15 October 2020

Are you talking to me?

You should be.

By Richard Pooley

In the bookshelf above my head is a paperback entitled You Talkin’ to Me?  It’s by the journalist Sam Leith and was published in 2012.  As you probably know, the title are the words of Travis Bickle, spoken by Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver.  The book’s strap line – Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama – tells you its subject, but not how instructive and amusing it is.  If you want to learn how to deliver a memorable speech or powerful presentation, there is no better guide (though Effective Presentation, written in the 1980s by the late Sir Anthony Jay, creator of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, is its equal).  I regularly re-read it.  But until today I had not noticed the source of the quote at the top of the blurb on the back cover: “The best available analysis of what rhetoric is, and how it works.” Boris Johnson.

I spent much of my working life training business people, bureaucrats and the odd -sometimes very odd – politician to be better communicators.  Although I did my final course three years ago (with denizens of the office of the Prime Minister of Latvia rather than those of 10 Downing Street) I have not stopped analysing the speeches of our masters and, all too few, mistresses.  Those of Prime Minister Johnson, and Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump have particularly fascinated me, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you a line-by-line commentary on their use of auxesis or concessio.  Look ‘em up… or buy Leith’s book.  What has interested me most is whether their speeches have been answering the question asked by Leith and Bickle.  Have these politicians (yes, Trump, you are a politician) been talking to their fellow citizens or just to their supporters?  Or neither?

Trump, it is clear, has always only ever spoken to his supporters.  And it is still possible, as my Shaw Sheet colleague J.R. Thomas keeps reminding us, that a majority of voters in key states such as Florida and Ohio believe he is talking to them and will accordingly give him another four years in office.  He is not in the same league as Obama when it comes to high-flown oratory.  But he became president because he convinced enough Americans he was thinking their thoughts and speaking their minds.

Macron, despite being an accomplished user of many of the tricks of the oratorical trade, has had great difficulty connecting with the typical Jean-Pierre or Marie-Claire.  He usually comes across as arrogant.  His language is too formal, too abstract, too bureaucratic even for the French.  Only once during this pandemic, on 13 April, has he really talked with, rather down to, the French (see my Shaw Sheet article Leadership).  He is lucky in his enemies though.  No-one else has yet emerged from among his opponents who can talk to the French in a way that makes them feel he or she is articulating what they think.

And what about Johnson?  As regular readers will know, I am no fan of his.  He’s not nearly as clever as he and his boosters claim.  His minder, Dominic Cummings, is far brighter.  He can’t be doing with detail.  He fabricates stories and invents facts to support whatever message he is sending.  However, until the pandemic hit him he was a very effective public speaker and writer.  He remains amusing and clever with words, two attributes which we Brits imagine indicate high intelligence, but his utterings, whether in formal speeches, press conferences or interviews, no longer connect with many of his supporters, let alone detractors such as myself.  His speech at the Conservative Party Conference ten days ago was, as usual, full of jokes, metaphors and hyperbole.  He even managed a hidden concessio:

“I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power, twenty years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.  They forgot the history of this country.  It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.”

As much of the media reported, he failed to mention that some people was, in fact, himself.  In a radio interview seven, not twenty, years ago he had said: “Labour put in a load of wind farms that failed to pull the skin off a rice pudding.”  He probably thought those listening to his conference speech would remember his culinary metaphor and subconsciously applaud his self-deprecation.  No doubt some did.  But many more, I suspect, are no longer charmed by talk of the skin on rice puddings and puffed sails or naval heroes from Our Island Story.  Most of us get our rice pudding out of a tin, fatty Boris, and have never seen the skin you get on your nursery food.

Johnson has become infatuated with his own rhetorical skills.  He is no longer putting himself in his listeners’ shoes.  He is no longer asking himself: Who am I talking to?  What are they most worried about?  His speech to the nation on television on Monday night is a prime example.  He was supposed to tell us why the British government was being forced to impose greater restrictions on our lives.  Uppermost surely in the minds of those in Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Nottingham and elsewhere in the English North and Midlands was why they were being asked to have their freedoms curtailed and those in the South, London in particular, were not.  Johnson made no reference to this.  Nor did he mention even in the most general terms what additional financial support might be provided to businesses forced to shut down or local councils required (at last!) to do central government’s bidding.  Instead his message seemed to be:  We’re a freedom-loving people who, in order to see off the coronavirus, must give up those freedoms to save lives.  Fine, Boris, but that’s what you told us in March.

There was a moment in that speech on Monday when you can see how Johnson has become  a prisoner of his oratory.  He channels Churchill.  There are echoes of The Few in the Battle of Britain:

“Never in our history has our collective destiny and our collective health depended so completely on our individual behaviour.”

He is smiling ever so slightly as he says this, as if to say: Bet you couldn’t think up such a good line.

As Andy Burnham, Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, said at least twice on Thursday last week: “The Government are losing the dressing room.”  I had to explain the phrase to my wife but I am sure Mancunians knew exactly what he meant and agreed with him.  Boris Johnson is fast losing the support of those in Manchester and elsewhere in the north of England who voted for him.  It will be little consolation to him that such support is switching to Andy Burnham rather than Labour’s Keir Starmer.

It’s not only national politicians who need to put themselves in their voters’ shoes.  I also had cause this week to criticise the communication of two local Liberal Democrat politicians.  Both do a splendid job for our ward.  One works about thirty hours a week, unpaid, to fight our corner of Bath.  The other is one of the brightest people I have ever met.  So why, in written answers to questions to them submitted by my street’s householder association, do we get this kind of stuff?

“This pedestrian way is not an adopted highway but is now a designated public right of way (BC454/26) and this needs to be referred to the PROW team which we will do soon.”

“This scheme… relieves the pressure on family homes being converted to HMOs.”

“This requires a TRO on speeding… We will also try to do speedwatch with the help of PCSO on the road…”

I have no idea what any of those acronyms mean.  Even the context does not help me.  And what is an adopted highway?  Who’s adopting it and why?

What we need from our politicians is some decorum.  No, Johnson doesn’t have to behave in a seemly fashion.  His private life has shown that to be impossible.  No, he more than anyone would know what the Romans and Greeks meant by decorum.  In the words of Sam Leith it “means fitting your speech in terms of style and address to the audience it is intended to persuade.”