McCain Party Speech Was So-So What Will Gordon Say?

McCain Party Speech Was So-So 
What Will Gordon Say?

McCain's speech last night to his party convention was a bit so-so, even with the helpful acclamation in the hall. The last minute or so was combative, sprinkled with some good lines. He is no Reagan.

Brown has the same problem. This year he needs to up his game badly. He is searching (we are told) for speechwriters, his delivery is Brezhnevian. Gordon's speech has to save his career, enthuse the party activists, an increasingly cynical and unsettled PLP, deflect a coup attempt and mollify the public.

The last is possibly unachievable. The public has decided that Gordon is a disaster. He can veer to the left to enthuse the party but that will be a renouncement of everything New Labour stood for and will be seen as the last roll of the dice for survival by the media and voters. If he sticks to the course he is on the party activists will despair.

So what themes should his speech contain? Rabble rousing, Tory bashing or apologising and promising to do better? Begging? Tough call, not a speech Guido would like to have to write... what would you put in the speech?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

Brown : "Economy is Better Placed to Weather the Global Storm"

Gordon is simply not in touch with reality. He has just told a business crowd that this is the "first financial crisis of the new global age".

So the technology stock crash in 2000/1 was not worldwide? Didn't the 1997/8 Asian economic crisis and LTCM collapse have global repercussions, the ERM crisis in 1992 had currency volatility everywhere, Black Monday in 1987 was scary, the Latin American debt crisis in 80s... we have had them all the way back to 1929. All were global financial crises.

Gordon says the economy has "underlying strength", which must be why August saw the lowest new car sales since Bobby Charlton lifted the World Cup. Oh, almost forgot: the Prime Mentalist is getting on with the job and making long term decisions as well.