Tempting fate with Jackie Wilson

Pete Paphides: Rock Critic

As the party faithful stood milling around their seats at Manchester Central, Sit Down by James boomed out over the PA. And with the song working its subliminal magic, sure enough, they sat down.

On this form, you expected that the end of Gordon Brown’s speech might be marked with a rousing blast of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy. Instead, his people opted for Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher And Higher). A pretty sensible choice, as it goes. Unlike, say, Let’s Stick Together by Bryan Ferry or, um, Backstabbers by the O’Jays.

That said, choosing a song by Jackie Wilson was tempting fate. Wilson’s career ended on stage in 1975, as he fell head first into the orchestra pit in New Jersey while singing Lonely Teardrops.

There may have been deeper reasons for wishing to alloy Brown with Wilson. During his stardom, Jackie Wilson earned himself the nickname Mr Excitement. Whatever Mr Brown managed to achieve yesterday, it didn’t amount to an hour in the company of a born showman.

The verdict: solid and dull

Chris Roycroft-Davis

This speech was delivered with a machinegun. Words were sprayed out so fast that many welded themselves into monolithic slabs, like something out of a German dictionary. “Risingsocialmobility” and “newglobalage” were particularly challenging, as was the new word “varl-yews”.

Before Gordon Brown makes his next speech, someone has to tell him that less is more. He had good messages, but too many were swamped by rhetorical overload. It was like a Budget speech in which 200 facts are crammed into a 60-minute maelstrom.

The result was a nervy performance that lacked emotional impact. Which was a shame, because there was certainly emotion in there waiting to be drawn out. Brown’s revelation that he feared going blind was delivered in much the same harsh tone as his attack on financial speculators. In The Times yesterday I advised Brown to be bold and human . What could be better than an introduction by your wife? I also advised him to start with a bang. “Let’s come straight to the point,” he began. Unfortunately, he followed with so many more points, with very little change in tone, pace or pitch.

At times he appeared to be using the Autocue, and he looked confident, but he spoilt many of his best lines by looking down at his notes and losing facial contact with the audience. “The power of Labour to change lives.” Head down. “It will be a British century.” Head down. “I believe in Britain.” Head down.

It was vintage Gordon Brown, with key passages mangled by emphasis in the wrong places. The overall effect was solid and dull. Which might be what his party needed.

Chris Roycroft-Davis coaches business leaders on presentation

Was anyone listening at the end?

Phil Collins

Brown started well. There is no doubt the opening was effective. And it was still quite good when Gordon came on. The very first sentence defined the question – who I am and what do I think? By the end of the first paragraph we had the answer – fairness.

The axis of the speech was that neither markets nor states can be sovereign. Government has an important role in providing security and a fair deal. This is a proper argument. It is what he clearly thinks. It sounded authentic because it was. The passage on the 10p tax fiasco was also effective. He sounded contrite and the admission of weakness strengthened him.

This was evidence that Brown is a better speaker than people give him credit for. He went through a tonal range and the switches of mood were handled adeptly, apart from a camp moment near the end. The language was more colloquial than usual and the best line – “this is no time for a novice” – was a clever dismissal of his opponents.

The basic problem, though, even here, was the same as it ever was. Opponents were caricatured as laissez faire dogmatists or command and controllers. And the trouble with Brown as the Third Way between Trotsky and Ayn Rand is that everyone is a third way between those two.

The section on the Tories was funny by accident as the jokes dropped down dead. The poetic passages were written by William McGonagall’s less talented younger brother on an off-day. The game of name-the-Cabinet bingo was a distraction. The speech ended where it began, with his personal credo. But by then, was anyone listening?

Phil Collins is a former speechwriter for Tony Blair

Startling improvement on past

Max Atkinson

To judge from his conference speech, Gordon Brown seems to have taken on board the three main points I recommended on these pages on Monday, and arguably gained from some of the benefits I had in mind.

The first was that he should stop trying to emulate the “unscripted” walkabout style favoured by Messrs Cameron and Clegg and return to the lectern. By doing this, he looked much more comfortable, his gestures looked much more natural, he didn’t have to worry about what to do during bursts of applause and he came across as a confident and experienced elder statesman.

My second concern was that, in some of his previous speeches, his average pause rate was only once every 15 words – three times longer than in speeches by the likes of Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton and Blair.

On this occasion, Mr Brown made a startling improvement on some of his other efforts by matching, almost exactly, the one pause per five words of the leaders mentioned above.

The third thing that had worried me was his tendency to pack in long lists of statistics that don’t instantly mean very much to the average listener. On this, he did particularly well. He had some big numbers, but he made them come to life with real-life examples.

Before Mr Brown’s speech, I had said that he would be home and dry if he could equal Mrs Thatcher’s achievement at the 1981 Conservative conference – when things weren’t going too well for her either – at which she was applauded, on average once every three sentences. He came very close, with a rate of once every 3.5 sentences – so he might just be nearly there.

Dr Max Atkinson is an author and communications consultant

Times Recommends

• What makes the perfect mum?
• To keep me stress-free, no more awareness days, please
• What do lottery winners buy?