Unspun: How and why to write a speech

Ed Amory | Issue 6 | Comment, Magazine

From the Archive

Many of us have no time for long-form oration, but there are good reasons why political speeches are still important

It’s late afternoon in Downing Street, and the prime minister is due to give a major speech to the CBI the next day. Someone in the private office decides to check that Boris, who writes all his own speeches, has penned one for this occasion. Obviously, he hasn’t. Instead he’s been writing another speech for an evening event the next day, an extended journalistic riff on his recent visit to Peppa Pig World, at ‘the UK’s favourite family theme park’. So an official gives him a draft. Boris reads it and concludes, correctly, that it’s very dull. So he decides late at night to insert some of his more amusing Peppa Pig paragraphs into the CBI speech. He writes all over the draft, which he then takes to the CBI the next day. He loses his place, then his cool, and finally part of his authority, as he performs a rare triple apology.

On one level, it’s possible to feel sorry for Boris. He’s allergic to boring, so he finds it almost impossible to deliver a really dull official speech. But then again, he’s the prime minister now, he’s going to have to get over that, learn how to give speeches, and perhaps more importantly, how to write them.

My first job was in politics, and it involved writing, and helping to write, speeches for politicians. I learnt that there were three kinds of political speech. First, the official speech, written by officials, containing carefully phrased …

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