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So sitting tight and calling the cavalry wasn’t an option, and wouldn’t necessarily have been a sensible move anyway. Sometimes, it was the cavalry you had to watch out for.
its garden wall, as tall as Max himself, was an ancient thing of overgrown rocks, held together by crumbling mortar and ambitious moss.
His neighbour was up by five most mornings, in case – he surmised – they made smoking and being curmudgeonly illegal overnight. Every moment asleep was a moment wasted.
Max gave her a three-fingered salute which she returned half-heartedly with two of her own.
When you axed lower-paid jobs, the average rose without anyone becoming richer.
This was where careers were lost, in the gaps between the pages of the calendar.
second chair was the sturdiest on which to sit. First chairs were chosen not so much as a safe pair of hands as a handy pair of Marigolds – disposable once soiled.
She had imagined herself among the then PM’s favourites, but the PM, as events had so frequently demonstrated, didn’t have favourites, he had human shields.
Sparrow had been as clear an illustration as anyone might require of the dangers of believing oneself immune to public opinion. He’d been riding high, and would continue to do so for some while, and if the immediate impression he left on others was one of Rumpelstiltskin-meets-the-Penguin, his self-image, if his interminable blogging was any clue, placed him somewhere between Montaigne and Nostradamus.
it's Dominic Cummings isn't it!
That’s the real art of politics, Ms Fleet. Knowing when the next fuck-up’s due. And arranging for a human sandbag to be standing in the way.’
Always decide who’s to blame before anything goes wrong. It makes the subsequent investigation much simpler.
We’re all in it together might have been the public mantra, but everyone knew that you never took a ride in a hot-air balloon without knowing who you’d throw overboard first.
Unheard objections were like unacknowledged offspring: if no one knows about them, could they really be said to exist?
