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Mind your language

‘Our’ by ‘our’, Boris’s resignation speech

16 July 2022

9:00 AM

16 July 2022

9:00 AM

There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke of ‘our fantastic prop force detectives’. Prop? Prop forwards, clothes props, proprietors, propositions, propellers? Perhaps they are personal protection officers, though I don’t think those are detectives. Or it might be family slang made up by Wilfred, two: ‘Ook, Papa, prop-props…’

More cunningly deployed in the 900 words of the speech was our.

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