The Conference Speeches That Fall On Deaf Ears

Summary

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FOR a communications technology used by Cicero, political speeches are remarkably resilient. They are still seen as key indicators for a politician's success or failure, hence the accepted wisdom this week that Gordon Brown had to give the speech of a lifetime. They are analysed at length. The trouble is, they don't really work.

No speechwriter or politician, of course, would admit such a heresy. Big speeches take up an inordinate amount of time: Brown is reported to have gone through 63 drafts this week. As a civil servant, I never worked on Blair's party political material but I toiled for hours in hotel rooms and on trains and planes on many other of his speeches, re-casting, incorporating his endless fountain-pen additions, building up, cutting back. All that agony of composition - for nothing? Of course Brown's speech mattered.

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Extract

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The Conference Speeches That Fall On Deaf Ears

But the fact that it ended up being pretty good - reasonably well crafted at the start, at least, and slightly less of a laundry list than usual - wa...

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