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Who had a good conference?
Excerpt: Stephen Tall has a poll on who had the best conference. It is a bit hard to answer this - no one saw all of it. But here are a few winners and losers.
Stephen Tall has a poll on who had the best conference. It is a bit hard to answer this - no one saw all of it. But here are a few winners and losers.
First of all the three C's: Campbell, Clegg, and Cable all came out looking in very good shape.
Cable has persuaded the party that the party is over for extra public spending. for the rest of this parliament we are going to have to identify a saving or an efficiency gain for every extra penny we spend. Making the shortlist for the bloggers award meant I spent some time in the press room: I was struck by the respect for Cable there.
Clegg surprised us. Apparently his podium speech was great - but I missed it. He came up with a great idea in the Repeal Act and may just have won us back the Hunt vote. I did hear Nick speak in a couple of fringe meetings, and thought he was good but not earth shattering. It is a pity he sounds so posh though.
Campbell had most riding on this conference - and so in my view probably had the biggest win. His conference speech was very well-judged - actually a clever speech. He might have gone further in terms of challenging the party (and I guess he will have to), but for this conference the balance was right. His best line was "I have enjoyed this conference - especially since Tuesday lunchtime" but his "Cameron should apologise for supporting the Iraq war" got a lot of airplay, and is a very effective barb.
The other parliamentarian to have done very well was David Heath. His speech in the UK human rights debate was one of the best of the conference. I continue to think that we should make a lot more use of David.
On the flip side, Sarah Teather's speech on education was poorly received by conference and press. Simon Carr is too cruel here but you can appreciate the point he is making:
When they were looking for speech writers in Whitehall they advertised a test. Use the following words to write a ministerial speech, they said, and there followed 20 linguistic units we have come to know well. Choice. Contestability. Markets. Personalised services. Dignity. Social exclusion. Dependency culture. Local autonomy. Devolved responsibility ... on and on they went. It is the administrative language of the political class. It may be the most powerful reason why ordinary people are not connected with the political process.
Sarah Teather talks like that. Most of them do. Her speech on education was a mix-and-match speech that could be delivered by any political party. It was Whitehall wind. She says she's against it, but exemplifies it. She seems to have opinions on education. She demanded a system that served the individual not the state, and empowered people to be independent and free, with no more one-size-fits-all. There was lots of no-more-one-size-services. She wanted to trust people instead. And she put in what focus groups say they want: "passion". "[ENTER NAME]: You have failed our children!"
(I should admit that I have a policy grouse about the Teather prescription. One of here suggestions is taht we need our education to be more open to vocational education. Perhaps it should be. But there is also a view taht it is already too ready to embrace vocational education. If you are middle class there is no way short of extreme imbecility that you are going to allow your child to go down the vocational route. Vocational education is strictly for OPCs* and we should think about why this is so before we demand more of it.)
Outside the ranks of the parliamentarians, Stephen Tall had one of the best conferences one can imagine. Well done to him.
* OPCs = Other People's Children
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Peter agree with your coments, as we discussed, but this part about Clegg;
"It is a pity he sounds so posh though"
Come on Peter what do you want him to sound like, Del Boy?
No - and it is hard to imagine him sounding different. But I think a more classless accent would be an asset.
Peter
http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/
Huhne got a good coverage from the Guardian.
Again don't agree Peter, Cameron certainly does not have a "classless" acent nor Blair and they both seem to have done ok.
and what exactly is a "classless acent"? I think we can get too fixated by these things. Most people don't give a toss about accent as long as they have money n theor pockets, a decent health service and education for their kids.
If we get this right the person who presents it could have an accent from Mars for all most people would care!
I think it is a hazard for Cameron too, BM.
Blair tones down his accent - but tends to sound patronising when he does so.
I agree on your list of things people really care about.
Peter
http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/
Clegg doesn't sound posh to my ears; he sounds South East Classless. But then you are from the Shed, moi luvver! ;o)
Cameron sounds posher to me, although in a less obvious way than Tory MPs of old.
Blair has embraced a wierd vowel-shift all of his own, laced with a splash of estuary mockney - so that "I will build it" would come out as "I wuw biwd ut."
Strange.
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"Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures."
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Did anyone else hear Cameron's early "keep it real" radio appearance? Very amusing.
The novelist John Lancaster hit the nail on the head with an account of how people with split backgrounds alter their accents depending on circumstance. He focussed on lower-middle-class kids in South London, of which I am one, who are particularly adept at this. I freely admit I speak differently when at the pub before football than when, say, answering the phone at work.
I also recall hearing Tony Blair a few months ago saying "yes but no but" in a radio interview. Remarkably no one else seemed to notice this. Perhaps I imagined it.
Julian, this is still a country where you are judged and pigeon-holed as soon as you open your mouth.
I, too freely admit to accent modification, sometimes consciously. Its also a challenge to speak in such a way that you can't give anything away, which I can do pretty successfully, but the "a"s are the hardest thing to do.
When trying to avoid saying "bath" or "barth", I tend to do a wierd Blair-like vowel shift and come up with somethign that sounds like "buth" :o?
________________________________________________
"Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures."
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
The basic issue for MPs like Sarah Teather and many like her is that they have known very little outside the world of politics. Protest as they might about other jobs that they have held down, we all know perfectly well that these are essentially token employment while they get on with the real business of getting themselves a reasonably winnable seat. That is the essence of the professional politician which the public has come to distrust, and it is the reason why I am very anti the idea of anyone under of thirty becoming an MP.
An MP is there to represent their constituents, the vast majority of whom wrestle with the everyday issues surrounding keeping a roof over their heads, food on the table and buying the necessities and luxuaries of life.
No-one, in my opinion, should be allowed to stand as an MP unless they can show that they have worked and lived without connections to Westminster for at least five years in a non-political job.
The 'Duck Speak' that emanates from these youthful spokespeople is often risible because it is so divorced from reality outside the Westminster village. The public instinctively know it. When lectured to by well meaning MPs I strongly suspect Joe Public's silent retort is: 'Go away, hold down a proper job for a few years, and they come back and tell us what we should be doing' - or more probably something a lot ruder.