In 1953 the Labour MP Maurice Edelman wrote the political novel Who Goes Home in which a revered Parliamentary commentator states:
On the whole, British Prime Ministers have to be the sort of man you can trust with your eldest daughter or your sister or your wife or mother – a sort of father-figure. A man you’d shoot tigers with. … A Prime Minister’s rather like a Lord Mayor. He’s made by the job. He’s moulded into its chains. That’s why we get small business-men, big business-men, little solicitors and great aristocrats all following each other like ball-bearings. Of course the British public like to know their Prime Minister. But what they know is myth. It’s the same with every politician.
Edelman meant this to be taken as a truism – I wonder how far it remains true?
A missing “we” after why there?
Well spotted! I was wondering when someone would notice …
leave out the ‘tigers with’ and add a full stop after shoot and it gets my vote!
What a shocking proposal.