Danny Alexander clearly wanted to come across as casual and jovial for his speech to the Lib Dem conference. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His top button wasn’t done up. Neither were his cuffs because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had, after years of politicians using it as a figure of speech, rolled up his sleeves. This sort of sartorial shift normally gets written up as a politician ‘on manoeuvres’, and Alexander did seem keen to appear a little different, a little more human, this time round. He even told the audience at one point that he was saying something ‘with all my heart’.
He had, though, scripted part of his speech for rather a different audience. ‘The last time I addressed a crowd this large,’ he said, looking out rather hopefully over a half empty auditorium.
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