Soundbites that bit back

From working people’ to alarm clock Britain’, the phrases that came to haunt the unlucky politicians who coined them

- KATE DEVLIN

Ahead of this week’s Budget, Labour is struggling to define who is a “working person”. The issue would not matter so much, but the government has promised to protect whoever qualifies from a series of key tax rises.

Here we look at some of the other phrases used by politicians which came to haunt them in the end.

Back to basics

Sir John Major launched his “back to basics” campaign in a fit of optimism that it would resonate with a country that wanted to return to good old-fashioned values.

Sir John himself explicitly stated that the campaign was not “a crusade about personal morality”. But it was widely interpreted as exactly that. Which made a series of sleazy scandals involving his MPs all the more difficult.

Spring

Hard to stumble as you define a season, you might think. But Boris Johnson’s government managed it.

At one point, during successive UK lockdowns because of the Covid epidemic, the government announced that it would lift some of the restrictions it had imposed on millions of people across the country in spring.