JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: How about this for some blue-sky thinking: it's time to jargon-shame corporate wafflers like Starmer and Swinney

By JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK FOR THE SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL Published: 20:45, 28 May 2026 | Updated: 20:49, 28 May 2026 At some point in their careers – preferably on day one – every newspaper reporter faces an awkward inquiry from their editor. It is awkward because there is no way to come out of the conversation looking good. If the editor has to ask the question, you already look bad. The inquiry sounds something like this: ‘Paragraph four – what does this guff even mean?’ I am aware of only two possible answers, both unappealing. The journalist could admit that he or she doesn’t know what sense the words in paragraph four are supposed to convey. To which the time-honoured response from the boss is, ‘Well, if you don’t know what it means, how on earth is the reader supposed to know?’ Alternatively, the reporter could attempt to enlighten the editor by breaking paragraph four down into a simpler form. The industry standard editorial riposte to this is, ‘Well, why didn’t you write that in the first place?’ It is an excruciating but necessary exchange. Every editor who confronts writers with this beezer of an inquiry does plain English a service. Every writer who toils under the threat of this slam-dunk of a censure becomes a custodian of clarity. The problem is they are vastly outnumbered. They – and we – are besieged by speakers and writers of our language who deploy it for nefarious purposes which are the enemy of understanding. I am not just talking about the corporate wafflers, the blue-sky thinkers who run ideas up flagpoles before circling back to get their ducks in a row and start with the low hanging fruit. They are dreadfully pretentious and their metaphors endlessly irritating but at least we can avoid them by maintaining what they might call ‘an arm’s length relationship’ with that world. First Minister John Swinney is one of two of the most jargon-heavy orators British politics has ever seen... ... the other is current Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer Far harder to get away from is the bureaucratese of the public sector, those lifeless technocratic phrases knitted together to form a woollen sentence to keep the meaningless void at its heart warm. This is where we find stakeholder mapping, evidence-based policies, community interface and more feasibility studies than you can stay awake to count. Where do they teach this language? Isn’t it time these courses fell victim to something terminal like the imposition of a fiscal pause or the implementation of efficiency savings? I have long suspected the true purpose of trotting out words and phrases that nobody at the bus stop would dream of using is to create the impression of expertise among those who don’t know any better. Well, we’re supposed to think, if they’re on about multidisciplinary infrastructural rationalisation now, we’d better pipe down. We’re outgunned by the syllables. Yet a new study suggests quite the reverse. Let me ‘bottom-line’ the findings for you: people who stuff their discourse with jargon often don’t have a clue what they’re on about. The waffle is a cloak to drape around their ignorance. The research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, found those who most enjoyed the drone of their own buzzwords were more likely to score poorly in analytical thinking and problem-solving tests. Why do they bombard us with impenetrable gibberish? To ‘create inflated perceptions of knowledge, skills, status, accomplishments, ideas or agenda’. Sounds about right to me. We tell local authorities of our troubles, of the pothole which tried to swallow our car, of the library they’ve put in mothballs, of the dizzying array of bins they’ve foisted on us – all with different collection dates which the council is too hard-up to issue a calendar for – and the local authorities return fire in the form of words designed to remove the will to live. I can easily get on board with the idea that a dearth of problem-solving skills lies behind these words. The only problem they do solve is that of having to listen to council tax-payers’ troubles. They’ll soon belt up after a few blasts of this vapid twaddle – for the sake of their own sanity if nothing else. A similar tactic is routinely deployed in national government. In Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney we have two of the most jargon-heavy orators British politics has ever seen. They’re out to break down departmental silos, you know, and tackle systemic issues like child poverty through a joined-up managerial approach. After all, it’s time to move on from sticking plaster politics. How I long for the revenge of the plain speakers, those mesmerising statesmen and women who held audiences in the palms of their hands by talking to them with candour rather than over them with flummery. Are there any left? Precious few in politics, it seems to me. We live in an age when skills in obfuscation appear to be prized above all else in governance. One imagines an editor approaching Mr Swinney with an inquiry about paragraph four of a speech he is due to give. ‘What does this guff even mean?’ he demands. ‘Exactly!’ replies the politician with a conspiratorial smile. ‘I’m rather pleased with it myself.’ Should we imagine that Sir Keir and Mr Swinney lack the ability to communicate their ideas in their own words rather than process-driven jargon committed to memory and spewed out to fill the entirety of their interviewers’ slots? Who knows? The depressing truth is that is beside the point. The point is the dryness of their language suits them. Why risk passionate oratory when robotic repetition of words and phrases which bore us to tears has got them this far? Why give their TV interviewers an ‘in’? Run down the clock with talk of ‘mission delivery’ and ‘harnessing collective intelligence’ and before you know it there will be a ‘just transition’ to the next item. You find these interviews and speeches incessantly evasive, insufferably dull? You don’t even know why you’re watching? Job done, then. Heaven forfend our man should fire you up. The object of the exercise is to crush your pep with terminology which induces slumber. Think of these words as sedatives. Feel your eyelids growing heavier. The challenge facing voters on both sides of the Border is maintaining their anger over appalling governmental failures when men like Sir Keir and Mr Swinney deploy their protective shield – that dense layer of linguistic fog with which they seek to disorientate us. We need to call them out on it, confront them with demands to ditch the corporate executive lexicon and get down to brass tacks. Stop them mid-sentence. Ask what the last six words of it even mean. They must be embarrassed into coherence. We’ll call it jargon-shaming. I say this as one who has fielded the occasional awkward inquiry from an editor and taken on board its central message. Language is for communicating ideas, not for obscuring them. It is for conveying substance, not disguising the lack of it. With the efficiency savings gleaned from shutting down the courses where public servants learned all this baloney, I’d inaugurate new ones to cleanse their chat of it entirely. An urgent programme of disinfection is required for our discourse, and I can propose two prominent politicians who should lead the way into the showers. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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