Cringeworthy politicians need to learn the art of swearing well

As stirring calls-toarms go, the Liberal Democrats’ latest effort lacks a certain subtle something. “Bollocks to Brexit” crows the manifesto for their EU elections campaign. I’ll say this for the flier delivered by Nigel Farage last week (well ahead of the Lib Dem game): it had lovely manners. No four-letter words, no eight-letter words, no dirty doodles in the margins.

There is something “trendy vicar” about a swearing politician. Yes, I’m down with the kids, they say, with my hashtag slang and my naughty words. In the pews or at the polling station, we cringe. A man may swear like a docker when he’s down The Dog and Duck, but he’d wince if the chief secretary to the Treasury said so much as an intemperate: “Oh, bum.”

In an interview this week, Gabby Bertin, former press secretary to David Cameron, said she had had to reprimand the then prime minister for saying “too many twits might make a t---”. That was in 2009, talking about Twitter, which in the intervening 10 years has become a spittoon for every base thought, rude word and profane political outburst. Cameron was right in his instincts, but he might have put it more prettily.

Parliament has a rule about playground insults: “Unparliamentary language breaks the rules of politeness in the House of Commons chamber.” Successive speakers have taken offence at the words blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, stoolpigeon and traitor. You’ve got to love a good “guttersnipe”. In 2018, the Scottish MP Mhairi Black became, aged 23, the first person to use the C-word in the chamber. She was speaking during a debate on misogyny and she was quoting some of the abuse she receives on – well, there’s a surprise – Twitter.

Last year, at an event for

EU diplomats, Boris Johnson was thought to have said: “F--- business.” Not me, guv, said the then foreign secretary, when asked to explain himself in the Commons. He had merely “expressed scepticism about some of the views of those who profess to speak up for business”.

Gavin Williamson, the former defence secretary who told the West’s enemies in Russia to “shut up and go away”, is reportedly said to have scrawled “F--- the Prime Minister” on a letter from Downing Street that refused to let him send Royal Navy warships into Chinese waters in the South China Sea. Beneath the dignity of his office.

When caught in the asterisk act, a politician should wash their mouth out with soap and humour. In 1993, John Major was overheard calling three Eurosceptic members of his cabinet “bastards”. (What is it about Brussels that brings us out in blasphemies?) Major later said that the appellation was “utterly unforgivable”. But he went on: “My only excuse is that it was true.”

We can forgive a lot if the mud-slinging makes us laugh. Jacob Rees-mogg puts more vitriol into that unspeakable word “Wykehamist” than many politicians manage with a tirade of abuse. Fans of The Thick of It gleefully quote screeds of Malcolm Tucker’s inventive invective. “Feet off the furniture, you Oxbridge t---, you’re not on a punt now” is filthy, but it’s also funny.

“Bollocks to Brexit” is merely feeble. “Fiddlesticks to Farage,” they might have said. “Botheration to Boris.” It’s a sniggering, asinine, schoolboy stunt, not a case for the country’s future.