600 Blogposts: thanks, reflections and requests

I’ve just noticed that the previous post was the 600th since I started the blog in September 2008.

Without a steadily increasing number of visitors, I doubt if I’d have carried on for this long – so many thanks to all of you who've given me an incentive to carry on (at least for a bit longer).

Reaching this landmark prompted me to look more closely than usual at the results from my hidden visitor counter.

Return visits

Particularly encouraging was the discovery that 17% of the visitors to the blog are 'returning visitors' - among whom I should record special thanks to the record-holder, who's now made 478 return visits to the site.

I should also put on record my thanks to leading bloggers like Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, and John Rentoul - links from whom always result in a spectacular increase in the number of hits.

Google search terms
I've also been reasonably encouraged by what people have typed into Google to find their way here. As you'll see from this list of the most recent ones, they lead people to some of the recurring themes of the blog:

• Obama 2008 victory speech rhetorics
• Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S.
• neil kinnock height
• ceremony Acceptance Speeches
• cartoons about body language
• brown book
• barack obama inauguration speech techniques
• imagery in speeches
• debunking body language experts
• rhetoric + obama's victory speech
• communication statistics percent body language vs speech
• does the taller candidate win in UK elections?
• communication cartoon blog
• award ceremony speeches in public speaking
• queen's speach at un july 2010
• margaret thatcher public image
• inspiring speeches
• ronald reagan and teleprompter
• peter sellers speech about nothing
• Nelson Mandela Release Speech
• body language cartoon
• personification in barack obama inauguration speech
• statesman speeches
• margaret thatcher charisma
• obama;s victory speech analysis
• lists of three
• communication is 50% tone,40% body language and 10%
• rhetoric techniqus used in obama this is our time speech
• non verbal communication videos
• "little miss muffet" "dudley moore"
• margaret thatcher voice training
• labour leadership candidates in order of height

What's missing?

One thing I notice that doesn't appear in these recent Google searches are words like 'PowerPoint' and 'visual aids', both of which are discussed at length in my recent books and in quite a few blog posts. Also absent are words relating to research into everyday conversation.

So perhaps these are areas on which I should do some more blogging in the weeks and months ahead.

But most important from my point of view would be to hear of any suggestions that you might have about how to improve the blog, and especially about which kinds of post you like the best.

I'd also welcome any ideas about how to attract (and retain) more new visitors to the blog.

Gordon Brown's book of speeches

On 1st April, I recorded my surprise that a publisher had (a) thought it worth publishing a 300 page book of Gordon Brown's speeches The Change we Choose: Speeches 2007-2009 and (b) decided to publish it on April Fools Day (HERE).

So I suppose I shouldn't really have been quite as surprised as I was by the news of of how many copies of the said book have been sold since then, as revealed in this week's Private Eye - which reports that it 'has sold a grand total of 31 - yes thirty two - copies' (Private Eye,1268, p. 25).

Bad news, perhaps, for publishers still competing to sign up any remaining memoirs by former Labour cabinet ministers - but very good news for less well-known authors like me, who can take heart from the knowledge that, compared with Mr Brown's latest tome, our own books have all been outstanding best-sellers!

Davos Meets Glastonbury: The UK Speechwriters’ Guild Conference

The world’s top speechwriters and thought leaders will gather in Bournemouth, UK, for a day of speeches and socialising on Friday 17 September, 2010.

The Second ‘Leadership & Communication’ Conference organised by the UK Speechwriters’ Guild will focus on the theme, How do leaders deliver the good news and the bad?

“Speechwriting is a misunderstood role. Many people think that the fact that a politician uses a speechwriter is just another example of their deviousness.” says Guild organiser, Brian Jenner.

“Appointing a speechwriter helps you find clarity, where often there is none. Journalists have sub-editors, authors have agents, speakers need speechwriters.

“Also, every organisation needs a story. Once you’ve got the core story right, every other communication springs from that. So you can’t Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or write compelling e-newsletters until you know what you’re about, and what you’re trying to do. That’s why the in-house speechwriter is becoming more and more common.”

SPEAKERS
This year’s speakers include Jeff Shesol, (former Clinton speechwriter), Edward Mortimer (former speechwriter to Kofi Annan), Martin Broughton, (Chairman of British Airways, Winner of the UKSG Business Communicator of the Year 2010), Max Atkinson (former speechwriter to Lord Ashdown and author of Lend Me Your Ears). Phil Collins (former speechwriter to Tony Blair) and Charles Crawford (Former Foreign Office Diplomat) and Hugo Summerson (former MP).

GROUP SESSIONS
The day will also include an expert training session in smaller groups. The price is £168 for the day including a buffet lunch and refreshments. You can find out more HERE - or contact Brian Jenner direct for more details:

Tel +44 (0)1202 551257
Mob +44 (0)7976 720705

Memoirs, bloody memoirs!

In the light of recent controversies surrounding Lord Mandelson's memoirs, and in anticipation of Tony Blair's forthcoming tome, it's worth rewatching Jim Hacker's reaction to his predecessor's literary efforts - and how the matter was resolved:

Can Labour afford to back the Ed Milibandwagon?

A special welcome to those of you who've come via the first ever link here from the Left Foot Forward blog. I hope you won't be too disappointed to discover that the words 'dangerous' and 'trot' are nowhere to be found in what follows. And, if this is your first visit, I very much hope that you'll browse around some of the other posts, to which a complete list of links can be found under 'COMPLETE BLOGPOST INDEX' on the left. If you do, you'll see that the blog seeks to be 'non-aligned' and you don't have to go far to find positive and negative comments about members of all the main political parties. The main focus is on analysing and commenting on speech-making, presentation and communication, often using short video clips to illustrate the points being made.

Listening to Ed Miliband denouncing New Labour in an interview on today's World at One (BBC Radio 4) reminded of something I wrote six years ago, when the said Miliband was one of the Brownites who was busily briefing against Tony Blair.

Under the title Can Labour Afford to Back Brown? the first few paragraphs went as follows:

1979 Revisited?
"On the day after the 1979 general election, I remember being flabbergasted by a letter to 'The Guardian' that seemed completely out of touch with reality. Signed by Tony Benn and a group of like-minded colleagues, it attributed Labour’s defeat entirely to the fact that it had failed to pursue policies that were left-wing enough. The authors conveniently ignored the fact that the Callaghan government had only managed to stay in power because of a pact with the Liberals. And they were undaunted by the complete lack of evidence of any widespread support for left-wing policies from an electorate that had just voted Margaret Thatcher into office.

"With the price of ignoring the preferences of the electorate as high as eighteen years in opposition, the party ought surely to have learnt its lesson. But calls from Labour malcontents to replace Blair with Brown are beginning to sound like the first drum beats of a renewed retreat from political reality. It’s not just that the anti-Blair agitators have apparently forgotten that bickering and division are a sure-fire recipe for damaging a party’s fortunes. They also seem to be assuming that the electorate would be happier, or at least just as happy, with Brown at the helm as they are with Blair.

"What harks back so resonantly to 1979 is the fact that the change being pressed for by the siren voices within the party once again seem to have more to do with internal party feuds than any rational assessment of Labour’s wider electoral appeal" ... (continued HERE).

1979 Revisited again?
Now that Ed Miliband has won the backing of the big unions, whose support Ed Balls had been hoping for, the question is: can Labour afford to back Ed Miliband on his journey back to 1979 and the wonderful world of old Labour?

And, in case you think I'm being a bit alarmist, try this sample from one of the video clips posted yesterday:

Although I know nothing at all about his mother's values, I do know that his father, the late Ralph Miliband, was a militant Marxist and a highly influential member of a generation of sociological theorists who (in my opinion) contributed towards undermining the credibility of a once respectable discipline and, more indirectly, towards the Labour Party's disastrous lurch to the left in the early 1980s.

I also know that, if I were Labour Party member hoping for better things to come, I wouldn't be putting my money on a leader so willing to associate himself with the Marxist values of his father.

Nor would I take too much heart from the following clips from a video posted on the candidate's own website.

Down with New Labour and down with markets!

Time to turn the page (backwards?)

The discontinuity candidate?

Too young to remember?
The problem is that Ed Miliband is too young to remember what happened to the Labour Party during the 18 years of decline and recovery between 1979 and 1997. He was only 9 when Margaret Thatcher came to power and 13 when Foot led Labour to the disastrous defeat of 1983.

So let me remind him and his supporters of a few rather important facts:

1. In 1980, Labour turned its back on the moderate Denis Healey and elected left-winger Michael Foot as party leader.
2. In 1981, left-winger Tony Benn came within 0.8% of ousting Denis Healey as deputy leader.
3. In 1981, four senior former Labour cabinet ministers broke away from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party.
4. Labour's 1983 election manifesto, described by Gerald Kaufman as 'the longest suicide note in history', included withdrawal from the Common Market and unilateral nuclear disarmament.
5. At the 1983 general election, Labour's popular vote was only 2% ahead of the combined vote for the SDP and the Liberal Party.
6. Had the SDP not attracted so many 'moderate' Labour voters in 1983 and 1987, subsequent Labour leaders would not have been forced to move their party towards the centre.
7. In 1995, Labour removed Clause IV from its party constitution (the commitment to 'the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange') - the official birth of New Labour.
8. Blair and Brown worked very hard in opposition to win the confidence of business, the City and middle class voters before Labour's general election victory in 1997.

Old Labour today = defeat tomorrow

In short, however much the likes of Ed Miliband may want to consign New Labour to the past, they should remember that their party would never have won one, let alone three consecutive elections without the broader centrist approach and appeal established by New Labour.

And, as I suggested when I warned that Brown would be an electoral disaster, the party is unlikely ever to win again without a leader who can communicate effectively with a much broader swathe of voters than those represented by the trades unions and the traditional Labour 'core vote' - to whom Miliband the younger is appealing for his mandate to put the clock back.

But to some of us of a certain age, it sounds like a retreat from political reality' that's at least as flabbergasting as the one led by Tony Benn and his left-wing chums back in 1979.

Another chance to compare the Labour leadership candidates' communication skills

Last week, I posted Laura Kuenssberg's BBC interviews with each of the Labour Leadership candidates HERE.

The Party has also posted a series of videos on YouTybe, with the candidates standing in front of the same backdrop answering the same questions.

So here's another chance to compare their communication skills - and/or to tease out their coded messages about where they really stand on the past, present and future of the Labour Party. I confess to having spotted one or two interesting observations about Ed Miliband - so expect another post on that particular subject in the next few days.

Meanwhile, and in the interests of preserving neutrality, they are presented here in descending order of height (for reasons explained HERE), with the Miliband brothers (top equal at 5' 11") in alphabetical order:

Listen with Mother Mandy: monarch-maker, Maggie-mimic or megalomaniac?

In case you're being distracted by the reviews of Lord Mandelson's memoirs that are still spewing out into the press and the blogosphere, spare a moment to watch tw0 extraordinary self-advertisements from the man himself.

Just in case you're näive enough to have thought that there might have been one or two other Labour MPs (not to mention back-room advisors like Philip Gould) who might have played a part in devising the 'New Labour' project, Mandelspin informs us that Blair and Brown "wouldn't have been in power without a third man" (i.e. him - 10 seconds in).

Taking a tip from Margaret Thatcher?

Mandelspin's willingness to revel in his 'Prince of Darkness' image must make him the first politician to adopt and exploit a nickname since Margaret Thatcher borrowed 'the iron lady' from the Russians to refer to herself.

He mentions it again in this next advert - for which I can only assume that he was coached by Rory Bremner: