http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22322254

Rhetoric and poetry, eh? Makes you glad to be a 'pleb'

That sounded like he was attacking every other school.

Inverted snobbery is all very well, but anyone who has read the speeches of Cato, Thucydides, Lincoln etc. has something of an advantage in political life. Those guys were incredibly effective at putting a point across, and the techniques they used to do so are still highly valued.

I don't doubt it, there's barely a 'What's your favourite book?' asked of a politician without the answer being 'Bill Clinton's biography' or some such.

Which just goes to show the limits of rhetoric.

The great masters were able to talk about highbrow stuff to an audience overwhelmingly educated along the same lines as themselves. They had an audience of rhetoric fans who liked to appreciate speeches that include lots of "and I'll tell you three reasons why...." silliness.

Your modern politician is communicating with a far more diverse audience, the majority of whom will stop listening once you revert to familiar formulae, which means you have to rely more on the little acts of petty sophistry and innuendo.

So the successful ones now are those who can find a way to appeal to the right kind of voter. Clinton had that in spades. He's every bit as well educated as Boris Johnson, let alone mediocrities like Blair or Cameron. But in spite of all that privilege he could talk to the aspiring poor and the nervous middle classes at the same time, without condescension or (unusual quantities of) hyperbole.

Clinton kind of got that second hand - it was Reagan and Thatch who pioneered the appeal to aspiration, but they were trapped in the ethos of getting government out of the way (and pockets) of those who toil. Clinton was able to do more with it because he targeted the same need but was in a position to say how the government could help those who help themselves.

Pathetically, he was followed by a generation of nonentities who worked to copy his methods but not his message. Bush Jr was pretty good at courting the poor, Tony Blair gave Labour the ability to talk to aspirants again. But those guys kind of screwed the pooch. Bush's folksy mannerisms aren't popular any more - there's no shortage of candidates who can issue a similar stream of malapropism but they don't seem to make it into the big league any more. And the British public is no longer *quite) so easily enthralled by polished politicos who stay permanently on message without saying a damn thing.

Obama's rhetoric, though hardly Cato is far more old fashioned than other recent politicians. And the only truly talented communicator in British politics these days seem to be Boris*. So there's hope for Milliband. If he gets round to saying something about a thing he would do and how he would do it, people may well let him off for not saying it very well.






* He may be a cock, but "inverted pyramid of piffle" is the coolest thing any UK politician has said in decades.

What is interesting is that the right wing parties have a better way of communicating with the masses than the left. The right are very good at story telling - that is they create a narrative which can be repeated parrot fashion across the media, and which can paint a pretty clear picture in the mind of the listener. Repeat the story enough and it sticks. The small problem is that these stories are very generalised and can ben somewhat inaccurate. For example, the story of the man waling to work while his neighbour’s curtains are drawn. It’s an image that probably rings true with a lot of people, and the assumption is that the person at home is somehow on benefits instead of working.

The left, rightly or wrongly, like to counter such stories with statistics, fact, figures and can end up sounding like the person who corrects grammar, bemoans the demise of the Oxford Comma, or is keen on the correct usage of the apostrophe. No one like a smart-arse, and even if the Left get it right, their methods of communicating leave little to be desired.

They can afford much better speechwriters.

Are you possibly failing to filter for personal bias? I think perhaps you view the stories told by the other team as exactly that, but neglect that anecdotal evidence supplied by the left are stories too. The workshy scroungers derided by Tories for siphoning taxes become angelic victims of fat cat industrialists who siphon cash from workers and so on.

Democratic politics is always about stories, the trick is always to cast it in such a way that the maximum possible number of people see themselves in them. If you have heard a politician talk about who is being ripped off, or who can have a brighter future, and have thought this is me, you were being told a story. It's all tales about who is deserving (of reward or punishment); why YOU are suffering because the misdeeds of others, who hasn't done enough to control an economic or social problem that they probably have little influence over; and who has bragging rights for successes that actually arrived by complete chance.

The facts rarely support either side as fully as they claim in their biased narratives. Nearly every political or economic decision is a trade off, and usually the anticipated outcomes are far from certain. But partisan interests on either side are rarely served by acknowledging that. This is why idiot voters are routinely sold snake oil prescriptions by filthy politicians, and their inevitable response is to switch sides every now and then, as if a different brand of reptile juice will fix the problem.