Scorn Read online

  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

  Peers

  I am dead: dead, but in the Elysian fields.

  Benjamin Disraeli on his move to the House of Lords. Attrib.

  The House of Lords is like heaven – you want to get there some day, but not while there is any life in you.

  Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls

  They that hated the Bishops hated them worse than the devil, and they that loved them loved them not so well as their dinner.

  Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Faulkland on failing to defeat a late-night Lords vote to curtail bishops’ voting rights in 1641

  The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days.

  Clement Attlee. Attrib.

  Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears, prejudices, misconceptions – those are the peers, and they are hereditary.

  David Lloyd George

  Historical throwbacks and hillbilly inbreds.

  Tony McNulty MP on hereditary peers

  An ermine-lined dustbin, an up-market geriatric home with a faint smell of urine.

  Austin Mitchell MP on the House of Lords

  Last week, The Lord jetted in from New York to vote in support of tax credit cuts for the working poor … The last time Webber voted was for same-sex marriage – so he loves gays but hates the poor. Anyone would think The Lord cared only about his audiences.

  Bridget Christie on Andrew Lloyd Webber

  TIM SAINSBURY: (Seeing Nicholas Soames in his hunting dress) Going rat-catching, Nick?

  NICHOLAS SOAMES: Fuck off, you grocer: you don’t tell a gentleman how to dress on a Friday.

  Exchange in the Palace of Westminster between Nicholas Soames MP, grandson of Winston Churchill, and Tim Sainsbury MP of the supermarket dynasty

  When I want a peerage I shall buy one like any honest man.

  Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe

  Let me be thankful, God, that I am not

  A Labour Leader when his life-work ends,

  Who contemplates the coronet he got

  By being false to principles and friends;

  Who fought for forty years a desperate fight

  With words that seared and stung and slew like swords,

  And at the end, with victory in sight,

  Ate them – a mushroom viscount in the Lords.

  William Kean Seymour, Viscount Demos

  Other people’s opinions matter less – unless they’re medical.

  Baroness Trumpington on the benefits of ageing

  Australian Politics

  He [Joyce] looks somehow inbred with a tomato. It’s not a criticism, I’m just saying, I was a little worried … he might explode.

  Johnny Depp on Barnaby Joyce MP after the latter had mocked Depp’s apology for illegally importing his dogs into Australia

  I think I’m turning into Johnny Depp’s Hannibal Lecter, aren’t I? I’m inside his head, I’m pulling little strings and pulling little levers. Long after I’ve forgotten about Mr Depp, he’s remembering me.

  Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce

  A feral calculator.

  Paul Keating on John Hewson, 1993 Australian general election

  Like being flogged with a warm lettuce.

  Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, referring to an attack by the Opposition leader, John Hewson

  He’s wound up like a thousand-day clock.

  The then Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, about his Liberal Party opponent John Howard

  What we have is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him.

  Paul Keating on John Howard

  From this day onwards, Howard will wear his leadership like a crown of thorns and in parliament I will do everything to crucify him.

  Paul Keating on John Howard

  I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not crawl out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot.

  Paul Keating on John Howard

  I was implying that the Honourable Member was like a lizard on a rock – alive but looking dead.

  Paul Keating on John Howard

  I suppose that the Honourable Gentleman’s hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness.

  Paul Keating on shadow treasurer Andrew Peacock

  It is the first time the Honourable Gentleman has got out from under the sunlamp.

  Paul Keating on Andrew Peacock

  Just because you swallowed a fucking dictionary when you were about fifteen doesn’t give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over the rest of us.

  Paul Keating to a member of his Cabinet

  What for? Then I’d be like you.

  Paul Keating, to Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Whitlam had just said to him ‘that was a good speech. You should go back, comrade, and get yourself an honours degree’.

  He schemed, revised history … the king of all larrikins, a coarse auto-didact with a tongue that could clip a hedge.

  Conrad Black, owner of the Daily Telegraph, on former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating

  Now, I know that there are some Aboriginal people who aren’t happy with Australia Day. For them it remains Invasion Day. I think a better view is the view of Noel Pearson, who has said that Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country’s British Heritage.

  Tony Abbott

  [Tony Abbott] stands for nothing. He is the Nancy Reagan of Australian politics without the astrology: say no to everything, just rancid, dripping, relentless negativity.

  Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare

  Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail: Small Breasts, Huge Thighs, and a Big Red Box.

  Menu item at a Liberal National Party dinner. The menu was widely circulated on social media and caused widespread outrage.

  (Mr Abbott) is Gina Rinehart’s butler.

  Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard

  The Leader of the Opposition [then Malcolm Turnbull], faced with the choice of a doberman or poodle, has gone for the poodle.

  Julia Gillard compares Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne

  Anyone who has chosen to remain deliberately barren … they’ve got no idea about what life’s about.

  Senator Bill Heffernan discussing Julia Gillard’s fitness for office

  American Politics

  The moral character of Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puffing about liberty, equality and the degrading curse of slavery he brought his own children to the hammer and made money out of his debaucheries.

  Alexander Hamilton, American politician on Thomas Jefferson, third President of the USA

  DEPEW: I hope if it’s a girl Mr Taft will name it for his charming wife.

  TAFT: If it is a girl, I shall, of course, name it for my lovely helpmate of many years. And if it is a boy, I shall claim the father’s prerogative and name it Junior. But if, as I suspect, it is only a bag of wind, I shall name it Chauncey Depew.

  William Howard Taft, before his election as President, and Chauncey Depew

  He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn’t ordered.

  Ring Lardner Jr. on President William Howard Taft

  You pride yourself upon an animal faculty, in respect of which the slave is your equal and the jackass infinitely your superior.

  John Randolph to fellow-Congressman Tristram Burges, in reply to the latter’s claim he was impotent

  A real Centaur: part man, part horse’s ass.

  Dean Acheson on President Johnson

  President Robbins was so well adjusted to his environment that sometimes you could not tell which was the environment and which was President Robbins.

  Randall Jarrell

  Why, if a man were to call
my dog McKinley, and the brute failed to resent to the death the damning insult, I’d drown it.

  William Cowper Brann on William McKinley

  Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

  Mark Twain

  ‘Do you pray for the senators, Dr Hale?’ ‘No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.’

  Edward Everett Hale

  Six inches deep – and six miles wide at the mouth.

  Popular jibe comparing William Jennings Byron, American populist party’s presidential candidate (known as The Boy Orator of the Platte), with the River Platte

  The policeman and the trashman call me Alice. You cannot.

  Alice Roosevelt Longworth, when Senator Joseph McCarthy called her Alice

  The meanest kind of bawling and blowing office-holders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-train’d to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, dis-unionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyers, spongers, ruin’d sports, expell’d gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal’d weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarr’d inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from other people’s money and harlots’ money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.

  Walt Whitman on a Democratic National Convention of the 1850s

  A large shaggy dog, just unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.

  Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman

  A man of taste, arrived from Mars, would take one look at the convention floor and leave forever, convinced he had seen one of the drearier squats of Hell … a cigar-smoking, stale-aired, slack-jawed, butt-littered, foul, bleak, hardworking, bureaucratic death gas of language and faces … lawyers, judges, ward heelers, mafiosos, Southern goons and grandees, grand old ladies, trade unionists and finks; of pompous words and long pauses which lie like a leaden pain over fever.

  Norman Mailer on the Democratic National Convention of 1960

  My dear McClellan: If you don’t want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln