Tag Archives: Hannan

EU debate does pro-lobby no favours.

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At the Cadogan Hall in London exactly two years ago on 20 March, 2013, Intelligence Squared staged a debate with the motion Both Britain and the EU would be Happier if they got Divorced. The Chairman was Nik Gowing and his opening statement measured the hall audience at nearly a thousand people..

Speaking for the proposition were Daniel Hannan and Nigel Farage, and for the opposition were Katinka Barysch and the late Leon Brittan.

I have gone on record on this blog as declaring myself anti-EU, but wanting a referendum principally because of the accompanying debate. Pro-EU arguments seem either emaciated or disingenuous, and I hunger for some that might give me pause. Perhaps this debate will oblige.

I am often asked, by those who will be taking part in adversarial events such as these, what their ‘off camera’ demeanour should be. Should they, for instance, illustrate with their facial expressions that the current speaker is lying through his teeth? My unwavering advice is that they should keep their powder dry, remaining impassive unless they are speaking. It weakens the image to do anything else. During Gowing’s introduction to the debate, and his naming of the speakers, all remain expressionless except Barysch who switches on a semi-profile friendly smile. She’s already working, but I doubt that it is working.

I assume that the opening addresses are restricted to five minutes each. For one thing this is usual practice, and for another the length of them in the event varies from 4:15 to 4:50. This is impressively professional and disciplined. I am hoping this discipline will prevail in the debate itself. Events like these get cheapened by accusations of untruth or cheap tricks like interruptions that artificially extend themselves to cut into the opponents’ speaking time. Actually, an Intelligence Squared audience should be savvy enough to make such stunts counter-productive.

Hannan [2:44 – 7:34] goes first. He rises to his feet as his introduction begins, arriving at the lectern as the introduction ends. This sort of apparently inconsequential detail has a positive influence on audiences, if only subliminally.

I have featured Hannan often on this blog, commending the skill that he has evidently toiled to polish. I am a little concerned that he is perhaps too polished, that super-fluency might be sterilizing his performance. I would like to see more of the real warts-and-all person showing through. His habit – I have heard this often – of punctuating his speeches with “my friends” is a little old-fashioned and bordering on the prim. Yes I am picking nits off nits, but when a speaker is this good I have little else to pick. If I were advising him I would urge him now to stop striving for perfection, relax a little and allow more warmth of human imperfection to show through – at least with most audiences.

He has a very classy closing! It’s one thing to manipulate the final lines of the poem, Ulysses, weaving your peroration with Tennyson’s, but the impudence of his introducing it via reference to a James Bond film causes me to smile and tip my rhetor’s hat.

Barysch [8:15 – 12:53] opens for the opposition. She likewise walks to the lectern during her introduction: we’re watching pro speakers here!

We saw her studied smile earlier, and now we hear the studied dulcet cadences of her voice. She seems happy to leave much of the nitty and gritty to the others. Her role is to paint the EU loving and understanding, a little wayward possibly on occasion but essentially benign. The EU, she cooingly implies, is a great big fluffy bunny rabbit.

Stressing that she is an economist and therefore concerned with data as well as fluffy bunny rabbits she goes down the “why would Britain want to close her doors to the rest of the world?” route. I wonder how heavily her opponents will tread on that canard, and whether the audience of ‘almost a thousand’ will buy it anyway. In terms of pure speaking technique she is very good. In terms of her reading of this audience I am not so sure

Farage [13:36 – 18:16] likewise walks through his introduction, and opens with “Good evening everybody!” For non-UK readers unfamiliar with the current political climate in Britain, perhaps I should make it clear that Farage is a very sharp thorn in the hide of the British political establishment. The mainstream media and the education system being part of that establishment, he is routinely painted as being the devil in human form. I have yet to read that he eats babies for breakfast, but give it time. The interesting thing is that people who meet and speak with him seem always to like him. Funny that! I have never met him.

I am interested to see what he does with some of Barysch’s assertions. The Japanese have a word, Mokusatsu. It means “To treat with silent contempt”. Farage practises Mokusatsu, trusting in the audience’s wisdom. Instead he concentrates on the duplicity of the EU having been miss-sold on the basis of being merely a market, then steam-rollering its way to a political monolith with the enthusiastic collaboration of the political class but in defiance of just about every poll or national referendum. The inference is that half a billion European people don’t want it, but a few hundred politicians don’t care.

Just after 16:25 he comes out with a statement that could be held to be highly inflammatory, but which gets a small laugh from the audience. This is merely an appetizer to prime a punchline that harvests a huge laugh. He reads the audience very well.

Brittan [19:02 – 23:17], uniquely in this company, stays seated through his introduction. To be fair his chair is nearest to the lectern. Uniquely in this company he has a script, though he handles it skilfully.

He opens with the claim that leaving the EU we could no longer trade with countries within it.

Though we are a net buyer in our trade with other EU countries, apparently European manufacturers are so rich that they would no longer want to take our money for their goods. I remember Ben Gummer MP coming out with that one on Twitter, and being greeted with a deluge of derision. On my visits to Switzerland and Norway – both non-EU countries – I was sure I saw plenty of Mercedes, BMWs, VWs and Audis, but obviously I was mistaken.

Next he accuses his opponents of lying.

Next he declares it an “absolutely howler” that European Commissioners make the laws. I wonder how strictly Hannan and Farage will practise their Mokusatsu when next they speak.

The four opening addresses being completed, Nik Gowing explains that a poll was taken of audience members when they arrived. He reads out the results which show that pro-EU sentiment prevailed substantially, and goes on to tell us that another poll will be conducted at the end.

There follow some questions and answers which involve lots of Mokusatsu. There is a diverting episode in which Brittan accuses Hannan of misrepresenting something he had said. Hannan’s trademark courtesy is clearly stretched and, though he maintains the niceties, his widened eyes betray his anger. That anger, like all stress, robs Hannan of some of his ability to think on his feet. He has a crushing answer easily available – “the audience were listening: let them decide” but doesn’t use it. Brittan is anyway only doing it to cut into Hannan’s speaking time.

There is a lesson here for all debates including adversarial broadcast interviews. It is easy to lapse into the mistaken sense that your goal is to sway your opponent or interviewer. That is of course nonsense: they couldn’t matter less. It is only the audience that matters.

Barring that momentary lapse from Hannan, he and Farage were infinitely better with the audience than their opponents. You do not need to take my word for that. The final poll showed a huge swing in their favour. They wiped the floor.

Did I glean any new, thought-provoking pro-EU arguments? Nope, they were pathetic.

Hannan dazzles at the Oxford Union

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My brother expressed to me disquiet over this blog. He felt that it covered the performances of speakers that were so good that readers might be fed unreasonable expectation. Upon my probing further it emerged that the only posting he could remember was Daniel Hannan. On that sample he had a case. Hannan is about as good as they get.

At an Oxford Union debate in November 2012 he had to be at the top of his game because, as we saw in my previous posting, he was preceded by a barnstorming performance by Cornel West. Indeed he begins his speech by suggesting that he should just agree and have done with it – “…but while I’m on my feet I’m going to say one other  thing…” and then he says a great deal. The Motion was ‘The House Would Occupy Wall Street’ and Hannan was speaking against it

The Oxford Union, despite the formal garb, lends itself to animated delivery. You think you know what decorum means? In rhetoric it means blending to your advantage with the prevailing environment. Hannan doffs his “smooth as a kitten’s wrist” image, replacing it with enthusiastic energy.

The enthusiastic energy [anadiplosis] begins with the last thing the audience had expected to hear from him. He castigates the bailing out of the banks. These students, fed on a diet of mainstream media, thought they knew what all politicians of the right stood for and he is determined to disabuse them. He creates a slow-building auxesis whose impetus is so strong that he perhaps stuns the audience into missing a potential laugh at 1:30. No matter: without breaking stride he throws it away, forges on and is rewarded with full-blooded applause at 2:18. He’s got them! Now with the assistance of a little pantomime he gets a huge laugh at 2:37. The auxesis continues to its punch-line for which he unexpectedly takes the top right off the volume to underpin the earnestness of his central message which is that corporatism is not the same as capitalism, This is the end of his beginning.

He swings into the main body of his speech; and my pulse quickens. He is using a Tripod structure. He even gives us a Contents Page! Has he read my book?  Not as far as I know, but then I merely codified and named the structure: creating it for yourself is hardly rocket-science. This is truly magnificent. His message is crystal clear, transparently sincere and solidly argued. As he swings into his closing you feel that though Cornel West brilliantly grabbed the audience’s emotion and heart, if the vote goes with the head Hannan must win.

The closing is another auxesis. He had told them at the beginning that the Occupy movement was misdirected, aiming at the wrong target. Now he closes the circle (has he read my book?) listing for them the buildings they should be occupying, intensifying example upon example till … aargh! He spoonerized the punch-line! The micro-structure that lead to the punch-line was pretty as could be and should have climaxed triumphantly. In the event it was a bit of a smudge. It was momentary, half-way only, corrected after a mini-second, probably didn’t matter at all to the audience; but if I were in his shoes I know I’d be kicking myself black and blue. I am not: I can look at it with my nose further from the canvas, and I am convinced it didn’t matter. I doubt that he sees it that way.

Dan Hannan is really outstanding. Could I help him improve? In terms of his material I could really help only by being a sounding board; and with this speech I’d have to be picking nits off nits. There is one area that bothers me slightly. He makes much use of vocal colour-tone, and does it very effectively. The trouble is that when he goes dramatically quiet he loses some intelligibility. It’s because his voice is not trained.

So what about my brother’s disquiet? Can I help others to reach this standard? Yes and no. It depends on them. Hannan certainly has natural ability; but don’t make the mistake of supposing that he emerged from the womb doing this. He has worked hard. Any candidate that came to me asking for that level would have to want it very much, and be prepared to put in the work! And some have done all of that.

Daniel Hannan: smooth as a kitten’s wrist.

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From Auracle Newsletter for March, 2012

For a couple of months I have been gestating for this newsletter, a critique on a speech made by Daniel Hannan MEP to a distinguished audience of mainly Germans and British.

Then a few weeks ago the EU parliament had a recess and Hannan went off on a tour of the Anglosphere. Very soon Twitter began buzzing with how he had wowed an American audience which was an interesting comparison with the previous example as it showed how – true to Cardinal 2 in The Face & Tripod – he varied his delivery to match his audience. I was just wondering whether to make a choice between them or conduct a comparison of the two, when twittering began afresh on a speech to an Australian audience.  In no time the Twitterati were getting excited over another speech he had made in Canada, but I decided I had enough for this exercise.

1. In May 2011 a debate was held at the Royal Geographical Society. The Motion was, “Germany no longer needs Europe – the dream is over”. Hannan spoke for the motion. His opening is brilliant: he captures the imagination immediately, making a strong argument in the process. Furthermore he attributes the argument to others, thereby doing several clever things simultaneously. He burnishes his image by modestly stepping aside from taking the credit; he inflates the credibility of the argument by citing distinguished authors by name (remember the proper noun directive in F&T); and he heads off any criticism of non-originality.

Which of my past trainees remembers my talking of the ‘muffed-word-test’? Essentially this is not about whether you muff words, which everyone does occasionally, but about how well you correct it with good humoured smoothness. Now watch Hannan at 2:50.

Dig out your copy of F&T and re-read the small section entitled ‘Negotiate’. Then watch this speech from 4:12. Hannan hands out a succession of bouquets to buy enough credit for the message he reaches at around 5:00.

At 5:25 he addresses what could be a knotty issue and dramatizes it well enough to elicit a ripple of laughter and applause; but because it is a knotty issue he speaks on through the applause in order not only to minimise it but be seen to minimise it lest anyone in the audience should take offence. This man is very smart and skilled.  Now let’s look at the second speech listed.

2. In February 2012 Hannan was one of the speakers at CPAC (Centre for American Politics & Citizenship).  In his opening, he uttered words he would never have used in the previous speech, “I gotta tell you…” This is a classic example of tailoring to your audience, as I direct in Cardinal 2 of F&T.  Did you, like me, hold your metaphorical breath lest he took it too far – what one might call ‘the oldest swinger in town’ syndrome? In the event he stopped comfortably short of that. You can hear the atmosphere buzzing in the hall, and he responds to it with just enough controlled ‘mirroring’.

At 4:00 he gives us some throw-away humour concerning the phallic shape of the Washington Monument; but, true to the throw-away principle (see my chapter on humour), he does not beg a laugh but continues as if he’d never said it – and gets a huge laugh. He also delivers the humour in a way that is oblique enough for anyone who might have been offended not to understand it. Very sound.

At 16:30 he gives us an anaphora repetition – less prosperous, less independent, less democratic, less free. Does he harpoon a potential triad by having four elements in his repetition or are the first three the triad which are then emphasised and locked into place, as it were, through the addition of the fourth? I think the latter, because he stops enumerating with his fingers after the third. At any rate, it all works beautifully because it receives a very respectable six seconds of applause, which could easily be longer except he curtails it by starting speaking again.

That’s the second time in this critique that I have found him choosing to kill his own applause. Consider: if by not begging laughter or applause you enhance your standing with your audience, how much more do you do it by actively suppressing them?  In the blink of an eye he conveys an eagerness to get on with imparting the message and the security of an ego that does not need reassurance from applause. Myriad positive messages are being transmitted.

When a speaker is as good as this I cannot help but be super-picky. If you’ve read F&T you know how keen I am on the use of parallels. For some years I edited a rather scholarly wine journal. At 26:38 Hannan goes into a viticulture anecdote-and-metaphor that is true but technically incorrect in a tiny detail which though small is crucial enough fatally to undermine the parallel. What a party-pooping stinker I am to have told you that! Let’s move to the third…

3. Later in February 2012 Hannan spoke at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne. At the start I suspect you might be as bemused as I at how sombre he appears to be with an Australian audience. Also we do not seem to have joined it quite at the beginning. This bothered me so much that I dug some more; and I found another source of the speech here. It turns out that the first version begins just over 12 minutes into the whole thing. Perhaps more significantly that version claims to have been posted by Hannan himself, so it was he who apparently edited out those first 12 minutes before posting – in which case he needs to consider hard the difficulties and dangers of that sort of self-editing.

(There is on YouTube a severely cut-down version of a reading I did in 2010 of the whole of the Gospel of St Mark. I did the cutting-down. Several people who were there have observed that I cut out and I kept the wrong bits – and I fear they may be right.) Hannan’s exuberant seduction of his audience in the first few minutes of the uncut version of this speech is lovely to witness, and a rare public insight into his fun-time personality. But he excised all that in favour of later serious arguments which we can see him making a hundred times elsewhere.  I’d be the last to quarrel with his enthusiasm for his message – that’s Cardinal 1, a cornerstone of my training – but in this instance it may have caused an error.

This man is a first class speaker. For one thing he is beautifully economical; and I can identify at least two reasons for this. There are strict time limits on speeches in the EU parliament, so he has trained himself to get on, package his point clearly, and get off. You can see examples all over YouTube.

And he has learnt that the way to use fewer words is to use only the right ones. Those who have attended master classes with me will verify that I advocate the reading aloud of poetry as a way to improve many skills in this medium. Beautiful and economic turns of phrase work themselves into your mind by osmosis and become habit-forming. Not only do you find yourself getting better at finding the right words to convey the precise nuance you seek, but they trip off the tongue with less and less effort. Is there the remotest doubt but that Daniel Hannan is very well read? I began my working life as an actor an aeon ago, and was playing Shakespeare with the National Theatre before he was born; also I have directed half-a dozen Shakespeare productions. But he can out-quote me on Shakespeare without breaking sweat. In the complete version of that speech in Australia he effortlessly quotes 25 seconds of St Matthew’s gospel to make a point. At the 5:10 mark he makes merely the slightest reference to an incident in Jason’s Golden Fleece caper before ‘throwing it away’. All the above speeches are littered with what Logan Pearsall Smith meant when he wrote –

There is one thing that matters, to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

But such a chime of words can jangle unless delivered with the confidence of familiarity. Hannan is manifestly familiar with everything he quotes – and that’s the key. On one recent occasion in the EU parliament he made a speech which consisted only of a single verse from a poem by G K Chesterton.

So, in conclusion, is he flawless? No, but then no one is. Every so often he allows words to die at the ends of phrases. It is not laziness: his enunciation is exemplary and he uses rising cadences well. It is done deliberately for effect, and it can be very effective, but care has to be taken not to sacrifice intelligibility for that effect. At 7:12 in the second of our speeches there are three examples in quick succession – the words “equivalent”, “independence” and “freedoms”. I’m being picky: President Obama is much worse.

I described Hannan in the title as being smooth as a kitten’s wrist. It’s worth noting that smooth though the feline wrist may be it is in close proximity to some very sharp claws. Hannan has a well-deserved reputation for maintaining strict courtesy to friend and foe alike, yet the speech that drew him to the attention of millions was the one wherein he eviscerated Gordon Brown in the EU Parliament.

There is something else that is interesting about that. The examples of speeches we have examined here I have listed by number, by venue, by date but not by what was said. None of them has a FACE! You try doing a YouTube search with the words “Devalued Prime Minister” and that Gordon Brown speech will fly onto your screen. He gave that speech a FACE – apparently by accident. If he had read F&T, particularly Cardinal 3, perhaps it would have been deliberate; and perhaps he would have made it a habit.