on Sir Stafford Cripps, Autobiography
I must say that (Profumo) never struck me as a man at all like a cloistered monk; and that Miss Keeler is a professional prostitute. There seems to me to be a basic improbability about the proposition that their relationship was purely platonic. What are whores about? (turning to Macmillan) What is to happen now? We cannot just have business as usual … I certainly will not quote at him the savage words of Cromwell, but perhaps some word of Browning might be appropriate:
‘… let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain.
Forced praise on our part – the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again.’
Nigel Birch MP on Harold Macmillan: Commons speech
Above any other position of eminence, that of Prime Minister is filled by fluke.
Enoch Powell
Defeat comes from God, victory comes from the Government.
Aneurin Bevan on Winston Churchill
I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.
Winston Churchill
I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.
Winston Churchill on Molotov
He never spares himself in conversation. He gives himself so generously that hardly anybody else is permitted to give anything in his presence.
Aneurin Bevan on Churchill
I stuffed their mouths with gold!
Aneurin Bevan, explaining how he persuaded doctors to accept the National Health Service. Attrib.
MPs love letting fly at each other. The Speaker often struggles to police their language. Since the Official Report commenced in 1861, we can read a bewildering variety of judgements from the chair. What is or is not acceptable as Parliamentary scorn seems to depend on the Speaker’s digestion. Take, for instance, rulings on how far a Member may go in calling another Member a liar. The following have been disallowed:
1862 a Member’s statement was ‘entirely false and without foundation’ (Speaker: ‘The hon. Member should express himself in proper language.’)
1863 ‘scandalous and unfolded’
1868 ‘doing dodges’
1870 ‘false’
1881 ‘hardly credible’
1883 ‘resorting to trickiness’
1884 ‘shuffling’
1886 ‘dishonest and hypocritical’
1887 ‘foul calumny’ and ‘gigantic falsehood’
1888 ‘flippant mendacity’
1909 ‘cold and calculated lie’
1914 ‘mendacious’
‘infamous lie’
‘wilful falsehood’
1932 ‘perverter of the truth’
1946 ‘abdominal lies’
1952 ‘a wicked misstatement of the truth’
1953 ‘dishonest’
1961 ‘untrue’
1963 ‘duplicity’
1966 ‘deliberate fabrication’
1967 ‘twister’
1976 ‘fiddling the figures’
1978 ‘arch confidence trickster’
‘spoke with a forked tongue’
1987 ‘economical with the truth’
1988 ‘numerological inexactitude’
‘organized mendacity’
1992 ‘telling porkies’ (Speaker: ‘I think we will not have that word. It escaped my notice last week. I had to look it up in the dictionary, but now I know what it means the hon. Member should please withdraw it.’)
1993 ‘dishonest’
But these slipped through:
1864 ‘a calumnious [sic] statement’
1946 ‘devoid of any truth’
1959 ‘cooking the figures’
1988 ‘shameless lack of candour’
1994 ‘tissue of lies’
And the following lived a half-life, appearing in the first edition of Hansard then disappearing from a Defence minister’s lips, and the bound volume, after the Speaker declared it could not be verified on audio recordings:
2008 ‘absolute bollocks’
(However, in 2016 Emily Thornberry MP, Shadow Defence Minister, got away with mouthing the word)
It is similarly out of order to accuse another Member of being drunk. All the following having been ruled out of order:
1935 ‘Have you been drinking?’
1945 ‘Take him out, he’s drunk!’
1951 ‘alcoholic jeers’
‘not sober …’
1974 ‘the appearance of being slightly inebriated’
1976 ‘a semi-drunken Tory brawl’
1983 ‘in this condition’ (Claire Short, MP, of the minister Alan Clark. I was there. He was drunk. But the Deputy Speaker reprimanded Short.)
1987 ‘in a drunken stupor’
However, in 1974 James Wellbeloved did slip past the Chair this half-retraction: ‘I am not suggesting that they are drunk, I am merely suggesting that they are giving a very good imitation of it.’
Comparing another Member with an animal is also unwise. In 1976 the Speaker (Selwyn Lloyd) was clear: ‘I always object to the use of animal terminology when applied to Members of this House.’ He was banning a description by an MP of the Members opposite as ‘laughing hyena’. Withdrawing the words, the MP substituted ‘laughing Ken Dodds opposite’, which the Chair found satisfactory. How Lloyd would view Michael Foot’s description of Norman Tebbit as a ‘semi house-trained polecat’ we shall never know. Hansard’s first recorded animalistic references consisted only of noises. These, and terms in the list which follows, have been ruled out of order:
1872 ‘amid the general confusion were heard imitations of the crowing of cocks, where at the Speaker declared the scenes unparliamentarily, and gross violations of order’
1884 ‘bigoted, malevolent young puppy’
1885 ‘jackal’
1886 ‘Tory skunks’
1923 ‘chameleon politician’
1930 ‘insolent young cub’
1931 ‘lie down, dog!’
‘noble and learned camels’ (of the Lords)
1936 ‘swine’
1946 ‘silly ass’
1948 ‘dirty dog’
1949 ‘stool pigeons’
1952 ‘you rat’
1953 ‘cheeky young pup’
1955 ‘rat’
1977 ‘snake’
1978 ‘bitchy’ (of Mrs Thatcher)
1985 ‘baboons’
‘his shadow spokesman’s monkey’
1986 ‘political weasel and guttersnipe’
1987 ‘the morals of tom cats’
1989 ‘political skunk’
And these were allowed by the Chair:
1989 ‘the attention span of a gerbil’
‘the wolf of Dagenham’
1992 ‘the hamster from Bolsover’ (of Dennis Skinner)
‘cruel swine’ (of Kenneth Baker)
A surprising permission was the Speaker’s declining to stop an MP describing Margaret Thatcher as ‘behaving with all the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa constrictor’.
I have been helped in the selection of these examples by the research of parliamentary writer Phil Mason, whose book Nothing Good Will Ever Come of It quotes more than a century of MPs’ recorded predictions, most of them hilariously off-target. Drawing on Mason’s files, there follows a selection of various other Speakers’ rulings on questionable language:
DISALLOWED
1861 ‘very insolent and scornful’ (of the Chancellor)
1867 ‘returned by the refuse of a large constituency’ (of an MP)
1872 ‘three peaceful shepherds had already turned their pipes behind him’ (Speaker: ‘not becoming expression’)
1875 ‘Villains’ (Samuel Plimsoll describing shipowners)
1877 Speaker: ‘It is not proper to impute what of straightforwardness or courage to any Member or to imply that a Member was not actuated by the feelings of a gentleman.’
1878 ‘damnable character’
1880 Speaker: ‘It is not in accordance with Parliamentary usage to say that members of this House are on the side of Atheism, irreligion and immorality.’
1881 ‘poltroon’
1884 ‘seditious blasphemer’
‘ruffianism’
1885 ‘insolence’
‘indecent purpose’
1887 ‘damned lot of cads’
‘bad, mean, pettifogging’ (of the House of Lords)
1888 ‘Judas’
1897 ‘tommy rot’
1900 ‘language of the pot-house’
1901 ‘fool’
‘orgy of unbridled ruffianism’
1902 ‘pharisees and hypocrites’
1906 ‘the offscourings of Bristol’ (of constituents)
1908 ‘vicious and vulgar’
‘coward and a cad’
1910 ‘half pantaloon and half highwayman’
1911 ‘traitor’
1914 ‘swindlers’ (of government)
‘vulgar cad’
1924 ‘leader of a murder gang’ (of a minister)
1926 ‘the minister of death’ (of Minister of Health)
‘a mind on all fours with a London County Council sewer’
1928 ‘Pecksniffian cant’
1931 ‘blethering’
‘impertinent dog’
‘dirty rot’
‘sponger’
1939 ‘bunch of robbers’
1944 ‘unspeakable blackguard’
1946 ‘source of infection’
1949 ‘freelance demagogue’
1950 ‘yahoos opposite’
1951 ‘rabble’, ‘stooge’
1955 ‘nosey parker’
1956 ‘murderer’
‘traitorous defeatist’
1958 ‘I’ll see you outside’
‘stinker’
1959 ‘dunderhead’
‘smart Alec’
1960 ‘oafish’
1961 ‘lousy’
‘slippery’
‘get back to the gutter’
‘white livered’
1965 ‘Quisling’
‘sheer, concentrated humbug’
1968 ‘A British Herr Himmler’
‘scoundrel’
1969 ‘mean bastards’
1972 ‘the Right honourable cheat’
1975 ‘bunch of damned hypocrites’
‘buffoon’
‘grubby and squalid’
1976 ‘idiots’
‘racialists’
‘hooligan’
1978 ‘arch confidence trickster’
‘ignorant bigot’
‘the biggest basket of them all’ (of Prices minister)
1980 ‘mass murderer’
1983 ‘two-faced’
1984 ‘supercilious git’
‘mealy-mouthed hypocrisy’
‘a load of bullshit’
‘pompous sod’ (Dennis Skinner of David Owen. Skinner offered to withdraw ‘pompous’)
1985 ‘creeps’
1986 ‘bollocks’
‘cretin’
‘twerp’
‘boring old twat’
‘wimp’
1987 ‘bugger all’
‘giggling idiot’
‘go to hell’
‘arrogant bastards’
‘fat bounder’ (of Nigel Lawson)
‘bumptious balloon’ (of Nigel Lawson)
‘Pakistani umpire’
1988 ‘bugger’
‘political shyster’
‘tweak his goolies’
‘poached bullshit’
‘sneak’
‘berk’
‘wicked’
‘cheat’
‘objectionable lout’
1989 ‘freak’
‘barmy’
1990 ‘ignorant twat’
‘poppycock, bunkum and balderdash’
‘scabs’
‘freeloading scroungers’
‘paid hack’
‘arrogant little shit’
‘spiv’
‘parasite’
‘Mr Oil Slick’
‘front bench yobo’
‘jerk’
‘kinnocchio’
1991 ‘trifler and opportunist’
1992 ‘little squirt’
‘like a 50p piece: two-faced and seven-sided’
‘hack, obedient, lickspittle Tory member’
‘clever little sod’
‘stool pigeons’
1994 ‘shifty’ (when used to describe a member but allowed for a policy)
‘unctuous slob’
‘ethically challenged’
‘prat’
‘stupid cow’
1995 ‘dimwit’
‘nitwit’
1998 ‘gormless alien’
‘the honourable anorak’
‘piddling’ (the alternative offered, ‘two-bit’, was also ruled out of order)
1999 ‘riff raff’ (compare with page 152 ‘waifs and strays’, 1996, which was challenged and deemed in order)
‘bastard’ (when used to describe a policy rather than a person)
2000 (to do) ‘sod all’
‘Whips’ narcs’
2001 ‘con man’
2002 ‘coward’
2004 ‘little sod’
2009 ‘monster’ (when referring to another Member)
2010 ‘pipsqueak’
2012 ‘sod’
2013 ‘conman’
2015 ‘idiot’
‘crap’ was allowed in July 1991, but ruled out of order just 5 months later. In 2015, it was allowed again, on the grounds that the Member was reporting the opinion of a constituent: ‘… the school had become a haven for every crap teacher in the north-east’.
ALLOWED
1931 ‘nonsensical twaddle’ (Speaker: Use of nonsensical ‘a matter of taste’. No judgement on twaddle)
‘bunk’
‘humbug’
1936 ‘tripe’
1947 ‘clear your ears out’
1949 ‘official stooge’
‘Quisling’
1953 ‘unclean’
1957 ‘near treachery’
‘bribery’
1958 ‘blather’
1959 ‘a card sharper and confidence trickster’
1966 ‘tame hacks’
1968 ‘go back to Moscow’
1970 ‘carpet bagger’
1971 ‘shower’ (the Government)
1978 ‘political thug’
1985 ‘snivelling little git’
1986 ‘a Government of petty crooks’
‘old Etonian twerp’
‘Gauleiter’
‘pathetic Member’
‘wally’
‘weak-minded’
1987 ‘a boot up the backside’
‘arrogant little basket’
1988 ‘wet-necked twits’
‘two-faced as hell’
1989 ‘be quiet, silly old fool’
‘absolute bull’
‘fathead’
‘utter crap’
‘street hooligan’
‘yankee lickspittle’
‘freaks’ (as a description of opposing members. In the same year, the singular was ruled out of order as this was deemed to reflect upon an individual member)
Since 1990:
‘twit’
‘don’t be so bloody stupid’
‘bloodthirsty louts’
‘too bloody mean’
‘you mean and silly woman’
‘shut up, you old windbag’
‘[the minister] does not give a fart’
‘witless, blind and stupid …’
‘Polly Pot in No 10’ (of Mrs Thatcher)
1990 ‘pig’s bladder on a stick’
1991 ‘bloodthirsty louts’ (again, allowed as it did not refer to a particular individual)
1992 ‘mad fool, loony half-mad cretin’
‘millionaire’s mammy boy’ (ruled ‘not wholly unparliamentary’)
1995 ‘twaddle’
1996 ‘chancer’
‘waifs and strays’
‘school sneaks’
‘pygmy’
1997 ‘claptrap’
1998 ‘Sweet FA’ (Mr Speaker confessed to be ‘not certain whether this was unparliamentary, but most undesirable’)
[speaking] ‘with forked tongue’
1999 ‘Stepford Wives’ (as a description of opposing members)
‘Quislings’ (the ruling in 1965 outlawing the same insult was on the singular which made all the difference)
‘to blackmail’ (allowed as the speaker was accusing the Government of doing the deed, not an individual Member)
2000 ‘chopping off their goolies’
‘villain of the piece’
2002 ‘Oh, shit’ (when used in quotation)
‘barmy’
2003 ‘getting well and truly shafted’ (when used as a quotation from a constituent)
‘would have been well duffed up in that debate’ (no admonition from the Chair when the speaker claimed this to be unparliamentary)
‘hypocritical sophistry’, ‘deceit’ and ‘lies’ (all on the grounds that they were not being used to refer to individual Members but to opponents collectively)
‘creating a great deal of wind’ (criticising an opponent’s line of argument)
2004 ‘knackered’
‘a mafia’ (as a description of an opposing party)
2005 ‘bonkers’
‘bunkum’
2006 ‘total cock-up’
‘toe-rags’ (used to describe fraudsters, not other members)
‘claptrap’
‘culturally bananas’
2007 ‘shit’ (when used as a noun)
‘nincompoop’
2013 ‘bigot’
‘untrue’ (when accusing a Member of giving untrue information. It was permitted as, the chair explained, ‘[while] it would be wrong to say that the shadow Minister had intentionally misled the House … to argue that he does not understand the matter and therefore says things that are untrue is not unparliamentary’.)
2014 ‘puerile and superficial’ (when referring to a Member’s views rather than to their personality)
2015 ‘a couple of Muppets’ (referring to other Members)
2016 ‘wazzock’ (in a debate on whether US Presidential candidate Donald Trump should be banned from coming to Britain, allowed presumably because the speaker was not referring to a fellow Member)
And finally:
‘that amiable dumb bell’ (of Sir Geoffrey Howe).
The mild-mannered Sir Geoffrey Howe, Margaret Thatcher’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Foreign Secretary, finally turned against her in November 1990. His resignation speech is quoted at some length below, not for the savagery of its invective – the restrained prose makes for a less than scorching read – but for its effect, which was the more explosive in coming from a much-put-upon and undemonstrative politician. Many would trace Thatcher’s downfall back to this Commons moment, which to witness was stunning …
[Sir Geoffrey reflects positively on his time as Margaret Thatcher’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer, but goes on to say that the Prime Minister is failing to understand Britain’s relationship with European allies] …
The European enterprise is not and should not be seen like that – as some kind of zero sum game … [a] … nightmare image sometimes conjured up by my right hon. Friend, who seems sometimes to look out upon a continent that is positively teeming with ill-intentioned people, scheming, in her words, to ‘extinguish democracy’, to ‘dissolve our national identities’ and to lead us ‘through the back-door into a federal Europe’. How on earth are the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, commending the hard ecu as they strive to, to be taken as serious participants in the debate against that kind of background noise? … It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain … but the task has become futile: trying to stretch the meaning of words beyond what was credible, and trying to pretend that there was a common policy when every step forward risked being subverted by some casual comment or impulsive answer. The conflict of loyalty … to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister … and … to what I perceive to be the true interests of the nation, has become all too great. I no longer believe it possible to resolve that conflict from within this Government. That is why I have resigned. In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country. The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.
Sir Geoffrey Howe, resigning from the government
How can one best summon up the exquisite, earnest tedium of the speech of Sir Geoffrey Howe in yesterday’s South African debate? It was rather like watching a much-loved family tortoise creeping over the lawn in search of a distant tomato.
David McKie on Sir Geoffrey Howe
He is not only a bore, but he bores for England.
Malcolm Muggeridge on Sir Anthony Eden
Muggeridge, a garden gnome expelled from Eden, has come to rest as a gargoyle brooding over a derelict cathedral.
Kenneth Tynan on Malcolm Muggeridge
Harold Wilson was one of the men who ruined post-war Britain. He was a small posturing visionless politician, personally pleasant to his friends and even his enemies, amusing, irreverent and apparently kind. But his public work was a long strung-out disaster, overlaid by the impression at the time that it was at least dextrously accomplished.
Hugo Young
I’d like it translated.
Harold Macmillan during an address to the UN General Assembly after Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged the heel on the table
It was almost impossible to believe he was anything but a down-at-heel actor resting between engagements at the decrepit theatres of minor provincial towns.
Bernard Levin on Harold Macmillan, The Pendulum Years
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.
Jeremy Thorpe after Harold Macmillan’s 1962 Cabinet reshuffle
One can never escape the suspicion, with Mr Macmillan, that all his life was a preparation for elder statesmanship.
Frank Johnson on Harold Macmillan, in The Times
SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME: Tell me, Mr Chairman, what do you think would have happened if Mr Khrushchev had been assassinated and not President Kennedy?
CHAIRMAN MAO: I do not believe Mr Onassis would have married Mrs Khrushchev.
Exchange at an official dinner
He is going around the country stirring up apathy.
William Whitelaw on Harold Wilson
If ever he went to school without any boots it was because he was too big for them.
Ivor Bulmer-Thomas on Harold Wilson’s claims to an impoverished childhood
From Lord Hailsham we have had a virtuoso performance in the art of kicking a friend in the guts. When self-indulgence has reduced a man to the shape of Lord Hailsham, sexual continence involves no more than a sense of the ridiculous.
Reginald Paget MP on Lord Hailsham, following the Profumo scandal
‘What have you done?’ cried Christine,
‘You’ve wrecked the whole party machine!
‘To lie in the nude may be rude,
‘But to lie in the house is obscene!’
Anonymous on John Profumo, about the Profumo scandal
The Conservative Party has two states: complacency and panic.
William Hague
If you were hanging from a ledge by your fingers, he’d stamp on them.
Edward Pearce on James Callaghan
A little boy sucking his misogynist thumb and blubbing and carping in the corner of the front bench below the gangway is a mascot which parliament can do without.
Nicholas Fairbairn MP on Edward Heath
A shiver looking for a spine to run up.
Harold Wilson on Edward Heath
Like being savaged by a dead sheep.
Denis Healey, referring to the attack by Sir Geoffrey Howe on his Budget proposals, in the Listener
A perfectly good second-class chemist, a Beta chemist … she wasn’t an interesting person, except as a Conservative … I would never, if I had amusing, interesting people staying, have thought of asking Margaret Thatcher.
Dame Janet Vaughan (former tutor at Somerville College, Oxford) on Margaret Thatcher
I am not a doctor.
Edward Heath, declining to speculate on why Mrs Thatcher disliked him
Headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated.
ICI personnel report on the 22-year-old Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher)
That fucking stupid, petit bourgeois woman.
Lord Carrington on Margaret Thatcher. Attrib.
The one thing I learnt as Margaret Thatcher’s chief whip was that there is no limit to the capacity of human beings to absorb flattery.
Lord Wakeham
I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, as long as they do what I say.
Margaret Thatcher
They’ll have the same as me.
Margaret Thatcher (in puppet form in the TV satire Spitting Image) while dining with her ministers. The waiter had taken her order for a steak and inquired ‘and the vegetables?’
An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.
The Duke of Wellington, describing his first Cabinet as Prime Minister
I’ve met serial killers and professional assassins and nobody scared me as much as Mrs T.
Ken Livingstone on Margaret Thatcher
Cette femme Thatcher! Elle a les yeux de Caligule, mais elle a la bouche de Marilyn Monroe.
(That woman Thatcher! She has the eyes of Caligula, but the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.)
François Mitterrand on Margaret Thatcher
In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations of the world.
Margaret Thatcher
I wouldn’t say she is open-minded on the Middle East, so much as empty-headed. She probably thinks Sinai is the plural of Sinus.
Jonathan Aitken MP on Margaret Thatcher
I wish that cow would resign.
Richard Needham MP, Northern Ireland minister, overheard on a telephone, on his Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher
Like the deadly Upas tree, beneath whose branches nothing grows.
Denis Healey on Margaret Thatcher’s deadening effect upon her Cabinet
La Pasionaria of middle-class privilege.
Denis Healey on Margaret Thatcher
Petain in petticoats.
Denis Healey on Margaret Thatcher
Rhoda the Rhino.
Denis Healey on Margaret Thatcher
The great she-elephant.
Julian Critchley on Margaret Thatcher
Jezebel.
Revd Ian Paisley on Margaret Thatcher
The Immaculate Misconception.
Norman St John-Stevas on Margaret Thatcher
Attila the Hen.
Clement Freud on Margaret Thatcher
David Owen in drag.
Rhodesia Herald on Margaret Thatcher
The trouble is that when she speaks without thinking she says what she thinks.
Norman St John Stevas on Margaret Thatcher
One of the things politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.
Margaret Thatcher
Her Majesty does not notice what other people are wearing.
Buckingham Palace’s alleged response to a request from Mrs Thatcher for advance notice of the Queen’s wardrobe, so she could avoid embarrassing her by wearing the same
I wasn’t lucky. I deserved it.
Margaret Thatcher, aged nine, after receiving a school prize
It’s a pity that others had to lose theirs at Goose Green to prove it.
Neil Kinnock, on Question Time in 1983, responding to a heckler who had shouted ‘At least she’s got guts’ in response to an answer about
Margaret Thatcher
The self-appointed king of the gutter.
Michael Heseltine on Neil Kinnock after the above attack on Margaret Thatcher
Neil Kinnock’s speeches go on for so long because he has nothing to say, so he has no way of knowing when he’s finished saying it.
John Major
They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Conor Cruise O’Brien on the Ulster Unionists
Jesus Christ, in any case, is a Name Which Makes News … From Lord Beaverbrook’s point of view, his was essentially a success story. From humble origins (though, as the son of God, he might be considered to have exalted connections) he achieved a position of outstanding power and influence. The Crucifixion was a set-back, certainly, but the Resurrection more than compensated for it. Thenceforth, the movement he founded progressed almost as fast as the circulation of the Daily Express …
Malcolm Muggeridge, reviewing The Divine Propagandist, a life of Christ by Lord Beaverbrook
‘His sentences burble from his lips … a susurration of clichés barely turning a leaf … Each phrase is laced with laudanum … political musak, a background hum. We search in vain for the knob to turn them off … Put Mr Ashdown in a Labour cabinet and he would sink gently to the bottom, leaving only silver bubbles on the surface.
Simon Jenkins on Paddy Ashdown, in The Times
If you’re calling Paddy Ashdown please leave a message after the high moral tone.
Charles Kennedy
Paddy Ashdown is the only party leader who’s a trained killer. Although, to be fair, Mrs Thatcher was self-taught.
Charles Kennedy
A mind not so much open as permanently vulnerable to a succession of opposing certainties.
Hugo Young on David Howell, in One of Us: Life of Margaret Thatcher
A man who could start a fight in an empty room.
Anonymous on Gerald Kaufman
He was swaggering in a predatory way towards the susceptible of this conference like a gigolo eyeing the passenger deck.
Edward Pearce on Michael Portillo, in the Guardian
Is there no beginning to your talents?
Clive Anderson to Jeffrey Archer
The prigs who attack Jeffrey Archer should bear in mind that we all, to some extent, reinvent ourselves. Jeffrey has just gone to a bit more trouble.
Barry Humphries
A numbing fusillade of platitudes … his brain permanently on line to a fad lexicon … Mr Blair uses abstract nouns as a wine writer uses adjectives, filling space with a frothy concoction devoid of meaning.
Simon Jenkins on Tony Blair, in The Times
With Tony you have to take the smooth with the smooth.
Anonymous senior Labour politician on his leader
Mr Blair is a man of hidden shallows.
Hugo Gurdon, the Daily Telegraph
He made particularly good toast.
Michael Gasgoigne on Tony Blair – Blair was his ‘fag’ at Fettes school
My advice is quit while you’re behind.
Tony Blair to William Hague
Tory MPs are willing to be led, in the way that Henry VIII was willing to be married.
Bruce Anderson
He has something of the night about him.
Tory MP Ann Widdecombe on her former boss and Home Secretary Michael Howard, 1997
All the attributes of a populist except popularity.
Bruce Anderson on Michael Howard
I wouldn’t vote for Ken Livingstone if he were running for mayor of Toytown.
Arthur Scargill
You were the future once.
David Cameron to Tony Blair
@CAMPBELLCLARET: So @AIanucci OBE joins the Establishment he claims to deride. Malcolm Tucker and I do not approve of the honours system
@AIANUCCI: It’s probably more Establishment to order your army to march into other countries for no reason. Swings and roundabouts
@CAMPBELLCLARET: you see, your wit a bit tired and blunt already. Three little letters can have more impact than you realise. Tut tut
@AIANUCCI: WMD
Exchange between Alastair Campbell and Armando Ianucci on Twitter
The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it, is that too many tweets might make a twat.
David Cameron
The man loves West Ham too much.
Pig molester
But u still shagged a pig
You’re still a twat
That’s nowhere near enough, open up the fucking borders, you murderous necropigfucker. Also you fucked a dead pig.
Kermit is NOT happy
Mate, stop putting human beings in camps, and stop putting your knob in dead animals.
Responses to David Cameron’s first tweet, promising extra funding for refugee camps, following allegations concerning his student antics
There is something about David Cameron that bothers me – those features of his are still waiting to turn into a face.
Clive James
UKIP is just a sort of bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, mostly.
David Cameron
I always think he looks like somebody has put their finger up his bottom and he really rather likes it.
Anna Soubry on Nigel Farage
The Grand Hernia himself, Nigel Farage.
Camilla Long
I have read that there are some people – probably the type who are thinking of defecting to Ukip – who present themselves at A&E with barely credible injuries sustained through vacuum cleaner abuse.
Boris Johnson
Because the Ukips’ deputy leader, Paul Nuttalls [sic], is so pleased to be the centre of attention he sports the perpetual expression of a baby that has just used a potty for the first time, holding up his arse muck delightedly for his parents to coo over.
Stewart Lee on Paul Nuttall
If you only read one thing this year … then you’re probably the kind of person who’ll enjoy this.
Amazon review of Nigel Farage’s The Purple Revolution
Ed Miliband is like a plastic bag caught in a tree. No one knows how he got up there and no one can be bothered to get him down.
Bill Bailey
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie in close together to keep each other warm.
Henry David Thoreau
He was always the sort of Socialist who would do anything for the workers except eat like them.
Bruce Anderson on Roy Hattersley, in the Spectator
Nouvelle cuisine was French for ‘fucking hell, is that all you get?’ This is Nouvelle Labour.
Rory Bremner
Being elected a Labour MP is the only job you can get that actually makes you redundant.
AA Gill
Only the future is certain, the past is always changing.
Paul Flynn on New Labour propaganda
As far as the 14th Earl is concerned, I suppose Mr Wilson, when you come to think of it, is the 14th Mr Wilson.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, responding to Harold Wilson’s sneers after renouncing his peerage as the 14th Earl of Home to become Prime Minister
The Minister of Technology flung himself into the Sixties technology with the enthusiasm (not to say the language) of a newly-enrolled Boy Scout demonstrating knot-tying to his indulgent parents.
Bernard Levin on Tony Benn
If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story ‘Benn grabs child.’
Tony Benn
The last political battle is to avoid becoming a national treasure.
Tony Benn
Words cannot express my regret at the news that Anthony Wedgwood Benn has decided to retire from parliament. My regret is that he left it so late.
Gerald Kaufman MP
Cecil Parkinson, you’re director of a fertilizer company. How deep is the mess you’re in?
Jeremy Paxman’s first question to former Conservative party chairman on the BBC’s 1997 General Election results programme
John Major, Norman Lamont: I wouldn’t spit in their mouths if their teeth were on fire.
Rodney Bickerstaffe of UNISON, 1992, who said this was based on a Scottish insult he learned in his youth: ‘I wouldn’t piss down his throat if his chest was on fire.’
Only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster bus.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London. (He did.)
You don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you.
Steven Norris MP, Minister of Transport, explaining the superiority of the motorcar over public transport
If you vote for Kinnock you’re voting against Christ.
Dame Barbara Cartland explaining why British voters should not vote Labour
The Honourable Member for two tube stations.
Nicholas Fairbairn on Frank Dobson (MP for Holborn and St Pancras)
A bull in search of a china shop.
Unnamed union boss on Charles Clarke
Whenever Clare Short wrestles with her conscience, she wins.
Ben Macintyre
The man who takes the weight out of lightweight.
Bruce Anderson on Charles Kennedy
What is that fat gentleman in such a passion about?
Charles Shaw-Lefevre, as a child, hearing Charles James Fox speak in Parliament
They are gnats on an elephant’s backside.
John Prescott on workers at New Labour’s Millbank HQ, 1997
He loses his temper on Monday and doesn’t find it again till Friday.
Anonymous civil servant about John Prescott
Mr Prescott has a mind like knitting the cat has played with.
John Prescott’s college tutor
He has the face of a man who clubs baby seals.
Denis Healey on John Prescott
Like a fist fight in a hydrangea bush.
Craig Brown on buxom Dame Jill Knight wearing a floral print
Sir Eric Pickles sounds like a name a particularly eccentric old lady would give her favourite cat.
Martin Francis on Pickles’ knighthood
Apart from my own name, the Transpennine Express is the greatest misnomer of all time.
Former transport minister Lord Adonis
Peter Mandelson has the insolent manner of one born to the top rung but three.
Gore Vidal
Having a conversation with Mr Mandelson was rather like walking down stairs and missing the last step. You were uninjured but remained disconcerted.
Alan Watkins
Like Woody Allen without the jokes.
Simon Hoggart on Sir Keith Joseph
A tango dancer who’s opened his legs to President Clinton.
Chinese government description of Chris Patten (last governor of Hong Kong)
There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe.
Gordon Brown to Tony Blair. Attrib.
If we can’t take this lot apart in the next few years we shouldn’t be in the business of politics at all.
Tony Blair handing over the premiership to Gordon Brown
An analogue politician in a digital age.
David Cameron on Gordon Brown
A tiny dot on this world.
Robert Mugabe on Gordon Brown
The House has noticed the Prime Minister’s remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean.
Vince Cable to Gordon Brown
He has the judgement of King Lear, the decisiveness of Hamlet, the paranoia of Othello, and the loyalty of Brutus. But at least we’ve got rid of Lady Macbeth.
Bob Marshall-Andrews MP on Gordon Brown, shortly after he became Prime Minister
A Shakespearean tragedy.
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, describing Gordon Brown, to Boris Johnson, later Mayor of London. Powell denies the remark.
It doesn’t matter how deep your intelligence or convictions, or how ingrained your sense of vocation and election, if you look sick when someone laughs at you, you aren’t up to the job.
Howard Jacobson on Gordon Brown
Well that’s a lie.
Overheard remark by Cherie Blair on hearing Gordon Brown say he had considered it a privilege to work with Tony Blair. Mrs Blair denies the remark.
A fucking disaster.
Alleged remark by John Hutton, Business Secretary, anticipating Gordon Brown’s premiership
At Downing Street upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t Blair.
He wasn’t Blair again today.
Oh how I wish he’d go away!
Limerick attributed to a cabinet minister (anonymous) describing Gordon Brown’s occupancy of 10 Downing Street
Psychologically flawed.
A ‘source close to’ Prime Minister Tony Blair on his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, 1998. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s Press Secretary denies the attribution.
He can brighten a room just by leaving it.
Peter Lilley on Gordon Brown
John is John.
Tony Blair on John Prescott
[Tony Blair] doesn’t like the full-frontal approach. It puts him off his tea.
John Prescott on Tony Blair
One of the Number Ten mekons.
John Prescott on David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary – a comparison with the big-brained, shrivelled-bodied, green alien dictator in the 1950s Eagle comic
A semi-detached member of the Cabinet.
Description of Tory politician John Biffen by Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham.
The sewer and not the sewerage.
John Biffen on Bernard Ingham
Silly old fucker.
Alastair Campbell on Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham
A big twat.
Alastair Campbell on Martin Sixsmith, a Whitehall director of communications
A desiccated calculating machine.
Aneurin Bevan, usually regarded as a jibe at Hugh Gaitskell
Nobody ever celebrated Devolution Day.
Alex Salmond
Lady Macbeth.
Boris Johnson on Nicola Sturgeon
For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party.
Boris Johnson
I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us … I’m happy to add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apology.
Boris Johnson, apologizing for the above remark
An enigma wrapped up in a whoopee cushion.
Will Self on Boris Johnson
A gurgling loaf with a sheepdog’s haircut and a repertoire of Latin bum jokes.
Ian Martin on Boris Johnson
We cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.
David Cameron on Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn is the Left’s Enoch Powell. His views and stances are equally repugnant … Powell was always at pains to paint himself as someone who did not personally entertain prejudice. He was merely an interlocutor between the body politic and those that did. He did not endorse racism. But he thought it important to engage with those who held such views, to understand them, and provide an outlet for their opinions.
Jeremy Corbyn is the same. Terrorists. Anti-semites. Isil apologists. He doesn’t share their views. But he offers himself as a conduit for them. So we can better understand them. Or so he says. And then off he goes, partying with those who chide us not to compare Isil with the Nazis, just as Isil are slipping lethal injections into the arms of disabled children.
Dan Hodges on Jeremy Corbyn
A man of herbivorous ways and carnivorous views.
Peter Hennessy on Jeremy Corbyn
Although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.
E.B. White on the science of polling