Speechwriter Philip Collins argues that bad politics and good writing don't mix
Martin Amis once said that Philip Larkin had lived a miserable life so that you didn't have to. I feel a bit that way about reading political speeches. Current political rhetoric is so flat, so stale, so much the opposite of inspiring. It 's strange, then, that the political speech should still matter as much as it does. David Davis owes his political fate to a political speech. David Cameron won and then transformed his leadership at successive party conferences. Tony Blair secured a departure date of his own choosing; Gordon Brown sowed a doubt about hi s likely success.
So much is said, a lot of it is important, and so little of it is memorable. And yet it should be: rhetoric is, after all, prose with poetic intent. It is, like poetry, compressed speech. It is also, at its best, heightened speech. But it must always operate at the same height as the issue it carries. A high-octane account of planning guidelines is going to sound absurd. Reciting Auden in aid of the energy review is going to sound desperate. An event has a register of its own and good political writing has to fi nd the right pitch.
And here's the main problem. There aren't many grand causes in domestic politics in developed nations. Think of the great speeches of the 20th century - Churchill, King, Havel, Mandela. It isn't really the writing that makes them so much as the moment. The poetry, as Wilfred Owen once said, is in the pity. The greatest speech is a cry of anguish against an injustice and, if the injustice is grave enough, the writing can be direct and spare. It obeys the rule that lilies are pretty enough without gilding. It doesn't need to be rhetorical at all.
For us, now, political consensus is the bane of memorable language. The Conservative party taught the Labour party the lesson of the open economy. In return, the Labour party has taught the Conservative party about an open society. There is a lot to agree on; everybody knows that a lot of the heat has gone out of the political battle. And yet the logic of politics compels everyone to carry on as if this were not so.
The political speech, like all drama, needs disruption and confl ict. And so we confect it, rhetorically. We exaggerate the differences between traditions by refusing to acknowledge our own doubts and making straw men of our opponents. There has always been a bit of this in politics; there is now little else.
The absurd stalemate of politics and its coverage makes this all worse than it needs to be. When every diverting statement is evidence of disunity, it makes sense to be cautious. There is an incentive to stick to the line. Florid language or unusual approaches seem like undue risks. Good political speeches are also casualties of the sheer pace of modern politics. Nobody can aff ord to be silent for long and so politicians today speak far too often. Their predecessors in the 19th century would speak probably three times a year. Their speeches would be deeply researched and considered rather than knocked out in the fury of an ephemeral crisis. Most political speeches today are unnecessary: press releases pointlessly stretched beyond their natural span and read out fl atly to an audience of invited lobbyists.
The real audience, of course, is the one half-listening at home.
Universal suff rage suff rage changed rhetoric. Suddenly the audience was less evenly educated. No set of classical or biblical references could safely be assumed. Shakespeare doesn't feature much any more and nor does Dickens. To invoke the nation's history was, once, a way of connecting with it. Now any speech that has any sort of historical discursus - like Gordon Brown's recent speech on liberty - is immediately written up as a "lecture".
We are writing now, in a very diverse nation, for the lowest common denominator. It is no wonder our language is more demotic. We have been on a very long journey from courtly language to colloquial language. Lloyd George once referred, in a speech, to the great pinnacle of sacrifi ce, pointing like a rugged fi nger to heaven. He was admonished for being too low brow. If you said that today, the commentators would think you were the poet laureate.
But, for all that, it is still possible to write well rather than badly. Some things are axiomatic no matter what the countervailing forces: strive to be clear, avoid anything you suspect of being a cliché. Don't use the phrases community, fast-changing world, agenda, stakeholders, hard-working families, unless you really do have a gun to your head. Remember that you have to answer why they should care before you regale them with a list of your achievements. Don't write for yourself and people like you; they already agree. Don't caricature the opposing view: the audience can tell.
The worst enemy of good writing is still the one that Orwell identifi ed: politics itself. When good language is suborned for political strategy, when writing is like join-the-dots, then a speech is never going to take wing. The style tells you a lot about the substance. If it's part of the style to break people off into political categories, you can bet it's part of the substance, too. If it's part of the style to fi nesse a tough call rather than make it, then, sooner or later, that will do for the substance, too.
Political speakers, like most writers, give away more between the lines than they realise. Bad politics can never be more than murky. Good writing can never be less than clear. And that's why one can never beget the other.
· Philip Collins is taking part in BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking: A Festival of Ideas, November 9-11. www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/freethinking