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

Now you may reasonably object that when people are winning battles and dominating events, what they say is inherently interesting because it has consequences. That is true, and to conclude that their speeches are required reading is not irrational. Required reading, however, can be pedestrian, and an audience can be painfully aware of it even while listening dutifully. The process I am describing is different. Beyond realising that what a person says matters, the audience actually hears — or thinks it does — exceptional eloquence, fluency and rhetorical command, because we are unconsciously persuaded that the speaker is exceptional. Or we actually hear a stumbling performance because we have decided the performer is stumbling in other ways.

For party leaders, the consequence is humbling. There are very few performances which are in themselves ‘make or break’, whatever the newspapers may say. But there are performances which are likely to take the colour of whatever opinion of you is already forming in the public mind. There are occasions, therefore, when you cannot win; and occasions when it will be hard to fail. Brown’s platform debacle, and Cameron’s platform triumph, were epiphenomena.

Matthew Parris is a columnist for the Times.

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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.