In May ACRE held a conference in Miami to launch Conservatives International. One of the speakers was Dan Hannan. On learning this my immediate instinct was to move on: I’ve critiqued him far too often. But when I investigated further I found that it was more than eighteen months since last we covered a speech by him, so I at least owed myself a chance to look.

I am very glad I did. Just the still image advertising the video quickened my pulse. No lectern, no slides, no aids of any sort. We see just him on a stage, which is how I set the scene for my trainees because it forces them to confront all their challenges.

Clever opening. He outflanks his theme by appearing to talk nonsense, thus drawing us in. By the time he explains his reasoning we are already with him, and well primed for his childhood reminiscences which are chosen to be starkly relevant.

He comes across as very relaxed, but why shouldn’t he? He’s preaching to the choir, of which I admit I am one, and there are only two hundred of them in the hall. Still his body language conveys an inner confidence that certainly would not be there with many speakers.

He hasn’t yet eradicated the diction flaw of sacrificing syllables for the sake of a perceived dramatic effect. I’ll present just one example from a very large field: at 3:52 that word is “developing”, but we know only from the sense. The final syllable is inaudible. My mind flies back half a century to 1967 and the wonderful Kate Fleming, then voice coach at the National Theatre. Had she had a recording device to prove it, I would have been more easily persuaded that I was doing then what Hannan is doing now. It is possible, with guidance, to develop habits that retain dramatic effect and also all syllables, words, phrases; and he needs to do so, because meanwhile too much of what he says is partially lost.

I get this picky only with speakers who are very good, and they don’t come much better than Hannan. This is a beautifully crafted speech, with brilliantly coherent arguments. He goes down the obvious route of explaining the economic and ethical points that make free trade the most beneficial system for humanity. That was to be expected. He also takes us through the obstacles that can make it so difficult to sell; and that is for me the most enlightening part.

He explains the political, economic and psychological barriers that drive people away from the free market system that has elevated society (particularly the poor) so much over the past two centuries into the welcoming but coercive arms of socialism that has failed at every attempt, always results in immiseration, and was responsible for one hundred million deaths in the twentieth century.

It is a brilliant speech.

Hannan was selected by Aldershot, a constituency in the south east of England, to be their Conservative candidate at the recent General Election. The selection was blocked, I understand, by Conservative Central Office. We can only guess at their reasons, just as we can only guess at how the Conservative Party squandered a seemingly invulnerable poll lead.