Time to clean up our language

However welcome the intrusion of reality on some more deluded ideas, the political 'pivot' leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those living in the ordinary moral universe in which is is wrong to lie, to boast, or to bully. It is time to drop the word entirely from political discourse and call the pivot what it usually is: rank, self-serving hypocrisy.

Newly elected Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, pictured arriving at the Conservative national caucus meeting in the Sir John A. Macdonald Building on Sept. 12, 2022, with his wife Anaida and their son Cruz. It looks like a Poilievre 'pivot' on climate is inevitable—although it will be dressed up as a fairer, more equitable approach to containing emissions, not a complete policy reversal, writes Susan Riley. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY SUSAN RILEY

October 17, 2022

CHELSEA, QUE.—Political language has become so degraded that a gross betrayal of supporters, a shameless climbdown from previously embraced imperatives, the sudden disappearance of favourite dog whistles when they are no longer useful, is widely known as a “pivot." Not a lie, not self-serving ev...

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