John Sutherland, professor emeritus of modern English literature at University College London, called it an angry poem. "The motive force here is disgust. Disgust at the great machine and its dishonest mechanics who run our society. Duffy Furiosa. The poem's technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage - a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure."

He said he rather regretted the fact that Duffy had given the poem a title "because it's not until close to the end that this great heap-of-crap which has so got Duffy's goat is identified."

Sutherland also wondered whether Duffy was shifting her attack from politics to politician - as in Gordon Brown - by using the "the talismanic phrase" of "moral compass".

Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, called it a bold poem. "I think that what she has managed to do is capture in poetry the sense of disbelief, the strangled despair, which leaves most of us just shaking our heads, open-mouthed and inarticulate." She said Duffy had brilliantly put into words that "bloody hell" feeling most people felt every time they listened to the latest detail of the expenses scandal.