Mea Culpa: Rishi Sunak, sailing on a raft around Belgium

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

‘For the umpteenth time, Suella... no, we are NOT there yet’ (Théodore Géricault)

We got our metaphors at sixes and sevens in a picture caption on Monday: “The prime minister is considering a raft of driver-friendly measures.” I imagined Rishi Sunak riding several cars lashed together as they were swept along by a flood, which may or may not have been caused by climate change, having just seen some rather dramatic footage from China. But in the photo itself he was indoors standing next to what looked like an exhibit of an old racing car.

The report, which was about Labour criticism of the prime minister’s “helicopter lifestyle” mentioned helicopters and cars, but not rafts, or boats of any kind.

New Magellan? Elsewhere the same day, we briefly paraphrased comments by Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary and EU trade commissioner, as saying that trying to “circumnavigate” Brussels was always going to backfire. Perhaps he was trying to do it on a raft, with a backfiring engine, on a grand tour of the continental European canal network. But no, we meant “circumvent”. Lord Mandelson was criticising the British government for seeking to go around the European commission by trying to do deals directly with EU governments.