Labour Party leaders' acceptance speeches: Neil Kinnock, 1983; Ed Miliband, 2010

With the winner of the Labour Party leadership election to be announced over the weekend, the Miliband brothers and their speechwriters must be hard at work on the acceptance speech.

As they were children when Neil Kinnock was elected party leader in 1983, they may not have paid much attention to what was widely regarded at the time as a minor classic.

So to inspire them in their efforts, and allow others among us to wallow in nostalgia, here it is.

Introduced by the chair as a "wee, wee speech if it's possible" (!), it takes him about 2-3 minutes to get up a decent head of steam - but, after that, it's well worth watching:

Kinnock Part I (about 6 minutes):


Kinnock Part II (about 7 minutes):


P.S. Miliband's Acceptance Speech, (starts 2 minutes in) 2010:
You can now compare Neil Kinnock's effort directly with that of the new leader. A first impression that rather surprised me after a couple of viewings was that, compared with his mentor's speech, Miliband's script seemed a bit lacking in substance.

1 comment:

David Kames said...

it's a shame, but it seems like the Kinnock speech is no-longer online...