hanger and flogger

English

Alternative forms

• a hanger and a flogger

Noun

hanger and flogger (plural hangers and floggers)

1. (UK politics, derogatory) A person who is in favour of severe criminal penalties, especially capital punishment or corporal punishment.
   • 1994 April 25, Joan Seccombe, Baroness Seccombe, “Criminal Justice And Public Order Bill”, in parliamentary debates (House of Lords)‎^[1], column 487:

     I am certainly not a hanger and flogger and I hate the occasions when we have to deprive someone of their liberty, but sometimes that has to be done.

   • 2001 August 30, Nicholas Watt, “Clarke dismisses Tory rival as a 'hanger and flogger'”, in The Guardian:

     Kenneth Clarke yesterday intensified his assault on Iain Duncan Smith when he dismissed his rival for the Tory leadership as a rightwing "hanger and flogger".

   • 2019, Louis Theroux, Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times in Television, Pan Macmillan:

     Later, as shadow home secretary, with her devout Catholicism informing her political positions, she [Ann Widdecombe] had opposed gay marriage, opposed the equalization of the age of consent for men, opposed abortion, but hadn't opposed the death penalty – a hanger and a flogger, she wanted that brought back.