WELL, that went well. Veteran broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby described it as “the poorest conference speech I’ve ever heard from a prime minister” – and that’s up against some pretty tough competition.
At the Tory party conference in 2017, Theresa May’s breathing apparatus gave out on her during her big platform speech and parts of the scenery peeled off mid-address, turning the slogan “building a country that works for everyone” – remember that? – into a live-action game of guess-what-we-really-meant-by “bui ding a c ntry tha orks or ryon”. Make Mordor great again!
But for Bernard, May unable-to-speak is still more eloquent than “monotone, leaden” Truss in full flow – if you can describe the angular syntax of the new prime minister as flowing. Not all of this is Liz’s fault. Truss talks with all the humanity of a Gatling gun at the best of times, but as a tribe, modern politicians have come to favour bold declaratory phrases in their platform speeches. Eschewing complete sentences, they knit together a succession of clipped, affirmative, quotable lines.
