I suppose we should be grateful that Northern politicians are volleying mere insults at one another. Still, the recent exchanges have been far from edifying.
Gerry Adams’s use of the word “bastards”need not detain us for long . The Sinn Féin president, who has since almost apologised, was speaking to party supporters in Enniskillen and (we must generously assume) did not intend his remarks to receive wide circulation. When asked about the advantages of power sharing, he responded with characteristic robustness: “But what’s the point? The point is to actually break these bastards.”
Let us face reality. The cordial distaste manifested between political opponents in public invariably mutates into less-than- cordial detestation when the cameras have vanished. And this is nothing to the Old Testament abhorrence that colours private conversations concerning unhelpful (supposed) bedfellows.
The most famous political use of the word “bastards” occurred in remarks made by John Major concerning Eurosceptic colleagues in 1993. Twenty years later, Michael Howard and Michael Portillo, usually assumed to be among the fatherless plotters, were still laughing about the exchange. Howard noted that Major phoned him to say the PM wasn’t talking about him. “He never phoned me,” Portillo said with a cackle.
On the record
Conspiracy theorists will argue that Adams and Major, both of whose comments were recorded, may not have been altogether appalled at the leaks. But the conversations remain of a different nature to the recent pathetic, clueless, adolescent comedy routines delivered by Gregory Campbell in the Northern Irish Assembly.
Made on the record, within the chamber, the remarks are presumably meant to express Campbell’s sincere beliefs on the propagation of the Irish language. “Curry my yogurt, a can coca coalyer,” the DUP member said in cloth-eared imitation of the phrase “Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle.”
Later, Campbell suggested his party would treat the proposed Irish Language Act like “toilet paper”. Minister of Culture Carál Ní Chuilín offered a furious response and Adams fulminated his way towards that much-publicised minor obscenity.
Irish-language speakers have every right to be offended by the implication of both remarks. It’s one thing to insult a political colleague. It’s quite another to ridicule the backbone of an entire culture. Those who value the still freshly minted institution that is the Assembly will regret Campbell’s contempt for reasoned debate.
None of this would matter so much if the initial attack were not so utterly witless. I hereby accuse the member for East Londonderry of sullying the good name of political invective. There is nothing quite so delicious as a well-timed, perfectly honed verbal evisceration. When politicians get it right, even their opponents finds themselves rocking back in a state of oxymoronically appalled admiration.
Sometimes success is more to do with delivery than content. Paul Keating, the former Australian prime minister, did not coin many memorable phrases, but his astringent delivery, somewhere between music-hall comic and demotic prosecution counsel, allowed each poisonous phrase to plunge home. Watch him lean in to opposition leader John Hewson and, when asked why he refused to call an early election, explain that “I want to do you slowly!” Hewson can’t help but laugh as he anticipates the metaphorical skewer.
From time to time, a juicier insult ends up burnishing the intended victim’s reputation. Norman Tebbit, the firmly Thatcherite Tory MP, now says that he was flattered when Michael Foot, Labour Party legend, famously referred to him as a “semi-housetrained polecat”. Tebbit later remarked: “I, until then, was a more or less unknown Conservative. He demeaned himself and gave my political career a tremendous lift.”
Tebbit here got at the danger of being a little too eloquent in your invective. Foot’s phrase, composed of three two-syllable words, tripped so easily off the tongue that commentators were sure to run with it for weeks (indeed decades) to come. The result was that Tebbit, who didn’t like to be messed with, got a reputation as the sort of fellow who wouldn’t be messed with.
Inventive invective
There are endless examples of high-quality invective. “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth,” Texan governor Anne Richards said of George W Bush. “Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes,” the incorrigible Pat Buchanan remarked.
Take note, Mr Campbell. You are paid to represent your constituents. But it is not unreasonable to expect you to bring some art to your rhetoric. If you must insult supporters of the Irish Language Act, do so in a way that causes them to laugh in spite of themselves.
Churchill understood that. Lyndon Johnson got it. And the recently deceased founder of your party certainly understood the principle.