Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
In two weeks, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, and Tom Tugendhat will make their main stage speeches to conference.
In the space of twenty minutes, each will need to convince us they’ve got what it takes to lead the Conservative Party. But can a couple of thousand words make that much difference?
As a speechwriter by trade, I’d have to say yes, wouldn’t I? But there’s a better reason to make the claim — which is that it’s happened before.
It was 2005 leadership race and the venue was Blackpool. David Davis came to the conference as the favourite, with Ken Clarke as his main rival. The other contenders were Malcolm Rifkind (who soon dropped out), Liam Fox, and David Cameron. The latter very nearly didn’t make it. Over the summer, he’d garnered so little support from his fellow MPs that he almost gave up. What might have happened if he had, we’ll never know (but I’ve written about it anyway).
Of course, in the event, he decided to go to Blackpool for one last roll of the dice. The gamble paid off — because by the end of the conference the dynamics of the leadership race had changed completely.
What’s remembered today is that Cameron wowed the delegates, while Davis disappointed them — but it was more complicated than that. Crucially, Clarke presented himself as the champion of a better past, while Fox — having given the second-best speech — stopped the Right from consolidating around Davis. The Davis-Clarke race turned into a Davis-Cameron race, with the latter gaining all the momentum.
It wasn’t just about the oratory, of course. The contest still had another two months to run and the Davis campaign made other mistakes. Nevertheless, the speeches were pivotal. There’s no guarantee that history will repeat itself, but the 2024 hopefuls would be wise to ask what went so well for Cameron and so badly for Davis.
The wrong answer is that it was all about delivery — i.e. that Cameron crushed it, while Davis bombed. You might even hear mention of the 7-38-55 rule. This is the notion that 55 per cent of what comes across from a speaker to the audience is body language, while 38 per cent is conveyed by tone of voice and only 7 per cent by what is actually said.
However, Albert Mehrabian‘s research — which was about the face-to-face communication of emotion through simple words — is often misinterpreted. His rule was not meant to be applied to communication in general — and certainly not to the theatre of political speech-making.
It’s also worth pointing out that Badenoch, Cleverly, Jenrick, and Tugendhat are all accomplished public speakers. As long as they play to their respective strengths, their best hope for a game-changer lies primarily in what they say, not how they say it. So while context matters, so does plain old text. Indeed, if you lay out the 2005 speeches side-by-side it soon becomes clear that the Cameron speech stands out from the others.
For one thing, it’s shorter — 1,732 words by my count, compared to 1,959 words for Clarke, 2,195 for Davis, and 2,242 for Fox. In everyday situations, most people speak at a rate ranging from 110 to 150 words per minute. In theory, that means one can get through well over 2,000 words in a 20-minute slot. But, in practice, one shouldn’t. Not only is delivery almost always improved by slowing down — a speaker also needs to leave room for clap lines, laugh lines, and, hopefully, a concluding round of applause.
Brevity is also a discipline. Unlike his rivals, Cameron barely wasted a word. From the outset, he got to the point, addressing the Conservative predicament following a third successive election defeat. He understood he was standing before the conference not as a mere member of the shadow cabinet, but as a potential leader and future Prime Minister. Therefore he prioritised the pitch, whereas his rivals didn’t.
Fox also began with the state of the party but kept veering off topic. There was a lot of banging on about Europe. Clarke began by saying he was tired of the party losing but went on to pay generous tribute to his achievements as Chancellor — which, by 2005, belonged to a previous era.
A long section of economic commentary followed, before he finally returned to the matter at hand. He tossed off a last-minute joke about being the leader-in-waiting — “Oh boy, have you kept me waiting” — and that was about it. He may as well have held up a sign reading “yesterday’s man”.
As for Davis’s turn, it wasn’t all bad. In any other year, the meat of it would have made a sound speech for a no-nonsense shadow Home Sec. There was even a prescient line insisting we must “take back control” of our borders.
Yet, in 2005, Davis had a leadership race to win. The main reason why he was on stage was to make his pitch. He did get round to it eventually, but after a first half full of terrorism, crime, uncontrolled immigration, and Saturday night binge-drinking (“a vision of hell”) it was hard to make the transition to the broad, sunlit uplands.
The speech as a whole was undermined by tonal inconsistencies — a telltale sign of speechwriting by committee.
One of two things happens when you have too many writers and editors in the room (or, worse, online). Either the participants justify their inclusion by knocking down every point of interest in the early drafts; or you have competing egos marking their partial authorship like dogs in a town park. Respectively, the likeliest outcomes are characterless pap and textual incoherence — both of which make for poor speeches.
More than anything, character and coherence is what distinguishes Cameron’s speech. It is so tightly written that it twangs like a bowstring — which he used to fire arrow after arrow into the audience.
Like the other speeches, there’s some knock-about stuff aimed at Labour, but the speech immediately snaps back to its primary purpose. Yes, the government is awful, it says, but “still we were defeated”. And in case anyone misses the point, the next line reads: “They’ve failed, but so have we.”
Given Cameron’s shadow cabinet position at the time, there is a section on education policy. But that’s kept tight too — the analysis peppered with bite-sized facts, not flabby rhetoric.
More barbs for Labour follow, but, much more importantly, what must be done to defeat Labour. The listener is confronted with the consequences of Tory complacency, of “one more heave”, of lurching to the Right. Each time Cameron says he doesn’t want that to happen, then pointedly asks his audience “Do you?”
The Tory rank-and-file might not want to be led from the centre, but, one way or another, it wants to be led. Cameron’s speech was the point at which he took control. Having challenged, even harangued, the audience, he said: “I want you to come with me”.
There was nothing quite so masterful in the other speeches. One might want to reach for other adjectives — for instance, manipulative or controlling — but there’s no denying that it worked.
Even the lighter moments in the speech serve a purpose. After stating that “we don’t just need new policies or presentation or organisation, or even having a young, passionate, energetic leader”, Cameron quips: “Come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea.”
A shameless piece of self-promotion, but deftly executed. Now compare that to the jokes in the Davis speech. Even if they’d been funny, they serve no purpose. Indeed, the laboured setups and follow-ups interrupt the flow of the argument.
All good writing requires ruthlessness. If something is there just because you like it, not because you need it, then cut it out. Or, as Arthur Quiller-Couch once advised, “Murder your darlings”.
I don’t say any of this because I’m a Cameron fanboy — I’m really not. Nor do I pretend that giving a good speech means that you’ll be a good Prime Minister. For those with the right sort of brain, organising words is easy — easier, at any rate, than organising a government.
But that’s precisely why giving a good speech is such an important test of discipline. If a would-be leader can’t even manage that, then what chance do they stand with the harder stuff?