I fell asleep during Gordon Brown鈥檚 last speech. Don鈥檛 get me wrong. It was a good speech - by today鈥檚 standards. It was delivered in the Chancellor鈥檚 typical 155-mill Howitzer fashion. Thrum鈥hild and pensioner poverty; boom鈥ull employment; kerunch鈥hird world debt. It was just that I鈥檇 been up early, the seats in the Clyde Auditorium of the SECC were cinema-soft, and - well - political speeches aren鈥檛 what they used to be.
The day after Mr Brown鈥檚 speech, two long articles in The Independent and The Times bemoaned the linguistic standards of our politicians. Matthew Parris, as ever, was delicately devastating about the vacuity at the heart of some New Labour language. But the charges can be aimed at all the political parties. The "good" adjectives and nouns pepper all speeches, interchangeably: tough, prudent, opportunity, potential, free, vision, proud. And along with the pepper, the syrup - the y鈥檏now pseudo-extemporisations about football, partners, childhood, constituents. I used to fantasise at these points about being caught by the TV cameras filming cutaways, throwing up noisily into a metal bucket, which happened to be next to me in the conference floor. Now, though, I realise it doesn鈥檛 matter that much.
And that does not mean that politics doesn鈥檛 matter: we political journalists are continually berated for not caring about politics. In fact, I think the turgidity of most political speeches can be seen as quite positive.
This is not the age of protest, the age of shocking change - however much we鈥檙e told it is. I would love to hear a frontbencher fall back on Castro鈥檚 old sign-off, "Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!" I would love to hear a backbencher quote Somerset Maugham on the government鈥檚 plans to lever a majority of school-leavers into higher education: "They do not go to university to acquire culture, but to get a job鈥hey have no manners鈥hey are scum." I now understand that that probably won鈥檛 happen. The closest we could get to that level of excitement would be for Alan Milburn to swap his soft north-east brogue for Teutonic steel, and shout "Under ze next stage of our reforms, NURSES! VILL! PERFORM! ENDOSCOPIES!" (That is, in fact, the government鈥檚 plan - albeit without the German accent.)
This doesn鈥檛 mean that political speeches don鈥檛 matter any more. They matter hugely to people who deliver them. Witness, for example, the prevalence at Labour鈥檚 spring conference of what鈥檚 known informally as the spad eye-roll. That鈥檚 not the chef鈥檚 special at a sushi bar; it鈥檚 the roll of the eyes performed by special advisers to cabinet ministers, as they admit that their masters are spending hours, unsupervised, poring over and re-writing the agreed text of their conference speech.
Speeches can be useful indications of where policy (and occasionally personal) ambition lie. Indeed, the accompanying turgidity can force us to pay more attention to the detail and the implication of the policies, and to be more forensic about past records. And they can serve to delineate choices at the forthcoming election more clearly than any wild-eyed hyperbole.
It would be wonderful if the language were illuminating, concrete or elegiac. But the organisation of modern politics demands a narrow rhetorical base. I鈥檓 not sure that there was ever a time when all our politicians spoke like Abe Lincoln. But it is true that there are fewer absolutely lousy frontbench speakers these days, just as much as there are fewer hair-raisers. Standards no longer fluctuate wildly. You have as much chance of hearing an unusual turn of phrase from a politician as you would from a player interview on Football Focus. That is, about once every four-and-a-half seasons. (In fact, "tax is like sex" - R. Prodi, 2001, and "the seagulls follow the trawler" - E. Cantona, 1995, suggest that it鈥檚 foreign players/politicians who are boosting the average.)
That does not mean that the age of great speech-making is over forever, that we will never again hear Marcus Garvey or Winston Churchill. There is a huge political issue waiting to be debated sooner or later in this country. At some point, we will confront the prospect of monetary union. It鈥檚 a debate which leaves some of our politicians shivering, with dread or pleasure. Questions of rhetorical tactics will be asked. Do the proponents draw monochromatic economic arguments, or allow themselves the colour of the political case for union. Do the hard-line opponents temper their warnings for fear of sounding unbelievable, or do they ring the biggest knell they can - the end of a sovereign nation鈥檚 history?
In the meantime, this election will be interesting, serious, amusing, important. It will not be a rhetorical feast. But we just need to temper our appetites.
