I recently had occasion to correct a small error that Gawain Towler, Chief Press Officer for UKIP, had made in a Tweet. I was pleasantly startled to receive a direct message in seconds, conceding the point. This sort of straightforward integrity doesn’t come down the political road too often these days, so when I had a moment I went searching for any speeches he might have made. Does this characteristic appear in his speaking? I found this …

We don’t see the very beginning, which is a pity. I always say that making a speech is like flying a plane insofar as the most difficult, hazardous, and revealing moments come during the takeoff and the landing. We are here denied the chance to witness his leaving the ground, though when we join him he is still climbing rapidly.

He’s nervous! That right hand on the back of his neck is a classic indicator. I’ve highlighted this before, perhaps most notably in the penultimate paragraph here. Also this whole opening is clunky as hell. It takes till around 1:30 before he begins to get into his stride. This could be simply because of hump, but that’s no excuse. If nerves have a habit of getting in the way of your first couple of minutes, then address the problem and bloody fix it! There are ways.

He has a hand-problem, and needs to find for himself a default position for his hands – one that feels and looks right. Crossing arms, as he does around the 2-minute mark, is a no-no.

I’m being a little harsh, but only in order to balance up the praise that is to follow.

He shoots the speech from the hip. Anyone who doesn’t know that this is an obsession of mine hasn’t read this blog much. People have told me they think it’s a risky circus trick. It is not a trick but dead-easy; and if you know how to do it properly it is at least as safe as reading from a script. The subliminal signals it sends to your audience are all positive – chiefly that of sincerity.

You may detest everything that Towler stands for, and disagree with every syllable he utters, but you surely cannot doubt that he is sincere. Here is a politician who, if you vote for him, you know what you will get. And that as a quality is scandalously rare these days among the dung-beetles that pass for politicians.

(No: ‘dung-beetles’ is wrong. Dung-beetles actually clean up the stuff they clamber over.)

The main body of this speech is a good bit of speaking. He establishes a decorum that works, and puts across a clear and unambiguous message. His style is that of ‘conversational sincerity’ which is what the market favours these days. If I were advising him I would like to help him sort out his hump, his opening, and find a default position for his hands. I would want to help him structure his material a little better to add clarity. I would meddle with essentially nothing else. But actually I reckon he’s perfectly equal to sorting these things out for himself

His takeoff was dodgy – what of his landing? His landing was an epistrophe on the word “better”. It was a little beauty!