Such is my respect for Spectator readers that I offer you a column whose subtext is in Latin. Ours is one of the last mainstream magazines among whose readership the phrase mutatis mutandis will be very widely understood.
But the little test you and I are going to try concerns a live issue, not a dead language. For the purposes of this test I am going to paint you a scenario, and you’re going to give me the broad thrust of the advice you’d give in such circumstances.
Imagine that the Labour party has been trying for some time to position itself firmly on the centre ground. The strategy (you may remember it from the days of Tony Blair) is to break out of the party’s ‘core’ support, and attract enough floating voters — those people who can imagine themselves voting Labour but might in other circumstances vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat — to nudge its poll ratings towards the 40 per cent mark necessary to gain an overall majority.
The repositioning had been going reasonably well.
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