Speaking without notes: why watch Miliband or Cameron when you can watch Julia Gillard?



A speech is occasionally so stunning that it's worth watching all the way through for pure enjoyment and/or instruction.

So I'm grateful to Jim Kelleher (@UncleBooBoo on Twitter) for drawing my attention to this gem from Australian prime minister Julia Gillard - which he rightly describes as "an amazing smackdown" and "a  masterclass in speaking without notes."

Much more powerful and effective than recent attempts at 'notelessness' by British politicians and, as an added bonus, it's also a masterclass in the finely honed insult.

Are members of all our political parties getting older?

On Friday, we went to a dinner organised by our local Liberal Democrats, at which Simon Hughes M.P. was the guest speaker - and very good he was too.

But what's been worrying me ever since is the average age of the audience. Not quite as ancient as the average age of the congregation at our local church (C of E), perhaps, but not far off.

Last week, Labour Party Conference organisers showed off a rather youthful group of audience members behind Ed Mildband during his speech.

And the Conservative Party Conference, as seen on TV today, seems to be largely made up of people who are far younger than the average age of Conservative Party members. 

So my questions for today are:
  1. Is the age of political activists in all parties on the increase? 
  2. If so,  does it matter?

Ed Miliband's tour de force


It's not often that a party leader's conference speech gets as widespread a thumbs-up as Ed Miliband enjoyed yesterday - even though what seems to have impressed the media most is his new-found ability to speak so fluently (and for so long) without any apparent reference to a script.

Could it be, I began to wonder, that our broadcast media are themselves so dependent on scripts and teleprompters that they're all too easily impressed by a style of speaking that they rather wish they could master for themselves?

Camaronesque?
Or did David Cameron really set a new standard when he won his party leadership by speaking without notes at a 'beauty parade' in 2005, underlining the power of an unscripted conference speech two years later by deterring Gordon Brown from holding a general election at a time when Labour would almost certainly have won?

Subsequent attempts by others, like Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown, to emulate David Cameron's skill at speaking without a script have not met with anything like as favourable a media response as Ed Miliband attracted yesterday.

Scriptlessness or better than expected?
It's not clear to me whether this was mainly the result of scriptlessness, a more relaxed delivery than usual or, perhaps most likely (?) because Miliband's previous performances had set such low media expectations.

The trouble now is that he runs the risk, if he reverts to using scripts again, of being denounced for not speaking from the heart and/or having employed someone else to write his speeches for him.

Other quibbles
Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm still not convinced by this walkabout management guru style of delivery for political speeches. Other quibbles include:

  • Glum-looking backdrop: I still don't see the point of having part of the audience behind the speaker. Although reasonably well-behaved, this particular group looked very glum for much of the time and were, on occasions,  rather slow to join in the applause. 
  • Too youthful a sample*Some viewers (e.g. me) were quite shocked by how very young a sample of voters they represented, with no one much over 45 anywhere to be seen among those behind him.
  • Hands: Finally, if you're going to wander about the stage, what to do with your hands and how to respond to applause can pose problems for a speaker. On the whole. Mr Miliband coped quite well on both these fronts. However, he might like to note that there were some on Twitter who took exception to the fact that he spoke for quite long periods with one hand in his pocket. If it's any comfort to him, the complainants probably went to a public school where you weren't allowed to put your hands in your pockets until you reached the sixth form...
P.S. Thanks to Simon Atkinson of IpsosMORI for pointing out via Twitter (@SimonMAtkinson) that  53% of electors are aged 45+!! (his exclamation marks). Perhaps he or one of his colleagues should alert the Labour Party (or whoever selects their backdrop audiences) to this important fact...