Mea Culpa: a dramatically inaccurate name for a stand-in

John Rentoul on questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Kiefer Sutherland in ‘Designated Survivor’ – something Dominic Raab is not

We described Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, a few times last week as the “designated survivor”, meaning he would take over if Boris Johnson should be incapacitated by the coronavirus. Such is the gallows humour of British journalists, but it is quite wrong.

The designated survivor or, less dramatically, the “designated successor” is a member of the US cabinet chosen by the president to be kept away from events such as State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations – in case all those in the line of presidential succession are wiped out. (The order of succession, a list of up to 17 people, starting with the vice president and ending with the secretary of homeland security, is set out in the US constitution and in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, as amended.)

The practice is said to have started as a nuclear war contingency in the 1950s, although the names of those designated have been recorded only since 1981.

The term was popularised by a 2016 TV drama, Designated Survivor, in which Kiefer Sutherland stars as the secretary for housing and urban development who suddenly becomes president by this route.

Raab’s role as the prime minister’s deputy is different. As first secretary of state, and while there is no one with the formal title of deputy prime minister, he is the highest-ranking minister after the prime minister and would deputise for him if needed. His position is more like that of the vice president in the US system, who becomes acting president if the president is temporarily incapacitated.

Term limit: One piece of verbal clutter that could do with a spring clean is “in terms of”. As Stephen Mennell pointed out, we used it a lot last week. In a review of a “fitness tracker” we said it analyses “how well you’ve slept, showing a graph with details in terms of light and deep sleep on your smartphone”. Just “details of” would have been fine, although at £89 perhaps we felt it needed more words.

In a TV review, we said: “Yet in terms of adding to our understanding of Jackson and his inner life, it is unclear if The Real Michael Jackson brings anything fresh to the table.” This is crying out to be rewritten thus: “Yet it is unclear if The Real Michael Jackson adds to our understanding of Jackson and his inner life.”

And we began a report about the effects of the virus outbreak in southern Italy thus: “When coronavirus cases began multiplying in Italy, making it the worst-hit country in the world in terms of deaths …” That is rather flat for an opening sentence. It could have been: “... making it the country with the highest death toll in the world …”

Every time we are tempted to use the phrase we should ask: is there a better way?

Oh yes he did: This isn’t our mistake, but in an article about Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel we quoted the author as saying: “It’s peculiar that Shakespeare doesn’t make a single reference to the plague in any of his works.”

As Gavin Turner pointed out, in Romeo and Juliet an “infectious pestilence” prevents Friar John delivering a crucial letter to Romeo; the same play in which Mercutio says: “A plague on both your houses.”