sticking plaster

As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt.

In a statement, Khan called the deal a sticking plaster and said: "The Government is, in effect, making ordinary Londoners pay the cost for doing the right thing on COVID-19.