Scorn (12 page)

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 mainland 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?
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