If I hear the phrase “a fish rots from the head down” in relation to the sleaze allegations assailing the Conservative party once more, I think I’ll scream. As will my wife. There we were, listening to Any Questions when the Labour MP Barry Gardiner spouted this ubiquitous nonsense. “No they don’t – they start rotting from the bloody intestines, you stupid man,” she rebuked the radio. And the science is on her side. Where the phrase derives from is open to conjecture; the Greeks, the Chinese and the Turks are all cited as possible sources. But just type the phrase into Google and prepare to be overwhelmed by examples.
I was rather taken, though, with another Labour MP who asserted boldly that the fish rots from the head up, which is an altogether more surreal and beguiling concept. (I was equally taken by a protester at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow who complained bitterly that the delegates had “kicked the most important issues into the short grass”. Again an interesting concept.)
Finally on sleaze, I was pleased to be reacquainted with an old friend, courtesy of Andrew Neil, urging the abolition of the House of Lords. “It went from a bunch of hereditary thickos to a bunch of snollygosters who bought their entry.” That delightful word is US slang for an unprincipled politician who cares more for personal gain and seems to be the mot juste for our times.
I recently saw a headline that stopped me in my tracks: “Boris is courting political disaster by trying to guilt us into going green.” Nouns being turned into verbs is still one of my many grievances, but I really do think this one is an absolute stinker and that whoever perpetrated it should hang their head in shame.
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
