When I first started doing research into political speeches in the early 1980s, I concentrated on sequences that prompted applause – as it seemed a fairly obvious and unequivocal barometer for measuring audience approval. What attracted most attention about the results was the observation that most bursts of applause are triggered by a small number of simple rhetorical techniques (Our Masters’ Voices: the Language and Body Language of Politics, 1984).
But the book also included some observations about the content of the messages that get applauded in political speeches, the main finding being that 84% of the bursts of applause occurred after a boastful statement about the speaker’s own party or an insult/attack on an opposing party – or some combination of the two (OMV, p. 45).
When I was actively involved with the Liberal Democrats during the Ashdown years, we had some interesting arguments, thanks to their rather pious tradition of trying to stand aside from ‘Yah-boo’ politics – which would make it sound inconsistent if they were to use too much in the way of knocking copy.
But my point was (and still is) that to abstain from the insult/attack option means signing up to a self-denying ordinance that deprives you of one of the main techniques for generating audience approval - and the success of Vince Cable's suggestion that Gordon Brown had changed from Stalin to Mr Bean suggests that there is at least one member of the current leadership team willing to deploy an insult now and then.
So the first thing that struck me about Daniel Hannan’s speech was that almost every sentence conveyed an insult or attack – not just directed at Labour in general, but highly personalised ones aimed at the leader of the Labour Party in particular.
Add to this the fact that it was in front of MEPs in Strasbourg and in the presence of Mr Brown, a distinguished guest who had just made a speech, and the context becomes comparable with that of a cheeky schoolboy standing up at speech day and telling the headmaster exactly what he and others thought of him in full view of all the other pupils, teachers and parents.
If Mr Hannon’s repetitive use of the insult/attack option, packaged with some neat rhetoric and appropriate imagery (on which, see HERE), may have set the speech up to attract more attention than usual, it’s obviously not the only reason for its success.
Since writing Our Masters’ Voices, I’ve been asked many times: what makes a truly memorable speech? However intellectually and financially rewarding it would be to have a definitive answer, I can't claim to have got there yet. But I do have the beginnings of a theory.
Effective use of rhetoric and imagery to package the key messages is important, but it doesn’t really provide anything like a compete answer, not least because the same techniques are to be found in all famous speeches.
So I started trying to get together sample of speeches that qualified as such to see if they had anything in common. After asking scores of people which speeches they considered ‘memorable’, what surprised me was the frequency with which they mentioned the same four speeches (remember that I was doing this 25 years ago):
Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of change’ in the South African parliament in 1960
John F Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ in front of the Berlin wall in 1963
Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963
Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood’ in Birmingham, 1968
So what, if anything, did these particular speeches have in common that made them stand out as more memorable than most?
The best I’ve been able to come up with is that, in each case, the speaker managed to hit the jackpot by saying something that struck just the right chord with just the right audience in just the right place at just the right moment in history – which means that it’s more or less impossible to predict ‘memorability’ with any certainty in advance of any particular speech - though I did wonder whether this was what Barack Obama had in mind when he tried unsuccessfully to speak at the Brandenburg Gate when visiting Berlin last year – given the previous Berlin successes of Kennedy in 1961 and Ronald Reagan’s ‘Tear down this wall’ in 1987.
Much the same can be said of three more recent specimens of the commonest answers to the same question about memorable speeches:
Ronald Reagan’s ‘Challenger’ speech after the shuttle disaster in 1986
Tony Blair’s ‘People’s Princess’ speech on the death of Princess Diana in 1997
Lord Spencer’s eulogy at the funeral of Princess Diana (his sister) in 1997
At this point, I should make it clear that I am not suggesting that Daniel Hannan’s speech in Strasbourg the other day will ever get anywhere close to the long-term ‘memorability’ of the above examples. But I do think that, when it comes to explaining its sudden succes, the same factors -- right chord/right audience/right place/right time – may help to answer the question appearing on blogs and in the media, namely why has it taken off in the way that it has?
Right chord: challenging one of the favoured solutions to the current economic crisis
Right audience: including a prime minister and people around the world who are also unconvinced by such solutions
Right place: in the European Parliament where there is disagreement between countries about the alternative solutions
Right Time: Just before the G20 meeting about agreeing a global solution to the economic crisis
What brought me back to this question after so many years was reading through some of the 5,573 comments (at the time of writing) about the speech on YouTube.
You don’t have to read many of them to see that the right chord, the right audience, the right place and/or the right time are recurring themes from those who liked the speech well enough to want to put their own comments on the record.
UK media slowly wakes up to Daniel Hannan's speech
Thanks to Google Alerts, I can report that some British newspapers have finally started to post news about Daniel Hannen's speech on their websites (mostly in their blog sections). Click on titles below to inspect what they're saying:
12.34 p.m. THE TIMES:
Daniel Hannan - the Americans just love him
POSTED BY TIMES ONLINE NEWSDESK ON MARCH 26, 2009 AT 12:34 PM
14.28: p.m. THE GUARDIAN
Why has Daniel Hannan become an internet sensation?
Posted by Andrew Sparrow Thursday 26 March 2009 14.28 GMT
3.32 p.m. DAILY MAIL
Tory MEP ambushes Brown, branding his leadership 'devalued'... then becomes surprise internet hit
By NICOLA BODEN Last updated at 3:32 PM on 26th March 2009
12.34 p.m. THE TIMES:
Daniel Hannan - the Americans just love him
POSTED BY TIMES ONLINE NEWSDESK ON MARCH 26, 2009 AT 12:34 PM
14.28: p.m. THE GUARDIAN
Why has Daniel Hannan become an internet sensation?
Posted by Andrew Sparrow Thursday 26 March 2009 14.28 GMT
3.32 p.m. DAILY MAIL
Tory MEP ambushes Brown, branding his leadership 'devalued'... then becomes surprise internet hit
By NICOLA BODEN Last updated at 3:32 PM on 26th March 2009
Media coverage of Daniel Hannan's attack on Gordon Brown in Strasbourg
Yesterday, when I posted news of Daniel Hannan’s speech to the European Parliament, it had already attracted 22,000 viewings and 208 comments on YouTube in less than 24 hours. The latest score at the time of writing has shot up to 660,691 viewings and 4,560 comments.
Yet there’s still been no mention of it on any BBC news programme or on its website. Nor will you be able to find any reference to it on the websites of ITN, Sky News or Channel 4 News.
If you search through the websites of leading British newspapers, you’ll find that the only one with any reference to the speech happens to be the one for which Mr Hannan writes and on which he has a blog, namely The Daily Telegraph.
But the US media has been rather less neglectful in their coverage of this story, and anyone interested in hearing more about the speech can see an extended interview with the MEP on the Fox News website HERE.
And you can watch this space for some comments on the rhetorical highlights within the next day or two.
It's time Gordon Brown stopped recycling other people's lines
I’ve warned Gordon Brown and his speechwriters before (HERE) that it’s not a good idea to lift lines from other people’s speeches. This was prompted by one of the lines from a speech he made in July last year:
“There’s nothing bad about Britain that cannot be corrected by what’s good about Britain …”
This bore an uncanny resemblance to something Bill Clinton had said in his inaugural address in January 1993:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Then, when Brown spoke to the US Congress three weeks ago, he came up with:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe.”
Not surprisingly, this got some commentators wondering if his scriptwriters had now started borrowing from the collected works of Barack Obama, whose address at the 2004 Democratic Convention had included the folowing:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.”
Obama subsequently recycled a similar version in other speeches, including the one in Chicago after he had won the election:
“We have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America”
Recycling your own material may be acceptable, but there is nothing whatsoever to be gained from recycling material that sounds as though it’s been lifted from someone else – other than the kind electoral disaster Joe Biden experienced when his unattributed use of lines from a Neil Kinnock speech brought his otherwise promising 1987 campaign for the Democratic nomination to an abrupt end.
But Brown and his speechwriters still don’t seem to get it. So, here we are, hardly three weeks since he told the US Congress:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe”
we hear him telling the European Parliament:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, no east or west Europe. There is only one Europe – our home Europe.”
Pass the sick bag please ...
“There’s nothing bad about Britain that cannot be corrected by what’s good about Britain …”
This bore an uncanny resemblance to something Bill Clinton had said in his inaugural address in January 1993:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Then, when Brown spoke to the US Congress three weeks ago, he came up with:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe.”
Not surprisingly, this got some commentators wondering if his scriptwriters had now started borrowing from the collected works of Barack Obama, whose address at the 2004 Democratic Convention had included the folowing:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.”
Obama subsequently recycled a similar version in other speeches, including the one in Chicago after he had won the election:
“We have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America”
Recycling your own material may be acceptable, but there is nothing whatsoever to be gained from recycling material that sounds as though it’s been lifted from someone else – other than the kind electoral disaster Joe Biden experienced when his unattributed use of lines from a Neil Kinnock speech brought his otherwise promising 1987 campaign for the Democratic nomination to an abrupt end.
But Brown and his speechwriters still don’t seem to get it. So, here we are, hardly three weeks since he told the US Congress:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe”
we hear him telling the European Parliament:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, no east or west Europe. There is only one Europe – our home Europe.”
Pass the sick bag please ...
Daniel Hannan v. Gordon Brown at the European Parliament
Gordon Brown’s speech to the European Parliament yesterday got fairly wide media coverage, but there’s been little or no mention of a powerful response to it by Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP for South East England.
Less than 24 hours later, Hannan’s speech has had 22,106 viewings on YouTube and has attracted 208 (mostly favourable) comments.* A link to the speech has also already appeared on the page about him on Wikipedia
If evidence were needed that it’s worth posting speeches on YouTube, as I recently suggested the LibDems should be doing (HERE), then this is surely it.
It’s also encouraging to see that at least one young British politician is capable of crafting and delivering an impressive 3 minute speech - and raises the question of why we don't get to see more of the European Parliament on TV.
* UPDATE 4 HOURS LATER: these scores have now gone up to 36,748 viewings and 833 comments.
* UPDATE 10 HOURS LATER: these scores have now gone up to 167,779 viewings and 1,660 comments.
* UPDATE 14 HOURS LATER: these scores have now gone up to 316,779 viewings and 2,787 comments.
* UPDATE 24 HOURS LATER: these scores have now gone up to 660,691 viewings and 4,560 comments.
Jargon and gobbledygook comedy sketch
Anyone who runs courses on presentation and communication skills will be all too familiar with the problem of jargon and gobbledygook that was highlighted by yesterday’s announcement that the Local Government Association has published a list of 100 words that it wants to see banned (for news story see here and, for the complete list, see here).
Until last year, I’d never tried my hand at writing anything other than non-fiction, but my wife and I had been finding it difficult to find a double act on the internet that we could perform at an annual event in our village hall – previous years efforts had included a politically correct version of a conversation between Nelson and Hardy before the battle of Trafalgar and one about gardening between God and St Francis of Assisi.
So we started playing around with jargon and gobbledygook, both managerial and youth-speak, and came up with a visit to a clinic by a young woman who was having trouble making herself understood.
The most difficult part was finding a suitable way of bringing it to an end, but the Archbishop of Canterbury came to our rescue with his widely publicised lecture about Sharia law that had happened about a week earlier.
Sad though I may be, I had read and watched the whole speech and had been appalled by the incomprehensibility of his language, and, in particular, by the discovery that one of his sentences was made up of 149 words (i.e. more than nine times longer than the 16 word average sentence length in effective speeches).
High risk though it may have been, I decided to read the whole sentence out and, in Basil Fawlty's immortal words after mentioning the war to the German guests, I think I got away with it.
Anyone wanting to use the following is welcome to do so, but will probably need to modify the ending with a more topical role model than the Archbishop of Canterbury – Robert Peston, perhaps?
THE COMMUNICATION CLINIC
by Max & Joey Atkinson, 2008
(CONSULTANT RINGS BELL)
Next please.
(ENTER CLIENT CHEWING GUM, MUTTERING TO SOMEONE ON MOBILE PHONE)
Ah – hello Miss Fitt.
Hi
How are you today?
I’m good – and yourself?
Very well thanks. And thank you for filling in our psychometric inter-cognitive transactional protocol – from which it looks as though you may be having problems making yourself understood.
You’re so not wrong there.
And that it may be interfering with your social life.
Tell me about it.
No - you’re the one who’s supposed to be telling me about it.
Well at this particular moment in time, I want to address the issue ahead of it getting any worse going forward.
So how often would you say people are having trouble understanding you?
Ballpark figure?
Yes.
24/7.
OK - and what’s made you decide to do something about it?
Well like because I so want to play on a level playing field, and like sing from the same hymn sheet as everyone else.
Hmm – and how does it actually feel when someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying?
Well, like, I mean to say, and to be quite honest with you, it’s literally surreal – and whenever it happens I think: “don’t go there” -- End of.
But you are still going there, aren’t you?
Yeah, but – like - if you’ll just bear with me, the bottom line is that it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Mm huh.
And, to be quite honest with you I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been there, done that and got the T shirt.
Hmm.
I mean how weird is that?
And how are you coping with it?
Well, it’s like doing my head in.
Have you tried to do anything about the problem before coming here today?
I’ve tried doing some blue sky thinking, but it – like - wasn’t actually rocket science -- and I just so couldn’t get my head round it.
Anything else?
I’ve had a go at thinking outside the box and running a few flags up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.
And did they?
No, I never seem to get past first base, because in actual fact and to be perfectly honest with you, someone keeps moving the goal posts.
Have you ever thought about moving the goal posts yourself?
You what?
Ever thought of moving the goal posts your self?
No, cos I’m not empowered and don’t have ownership of them.
Ahhh, you see this is almost certainly why you’re finding things so difficult -- because really good communicators – the really effective ones -- like the Archbishop of Canterbury, aren’t afraid to own the goal posts and move them wherever they like. Your problem is that you speak in shorthand, whereas he speaks in long hand.
Wicked.
The point is, Miss Fitt, that if you’re going to get through to people, you need to start using the likes of him as a role model, and that means making your sentences more like this one, which I’ll read you from the text of the lecture he gave last week.
Cool.
“The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone
(MISS FITT STARTS TEXTING ON MOBILE PHONE)
"in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independent of membership in any specific human community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity...
(CONSULTANT NOTICES MISS FITT ISN’T LISTENING AND COUGHS LOUDLY TO GET HER ATTENTION BACK)
"… they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity and that the only way of doing this is to acknowledge the category of 'human dignity as such', a non-negotiable assumption that each agent (with his or her historical and social affiliations)
(MISS FITT YAWNS)
"could be expected to have a voice in the shaping of some common project for the well-being and order of a human group.”
(PAUSE)
So there you are Miss Fitt -- see what I mean?
(LONG PAUSE – MISS FITT LOOKS BAFFLED)
Well, I hear what you say.
And?
Whatever!
Whatever what?
I think he’s completely out of order.
Check the fixtures and fittings before you speak
Prince William recently gave a speech that, not surprisingly, received national media coverage. After all, here was a very famous person who had lost his mother at a young age and in tragic circumstances becoming patron of the Child Bereavement Charity, which helps children and families who have lost a parent.
It must have been difficult for him not to accept their invitation – and even more difficult to have to make a speech in which he could hardly not mention his mother, the late Princess Diana.
If that wasn’t going to be tough enough, he then had to speak without a lectern and without a stand for the microphone, even though the organizers must surely have known that it was going to be broadcast to a mass television audience.
The result was that the viewers saw a nervous young man standing at the bottom of a staircase with sheets of paper in one hand and a microphone in the other (see below).
Not surprisingly, it could hardly be said to be a model example of how to deliver a speech. However difficult Prince William was going to find it speaking about something so close to his heart, it would have been a little bit easier if he (or the organizers) had made sure that clutching paper and a microphone would not be necessary parts of the performance.
The very obvious general point is that, whenever speakers can, they should always check out – in advance – the room, layout, fixtures, fittings and equipment. Otherwise you risk falling foul of the inadequate arrangements made by your hosts.
It must have been difficult for him not to accept their invitation – and even more difficult to have to make a speech in which he could hardly not mention his mother, the late Princess Diana.
If that wasn’t going to be tough enough, he then had to speak without a lectern and without a stand for the microphone, even though the organizers must surely have known that it was going to be broadcast to a mass television audience.
The result was that the viewers saw a nervous young man standing at the bottom of a staircase with sheets of paper in one hand and a microphone in the other (see below).
Not surprisingly, it could hardly be said to be a model example of how to deliver a speech. However difficult Prince William was going to find it speaking about something so close to his heart, it would have been a little bit easier if he (or the organizers) had made sure that clutching paper and a microphone would not be necessary parts of the performance.
The very obvious general point is that, whenever speakers can, they should always check out – in advance – the room, layout, fixtures, fittings and equipment. Otherwise you risk falling foul of the inadequate arrangements made by your hosts.
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