How long will David Cameron speak for this morning as the conquering hero at the Conservative party conference in Manchester?
If form is anything to go by, around 50 minutes. Ed Milliband and Jeremy Corbyn each ran to about an hour in 2014 and 2015 respectively. Fidel Castro clocked up 4 1/2 hours in a speech to the United Nations and over 7 hours to his own party congress. Stalin and Brezhnev were not exiguous but the prize must go to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who spoke for 36 1/2 hours in 1927, albeit his speech was spread over six days. Are longer speeches better? Are longer bus queues better? Political speeches, from whatever party, are old-fashioned rhetoric that rely on a receptive audience and my perfect one would be:
“Thank you, party members, and thank you voters for electing me and my party into government. You know our policies, now we are going to get down to work to implement them before another party gets into power to undo all the good we hope we will have done by 2020. My train leaves in 5 minutes, so no clapping please.”
Jeremy took much of his speech off the shelf so, David, you’re welcome to use mine and have 48 minutes to chill axe. Of course you should expand and attack Jeremy Corbyn’s allegation that the Conservative party has handed out tax breaks to hedge funds in return for their funding to the party. Is this true? Many people will think so unless it is rebutted convincingly.
Funny that Jeremy didn’t mention in his speech that Ed Milliband has, belatedly, grown a beard. Ed loved a bandwagon but he missed that one.