Like the dislike for "entrenched incumbents" (another good government bugaboo), it's a legacy of the reformers' Mugwump past.

He's part Paul Ehrlich-style environmentalist, terrified about overpopulation and favoring tight immigration controls; part Club of Rome-style limits-to-growth advocate; and part Western-states mugwump , extremely suspicious of the illogical, inefficient component of politics.

Johnson thinks himself a wordsmith: he called Corbyn a mugwump - "a person who remains aloof or independent, especially of party politics" (OED).

uk The Mugwump , 37 Saddler Street, Durham A wide range of carefully sourced gifts is displayed over three floors in a listed building.

Suddenly, he felt all fuzzy, having not communicated to Dr David Fleming, National Museums Liverpool mugwump , just how ideally suited these ready-made halls would have been to display publicly the hundreds of ship models condemned to indefinite storage.

On the craft side, I adore Wooly Blue in Jesmond and Mugwump in Durham City.

But fans of Harry Potter will know it as one of Prof-essor Dumbledore's titles of Supreme Mugwump - and it is also the name of an alien species in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

Jean Jackson and her husband, Peter, have run Mugwump for 40 years.

The Lowland Hundred, Tim Noble and Paul Newland, with record label boss Jonny Mugwump , centre

He is a partner in fashion and gift store The Mugwump in Saddler Street, a former county councillor, and deputy chairman of the city's chamber of trade.

I came across the word Mugwump in the dictionary the other day.