02 May 2017

Sticks and stones

Is there any real need for the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party to descend to the level of the Foreign Secretary?  The Guardian reports:
Boris Johnson will be subjected to a Boris-style attack on Tuesday from the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, who will describe the foreign secretary as a “cheese-headed fopdoodle”.
The description follows Johnson’s description of Jeremy Corbyn as a “mutton-headed old mugwump” in his first intervention of the election campaign.
In a speech to the shopworkers’ union Usdaw’s annual delegate meeting in Blackpool, Watson will say: “Boris Johnson is a caggie-handed cheese-headed fopdoodle with a talent for slummocking about.”
A fopdoodle is defined online as a stupid or insignificant fellow, a fool or a simpleton. Cheese-head, confusingly, is a name for a type of screw with a raised cylindrical head, while a slummock is an untidy or slovenly person.
Good fun and all that, if a little strained.  But such name-calling is not raising the tone of the debate; nor is it adding to the enlightenment of the general public.

 

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