On 17 January 2017, at Lancaster House in London, Prime Minister Theresa May set out the government’s objectives for the negotiations on leaving the European Union. She said: “I am equally clear that no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.”
Crisis? What Crisis?
On 10 January 1979, during a wave of strikes, Prime Minister James Callaghan returned from a summit in Guadeloupe. At a press conference at Heathrow Airport, he was jocular and mentioned a swim in the Caribbean. A reporter asked about “the mounting chaos in the country.” Callaghan replied: “I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.”
The next day, The Sun ran the headline “Crisis? What crisis?” Callaghan never used those exact words. His speechwriter Roger Carroll later agreed they were an effective paraphrase: “He asked for it, I’m afraid, and he got it.”
Within four months, his government had fallen to a vote of no confidence and lost the general election.
The Vocabulary of Not Minding
English has several phrases for staying calm about what one wants. Not fussed : Not minding about something, as in “It’d be good to be there, but I’m not that fussed.” To play it cool : To deal with a situation calmly and not show what one is really feeling. To keep one’s powder dry : To save one’s resources until they are needed. To sleep on it : To wait until the next day before deciding.
Levy Time
Daniel Levy became chairman of Tottenham Hotspur in 2001 and gained a reputation as one of the toughest negotiators in world football. Spurs fans came to call transfer deadline day “Levy time.” The Guardian recalled an old line that he went to work in a transfer window only on deadline day, “such is his fondness for brinkmanship and last-minute business.” It added that the line was tongue-in-cheek.
In 2013, Levy sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid for a world-record fee.
A Little Local Difficulty
In January 1958, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, resigned over increased government spending. The two junior Treasury ministers, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch, resigned with him. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, about to leave on a tour of the Commonwealth, brushed the resignations aside as “a little local difficulty.”
The words are also quoted as “little local difficulties.” Time magazine reported that as he boarded his plane, he said: “I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties.”
A Game of Bowls
In 1588, according to a famous story, Sir Francis Drake was playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe when news came that the Spanish Armada was approaching. He is said to have replied that there was plenty of time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards.
The story is probably apocryphal. One early mention appears in a pamphlet of 1624, more than thirty years later.