Author: Haggard Hawks

Rely solely on the headlines and you’d be forgiven for thinking not much of any consequence has happened this week, save for two former Labour MPs endorsing Boris Johnson in the upcoming December election. It’s true, Ian Austen and John Woodcock’s words were hardly beneficial to Jeremy Corbyn (not least in the opening week of…

(n.) someone tasked with maintaining rules and keeping order

(adj.) appearing dead, but actually alive

Well, well, well. He’s only gone and done it. Apparently.  After a week of frantic into-the-night renegotiations, a plume of white smoke finally puffed its way up from the Brussels skyline early Thursday morning. Rumour has it, from a burning pile of three years’ wasted paperwork. A new deal outlining the UK’s—and, more knottily, Northern…

scowth (n.) a period of time off from work; scope or freedom to focus on other things

For the past several weeks, it has seemed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approach to the on-going Brexit negotiations has been to keep his cards close to his chest, and then at the very last moment reveal that he wasn’t ever actually holding any cards at all.  Throughout that time, Britain has looked dangerously and…

They say heroes come in all shapes and sizes. If you support Brexit, for example, your current hero likely comes in the form of the glabrous Machiavelli currently working the gears of 10 Downing Street—and whose supposed reputation for political shrewdness belies the fact that he’s now engineered the government’s seven consecutive defeats in the…

(n.) someone who treats the law with contempt; someone who deliberately flouts rules that are difficult to enforce

(n.) the courage to stand up for what you believe is right

(n.) someone who supports a liar, or helps propagate their untruths

(n.) an obsession with war or warlike imagery

(n.) a demonic menagerie

(n.) a worker who only busies themselves when they’re being observed

(n.) a messenger who arrives too late to be of use, or not at all

(n.) a noisy quarrel about politics

(n.) political bossism; a political system in which one powerful figure wields considerable power or influence The first is that it could win you a game of Scrabble one day. In 1982, a professional player named Karl Khoshaw played caziques (an official alternative spelling caciques) in an international Scrabble tournament and, with a score of…

(n.) a state of indecision, wavering between two opinions or options If last week’s EU election results taught us anything, it’s that the UK is still as divided as ever. On the one hand, Remainers claimed the biggest victory of the night: add up the votes for all those parties overtly calling for the 2016…

(v.) to spill a liquid messily over something

Another timely Word of the Week from @HaggardHawks: broggle (v.) to make repeated ineffectual attempts at doing something

hang-choice (n.) a choice between equally unappealing options

(n.) a non-committal, equivocating politician [19C slang] There were local elections in England and Northern Ireland this week (though not, despite what Boris Johnson thinks, in London). And with the results now in, for the first time in a long time one clear message has been sent to Westminster: the overtly pro-Remain Lib Dems and…

(n.) a recurrence of something undesirable after a period of dormancy A bad penny, as the saying goes, always turns up. The earliest record of that proverb comes from William Langland’s Piers Plowman, written sometime in the late 1300s, proving that people have been having problems with bad pennies since the Middle Ages at least.…

consisting of or succeeding by underhand schemes or strategies

Calling out the paralysis that Brexit has wrought upon to our political system, Oborne, the former political editor of the Leave-supporting Telegraph, bravely broke ranks and confessed that now was the time “to take a long deep breath.” And crucially, he admitted that doing so might now entail, “rethinking the Brexit decision altogether.”

Last week was a week of reappraisal and reconsideration. According to the latest polls, the UK had seemingly morphed into a Remain-backing country. While in order to ensure that a Brexit of any kind somehow comes to pass, many prominent Leavers had reassessed their opposition to Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, and had thrown their full…