parish pump politics
parish pump politics noun: political activity that is more evidently concerned with addressing the immediate needs of the local electorate than with strategy that might affect the national interest.
Noun
parish pump politics (uncountable)
- Political activity that is more evidently concerned with addressing the immediate needs of the local electorate than with strategy that might affect the national interest.
- Never avoid bars or smoke-rooms, because in the former case you miss the chance of marrying a flirt, and in the latter of having your mind improved by local parish-pump politics, and your head broken by a fool in his cups.[1875?], Thomas Bardel Brindley, chapter I, in Hints, Humorous and Satirical, to All the World and His Wife. […], 3rd edition, London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. […], →OCLC, paragraph 7, page 6
- Unfortunately, the parish-pump politics this perpetuates is congenitally unsuited to deal with the demands of a modern European society.1981, Electoral Politics in Ireland: Party and Parish Pump, page 144
- Synonyms:
- parochialism, provincialism
Synonyms of parish pump politics
Questions about parish pump politics
- What does parish pump politics mean?
- Parish pump politics means political activity that is more evidently concerned with addressing the immediate needs of the local electorate than with strategy that might affect the national interest.
- What part of speech is parish pump politics?
- Parish pump politics is a noun.
Words near parish pump politics in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: parish pump politics (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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