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  • Boris Johnson is still the British prime ministerThis is News Review from BBC Learning English.

  • I'm Neil. And I'm Sian, and  we are back in the studio.

  • So, Boris Johnson was and Boris Johnson still  is the British prime minister. What's going on?

  • I know it's confusing but stick with us.

  • Yesand don't forget it's really  important to test yourself on the  

  • vocabulary you learn and there's a quiz  on our website at bbclearningenglish.com

  • OK. MPs from Boris Johnson's political party  have voted on whether he should resign.

  • About 60 per cent of Conservative  MPs voted for Johnson to stay,

  • meaning 40 per cent of his own  MPs have lost confidence in him.

  • The vote came after a report which  showed that lots of Covid lockdown  

  • rules were broken by officials  working with the prime minister.

  • Johnson himself was fined by the police.

  • You've been looking at the headlines  Sian. What's the vocabulary?

  • OK, so we have: 'Partygate',

  • 'dead man walking' and 'draw a line under'.

  • This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

  • So, now let's have a look at our first headline.

  • OK. This one's from Forbes: UK Prime Minister  Boris Johnson survives confidence vote after

  • Partygate scandal.

  • So, we're looking at 'Partygate'.  Now this is a word that exists  

  • just for this situation - it  was invented for this story.

  • Yeah, but there's a formula, isn't there?

  • There is, yes, and it goes back to the 1970s,

  • in America, a political scandalthe president resigned -

  • it was called Watergate.

  • And for some reason the word 'gate' has  become a suffix which we add to say that  

  • there's a scandal about something. SoPartygate is a scandal about a party.

  • Yeah, that's right, and have you got  another example? There are plenty.

  • So, recently, Will Smith slapped  Chris Rock at the Oscars,  

  • and that became known as 'Slapgate'.  Absolutely. OK, let's look at that again.

  • Let's have a look at our next headline.

  • This one's from the Huffington Post: AnalysisBoris Johnson is now a dead man walking.

  • So, we're looking at 'dead man  walking'. That's a strange expression.

  • It is, but we're not talking literally here. The  writer of this article thinks that Boris Johnson

  • doesn't have a political future. He thinks  he's going to lose his job - not die.

  • So this expression is about  people's futures, isn't it?

  • That's right, and it's from prison language  originally. A person waiting to be executed,  

  • to be killed for the crime they committed, was  said to be a dead man walking. Not literally here.

  • Can you tell us how we use it? So nowadays  you could say, for example: A football manager  

  • whose team has been losing over and over againOne more game or one more defeat, and they will be  

  • fired. And that manager is a dead man walkingOK, let's have a look at that one more time.

  • Let's have a look at our next headlineplease. This one's from the BBC:

  • Time to draw a line under PartygateBoris Johnson tells cabinet.

  • Well, there's that word 'Partygate' again  but here we are looking at the expression

  • 'draw a line under' which means  that something has finished -

  • it's time to stop thinking about it.

  • Yes exactly so Boris Johnson has decided  Partygate is over, it's finished,

  • and people should stop talking about it  although others may disagree with him.

  • Yeah. OK, so Sian, I used to argue  with my kids every night about bedtime,

  • and I decided just to stop, and to move on  from it. Can I say I drew a line under it?

  • Not really, Neil, because  

  • we use this more for official, it's  more official language - more formal.

  • So in the context of work  or politicians use it a lot.

  • Here you could say we've decided to move  on, we've got, let's get over it instead.

  • OK, let's have a look at that again.

  • So we had 'Partygate' - any scandal  just add 'gate' to the end.

  • 'Dead man walking' describes a person  whose current situation is going to end.

  • And 'draw a line under something':  Stop talking about it - move on.

  • But before you move on don't forget  there's a quiz on our website and app,

  • so go to bbclearningenglish.com.

  • Thanks for joining us, and goodbye.

  • Goodbye.

Boris Johnson is still the British prime ministerThis is News Review from BBC Learning English.

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