Tag Archives: EU referendum

Roger Bootle: mildly excellent

Posted on by
Reply

On 28 January 2015 Roger Bootle, Chairman of Capital Economics, gave a talk at the University of Leeds. The talk was one of the Financial Times Masterclass Lecture series, and entitled The Trouble with Europe.

At this stage in the history of the UK this is fascinating: a penetrating, deeply researched and authoritative analysis of the European Union. Therefore as I did with the recent post we had of a speech by Digby Jones, I think it is relevant to put the timing of this talk into context. It was –

  • a little more than 3 months before a UK General Election, whereat David Cameron promised to seek radical reform of the EU, and then hold a referendum.
  • 18 months before the Referendum,
  • a time when the Euro was under enormous pressure.

That time-context gets particularly significant and interesting from about 41:00 onwards, and increasingly more as it approaches the end.

Malcolm Sawyer, Emeritus Professor of Economics, makes the introduction; and as we join it we see two figures standing in the gloaming before the screen. We zoom in to see which of them is speaking now and which is preparing to do so.

For me this is excellent! In these videos we seldom get a chance to watch the demeanour and body-language of a speaker before taking the stage. Bootle seems relaxed, and it is the sort of relaxation that is the preserve of one in command of his subject. He is listening impassively and slightly amused to the description of himself. Why is he carrying a sheaf of paper? Surely he won’t use a script: surely he is too adept a speaker for that. His adeptness is confirmed when he removes his wristwatch in preparation for laying it on the desk. That tells me that he has spotted the absence of a clock on the wall. It may seem a small thing but it indicates professionalism, and my expectation of speaking excellence rises – but what about those papers?

It turns out to be a list of his deck of slides – we even get a glimpse of it at one point. There are many slides, mainly graphics, and where there are words they are minimal. Very good. Accordingly I forgive the paper, except at one point when it rubs against his microphone.

He opens with some mild reminiscing about his long memories of this university. I chose that adjective ‘mild’ with care, because you can tell a lot about the tenor of a speech from the first minute. Immediately we know that however thoroughly he drills into the subject he will not hector. Nor does he. His command of the subject gives him authority, and enables the mildness.

This whole talk – fifty minutes of it – is riveting, not least because here we hear while armed with nearly five years of hindsight.

At 48:45 he begins to tell us how he will vote in the referendum, depending upon circumstances in the mean time. With hindsight we know what those circumstances turned out to be, and therefore how he probably voted. But what about his opinion nearer to today? This interview is from March of this year.

Digby Jones: punchy but gentle

Posted on by
Reply

In September 2013, Lord Digby Jones was guest speaker at the conference of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Before we watch the speech let us put that date into perspective. It was —

  • The year UKIP had a huge growth of influence, winning a great number of seats at local elections.
  • The year UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, first announced his intention to hold a EU Referendum.
  • The year before the EU Parliament election in 2014, where UKIP became the biggest UK party.
  • Two years before the 2015 UK General Election which David Cameron’s Conservative party won by twelve seats, with the promise of an EU Referendum as a central plank.
  • Three years before the referendum was held in June 2016, and the UK voted to leave the EU.
  • Six years before the latest EU Parliament election, when The Brexit Party became the biggest party in the entire parliament.
  • Six years and one month before today when the UK still has not left.

In slightly different words he describes his origins by echoing Margaret Thatcher’s immortal, “I started life with two great advantages: no money and good parents.”

My word, but he’s good!

Every aspect of his speaking is right. Humour for instance: I always say that the better it’s done the easier it looks. He makes it look a doddle. His account of being collected by a BBC car to take him to a series of interviews is breathtakingly skilful: beautifully structured, narrated, timed, and just enough histrionics to enhance rather than obscure the point of the story. Many, on the basis of this evidence, would call him a natural; but no one emerges from the womb doing that. He obviously has natural aptitude, but a lot of work has gone into being this good.

It’s not just humour. Starting at 7:35, and lasting a little more than a minute, is perhaps the clearest, most concise summary of socially-inclusive wealth creation I have ever heard. It’s punchy but gentle.

Punchy but gentle pretty much sums up his whole style. He makes his points very firmly, but we never feel barracked. I suspect that this speech consists of modules that he has used many times before, road-tested and refined. I don’t care: he delivers it as if for the first time and the result is stupendous.

At 17:00 he begins speaking about the EU, and he has a great deal to say. My timeline list above the video is there to help put into context what he says against when he said it. For instance he refers to “the EU elections next May” thereby pointing to the third item in my list.

Referring to UK’s relationship with the EU he stresses how uncertainty is the arch enemy of that business world he so clearly showed us we need. At 19:54 –

Get this sorted, one way or another, as quickly as possible

Six years and a month later they still haven’t.

Daithi O’Ceallaigh is sincere

Posted on by
Reply

A reader/trainee/friend, who happens to be Irish, emailed me to complain that I was banging on too much about Brexit. It was amusing not just because most of my blog correspondents tell me the opposite, but because of all my reader/trainee/friends the most ardently pro-Brexit is likewise Irish.

The principal reason that I’ve recently explored so many speeches about Brexit is that there are so many currently around; and I surely don’t have to explain why that is.

Nevertheless that email did prompt me to pull out a speech from my ‘to-do’ pile. It is pro-EU, and delivered by a distinguished Irishman.

Speaking in February 2018, here is Daithi O’Ceallaigh.

Instantly I warm to him. That lectern is a handy piece of furniture to lean on, as distinct from a repository for a script. And he leans on it in a manner that suggests that he just wants to feel closer to his audience – excellent body language! From the outset it is clear that he is speaking with us, not to or at. Also as time goes on it is confirmed that he is shooting from the hip, and any paper on that lectern will hold no more than bullet points.

A proper speaker.

When David Cameron first announced the EU Referendum I welcomed it on this blog, saying that I looked forward to hearing the arguments in the campaign. I was pro-Brexit, but wanted to hear well-reasoned attempts to sway me. In the event I was disappointed by Project Fear and puerile name-calling. That trend has continued ever since, and the current move towards political betrayal is a scandal that besmirches both Westminster and Whitehall. I would add the BBC to that, except they were already an embarassment.

This speech by O’Ceallaigh is the sort of thing I wanted to hear. He is evidently intelligent, sincere, and has proper arguments.

Has he swayed me? No, but if I were Irish, he would have come closer. Being patriotic doesn’t mean you hate other countries, or you’re doing it wrong; but where there’s a conflict of interest we all have to look after our own first. In the event of the oxygen mask being deployed, put on your own before your child’s. Nevertheless it’s more than self-interest.

Every one of his arguments is predicated by the assumption that if it’s not ordered by Brussels it won’t be done (or done properly). It is a variety of bureaucritis, a condition suffered by nearly all bureaucrats: essentially tunnel-vision. It is understandable that when all your working life is spent in a bubble of bureaucracies they assume in your mind an aura of indispensability; but history repeatedly shows that to be false. Bureaucracies are dispensable. They are a luxury, occasionally welcome but always expensive. They make excellent servants but dreadful masters.

If you dispute my term “tunnel vision” I refer you to his dismissal of the Irish Republic’s Irexit movement which he describes as a minority sport. At 1:30 –

There’s absolutely no doubt about the commitment of the Irish government, and the complete Irish political class, to staying within Europe.

I believe him. It is evidently also true of Britain. But the political class – riddled with bureaucritis – is not the country. The people are the country, and in Britain the country spoke and over-ruled the political class. And the political class continue to try to thwart the country.

I like this man, not just as a speaker – as a person; but I believe his misgivings, considered and sincere as they are, to be misguided.

Tony Benn: Democrat

Posted on by
Reply

I seldom agreed with Tony Benn‘s politics, but was always conscious that his views – however misguided I might find them – stemmed from his passion for democracy.

He died before the EU Referendum took place, but more than a year after David Cameron promised to hold one.

Here he is talking about it.

Can you imagine what he would have to say about the current parliamentary machinations to betray the largest democratic mandate in this country’s history?

Liam Halligan and releasing the handbrake.

Posted on by
Reply

On 28 March, a year and a day before the UK is due to leave the EU, The Bruges Group was addressed by John Redwood and Liam Halligan. The former has been on this blog fairly recently, speaking at another event: the latter we will hear today.

Liam Halligan is co-author, with Gerard Lyons, of Clean Brexit: Why Leaving the EU Still Makes Sense – Building a Post-Brexit Economy for All. The foreword was written by Gisela Stuart who was featured on this blog just last week.

If you glance at a summary of his career you will be in no doubt as to how highly regarded Halligan is, not only as an economist but as a journalist, author and broadcaster. In other words, not only does he know his stuff but he can communicate it. Nevertheless, addressing a live audience is quite different from those other media. Let’s watch.

[A little warning: the fx mic recording the audience reaction is turned too high at the beginning. Therefore turn your volume down before you start the video, and then up again after the applause.]

I’m not a fan of lengthy preambles, favouring what I call the Bald Opening (among other things it’s counter-intuitively good for the control of nerves). Nevertheless here the first 90 seconds is the best part of the opening, because Halligan is not staring at bloody paper. He may be a communicator and he has obviously learnt how to manage a round of applause, but he hasn’t been properly taught how to speak in public if he has to use notes or a script.

That’s not just my beating an idealogical drum: look for yourself how the best, most fluent, most engaging and compelling bits are the parenthetic sections where he lifts his eyes to the audience and just talks. Yes I know he reads very expressively, and he gets some well-deserved laughs, but it would have been even better without the paper. Hampered by paper it’s as if he is driving a car with the handbrake on. If he reads this he won’t believe it – they never do till I prove it to them – but it’s true.

And this speech deserves to be driven without the handbrake on, because it is a good and valuable speech. It has strong well-argued messages, full of properly researched data, everything such a speech should have … except the handbrake is on.

At 17:35, “I want to talk a little bit about No Deal…” he stops reading for more than a minute and a half, and indeed for some periods for the rest of the speech. Even when his eyes go down to the lectern he’s not always reading. You can tell by the tone of his voice, by his using spoken, as distinct from written, English – it’s a subtly different language – that this is Halligan himself speaking, not regurgitating something he’d written earlier. And those periods are always better.

This speech is nearly eight months old and Halligan was saying that though No Deal was not to be feared, an FTA was preferable. I wonder if he’d still say so. For me that argument has receded. Yanis Varoufakis, Greek ex-Finance Minister, has repeatedly warned that the EU is not to be negotiated with; and day by day he is proved right. It now seems to me that a deal – any deal – has now become suspect if it is negotiated before we have left the EU.

WTO may mean some short-term disruption, but it also means…

  • no £39bn
  • no 585 pages of legalese to be combed through for hidden traps (taking time that could be better spent, preparing for WTO)
  • no small print
  • no more pretending that the Northern Irish border is a problem
  • and we might speculate on how long it will then be before the EU comes hammering on our door for an FTA.

And also, open to the world, the UK can then release its own handbrake.

 

Gisela Stuart in the lions’ den

Posted on by
Reply

On 12 September Gisela Stuart was in Ireland, addressing The Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA). Her talk was entitled Why the Brexit Referendum Result must be Honoured.

Though many of my political opinions are at odds with hers, Ms Stuart has long struck me as one of the more admirable of British politicians. (Though she is no longer a Member of Parliament she continues to be a politician, occupying the Chair of Change Britain.) I’d often seen her interviewed on television, but I had never heard her delivering a speech. I was eager to amend that, so was delighted when I found this.

The introduction is made by Daithi O’Ceallaigh, erstwhile Irish Ambassador to London. It’s less than a minute and a half long, says what it needs to say. and he very properly never once looks down at the papers in front of him. If you find that unsurprising in such a short section, you haven’t read many posts on this blog.

Whether or not you chose to learn about the IIEA by following the link on their name (above), the word “European” and the ring of stars on the wall behind the chairman’s table bear a strong clue to the europhile nature of this gathering. Therefore Ms Stuart’s opening, slightly jocular, remark about walking into the Lion’s Den is explained. This audience is probably adversarial, possibly hostile, but being Irish it will be courteous.

And it is apparently with that view in mind that Ms Stuart pitches the decorum of this speech. The tone is gentle, reasoned, considered, and epitomises what I call the ‘conversational sincerity’ style of speaking which, I’m glad to say, has replaced the fashion for formal oratory that used to prevail. Perhaps this is her customary style of speaking, I don’t know, but it is certainly right in this setting.

It’s a beautiful speech and describes more calmly and lucidly than anyone I’ve seen why we the people voted leave, why we the people are heartily sick of the dog’s dinner that is being made of the process, and why we the people don’t think much of our political representatives at the moment.

I commend it.

 

Owen Paterson just talks

Posted on by
Reply

The UK in a changing Europe held a meeting in May 2018, entitled Brexit and the island of Ireland. It included a keynote from the Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP.

For some time I have wanted to look at his speaking on this blog, as he is one of Britain’s more impressive Members of Parliament, noted for the conscientiousness with which he does his homework. And there was another reason.

Since the referendum in June 2016, when the British people instructed parliament to extricate the country from the EU, I have been bemused by the convoluted meal that has been made of it. Very shortly after the vote I read an article by a Swiss professor of international law which stated that we did not need Article 50, we could just leave. I read that Lord Tebbit had stated that leaving needed only, “We’re going. We hope we can still be friends. Bye!“

The latter might be just a tad simplistic; but I have also noticed that those who insisted upon complications were mainly politicians, lawyers and civil servants, all of whom by nature can cut red tape only lengthwise. They need to get out of the way. Ordinary folk just get on with things. And when the matter of the Northern Ireland Border came up, I looked on in disbelief as a non-problem was elevated to ridiculous proportions. Owen Paterson has always struck me as having a more practical mentality than most, and his wide experience with Northern Ireland meant that he could fill in the obvious holes in my knowledge. Here is my chance to learn the problems that have escaped me.

The introduction is by Professor Anand Menon. He looks down at the lectern to tell us that. I think we can safely assume that he has in fact memorised his own name, so there we have evidence to what extent people use the lectern as a security blanket. Ok I’m being a little unkind because he very properly raises his eyes to us for the remainder of the time, except when listing future events, but people do use lecterns as a security blanket. Much of my time is spent in showing people that they don’t need a security blanket.

Paterson begins at 3:40 and ends for Q&A at 16:25. I don’t think he looks at the lectern one single time.

He spends his first couple of minutes on ethos, in which it emerges that his experience with Ireland, Northern and Republic, goes far beyond merely his parliamentary involvement, which in itself is very extensive.

Thereafter he makes it clear that any sort of heavy border is – in his own words – a dotty idea. It is undesirable for both sides, both of whom will want to go on trading as smoothly as possible. It is also unnecessary, as technology has already smoothed out such requirements. The British and Irish people have shown they can cooperate though much bigger issues than this. To suggest otherwise is political mischief.

His approach to public speaking is equally down to earth. He epitomises what I regularly say to my trainees, “It’s just bloody talking!” Yes, he occasionally goes a bit quickly and swallows a few syllables, but he doesn’t pretend to be attempting high oratory. He’s just talking, and everything about the way he does it conveys sincerity.

Anne Marie Waters trusts the people

Posted on by
Reply

Anne Marie Waters (hereinafter AMW) spoke at a meeting in Oxford on 30 May this year. Was it at the Oxford Union? The panelling in the background suggests it was, though Oxford presumably has other panelled rooms. She has been on this blog before.

If you click the link on her name (above) you will be taken to a Wikipedia page in which you will be fed a stream of pearl-clutch nuggets, including “far right”. I no longer know what “far right” means, though recently the most consistent definition I have found is “having views at odds with the bigotry of the Guardian and the BBC”.

This morning I saw that Twitter has suspended her account. I wonder whether this says more about the Establishment in general and Twitter in particular than about her.

Let’s see for ourselves whether she has horns, a forked tail, and spews out violent hate.

[The speech ends at around 44 minutes, after which there are questions.]

For three decades I have been coaching people in public speaking, during which time the fashionable speaking style has become steadily less formal. I welcome this movement, because it counters what in my book I call The Communication Paradox. Briefly this states that the better you are at communicating across a table, the more difficulty you have on a speaking platform. I urge my trainees to think in terms of speaking with their audience as distinct from speaking to or – worst – speaking at.

AMW speaks with her audience. She has pushed the boundaries of speaking informality as far as I have seen. She addresses her audience as you would if talking to friends in your kitchen. The audience embraces this to such an extent that we hear her speech punctuated by audible comments, one of which begins a digression so egregious that we can see that a chunk has been edited out.

On her previous visit to this blog I described AMW’s speaking as having undisciplined passion. Here she has introduced a small measure of discipline, though the speaking is still messy. The interesting thing is that the mess is a key part of its strength. The obvious lack of polish screams sincerity. You can search as hard as you like, but I contend that you will find no signs of artifice; so we are left with the conviction that though we might disagree with her she means what she says.

So what does she say? Do we hear hate? Do we hear swivel-eyed extremism? Do we hear Nazi propaganda? Is she urging us to wear masks, riot in the streets, set fire to cars?

No, she is telling us to trust the people.

HOW DARE SHE!

Claire Fox. What a communicator!

Posted on by
Reply

On 20 July, 2016, less than a month after the United Kingdom conducted a referendum on whether the country should leave the confines of the European Union, a referendum that returned a decisive vote to leave, The Leeds Salon invited Claire Fox to discuss the implications of the vote.

Having heard her on James Delingpole’s podcast, talking nineteen to the dozen, I am astonished to see her handling a thick sheaf of papers on that lectern.

My immediate impulse is, “Whatever for? – she needs a script like a reindeer needs a hatstand“. And then that reaction is quickly chased by admiration at how well she nevertheless manages it.

If you are a regular reader you will know how I often invite you to close your eyes for a short time, while the video is running, to hear the full difference in the sound of a speaker when reading or not reading a script. Usually, when the speaker’s eyes go to the paper, all the life drains from the speaking. In Fox’s case the difference is so slight as to be almost dismissible. Almost.

I fully approve when she reads to quote what someone else has written or said. A speaker needs to get these things precisely right, and be seen to be doing so, but the rest of the time she is so fluent and coherent when eyeballing the audience that it’s a disappointment when she looks down to her script, even though she’s only half a notch less so.

The speech itself is brilliant! She really is a fabulous communicator. She starts by saying that she doesn’t know what will happen next. And then from the opening observation that negotiating seems to be one of the most telling skills hollowed out by membership of the EU (ain’t that the truth!), through the various ways that remainers have tried to explain away their loss, to the exciting future in prospect, she sweeps you along for half an hour. This speech was two years ago, when her principal concern was that the government might renege on invoking Article 50.

She was very perceptive, though I think she would today agree that she underestimated the establishment’s determination disgracefully to thwart the will of the people. They’re still fighting without shame, clearly showing us that we have our own swamp to drain.

The least disruptive route for the country now is surely just to abandon pretence of negotiating with people who do not intend to negotiate; walk away from the table; keep the £40 billion alimony that they had the cheek to demand; go straight to WTO rules (of which we already have plenty of experience and mechanisms in place); kick the dust off our shoes and rejoin the waiting world.

 

Keir Starmer: competing with paint

Posted on by
Reply

On 13 December, 2016, Sir Keir Starmer delivered a speech at Bloomberg in London. He is the Shadow Secretary of State for exiting the European Union.

I read a Tweet from someone who, on the basis of a speech one day, described him as the most boring speaker he had ever heard. Naturally, though suspecting that partisan bias might have been at play, I had to investigate further. Sadly I have thus far failed to find that speech on line, but I have found this one. Why don’t you and I make up our own minds on the basis of what we find.

Well it isn’t about to set the world on fire, though I have known considerably worse. The main problem is that it has been scripted, and the scripting has hallmarks of the civil service. Let us look at some specifics.

He takes far too long to get going. From that opening Starmer stammer, which I am sure is not real but an affectation, up to 2:40 could beneficially be binned. It fails to contribute anything. He has in there a faintly humorous observation about his job-title. I have no problem with that, or the faint humour, but I do have a problem with his pause inviting audience response which doesn’t materialise. As throw-away humour it would have worked, but that pause made it lame.

At 2:23 he utters the words, “My speech today will be…” Did you get that? “Will be..” He is acknowledging that he hasn’t started yet, even though he is nearly two and a half minutes in. Two and a half minutes is actually an optimum length for an inconsequential opening (for technical reasons that I’ll spare you), but it needs to be a better two and a half minutes than that.

2:40 sees the beginning of a good epistrophe. As a bald opening that would have been powerful.

At 10:40 there’s a strong anaphora, and at 12:50 there’s another. There may have been more but the tediousness of the delivery makes it difficult to concentrate.

All these suggest professional speechwriting; and the even-handed balance of much of the message supports that view. The speech is relatively weasel-free for a politician.

I appreciate that balance, because not enough remainers have publicly made the point that if the referendum had gone the other way, and leavers had protested and obstructed as aggressively as remainers have, it would have been considered a scandal.

He is also right about the Cameron government’s disgraceful dereliction of duty that absolutely no plans were in place against a Brexit vote.

Yes, I am sure that professional speechwriter(s) were involved here, and it’s a quality job. But to be a good speaker, Starmer needs to learn how to dispense with his script and permit his personality to show. Reading causes him to scatter the speech with reading-stumbles, which are quite different from (and lamer than) speaking stumbles. Worst of all, reading makes his delivery tedious.

I became fascinated by the tangerine paint behind him.