Theresa May has summarised this entire election with her answer when she was asked what Boris Johnson’s “mugwump” was.
The Foreign Secretary made his election debut on standard form: using a word Edward Lear might have made up that sent Britain’s journalists looking in their dictionaries.
He called Jeremy Corbyn a “mutton-headed old mugwump” writing in The Sun on Thursday and the word was then said almost as many times as the prime minister has said “strong and stable”.
Almost.
On Thursday afternoon, the prime minister appeared on BBC Radio Derby and was asked: “Do you know what a mugwump is?”
She laughed and genuinely said, for the 432,356th time: “What I recognise is that what we need in this country is strong and stable leadership.”
There are a range of definitions of “mugwump” but the most succinct is perhaps “someone who doesn’t want strong and stable Government”.