Mea Culpa: hamming it up for the French election

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

Meat and greet: Vladimir Putin with Marine Le Pen in the Kremlin in 2017 (Kremlin/AP)

Every now and again I try to prove that I am not just a curmudgeonly pedant by praising one of our writers instead of finding fault. This week let me commend Borzou Daragahi, our international correspondent, for a variation on an old cliché that is actually elegant and effective.

In an article about Marine Le Pen’s past admiration of Vladimir Putin coming back to haunt her, he wrote that the Kremlin appeared to be interfering less in the French election this time round, “suggesting Moscow realised its ham-handed attempts five years ago to smear Mr Macron by leaking emails from his inner circle had backfired”.

The usual phrase is “ham-fisted”, but it has become so worn from overuse that it washes meaninglessly over the reader, whereas “ham-handed” restores the freshness of the original metaphor of hands so clumsy that they resemble hams. More, please.