The Wardman Wire

After 170 minutes and 17,871 words, the 3 speeches are over. Already life, and politics, has moved on. Time for a last look through the entrails before they are cast over the shoulder of history. For those of a stronger disposition, the BBC has the full text of Brown, Clegg and Cameron, and an at a glance comparison article. Hopefully the colour-coding is self explanatory! For a more in-depth look at the 2 main speeches, see this on Brown and this on Cameron.

Length

38 Minutes, 4085 words (107.5 wpm)

58 Minutes, 6703 words (115.6 wpm)

64 Minutes, 7083 words (110.7 wpm)

Which might just mean that Brown speaks more quickly, or that Cameron got more applause, or that Cameron deliberately slowed down to do the ‘gravitas’ thing. Clegg had more jokes and payoff lines, which may explain his slower delivery.

Height: Best Lines

“This is a Zombie government, a cross between Shaun of the Dead and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”

“Cameron’s only aim was to make the Conservatives inoffensive. Problem is, once you strip out the offensive parts of the Conservative party, there isn’t much left.”

“This is no time for a novice”

“One morning I woke up and realised my sight was going in my good eye. I… lay in the darkness for days on end. At that point my future was books on tape. But thanks to the NHS my sight was saved by care my parents could never have afforded.”

“Tony Blair used to justify endless short-term initiatives by saying ‘we live in a 24 hour media world.’ But this is a country, not a television station.”

“Four ways to make a complaint, but not one way for my constituents wife to die with dignity.”

Depth: Core Ideas

Future, protecting the planet, liberalism - trusting people and providing ‘people-shaped’ government, tax cuts for lower incomes, civil liberties

Fairness, stable government in uncertain times, hard work, duty, more fairness - applied to law & order, education, economics, global poverty, NHS, immigration, welfare etc.

Responsibility - in society, politics and finance; mending the broken society, change, character and judgment, family, sound money & low taxes, sorting out broken politics.

Width: Policy Areas Covered

Energy, environment, economy, tax, government spending, foreign policy, children/education, surveillance society.

Economy & globalisation, banking crisis, energy, law & order, record in office, children, education, NHS, medical research, foreign policy.

Banking crisis. Afghanistan/defence, economy, government spending, low tax, red tape, regulating politicians, Europe, NHS, Families, education, welfare reform,

Weight: Specific Policy Announcements

(note: all sorts of things were mentioned, but I’m trying to stick to concrete pledges, rather than aspirations or general policy areas).

House prices taken into account in setting interest rates. Independent monitoring of fiscal rules. Tax cuts to make 9 out of 10 taxpayers better off. No 3rd runway at Heathrow. No expansion at Stanstead. No nuclear or coal power. Support for every child falling behind in education. 1 million face to face doorstep conversations in the next 9 months. (8, of which one isn’t a policy pledge, and 3 are pledges not to do things)

Extend free nursery places to 2 year olds. Enshrine the elimination of child poverty in law. Right to catch-up tuition for every child falling behind in school. A slightly vaguer ‘right’ to good schools. Funding for 1m families to get online to link to schools. Free health checks for over-40’s from April 2009. No prescription charges for cancer patients. Speak up for the poor at the UN tomorrow. (7 1/2)

Give soldiers the equipment they need in war. New Office of Budget Responsibility. Corporation Tax cut by 3p with savings from scrapping reliefs and allowances. End to MP’s voting on pay & open-ended final salary pensions. Campaign in 2009 for European Constitution referendum. 4000 extra health visitors. Lose benefit if you don’t take a reasonable job offer. (8)

It’s interesting to note the overlap here: both Clegg and Cameron want independent monitoring of government spending, but Cameron’s proposal was more specific (in that he had a name for the body which would do it). They also both opposed the Heathrow expansion. Both Clegg and Brown offered support for children struggling in education. Considering how harsh Clegg was on the lack of specific Tory policies, it’s interesting that Cameron had twice as many positive policy commitments in his speech than Clegg.

Hallelujah Factor

A thin year for God - casual and unscripted swearing from Cameron, a joke from Clegg and a couple of Biblical allusions from Brown. Cameron’s mentioned both Al Quaeda, and that people might have a ‘faith to sustain them’. No mention of issues likely to inflame religious interest groups, such as Muslim no-go areas, abortion, embryo research, faith schools etc. Not very much noise on justice and poverty issues either, all rather swamped by the credit crunch. Pro-marriage stuff from Cameron might have pushed a few buttons.

Durability: Lasting Impact

Clegg’s effort may have won him a few friends, but he spent a lot of a relatively short speech scoring points, or pastiching Vince Cable (in content) or Cameron (in delivery). The speech, already seems to belong to a bygone age, before Lehmann Brothers went belly-up. However, given the Brown reshuffle, his remarks about people ‘rising from the grave of obscurity’ seem remarkably prophetic.

Browns forced smile doesn’t look quite as awkward as Cameron’s forced gravitas. Browns dour, duty-laden rhetoric, and clunky presence, have struck a better note than Cameron’s scattergun list of values. And context is everything: without the banking crisis, what would we be thinking?

Most bizarre was that none of the 3 speeches really got listened to. Clegg for being a Lib-Dem, Brown because everyone was looking for the coded attacks on Miliband and the leadership question (remember that?), Cameron because he was judged to have spoken for too long, and the Senate were about to vote on the US bail-out.

There is now a lively debate on what should be the relationship of government and people, which was at the heart of all three speeches. All 3 leaders professed their faith in human nature: Clegg in terms of liberal freedoms which people should be trusted with, Brown in terms of people with talents and working folk who can pull together to survive the storms. Cameron was the only one who really noted the existence of ’society’, and what makes it healthy or otherwise. Again, without the banking crisis and looming recession, it would be interesting to hear more on quality of life issues, which are the things we start bothering about once we’ve stopped worrying about our bank balance, or indeed whether we have a bank at all.