A guide to ‘gaffes’, and why, in truth, they are always to be found in the eye of the beholder

Among the silly expressions that may one day be associated with our era — and I hope buried with it — is the little word ‘gaffe’. I ought to know, having been indicted often enough myself for the crime, and having just co-edited and published a whole book, Mission Accomplished, of so-called gaffes committed by politicians and world leaders. Yet the moment you start to examine in a thoughtful way the things we call gaffes, the concept disintegrates into a clutch of very different types of utterances, some of which are wholly commendable.

All that such utterances have in common is that they are regretted. I do not even say ‘regrettable’ because in politics honesty, though often regretted, cannot be regrettable. Too often the word ‘gaffe’ is used as a shallow commentary on what is really a truth that causes embarrassment, or an opinion widely held but suppressed by the timid. Equally often the diagnosis ‘gaffe-prone’ is applied to a public figure who is in trouble for other reasons and already wounded, and whom the hunting dogs of the media are out to nip on any exposed flank they can find.

Take John Major’s overheard reference to some of his Cabinet as ‘bastards’. We already knew he thought that. The bastards already knew he thought it. Many of us considered the expression mild in the circumstances. But so beleaguered was the then prime minister that his best defence — that he was careless whether he was overheard or not — was unavailable. Margaret Thatcher could have said as much and been thought splendidly outspoken: indeed, when her spokesman Bernard Ingham called the late John Biffen ‘semi-detached’ we regarded Biffen, not Thatcher, as damaged by the remark. I’m not sure Tony Blair’s attributed ‘f—ing Welsh’ did him any harm at all among the media pack.