Lord Bonkers' Diary: Where "Bollocks to Brexit" came from

It's the slogan that turned around Liberal Democrat fortunes and this entry reveals where it came from.

Thursday

What a pleasure it was knocking up today! Our slogan ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ has quite swept the country and at cottage door after cottage door it is uttered spontaneously by the voters.

No doubt you will want to know how the party came to adopt it. It all happened one evening in the Bonkers’ Arms as we were setting the world to rights. Meadowcroft was late arriving, and when he did turn up I greeted him with “Good man! We have just got on to Brexit.”

There came the reply “Bollocks to Brexit: trimming that plumbago has brought on my lumbago.”

I jotted down his comment on a Smithson & Greaves beermat and telephoned London first thing the following morning.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• A bicyclist arrives from Kettering
• Orphans in the rafters
• Breakfast with Freddie and Fiona
• Tipping a knickerbocker glory over Oswald Mosley