We all know what it means when someone is said to have been ‘thrown under the bus’ by their colleagues – they have been chosen to cop all the criticism and blame for something that is a bit embarrassing. The picture it paints is clear enough: a large and embarrassing ‘bus’ – a public relations disaster – is approaching, and in order to save their own hide they will pick a scapegoat and ‘throw them under the bus’ (no actual violence being involved). But where does it come from? The clever lexicographers at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary say, ‘The origins of throw someone under the bus have been attributed to minor league baseball, Cyndi Lauper, the slang of used car salesmen, and various other improbable sources. As with so many colloquial expressions, we will likely never find its first use, but we do have information that points in a likely direction. The earliest written record we have of under the bus being used in this fashion comes in 1980, in reference to a British politician.’

Which makes sense. This expression belongs more in the realm of politics than anywhere else, and for someone coining the phrase in Westminster, the image of those big, red London buses must have been too enticing to pass up. Mind you, it does echo an earlier expression about Russian peasants being thrown off the back of a sled. In that instance, the picture is of a sled speeding through snowy countryside pursued by a pack of wolves, and the legend was that a titled aristocrat, urging the driver to greater and greater speed, would occasionally throw one of his servants off the back to satisfy the herd of slavering wolves and keep them at bay a little longer. Any politician ‘thrown under the bus’ by his party or his prime minister would know exactly how that would feel!