Conversations with hon. Friends: why parliamentary oratory has changed

Many of the breeding grounds for aspirant parliamentarians have gone or simply don't fit their purpose as well any more: here I point to some of the more frequent examples

As some of you will know, and as I keep saying to provide myself with a hostage to fortune which forces me to act, I am writing a book about parliamentary oratory. That sounds misleadingly grand: what I mean is I have a chapter structure, a furious thunderstorm of ideas and bugbears, and I have started writing text, very much unedited at the moment, which explores some of my opinions and reasoning about the way in which contemporary parliamentarians speak in the public forum, but mostly in the House of Commons.

At the risk of disclosing spoilers, I think the standard of oratory and rhetoric in parliament at the moment is low and staying low. There are a number of reason for this, which will be laid out in the book, and it’s my intention to examine them all and try to draw conclusions for how our legislators could speak more precisely, more persuasively, more memorably and, if I can put it this way, more attractively.

It is an important part of my proposition that speaking “well”, which in some people is a natural talent, is also a skill which can be both taught and improved by practice. You may be familiar with the theory which Malcolm Gladwell articulated in his 2008 work Outliers, though some have now tried to debunk it, that any ability can be developed to a very high standard through disciplined repetition and practice, and to a large extent I think that is true.

That is not to say that the most awkward, tongue-tied Member of Parliament can achieve the status of a modern-day Cicero or Demosthenes simply by putting the hours in. As human beings, we have different combinations of abilities, and some people are better at some things than others. I could have devoted the last 30 years to the subject and I would still not be a world-class theoretical physicist, because some of the necessary skills and inclinations are not ones I possess to any high degree. Nevertheless, hard work can close the gap much more than we sometimes realise or want to admit.

This is not a popular view in modern society, because, while it is strikingly egalitarian and optimistic, it is also dull and time-consuming. We prefer to think two complementary things: firstly, that some people have enormous innate talent, and can therefore be revered in wonderment without making ourselves feel inadequate because possessing a talent is a matter of chance and we cannot be chastised simply for not having a gift; secondly, that there is always a shortcut, a “cheat”, a technique to reach a destination more easily or quickly. Think of the popularity of books, articles and listicles about “life hacks”, the term coined in 2004 by British writer and journalist Danny O’Brien to describe, originally in relation to technologists, “the little scripts they run, the habits they’ve adopted, the hacks they perform to get them through their day”.

Doing something again and again makes you get better at it. Mark Knopfler, former lead singer of Dire Straits and, for my money, one of the greatest, most skilful and most distinctive guitarists over the last half-century, is often asked how he came to reach his dizzying level of mastery. Although admitting to possessing a gift, he does not shy away from the need for repetition, telling one interviewer “You should fall asleep with the guitar in your hands”. If you are dedicated, he argues, you will be relentless.

I remember at 16 sitting up all night trying to play the guitar, driving my poor parents nuts. They were begging me to go to bed, to stop banging my foot on the floor.

If we try to apply that to oratory, where do we start? If the end goal is effortlessly holding the attention of a packed House of Commons, stitching together elegantly phrased arguments and well-marshalled facts, what is the equivalent of sitting in your bedroom as a teenager and “falling asleep with the guitar in your hands”?

You are probably not practising speeches for a second reading debate or ministerial statements in front of your wardrobe mirror. I say that flippantly, but in fact I’m not being judgemental: William Hague famously addressed the Conservative Party conference in 1977, at the age of 16, and, although mannered and in a particular style, it was a hugely impressive and accomplished performance. He has explained that he was already an experienced public speaker, having honed his skills in religious discussion groups and the debating society at Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive School in South Yorkshire. He read Hansard avidly as a teenager and, it was alleged, had a collection of recordings of speeches by Winston Churchill.

(According to Kenneth Rose’s diaries, Lord Carrington, then leader of the opposition in the House of Lords and sitting on the conference platform, had been appalled by the precocious teenager and had muttered in despair, “If he is as priggish and self-assured as that at sixteen, what will he be like in thirty years’ time?” Norman St John Stevas, the camply witty shadow education secretary, had replied “Like Michael Heseltine”. Neither could have imagined that, in 30 years’ time, Hague would have been leader of the Conservative Party, led them to a second heavy defeat in a row, retired front-rank politics and then been persuaded by his successor-but-two, David Cameron, to make a comeback as shadow foreign secretary.)

Hague would develop his skills further when he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read philosophy, politics and economics and plied his trade in the Oxford Union, serving as president in Michaelmas term 1981. (There was a fascinating profile in The Washington Post at the time, which described how the student politician “puffs out his chest and wags his silver tongue, disarming any rash challengers with naked charm and vocal cords”. It called him “the Union’s current golden boy”, a “brilliant orator… [who] first gained attention nationally as a 16-year-old addressing the Tory (Conservative Party) conference on national television”.)

He would become one of the best parliamentary orators of his generation, relaxed and at ease in the chamber, agile and witty, and in technical terms a formidable opponent at the despatch box. For four years he stood opposite Tony Blair, in his first stint as prime minister and politically dominant. Blair, in his own very different way a brilliant communicator, was never at his best in the Commons, and particularly hated the weekly torment of Prime Minister’s Questions, at which he and his staff knew he did not excel. Early in 2000, there was sufficient anxiety in Downing Street about Hague’s mastery of the format that a memorandum from his advisers, headed by the director of the Number 10 Policy Unit, David Miliband, suggested:

Although PMQs is a pain in the neck, it is important and worth taking seriously. We think you should think of a fresh approach from next week so we can get back on top… Hague simply comes along with a five-minute script which he delivered well, ignoring your answers.

The advice was not received entirely well. “This is fine up to a point,” the prime minister wrote back, bur “I don’t think we should start panicking about this, or thinking PMQs is ever going to be other than something to endure. It is, in my view, the worst forum in which to appear.” Alastair Campbell, Blair’s moody and overbearing press secretary, was similarly dismissive. At one point he wrote, with typically graceless aggression, “If the Tories want a comedian as a leader, they might as well go for Bernard Manning—though he might not be right-wing enough”.

The importance of university debating, especially at the Oxford Union but also in other institutions like the Cambridge Union and, for a time, the Glasgow University Union, which was the training ground for politicians like Menzies Campbell, Donald Dewar, John Smith, Derry Irvine and Charles Kennedy, is a significant topic and I will tackle it at some point, no doubt in the book. Suffice to say at this point that it remains a major influence: in recent years, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg have all enjoyed success in the House of Commons as former officers of the Oxford Union, though the style which the institution fosters, of verbal dexterity, flippancy and an ability to argue any position, however extreme or outlandish, has sometimes been criticised.

Some politicians had unlikely training grounds. Andrew Bonar Law, the Conservative leader from 1916 to 1921 and then again, as prime minister, briefly in 1922-23, left school at 16 to become a clerk at his family’s merchant bank, Kidston and Sons in Glasgow. He was fiercely keen on self-improvement and attended the Glasgow Parliamentary Debating Association, a mock parliament run by the city’s corporation, but also honed a hard-edged, brutal style of argumentation, which Leo Amery compared to a “steel riveter”, as a spectator in Glasgow’s bankruptcy courts. Aneurin Bevan, the Labour MP who, as minister of health from 1945 to 1951, would set up the NHS, became an eloquent and passionate speaker as head of the local chapter of his trades union when he was a miner in Tredegar. His invective was perfect for whipping up his comrades and savaging their employers’ behaviour.

The legal profession has prepared many politicians for the art of persuasion and rhetoric. Perhaps the most famous example is F.E. Smith, later Earl of Birkenhead, who began his career as a barrister on the Northern Circuit in and around Liverpool before transferring his practice to London. Edward Carson, the father of Ulster Unionism, won his spurs in Dublin before establishing himself as an advocate in London: he defended the Marquess of Queensberry against the libel brought by Oscar Wilde, whom he had known when they were children in the Irish capital (Wilde told his lawyer that Carson would “no doubt perform his task with all the added bitterness of an old friend”). H.H. Asquith, John Simon, Rufus Isaacs and Douglas Hogg would all bring substantial courtroom reputations into Parliament.

There are fewer really eminent lawyers in the House of Commons now. The “modernisation” of the sitting hours after 1997, so that the House sits earlier in the day, makes it much more difficult to combine an ongoing career at the Bar with the diligence and attendance expected of Members of Parliament. Nevertheless, Dominic Grieve (2010-14) and Geoffrey Cox (2018-20) served as attorney general and were powerful orators, Grieve cold and clinical while Cox employs his rich baritone for rather grander rhetoric.

One form of preparation which has died almost altogether is addressing large political gatherings (other than party conferences). As leader of the opposition in 1949, Winston Churchill addressed a crowd of 22,000 party members at Ibrox in Glasgow, but that kind of mass event is much rarer now than it once was. Michael Foot was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1957 before his rather unlikely stint as leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983 and addressed marches and demonstrations of tens of thousands, the 1959 Aldermaston March numbering around 60,000. George Galloway, born in Dundee but a Glasgow MP for almost 20 years, would attend a march for—or rather against—almost anything and could dazzle huge crowds in a bullying, overwrought manner. John McDonnell, a left-wing Labour ideologue, speaks well from a platform, if more brutally effective than daintily persuasive. Ironically, one of the most active MPs outside the Commons, serial left-wing rebel turned Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, can carry crowds of thousands, especially at anti-war demonstrations, but is an ineffective and forgettable orator inside the House.

The Reverend Ian Paisley refined his hypnotic and dogmatic fury as a Protestant preacher, founding his own Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1951 and translating that apocalyptic style into the House of Commons, where he would assault government ministers as if they were only one distance removed from the Devil. Hollywood icon Liam Neeson, like Paisley a child of Ballymena in County Antrim, admitted that he sometimes went to listen to Paisley preach from the pulpit and drew on the charismatic, uncompromising language and rhythms.

What an orator he was. He’d put the fear of God in you. You could see this extraordinary performance, the charisma that he had. It was very powerful. It had an effect on me.

Many of these occasions, however, now possess neither the size of audience nor the political significance to teach MPs much about beguiling and persuading your listeners. That goes hand-in-hand with another problem, that Members are not really much interested in persuasive rhetoric in the chamber, knowing it will have little effect and generates a small audience except for bite-sized chunks which might make it to a news bulletin or a YouTube clip. Far too often, the only objective is to have something read into the record so that it is then content to be used in other ways elsewhere. I don’t think this trend it utterly irreversible, and I would point to flickers of encouragement like an obvious appetite for sprawling, multi-hour podcasts by hosts as diverse as Joe Rogan and Rick Rubin; but that is a subject for another day.

Rarely if ever can you simply turn back the clock. No matter how intense and earnest the effort of will, we cannot remake a political culture of mass public meetings, sharp-witted and successful lawyers and lyrically eloquent trades union leaders. But to move forward, we need to know where we are and how we got here. I hope, then, that this has been a useful glimpse into some of the influences of which parliamentarians have drawn in the past. Some remain useful, if less common, and of course we will find new ones as society develops.

Retired and semi-retired politicians now have “podcast” on their plans for the future almost as a pro forma; some are excellent, like The Rest Is Politics hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart; others, like George Osborne’s and Ed Balls’s Political Currency give off more of a sense that simply nobody told them they couldn’t or shouldn’t. However, so far as I can think, we have yet to see a major career in the UK launched in the opposite direction, a successful podcaster taking that audience and skills set and becoming a parliamentarian. Sebastian Payne, author and former journalist, has some podcasting heritage and is currently seeking nomination as a Conservative, so could be a pioneer. But it would probably take someone of the fighting weight of Christopher Hope, Emily Maitlis or Matt Forde to make the journey look plausible.

No doubt I will come back to this general subject from a number of different angles yet. There is a great deal to be said, both in terms of diagnosis and prescription: but let’s ease ourselves in gently.