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Mind your language

Dot Wordsworth: We've been self-whipping since 1672

7 September 2013

9:00 AM

7 September 2013

9:00 AM

Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had held that Tory backbenchers were now self-whipping. When she aired this opinion on Radio 4, Michael White of the Guardian did a Frankie Howerd-style, ‘Ooh, Missus!’ routine.

Surprisingly, self-whipping is no neologism.

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