In search of the perfect speech

The Paul Richards column

For a form of communication that is thousands of years old, it is amazing that speech-making is still one of the most important ways political leaders communicate with their public. It was the Greeks and Romans who codified speech-making into the art of rhetoric. The Roman forum and the Greek agora were the crucibles of debate where rhetoricians would learn their trade. Anyone fearful of the agora was considered ‘agoraphobic’. The techniques honed by those classical speakers are still with us today, and can be heard from the lips of David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Barack Obama and the rest.

A speech should be an occasion, not the passage of time. Any speech-writer should start by asking – what do I want to achieve, not what am I going to say. To fill time with pointless waffle should be a capital crime. I always multiply the number of people in the audience by the number of minutes the speaker goes on for to see how much human existence will be expended. That time can be filled with a horizon-lifting, heart-soaring, thought-provoking speech, laden with beautiful images and crafted phrases. Or it can be a series of PowerPoint slides which look like a plate of tagliatelli.

For political leaders, a speech should be the opportunity to change the terms of trade, to make the political weather. When the unknown Barack Obama spoke to the 2004 Democratic Convention, it put him on the road to the White House. When Cameron bested Davis at the Tory Party hustings in 2005, the outsider became the favourite to lead the Conservatives. I heard Dennis Skinner speak last night at a Labour fundraiser. It had it all – humour, indignation, arresting images, rhetorical questions and old-time religion. The content was the last thing that mattered.

In British political culture, speech-writing is not seen as a proper job. Government departments are stuffed full of press officers, but seldom do you see ‘speech-writer’ appear in the situations vacant columns. Most speeches are written by non-experts, and it shows. Yet from Aristotle onwards, there are tried and tested tricks of the trade which can used.

Here are my top five tips for political speech-writers:

1. You can’t write a speech for a stranger. You have to be able to hear the voice of the speaker in your head as you write. You have to know their phraseology, their anecdotes, and their funny stories. If a speaker sounds like they’re reading someone else’s words, an audience can soon sniff it out.

2. A speech should be a one-off. There might be clips on YouTube or a script afterwards, but the speech is about the moment, the location, and the time. A skilful writer will be clairvoyant: anticipating the time and place in which the speech will be delivered. The famous Point du Hoc speech by Ronald Regan in 1984 references the exact place atop a Normandy cliff that Regan stands to make his remarks. Yet the speech would have been written and signed off in Washington in advance. That’s clever.

3. A speech should be a game-changer. By challenging the orthodoxy, or bringing a new, ringing phrase to the political debate, or by excoriating an enemy, a speech can change the course of politics. Consider Blair’s response to the murder of Jamie Bulger: ‘if we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and what is wrong, the result is simply moral chaos, which engulfs us all.’ Or Thatcher’s ‘U-turn if you want to, the lady’s not for turning’. Or Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’. These speeches set a direction.

4. A speech should be beautiful. It’s the closest to writing poetry or music you’ll ever come. There are a range of devices which can adorn your speech: anaphora, epistrophe, triads, inversion, metaphor, anecdote, and many more. A speech-writer should use rhetorical devices like a craftsman uses his tools – to give shape, bring delight, and create permanence.

5. Lastly, use words in a surprising or challenging way. As Orwell said of writing, never use a phrase or image ‘you are used to seeing in print.’ A speech isn’t an annual report or newspaper article. The form allows you to stretch your legs a little. When Neil Kinnock described taxis in Liverpool being hired to hand out redundancy notices, he used the word ‘scuttled’. I’ve never heard of a taxi scuttling before or since, but on that occasion it was the perfect word. There’s no such thing as a successful draft, only successful redrafts. The sign of a great speech is the number of screwed up drafts scattered on the floor.

Paul Richards is presenting a masterclass in effective speech-writing at the Progress weekend school this Saturday and Sunday.