SIX THINGS ABOUT POLITICS AND INSULTS

1 ‘ MUTTON- HEADED’

Britain’s general election campaign was enlivened this week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn a “mutton- headed old mugwump.” Although in truth, Johnson said voters should not be deceived into thinking he was a “mutton-headed old mugwump” — woolly, elderly and politically benign — because if he was elected prime minister, Corbyn would wreak havoc on the economy, destabilize the Brexit process and make the country vulnerable to nuclear attack. Britain’s long tradition of parliamentary democracy is matched only by its long tradition of political insults.

2 BAAAAAH

Winston Churchill had an entire arsenal to use against his bureaucratic, charisma- free Labour rival Clement Attlee: a “sheep in sheep’s clothing”, “a modest man with much to be modest about” and “an empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Attlee got out.”

3 SPINAL JAB

When Labour leader Harold Wilson described his Conservative rival Edward Heath as “a shiver looking for a spine to run up” his insult was all the more wounding because it resonated.

4 ANIMAL ATTACKS

Labour finance minister Denis Healey in 1978 described being attacked by Tory rival Geoffrey Howe as akin to “being savaged by a dead sheep.” And said of his Labour colleague John Prescott, “He has the face of a man who clubs baby seals.”

5 FEAR FACTOR

Ann Widdecombe destroyed her fellow Conservative Michael Howard’s leadership bid in 1997 when she said there was “something of the night” about him.

6 MR. BEAN

Gordon Brown’s reputation for economic competence was all but obliterated by Vince Cable in 2007 when the acting Lib Dem leader said the Labour prime minister had gone “from Stalin to Mr. Bean.”