The politics of pips
‘What larks!’ exclaimed my husband archly, assuming that a connection between personal independence payments and Pip in Great Expectations would be amusing. But it is true that the political wrangle over personal independence payments would have been harder to popularise without the cheery abbreviation. Some of us remember Denis Healey’s promise to ‘squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak’. He might also have made similar promises about the rich in general. His inspiration was Sir Eric Campbell Geddes, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1917. ‘We will get everything out of her that you can squeeze out of a lemon,’ he said of Germany in December 1918. ‘I will squeeze
