![]() ![]() Instead, he now has long-term objectives and goals that will be “ measurable” so voters can check against performance. Starmer has ditched the language of pledges – understandably, as pledges have a vexatious tendency to sound like “promises” that people will then want to hold you to, and make a judgment on your character if you renege. Sunak is “delivering … against five priorities”. For Sunak, the executive team under his leadership is strong, but is being frustrated by a non-commercially minded board made up of civil servants and woke lefties, and a media too focused on trivial matters such as Suella Braverman’s serial indiscretions, rather than important things like his performance at G7 meetings.īoth their political visions are rendered in bullet-point format. For Labour, the clients, “hard-working families” and “ordinary working people” (those not in gainful employment clearly can’t afford Labour’s services), are not being served well by the current executive team and deserve better value for their money and hard work. The political arena of polis, power and institutions providing checks and balances has been replaced with targets, key performance indicators and clients. There are some common themes to these addresses. The overall effect is an elaborate pleading of the fifth. Variations of “look, let me be clear” or “look, I’ve been clear on this”, whenever pressed on detail, to steer things back to the non-answers already given. Unblinking eye contact with the camera or the interviewer to conjure up the earnestness absent from the responses. Autocue delivery even when there is no Autocue. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesĬorpspeak isn’t just about saying as little in as many words as possible. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who has wholeheartedly embraced corpspeak with her championing of “securonomics”. When asked what that was, Reeves replied: “Securonomics is an approach that builds on the contributions of more people in more parts of Britain and with a more secure national economy, taking advantage of some of the big opportunities but also ensuring our resilience, our strength and our security, to give families that security that they desperately crave right now.” On a big launch of brand Reeves in the US, and to show that, with Labour, Britain is “open for business”, the shadow chancellor went on Bloomberg to explain Labour’s new big idea – “securonomics”. Launching Labour’s five “ national missions” earlier this year, Starmer said that there is a global race to achievement, and: “ Britain must be on the start line – not back in the changing room tying its laces.”īut it is Rachel Reeves who has really embraced corpspeak, and in doing so demonstrated how much this type of pabulum has entirely devoured detail, rhetoric and even basic coherence among the ranks of political leadership. Compared with Sunak, though, Starmer is a poet, not afraid of a metaphor, but there is no risk of them bringing a tear to your eye. “Joined up” thinking, “sleeves-rolled-up” partnerships, “laser-targeted” policies and “ mission-driven” politics will all underpin Labour’s next manifesto. Starmer has his own version of this sort of CEO-on-an-away-day patter. After those local election results he had a rousing moment of self-reflection that he shared with the nation: “The message I am hearing from people is that they want us to focus on their priorities and they want us to deliver for them.” Asked to reflect on how he feels when he loses, Sunak replied: “My focus in this job is to deliver for the country.” Just suffered a wipeout at the local elections? You guessed it, delivering is the answer. Have any questions about Scottish independence? Sunak’s answer is that he is focusing on the things he can do to “deliver here for people in Scotland by working constructively together”. ![]() Sunak is, above all, “focused on delivering for Britain”. Most guilty of it is Rishi Sunak, a man who has probably said the word “deliver” more than any other during his premiership. Corpspeak, as it has been informally called, is a dead-eyed repetitive white noise that sounds like a cross between someone reading a PowerPoint presentation and a lawyer answering questions on behalf of a client they cannot trust to speak for themselves. I ’m not quite sure when it happened, but at some point over the past year, politicians’ language was taken over by a sort of corporate speak. ![]()
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