Is there a new Labour language from the new Labour leader? It is not always easy to identify a politician’s dialect, because his speeches and articles may be written by others, but presumably Ed Miliband got as far as approving the first sentence of his first article, which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph hours after his election.
Is there a new Labour language from the new Labour leader? It is not always easy to identify a politician’s dialect, because his speeches and articles may be written by others, but presumably Ed Miliband got as far as approving the first sentence of his first article, which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph hours after his election. ‘Yesterday,’ he wrote, ‘the Labour party committed to start the long journey back to power.’
This is not something you or I would say, but it is nearly something Messrs Cameron and Clegg would. As I observed earlier this year (Mind Your Language, 22 May), the coalition, in their own words, decided to ‘commit to holding a full strategic security and defence review’. Most British speakers of English would say ‘commit myself’. The new generation of party leaders drop the reflexive, as if they were friends of Tamara Drewe discussing relationship problems (or ‘issues’ as they’d say). Note that the coalition’s commit to is followed by a participle. Mr Miliband chooses an infinitive, which sounds weirder.
If Ed Miliband is committed to commit (though not as far as to marry the expectant mother of his child), he also feels a need to say need. There are six examples in his first article, and in his interview with Andrew Marr he declared: ‘You don’t need to be left-wing.’ Need is fashionable. Air stewardesses say: ‘I need you to fasten your safety-belt,’ and nurses use the same ploy. Need is often used as an alternative to want: ‘I need to go to the toilet.’
If someone needy is a nuisance, it is still possible to need and seem to be in charge. Need is now often used instead of the modal verb must, which does not show tenses. (Today I must; tomorrow I must.) But Mr Miliband demands no action this day. He writes of what ‘we will need to do’, not what ‘we need to do’.
Mr Miliband concludes: ‘It is now down to me to make the change happen. That is a challenge I relish.’ Down to is not quite the same as up to, which implies more choice and less responsibility. Again it is not a phrase of my generation — though I might have danced at Oxford with Tony Blair, who hoovered up such language. But he committed to a journey of his own.
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