The very creation of America was a bold affirmation of faith in the future: a future you have not just believed in but built with your own hands.

And on January 20th, you the American people began to write the latest chapter in the American story, with a transition of dignity, in which both sides of the aisle could take great pride. President Obama gave the world renewed hope, and on that day billions of people truly looked to Washington DC as ‘a shining city upon a hill’.”

Gordon Brown starts here as he goes on: full-beam flattery. The opening compliment to America worked brilliantly in the chamber, although it sets up a linguistic device that gets him into a tangle later on. Building the future is a leaden phrase to lead the speech. The announcement of a knighthood for Ted Kennedy is a microcosm of the whole speech. It sounds like a sentimental bid for applause to a British audience, but it set the mood of the hall perfectly. The speech contained a lot of purple prose and grandiose platitudes. But a lot of American political speech is like that. Mr Brown sent his audience home happy and it worked on that level.

Throughout your history Americans have led insurrections in the human imagination, have summoned revolutionary times through your belief that there is no such thing as an impossible endeavour. It is never possible to come here without having your faith in the future renewed.”

It might be thought by now that Mr Brown is ladling it on a bit thick. But there is a nobility to the idea of America that is worth defending. The problem is not the intention, it is the execution. The long passage in praise of America is standard-issue flattery. It is perfectly well done but you get no sense of Mr Brown’s genuine affection for America or his admiration for the dynamism of America. The praise is all done in the abstract, in a detached way. The text here is crying out for an anecdote, a story that illustrates his affection. This is a constant failing in Mr Brown as a writer. He does not know how to put himself into the story. Strangely enough, it sounds more authentically like him when someone else writes it.

And let it be said of our friendship – formed and forged over two tumultuous centuries, a friendship tested in war and strengthened in peace – that it has not just endured but is renewed in each generation to better serve our shared values and fulfil the hopes and dreams of the day. Not an alliance of convenience, but a partnership of purpose.”

And here is the telltale sign that Mr Brown is the main author of this text. Far too many sentences begin with the word “And . . . ”. The effect is to make his speeches sound too much like a list. These paragraphs will have been sweated over but they need more work. Partnership of purpose is an example of alliteration first, meaning second. It is a phrase that ought to have been mocked out of the text. Where is the person in the Brown court who does his speeches, within his earshot, in a David Brent voice? The effect is then limited further by the jejune treatment of the diplomatic issues where Britain and the US are locked together. This was always going to be an economic speech, but the foreign policy section is not even long enough to be called perfunctory.

My father was a minister of the Church and I have learned again what I was taught by him: that wealth must help more than the wealthy, good fortune must serve more than the fortunate and riches must enrich not just some of us but all. And these enduring values are the values we need for these new times.”

To students of Gordon Brown speeches the autobiographical passages are now very familiar. Indeed, quite a lot of this speech – including the Rwandan story – has been used before. Whole phrases and sections get recycled. We ought not to be too harsh on him for this. You cannot blame a man for having the same autobiography today as he had yesterday – and the American audience will not have heard this before. Besides, the sentimentalising of your own life is what a lot of American political speeches are like. Nobody in Congress will have found this odd at all.

So should we succumb to a race to the bottom and a protectionism that history tells us that, in the end, protects no one? No. We should have the confidence that we can seize the opportunities ahead and make the future work for us.”

This is the most disappointing moment in the whole speech. Not the content – Mr Brown has been resolute and right about protectionism and he deserves more credit for that than he gets. It is just that, when you have buttered up your audience so much you might be seducing them, you have earned the right to be a bit tough. He could have hammered this point home. He could have taken on his audience a bit, explained why American protectionism is a bad idea. But he plays safe. He briefed the issue hard in the run-up to the speech and then plays it soft. That is because he is trying to make a good speech, not a great one. A great speech would have taken this on properly. Getting the audience to cheer the message that they are wonderful is easy. Getting them to clap the idea that they are wrong is the real test.

As the Greek proverb says, why does anyone plant the seeds of a tree whose shade they will never see? The answer is because they look to the future.

For the lesson of this crisis is that we cannot just wait for tomorrow today. We cannot just think of tomorrow today. We cannot merely plan for tomorrow today. Our task must be to build tomorrow today.”

This is a real mishmash. A seriously tough editor would never let this through. The Greek proverb is evocative and actually contains the answer within it. There is no need then to supply the answer as if the audience is stupid. The man on the Moon is, like this one coming up, the mother of all clichés, followed by a non sequitur. Then we have the encapsulating idea – to build tomorrow today. What is this, time travel? Is he Doctor Who, all of a sudden? I hope we’ll have finished building tomorrow by the end of today otherwise we’ll still be building tomorrow tomorrow. I’m afraid this paragraph invites people to do what I have just done – poke fun. The future is not a building, either.

And if these times have shown us anything it is that the major challenges we all face are global. No matter where it starts, an economic crisis does not stop at the water’s edge. It ripples across the world. Climate change does not honour passport control. Terrorism has no respect for borders. And modern communications instantly span every continent. The new frontier is that there is no frontier, the new shared truth is that global problems need global solutions.”

This is a familiar Brown refrain. The interesting thing about this section is that it did not really lead the speech. The first mention of global integration is a long way in. We do not get to the content until we are almost halfway through. When it comes he does it quickly and clearly. There is, however, a structural anomaly in the speech. The short section on what nations should do in response to the crisis is orphaned between an autobiographical section on values and a plea for optimism. These latter two sections belong together, properly compressed. That simple change would make a much bigger difference to the flow than it sounds.

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