The lost art of the political put down

What one grieves for when hearing Raynor’s speech is what has been lost: the art of the political put down. Her diatribe was absent of any wit and the true imagination of a good insult.

“You cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile… banana republic, vile, nasty Etonian… piece of scum“

- Angela Raynor, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, referring to the Conservative government during her speech at the Labour Party Conference

The coarseness of Angela Raynor’s soliloquy jars the ear. Yet I cannot bring myself to object to the underlying sentiment that the shadow cabinet loathe the ruling party. Why ought they not to? It is better than them being cheek to cheek as they so often have been.

It is just as nauseating to read the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden responding as if he were part a cossetted maiden aunt and part a disappointed school headmaster when acting affronted and demanding apologies. The Tories will adopt a prissy hypersensitivity when it suits them; a kind of right-leaning political correctness.

For some reason, it is expected that everyone in public life should be vibrating towards the overarching goal of political unification, when many of us rather value political division and intense public rivalries.

Yet what one grieves for when hearing Raynor’s speech is what has been lost: the art of the political put down. Her diatribe was absent of any wit and the true imagination of a good insult. What she said will not offend its targets. It was not amusing or satirical. It lacked even an attempt at lyricism or cleverness. Anyone could have said it, so full was it of cliché.

I would much rather be called a “piece of scum” than be told I am a “sheep in sheep’s clothing”, as Winston Churchill remarked of his great opponent Clement Attlee. I would brush off being called “vile” (something which appeared twice in Raynor’s repetitive list). I would feel it much more acutely if someone were to say of me, as Disraeli said of Gladstone, “If… [he] fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity”.

The imagery conjured by David Lloyd George when he aimed the barb at Churchill and said that “he would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises” packs quite the macabre punch to it; being accused of an endless string of isms and phobias does not do anything like that kind of damage.

I cannot decide whether my favourite is Harold Wilson’s description of Ted Heath as “a shiver looking for a spine to run up” or Churchill, having been told by Lady Astor that “if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea”, replying, “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it”.

But what I know for sure is that the ancient art of the well-placed slander is skipping a generation.