The Times Op-Ed: A guide to electionspeak
By David Rowan
FORGET the manifestos - the linguistic front line is where the real battles are being fought. Track down the spikiest buzzwords and the most vivid neologisms, and you can neatly isolate an election's key themes. So ignore all those tedious speeches about health or crime: this campaign is all about Labour's loss of faith among its traditional supporters.
Just watch the verbal missiles fly between Labour's hard men and their left and liberal critics. With previously sympathetic columnists and bloggers turning on phoney Tony over Iraq, the Prime Minister is increasingly being addressed by the nickname Bliar. In response, Labour has been busily dismissing the whingers as dinner-party critics - the sneering shiraz quaffers, as Peter Hain sees them, lumbered with what the columnist David Aaronovitch calls their bruschetta orthodoxies.
There is one proposed solution to keep reluctant Labourites from defecting: the nose-holding vote, as promoted by John Kerry's supporters in last November's US election. Yes, the thinking goes, some of the candidate's policies might stink, but cover your nose anyway and give him your support. Polly Toynbee, the Guardian commentator, even offered this week to send the doubters wooden nose-pegs free of charge.
The Birmingham postal-voting scandal has proved a particularly fertile linguistic battleground. After the judge condemned a system that would "disgrace a banana republic", hostile bloggers have been delighting this week in renaming Labour the Banana Republicans or Zanu New Labour PF - the latter initials standing for "Postal Fraud". More likely to impress lexicographers as an enduring campaign legacy is the term vote farming, through which ballot papers are harvested by the parties for processing, perhaps placing voters under undue influence. When this happens in old people's homes, it is charmingly known as granny farming.
It is notable how militaristic the parties' campaign language has become in rcent days. Michael Howard promises to battle for Britain, repeating those old warnings about Labour's tax bombshell, and his opponents in the ground war announce a demolition day on Tory tax plans. We must now be deep into trench warfare when even Cherie Booth urges supporters to give George Galloway a bloody nose - surely a campaign role traditionally reserved for John Prescott.
Oh, and the policy issues? Education has so far cornered the market in creative buzzwords, which suggests that this is the one that matters. The Conservatives pledge to back synthetic phonics and the Lib Dems talk up positive behaviour plans for naughty children, while Gordon Brown has been loudly proclaiming Labour's schoolgate credentials.
After Cheriegate and Mittalgate, maybe he ought to choose another word.
(The Times Comment page, April 16 2005)
FORGET the manifestos - the linguistic front line is where the real battles are being fought. Track down the spikiest buzzwords and the most vivid neologisms, and you can neatly isolate an election's key themes. So ignore all those tedious speeches about health or crime: this campaign is all about Labour's loss of faith among its traditional supporters.
Just watch the verbal missiles fly between Labour's hard men and their left and liberal critics. With previously sympathetic columnists and bloggers turning on phoney Tony over Iraq, the Prime Minister is increasingly being addressed by the nickname Bliar. In response, Labour has been busily dismissing the whingers as dinner-party critics - the sneering shiraz quaffers, as Peter Hain sees them, lumbered with what the columnist David Aaronovitch calls their bruschetta orthodoxies.
There is one proposed solution to keep reluctant Labourites from defecting: the nose-holding vote, as promoted by John Kerry's supporters in last November's US election. Yes, the thinking goes, some of the candidate's policies might stink, but cover your nose anyway and give him your support. Polly Toynbee, the Guardian commentator, even offered this week to send the doubters wooden nose-pegs free of charge.
The Birmingham postal-voting scandal has proved a particularly fertile linguistic battleground. After the judge condemned a system that would "disgrace a banana republic", hostile bloggers have been delighting this week in renaming Labour the Banana Republicans or Zanu New Labour PF - the latter initials standing for "Postal Fraud". More likely to impress lexicographers as an enduring campaign legacy is the term vote farming, through which ballot papers are harvested by the parties for processing, perhaps placing voters under undue influence. When this happens in old people's homes, it is charmingly known as granny farming.
It is notable how militaristic the parties' campaign language has become in rcent days. Michael Howard promises to battle for Britain, repeating those old warnings about Labour's tax bombshell, and his opponents in the ground war announce a demolition day on Tory tax plans. We must now be deep into trench warfare when even Cherie Booth urges supporters to give George Galloway a bloody nose - surely a campaign role traditionally reserved for John Prescott.
Oh, and the policy issues? Education has so far cornered the market in creative buzzwords, which suggests that this is the one that matters. The Conservatives pledge to back synthetic phonics and the Lib Dems talk up positive behaviour plans for naughty children, while Gordon Brown has been loudly proclaiming Labour's schoolgate credentials.
After Cheriegate and Mittalgate, maybe he ought to choose another word.
(The Times Comment page, April 16 2005)
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