On the day last month when Rishi Sunak took an hour to explain why cancelling trains to the north was a good thing, I was listening to a different political speech altogether. In a cluttered and curtained-off further education college classroom in Banbury, Oxfordshire, a student was arguing for a curriculum and learning styles that adapt to individual students, rather than forcing them into cramped uniformity.
Her nonchalant teenage audience surprised themselves by nodding in spontaneous agreement. Some even offered up a parliamentary-style “hear, hear”. Her voice wavering as she recounted her experiences at school, and made a plea for those “shunned for differences that should have been embraced and nurtured in their youth”. That speech was just a few minutes long. Written in under two hours, and lacking the polish that paid professionals could provide, it was nevertheless a more grounded, heartfelt and engaging argument than the one being cheered by the Conservatives in Manchester.
I have been teaching, researching and writing about rhetoric for a long time. But my focus is often on political elites – what about everybody else? To answer this question, I spent much of the year travelling the country with colleagues from a national network for studying oratory and politics, and a theatre company, Dash Arts. The Speech! Speech! project saw us go to Brighton and Redruth, Manchester and Sheffield, London, Norwich and Banbury, where we invited prisoners, political activists, men’s groups, women’s groups, the deaf community, students and schoolchildren to make a political speech.
A good speech – like poetry and theatre – is magic. It is not a monologue, but a dialogue. It allows us to recognise shared experiences and common needs. It invites mutual action in response. But we mistrust that magic. Words can bewitch. Fearing they will flood our reason and open the gates to demagoguery, we dismiss it all as “empty rhetoric” and close our ears. But then we end up disenchanted by the bland, generic and endless declamations of personal opinion that fill our public life – inducing only inaction.
At these sessions, we started by explaining that political speech is not just any kind of speech. Too often we confuse political arguments with diatribes that prosecute “them” for making everything terrible, while praising “us” for our virtue and fortitude. Political speech is about action. It’s an argument for doing something now in order to make the future better. But you can’t just say why you believe in your proposal. You have to think about what someone else needs to know if they are to understand what it is we should do, how it can be done and why it will be worth it. We also urged people to think of something specific. It’s easy to make vague arguments in favour of abstract nouns: “change”, “growth” and “greatness”. That’s why politics is full of them. It is harder to make the argument that there are specific actions we might commit to.
People rose to the occasion for Speech! Speech! They argued for easier access to music lessons, increasing universal credit, employer recognition of the menopause, more foreign aid, animal conservation, and victim support in the criminal justice system. They argued against bankers’ bonuses, cuts to mental health services and littering. They argued for reducing food miles, rent control and greater devolution to Cornwall. Some made general moral appeals. In Coventry, a young man argued for greater tolerance, winning applause for his spontaneous use of rhetorical antithesis: “Their choices only affect their own lives. Your hate will affect millions.” Other speeches were idiosyncratic. In Redruth, a goth-styled teenager urged us to consider the ecological benefits of using coffins made from mushrooms. “Mushrooms are your friends,” he said, before concluding: “They’ll feed you, they’ll clothe you, and they’ll hold you when you die.”
Politicians like to tell stories about themselves, hoping that accounts of hardship, illness and meeting single parents in Nantwich will make them feel authentic. Our orators also drew on personal experience, but as evidence in arguments about what is to be done. One woman proposed that if everyone had first aid training, as she had, lives could be saved and the nation’s health improved. A refugee from Syria contrasted national sports cultures and argued for improving access to facilities in the UK. In Sheffield, on an estate sometimes disturbed by gun violence, a young man explained what it was like to fear being caught in the wrong postcode, and called for better policing.
Everywhere people spoke about mental health. In a Manchester prison, women gave powerful and emotional accounts of the addiction, domestic violence and mental illness that had contributed to their being there. They argued that refuge from violent men, access to drug treatment and proper counselling would reduce crime, prison numbers and the cost of the criminal justice system. One prisoner, so nervous that she spoke with her back to the audience, pointed out that it costs nearly £50,000 to keep her locked away for a year, only a few hundred pounds of which is spent on mental health treatment. She argued that, with the right support, she wouldn’t be inside but outside, contributing to society. “[I would be] sat with my daughter helping her transition to the teenage years,” she said. “Help me to help my daughter. Help me to support society. Help me to save you £50,000.”
A good speech helps us to understand not just what someone thinks, but why and how they think it. In Sheffield, an older man with mobility issues objected to clean air zones. He wasn’t ignorant of environmental crises. Reliant on car travel, he did not trust assurances that he would not be affected, and that the revenue raised would be spent on improving his city’s environment. I thought of this argument when another participant, who had appreciated hearing as well as making speeches, said “nobody ever comes and explains things to us”.
We are blindsided by the effects of policies that seem to come out of nowhere: closing shops, cancelling appointments, unexpected price increases. Constant upheaval occludes the future, leaving us trapped, uncertain and anxious. Mendacious orators flourish, playing on our fears yet promising only a trainline to nowhere. Our public discourse is fragmented, dominated by words said for money and designed to hold us in an eternal angry present. Regulation and cancellation alone will not get us out of that trap. Better to give more people the time and tools to think and talk aloud, and the power – potentially – to persuade, lighting the way to a future we create together.
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Alan Finlayson is professor of political and social theory at the University of East Anglia. He will be discussing the state of political speech with speechwriters, activists, academics and politicians in Manchester and London later this month
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