Another voice

The quality of a political speech is a symptom of popularity not a cause

Matthew Parris

13 October 2007

Matthew Parris on this year's conference speeches

And I think the Conservative party may have won Britain over. The reason? David Cameron is making good speeches. The excellence of his speeches is not the cause of his new popularity. His new popularity is the cause of his good speeches. We rate them because we rate him: not the other way round.

Ever since I started attending party conferences 30 years ago I’ve been puzzled by the violence with which press and public opinion seem to swing for or against key platform performances by important politicians. One speech is declared a triumph, another a disaster; one interview is lauded as masterly, another a toe-curling flop; a self-deprecating remark from one speaker is wit; from another an embarrassing gaffe. Yet for me such speeches, interviews or remarks have rarely seemed exceptional.

In Brighton this year at the Liberal Democrat conference, Sandi Toksvig bantered with Sir Menzies Campbell, who had told her that he was always nervous before any big performance. Sandi replied that she usually was too, but that Sir Menzies didn’t make her nervous. ‘Gosh, I’m a failure,’ he replied — a light, quick-witted response, I thought. But GAFFE! yelled the media, ‘Ming admits he’s a failure.’

Imagine Tony Blair at the height of his popularity giving the same response. Would we have called it an embarrassing stumble? Not at all. In fact Mr Blair had a particularly winning way with jokey self-deprecation and everybody called it cool. Sir Menzies wasn’t considered accident-prone because he dropped a clanger; he was said to have dropped a clanger because he was considered accident-prone.

Then at Bournemouth the following week came Gordon Brown’s big speech. You cannot expect me to swoon over a speech by the (in my view) hugely oversold Mr Brown; but I was there and tried to listen objectively; and the fact is that this was one of the best speeches he has ever made. It was not a very good speech — I doubt Brown will ever make one — but it was a tremendous improvement on his dreary, table-banging performances of the past. He spoke pleasantly, with an engaging tone and more light and shade than I’ve heard him command before. He was coherent and fluent and managed to smile. The speech had a statist flavour, but then that’s Brown: he has always been a fidgeting improver of mankind. We knew that — didn’t we?

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C.Gatenby

October 12th, 2007 3:12am Report this comment

I would disagree that Cameron’s popularity is the catalyst for his ‘good’ speeches. We rate Cameron because he, unlike Brown, has the capacity to inspire. The line 'Call that Election. We will fight, Britain will win' will forever give the British people a reverend flutter to what is quintessentially the lions heart.Could he be the one to now give it it's roar? Britain is listening - and it likes what it hears.

Michael Gorman

October 15th, 2007 8:01pm Report this comment

Agreed absolutely. I was there in 2005 for the Tory leadership speeches. Cameron, competent but a little nervous since he was without notes; Davies, competent; Fox, good but unlikely to win; Clarke, brilliant, by far the best, but outclassed by the Cameron PR machine. (P) I write as a former President of the Guildford Speaking Club, accustomed to judging speeches.

Purple Scorpion

October 15th, 2007 8:28pm Report this comment

There are two different phenomena here. Cameron was in trouble before the Tory conference, so his outriders (including your editor) were saying he would have to make the speech of his life ... in preparation for saying afterwards that he had. While the Cameron narrative was sketched out beforehand, the narrative about Brown seems to have been changed after the event. At the time the speech was not bad, but with hindsight it became dull. This is just scribblers desperate for a striking angle.