Daniel Hannan's speech - no longer infamous but just plain famous - has attracted widespread plaudits (I've received several emails from Americans I've never met asking me to pass on their admiration to Dan) and deservedly so.
I thought I'd put my speechwriter hat on (and perhaps perch a smaller stand-up comedian hat on top of it) and analyse the speech in some detail. I don't think readers need persuading it was a corker, and the hopelessly desperate nature of the Labour Party's response only serves as further proof. But it might be interesting to "break it down" - as the kids probably don't say any longer.
First of all, Dan was perfectly polite throughout. Certainly he was cross, but it wasn't the synthetic splentic rage that politicians sometimes deploy to such ill-effect. A major reason that the speech was masterly was that it was so controlled. Critics might say that it resorted to personal abuse, but each accusation ("Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words", "you have run out of our money", "I’ve long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things") resonated because they were fair comment.
Labour MP Tom Harris had a rather pathetic stab at accusing of Dan of being unpatriotic:
"What was truly repugnant about his speech was the total absence of any sense of patriotism. ... Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader — in a foreign country — is nothing short of disgraceful."
Nice try, Tom. But you've set a dangerous precedent. Will Labour MEPs follow a self-denying ordinance when Prime Minister Cameron addresses the European Parliament? And is it really on-message to stress the foreignness of the same? I thought we were all Europeans now.
Metaphor can be used in a terribly clumsy way in speeches. Dan's nautical theme hit the spot:
"Now once again today you tried to spread the blame around, you spoke about an international recession; an international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squall – but not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear up their rigging – in other words, to pay off debt – but you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line, under the accumulated weight of your debt."
Facts were used judiciously: children are being born with a debt of £20,000, our deficit is approaching 10% of GDP, 125,000 jobs have been lost in the private sector (while 30,000 have been created in the public sector), the pound has devalued by 30%. Each fact supported the overall theme - that the Prime Minister has been economically reckless.
This was a serious speech, and it was right to avoid jokes. All too often politicians' jokes are utterly groanworthy, and they are almost always best avoided. Far better to make a serious point that is also entertaining. Dan's line:
"I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era Apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense"
wasn't a joke as such, but it was jolly funny.
Dan quoted skilfully. The words "you are a devalued Prime Minister, of a devalued Government." borrowed from Labour Leader John Smith and so - as with Barack Obama's use of Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" - they had a powerful historical association (with the end of John Major's government).
Derek Draper, whose renewed prominence on the Labour scene is a sign of just how dire things have become, tried to do a number on the speech last night. His line "it was a clever little public, you know, Etonian style public schoolboy Tory boy speech" might have worked with the most ardent class warriors (even though, like George Osborne, Dan wasn't at Eton) but I think most people have had enough of that kind of thing.
Mr Draper asserted that the speech was factually wrong, without citing any evidence, and rounded off the interview with the useful observation that "it was a demented speech from a demented party" - which might have worked with morons.
Dan has since said that he thought about what his constituents would like to say to Gordon Brown, and that this informed his speech. It had a very deliberate, specific message, and didn't need to be any longer. Next time I grumble about only having five minutes for a stand-up set I'll try to remember that - and Dan's fellow politicians should try to do the same.
