Fear of media making political speeches dull?

Phil Collins,former prime minister Tony Blair’s speech-writer until 2007,told the Cambridge Festival of Ideas last week that because the media picked up on any dissent,politicians have to be wary of how their words might be interpreted.

“The incentive to be dull is very serious,” said Collins.

He added great speeches were rare nowadays. This was partly because the writing was poor and drew on a lot of jargon,particularly from business.

The pace of political life was much faster too,which meant modern politicians gave far more speeches than ever before,most of which were instantly forgettable.

Collins added that mass education had had an impact with politicians now aiming speeches at a mass audience rather than an elite. This meant they could not make literary references and that their language was narrower.

He denied the focus on sound bites was a factor. In fact,having a good argument was central and this could be encapsulated in a sound bite.

He urged speech writers to start from the sound bite which was really a summary of their argument.

“If you don’t know from a sentence what you are trying to say you don’t know at all,” he said.

Speech makers also needed to fit their language to the occasion and the audience. Churchill’s speeches were not as successful early on his career because he was talking about things “that did not warrant that degree of poetry”.

“You have to get the language in the right register,” said Collins.

Author Piers Brendon,a former Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre,said Churchill was an old-fashioned speaker who worked hard on his words and had studied and learnt by heart the great speeches of the past.

David Runciman,Reader in political thought at the University of Cambridge,said politicians nowadays were anxious to come across as “real people” due to the growing distrust of politicians and spin,but often their attempts to come across as real seemed clumsy and didn’t work.