Ed Miliband has just given a quite extraordinary speech. I don’t know if it was deliberately banal or merely unfortunately dull. It was certainly stupefyingly boring. The Labour leader gave the impression that Scottish Labour’s spring conference was the very last place on earth he wished to be.
I suppose you can’t blame him for that.
Even so this perfunctory, cliche-stuffed flannel suggested Miliband’s heart wasn’t really in Perth today. It was a kind of “God, do I really have to go to Scotland?” kind of speech.
I’m not sure Alan Partridge Meets Mr Pooter was quite the note Miliband hoped to strike. But when you start referring to Anas Sarwar as “dynamic” and Margaret Curran as “brilliant” you’re not really helping yourself. If that was (I assume) unintentionally amusing there was worse/more mirth to come.
It’s an iron law of political speeches that the speaker needs to find some connection tying him to the place in which he is speaking.
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