Showing posts with label alliteration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alliteration. Show all posts

David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some well-crafted rhetoric

Having used the neat alliterative phrase ‘decade of debt’ early in his reply to Mr Darling’s Budget speech on Wednesday, David Cameron returned to it in the second part of a contrast as he began to wind up his reply.

He then followed it up with another contrast between the last Labour government and this one, a repetitively constructed three-part list and a question – technically* pretty faultless, and hardly surprising that he was rewarded with a good deal of positive media coverage.

CAMERON:
[A] The last Labour government gave us the Winter of Discontent.
[B] This Labour Government has given us the Decade of Debt.

[A] The last Labour Government left the dead unburied.
[B] This one leaves the debts unpaid.

[1] They sit there, running out of money,
[2] running out of moral authority,
[3] running out of time.

[Q] And you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another fourteen months of this Government of the living dead?

(* More on these rhetorical techniques and how to use them can be found in my books Lend Me Your Ears and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy).