The Government has decided that young people are rude and must be taught better manners in school. Of all the currish, lily-livered, puke-stocking ideas dreamed up by those odiferous tickle-brained rump-fed codpieces, this must be one of the most addle-pated.

There, that feels better. Rather than teaching children courtesy (which cannot be taught, only learnt), schools would do far better to instruct their wards on the long and glorious history of the British insult. The ability to give and take offence is a vital part of our national heritage, but it is a tradition of scorn that is fast dying out.

One of the more depressing aspects of political discourse in Britain over the past decade is the lack of memorable insults. The late Robin Cook was the last politician willing and able to dish out really inventive invective, and even he was mild compared with his more malicious predecessors.

In ten years Tony Blair has not delivered a single one-line public insult worth remembering. Even the insults aimed at Mr Blair seem pallid. Thatcher’s reign left her festooned with nasty labels: Rhoda the Rhino, Attila the Hen, Virago Intacta, Petain in Petticoats and La Pasionara of Privilege. Poodle Blair just doesn’t have the same bite.

British public figures are no more polite and forgiving than they ever were, yet there is a widespread fear of saying anything offensive. When a politician does give offence – as with Boris Johnson’s views on Liverpool, for example – this is adjudged a mistake, for which atonement must be made. The calculated insult, once the gold standard of British politics, has been devalued beyond all recognition.

Winston Churchill was probably the rudest politician in history, a bard of the barbed quip. Like all great insulters, he worked on his craft, savaging friend and foe with equal witty pleasure, and plenty of malice aforethought. Indeed, as F. E. Smith once observed: “Winston has devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches.”

The very earliest recorded insult, as far as I can ascertain, was painted some 4,300 years ago on the walls of the tomb of Ti in Saqqara, Egypt. It depicts one fisherman saying to another: “Come here, you copulator”, or hieroglyphs to that effect. It is not Oscar Wilde, admittedly, but it was start.

Shakespeare was the master of the well-turned slur. He recorded and invented so many offensive terms that there is an Elizabethan insult kit on the internet that will generate an infinite number of Shakespearean insults to suit all occasions. The well-honed insult is so much more than mere rudeness. To give offence properly requires careful study of the intended victim and their frailties and vanities, for what one person finds insulting another may regard as entirely benign, and there are crucial geographical variations to bear in mind.

A recent survey by the Dutch psychologist Boele de Raad found that the Spanish respond most violently to insults related to family members and animals; the Dutch take offence at diseases; the Germans cite bodily functions, and the British, sex and body parts. The mother-insult is a worldwide phenomenon, from Finland (Aitisi nai poroja: “Your mother has sexual relations with a reindeer”) to China (“Nide muchin shr egad a wukwei”: “Your mother is a big turtle”), but we British don’t seem to mind so much when our mothers are insulted: which, come to think of it, is quite an insult to British mothers.

David Beckham proved himself a true ambassador for Britain when he went to the trouble of learning how to insult Spanish officials during his time at Real Madrid. He managed to get himself sent off in 2004 for calling a linesman hijo de puta (son of a whore), but then ruined everything by admitting afterwards that he didn’t know what he had said.

The 17th century was the heyday of the British political insult, with Dr Johnson sticking the boot in with inspired venom. Hansard once echoed with such parliamentary language as “guttersnipe”, “seditious blasphemer” and “pantaloon”. The world wars and the Cold War also offered wide scope for theatrical offensiveness: Krushchev raised the bar in 1960 by pounding his own shoe on the table at the UN, thus adding insole to injury.

A talent to abuse continued to be valued until quite recently, with Alan Clark sneering at Michael Heseltine for having to “buy his own furniture” and Denis Healey comparing an attack from Geoffrey Howe to “being savaged by a dead sheep”. Indeed, an inability to be adequately rude was traditionally seen as a political failing. John Major’s description of Saddam Hussein as “a very nasty piece of nastiness” earned him well-deserved ridicule.

The British political insult started to die in May 1997. The age of spin required that slighting remarks be delivered sotto voce, anonymously, though the planted story and the sly aside. Politicians were just as rude as ever, but seldom to each other’s faces: this was called “civility”.

Today, to get our fix of bile, we must turn to the television diatribes of Simon Cowell or Alan Sugar, professionals churning out confected insults aimed at people who do not matter and cannot defend themselves.

While our politicians worry about instilling the “soft skills” of good manners in schoolchildren, the political world is no longer illuminated by the clear, glinting flash of the truly original insult. It is time to bring back the art of impoliteness, to revive that golden age when a politician could not see a belt without hitting below it.

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