I grew up in a household devoted to Labour. In the 1970s, my father took a week off work every year so he could watch the party conference on the telly...every minute of it...all day...every day...Monday to Friday. In the evenings, if you didn't make an excuse - homework, a hot date - and leave the room, you had to sit through the edited highlights. With commentary. He would listen to the speakers and make one of two pronouncements: 'Good speaker - no doubt trained by the Communist Party' or 'Poor speaker - a TUC man.' He loved 'good' speakers like Jim Callaghan and George Brown.
These were the days before spin doctors. I remember the first time I heard Tony Blair speak at a conference. I knew at once there was something not right. His speech was slick and well put together but not from the heart. Of course, I was prejudiced: I was devoted to John Smith - I remember clearly where I was when his death was announced - and compared Blair unfavourably to him.
But all of the speakers I have heard in earlier political eras are giants of oratory compared to the politicians I hear speaking right now. Especially, but not exclusively, Tory speakers: people like Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond, Theresa May, Amber Rudd and Liam Fox. Donald Trump and, sadly, Emmanuel Macron are the same. People like Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Tim Farron and Nicola Sturgeon are streets ahead of these people. (Mind you, it would be good if Diane Abbott had a script - and stuck to it - she'd get into less bother).
Numpty speakers read from a script. And the script is written by a spin doctor with no input from the speaker. Numpty speakers can't improvise. They are unable to adapt to the mood of the audience (on the rare occasions they ever face an audience). They are utterly devoid of humour. In fact, they have serious problems with what I call empathy but what is now widely entitled 'emotional intelligence.' If the Tories knew anything about the life of real people they might just cotton on to how upset a lot of us are to hear them talking about cutting the benefits of disabled people, depriving young people of housing benefit, imposing sanctions on the poorest in society - and, lordy lordy, talking about pensioners as if we have been living off the fat of the land for years and need to have our incomes curtailed (rather than living on the 4th worst pensions in greater Europe).
I'm more and more convinced these are politicians who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They are rich. They live at a level that a friend of mine once described: she'd had lunch with a very well off woman, wife of a farmer. They talked about the cost of housing and how hard it was for young people to get the deposit together on a house. She wondered what kind of money they were talking about: maybe £18,000, said my friend. She was far from sympathetic. It can't be that hard to get that amount of money together, she said. Whereas my friend - and I - could remember being down to our last fiver - and not as students - as teachers...
Most of all, I suspect the numpty politicians have a sense of entitlement that is abhorrent to most of us. They know what is best for us and, with a lot of backing from their friends in the media, they will make sure we get it.
The numpty speakers have the script and they expect the voters to follow it. That's why Gordon Brown got into trouble with a voter. She hadn't seen the script. Or if she had, she decided it was mince and dumped it. Theresa May might want to ponder Gordon's fate. He's still cutting about giving advice to voters in Scotland and we still go right on paying no attention. Theresa can tell us her government is strong and stable till she's blue in the face. But there's a good chance we won't buy it.
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