Who was the last politician you listened to for any length of time? Perhaps it was Andy Burnham or Zack Polanski. Or maybe it was Wes Streeting, Nigel Farage or Zarah Sultana. Perhaps your dark secret is that it was Donald Trump.
One thing these politicians have in common is that they are all unusually good communicators. From Farage’s drawling provocations to Polanski’s pithy directness, Sultana’s concentrated blasts of outrage to Trump’s mesmerising ramblings, they compel you to listen. The completely forgettable passages that voters across western democracies have associated with political speech for decades are largely absent.
In some ways, the return of rhetoric as a hugely advantageous political skill feels like a liberation. Nowadays, it’s true, this skill is often deployed in simpler, cruder ways than in the past: in quick, conversational interventions or digressive public statements and question-and-answer sessions, rather than expertly structured formal speeches.
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