The words politicians use matters. Today, they’re incapable of speaking without employing the cliched, impenetrable and divisive jargon of the culture war, Neil Mackay argues 

I was reading my colleague Andrew Learmonth’s recent interview with Russell Findlay, the performative leader of the Scottish Tories, when a phrase snagged my attention due to its sheer meaninglessness.

The phrase referenced what’s known as ‘the lanyard class’. It’s a culture war term, favoured by the very online and purveyors of cliché and division. But what the hell does it actually mean? 

It’s the kind of verbal goo George Orwell would have eviscerated in his essay on political language. Orwell described such terms as designed to “make lies sound truthful … and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

I looked up from reading Andrew’s interview to see two of the lanyard class sitting in my living room. One was my daughter, a Glasgow police detective currently investigating sex crimes, and busy arresting paedophiles and rapists. She was attacked in the line of duty a fortnight ago and could have been murdered.

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Beside my daughter sat another lanyard-wearer: my wife, a principal teacher in an inner city Glasgow school who educates some of the most deprived children in this country.

The only person not wearing a lanyard was me. If there was a category into which I could be placed, it might reasonably be defined as ‘the dilettante writer class’.  

I like to think that........

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