I’m starting to wonder if Gordon Brown and his advisers script his speeches and interviews using a special set of those fridge magnet poetry things – lots of apparently random words that can be re-arranged to leave little messages for people. Gordon appears to have a set with the words ‘tough’, ‘long-term’, ‘decisions’, ‘interests’, ‘stability’, ‘difficult’, ‘well-placed’ etc.
Don’t get me wrong – I know few, if any, political speeches or interviews are entirely off-the-cuff and there’s always a deliberate theme or ‘line-to-take’. And yes, you could easily play a similar game with Cameron or any other politician (Obama has apparently lost all but two magnets, ‘hope’ and ‘change’) but the point is gifted politicians are usually able to disguise this a little bit better – at least from all but the most seasoned hacks. There’s a transparency to many of Gordon’s appearances, an almost robotic reliance on these stock phrases. It makes it very clear what his line of attack on Cameron will be - ‘OK bloke but to wimpy for this big job’.
That may be true and perhaps my observation on Gordon is partisan but I never thought this about Blair – he had the knack of making equally (if not more) heavily scripted themes appear conversational and natural. Gordon seems to script his words every morning when he gets the milk for his cornflakes.
Don’t get me wrong – I know few, if any, political speeches or interviews are entirely off-the-cuff and there’s always a deliberate theme or ‘line-to-take’. And yes, you could easily play a similar game with Cameron or any other politician (Obama has apparently lost all but two magnets, ‘hope’ and ‘change’) but the point is gifted politicians are usually able to disguise this a little bit better – at least from all but the most seasoned hacks. There’s a transparency to many of Gordon’s appearances, an almost robotic reliance on these stock phrases. It makes it very clear what his line of attack on Cameron will be - ‘OK bloke but to wimpy for this big job’.
That may be true and perhaps my observation on Gordon is partisan but I never thought this about Blair – he had the knack of making equally (if not more) heavily scripted themes appear conversational and natural. Gordon seems to script his words every morning when he gets the milk for his cornflakes.
Labels: Politics
6 Comments:
I like Mark Lawson's take on this in the Guardian today...
The problem is that, in comparison with Bruce Forsyth's "Nice to see you!", the expression "fiscal arithmetic" lacks a certain lightness of touch.
I did notice Gordon slipping in to the old Blair routine today on Radio 4, starting replies with, "Well, you know...." as if what he was saying was shared by the interviewer and was therefore a universal truth.
See, the boy is learning...
It all adds to the impression that he never listens which, after all, he does not. My impression is that he consults the market research he fraudulently gets us to pay for , records it and before any interview someone has to pull out a long string from his back. Ask him a follow up question and you expect the head to twist unnaturally through 36o degrees and fall off amidst sparks, whirrs and clicks.
I cannot remember such a cadaverous buffoon since the early days of Seb Coe and that is saying a good deal. I hope to see him scraping a living as a lascivious cat on celebrity big brother sooner rather than later.
A bad joke .
True, Brown doesn't do - how shall I put this - the whole 'talking' thing that well (bar a setpiece speech here and there).
As you say, politicians generally do want to slip in their catchy phrases - but Brown's phrases aren't even catchy! I suspect that he comes up with most of them himself rather than getting a PR-literate person to do it.
If I can stretch your opening image into a metaphor: whatever magnetism he may have is well refridgerated.
Fridge magnet politics - now there's a thought for a post tomorrow.
There's a lot to be said for constancy - have you noticed how your comparator, Obama, is gradually morphing into Martin Luther King or how Cameron is trying to become credible?
By the way, the adverb 'too' is spelt like this and who told you about the cornflakes?
Thanks all.
In particular p.e. dant - there's a thin line between constancy and repetition....
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