Mea Culpa: rejected by the foreign secretary’s lookalikes

Questions of style and language in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

‘Psst. I’m not really Liz Truss, I’m just like her. Pass it on’ (AP)

No one is very interested any more in the Committee of Privileges investigation into whether the prime minister knowingly misled parliament about lockdown parties. But when they were, at the beginning of the week, Boris Johnson’s allies were calling it a “kangaroo court”, and we wrote: “Any such suggestion has been refuted by cabinet ministers like Liz Truss.”

Yes, I know that it is pedantic to insist that “refute” means “disprove”, because it comes from the Latin refutare, which means reject or repel. But if we mean “reject” why not use that and deny the pedants their day in court?

While we are in court, though, we don’t mean “cabinet ministers like Liz Truss”, we mean Liz Truss, so that should be “such as”. Ideally.