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 mainla
nd 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?
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