Scorn Read online

  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’

  1945 ‘dishonest evasion’

  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 Tha
tcher 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’

&
nbsp; 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’.)