deadcatting

“Deadcatting” is when a person intentionally says or does something shocking or dramatic to divert attention from a more damaging topic or scandal – as if the person in trouble has thrown a dead cat on to the table so that people will talk about the dead cat instead of the scandal.

When British PM Boris Johnson was recently hit by various scandals, including lockdown parties, he attacked opposition leader Keir Starmer by falsely claiming that Starmer had failed to prosecute a sex offender in 2009 when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Starmer was not directly involved in the case, so bears no responsibility. Johnson was accused of using this topic as a dead-cat strategy to make people forget his own scandals.