Flying a Kite and Rolling the Pitch (with Rob Hutton)

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Hello and welcome to Strong Message Here from BBC Radio 4, a journalist and a comedy writer's guide to the use and abuse of political language.

It's Helen Lewis.

And it's Amazinucci.

And this week we're getting our Mary Poppins on as we go go fly a kite.

Fly a kite.

Now that's to do with

political speeches.

Yes.

And then we will also be rolling some pictures.

But first, Amando, I have to ask you whether or not you've been up to anything exciting.

Well, the only exciting thing I've been doing is picking up on something that we discussed last week.

We mentioned flooding the zone as a kind of metaphor for that notion Trump and his team had of just spewing out as many announcements, as many provocative actions as possible to confuse the press, the media, the enemy.

So

many of them that they, you know, they didn't know where to start.

So flooding the zone.

This week, he actually literally flooded the zone.

So what he did was, once the LA fires were more or less gone out, he then ordered two dams in the Central Valley of California to release their water so that he could then announce that he's giving Los Angeles, the entire state of California, virtually unlimited water until it was pointed out that the Central Valley reservoirs don't actually connect with Los Angeles and that the water would just sit there outside the dams and probably soak away, meaning that farmers won't have that water in two months' time.

And it seems to me that what he did there was literally flood the zone as part of his campaign to metaphorically flood the zone because it was all about getting the tweet and the post on Truth Social that evening saying, Hey, I've done it, I've given California water, ignoring the fact that all the experts and the farmers were saying, What have you done?

Yeah, but that's kind of Trump's political genius, isn't it?

Which is that he manages to boil complicated problems down as if that they're incredibly so.

He goes, Ah, you've had a fire.

What you need some water.

I've inputted water, everything is now fine.

He did a thing that was quite similar during the rallies, and he used to say, you know, there weren't any communications in North Carolina.

I phoned up Elon Musk, Elon Musk brought in Starlink, and then everything was great.

Yeah.

You know, his satellite system.

And I kept thinking at the time, I really must go and find out whether or not it is as simple as that.

I know.

And I mean, is it genius?

Or is it...

What is it then if it's not genius?

Is it simpleton-ness?

Is it...

No, I mean, that sounds very pejorative, but I think it speaks to the fact that lots of people feel the world is very complicated.

And he just says, oh, here's a problem.

Things are on fire.

Do you want the answer to fire is water?

I've provided the world.

Why didn't anyone else think of this before?

Yeah, but the media that he so is addicted to was really full of farmers going, where's our water gone now?

You know, which is not the message he wanted to get across.

Well, yes, when the prices of everything go up in the summer, he'll have to come up with some reason that the deep state has been making your pears more expensive.

That's right.

And it isn't the fact that they haven't been able to irrigate their fields properly.

The tariffs has been a very good example of this.

Tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Oh, unless they do X, or they've announced X.

Oh, but it turns out they were going to do that anyway.

No tariffs on Mexico and Canada for another month.

And I just sort of feel like it's one of those situations where if you just skip that entire news cycle, you'd be no worse off.

Yeah, but he's now got the headline: I made Canada and Mexico, you know, do more at the border.

Yeah.

I think there is one worrying thing that's happened in British political

wordry this week, which hasn't got a great deal of attention, which is that in Manchester, a man was burning the Quran and was arrested for a public order offence and has pled guilty to it.

And, you know, lots of people, predominantly on the right, because they're the people who tend to talk about this, say, well, we haven't got a blasphemy law.

And that looks like a kind of blasphemy law by the back door, kind of putting this down to kind of community tensions.

Kirsten was asked a question by one of his backbenchers about whether or not he would bring back blasphemy laws.

I think we are back in the zone where people, some people really do want them.

Well it's a kind of blurred line between is it blasphemy or is it incitement, you know, which there is legislation for and it's a sort of fine line.

And also, would you know, if you were burning a Bible, would there be the same level of concern?

I don't know, but it's, you know, are you inciting anyone by burning a Bible?

Whereas it could be argued

that there was a level of incitement there.

Yeah, but I think I think what's happened probably is that there will end up being a level of incitement of the far right who will end up seizing it on this.

And, you know, not making an unreasonable point in this case that there do seem to be different rules for different communities.

But I think it's something I was very pleased when we repealed blasphemy laws because I don't think that words should be criminalised in that sense just by having offensive opinions.

And so I'm alarmed by the possibility we might be creeping back towards.

Creeping back into.

Well, somebody who knows a lot about words, Phil, do you appreciate that segue but rob hutton uh isn't going to blaspheme because a man who knows stuff about things yes uh he's sketchwriter of the critic and we've asked him here this week because we want to talk about how political speeches work and see the kind of backstage machinery of them and rob i know that you've you've attended many in your time many many many many i mean i've been doing this for 20 years now not sketchwriting but before Before this, I led political coverage for Bloomberg, so attended a huge number of very forgettable speeches.

What's the first one you can remember attending?

Well, actually, even before I was doing that, I can remember William Haig's Save the Pound tour.

And I was working for the Welsh Mirror at the time.

And he traveling the country with a van, and I sort of went, he was, not me, and I went along to have a look.

And he had a little stage in it.

And he would sort of pop up somewhere and announce that he was going to Save the Pound.

You'll be very rude about that, but he did Save the Pound.

He did.

He did, in fact, the pound single-handedly.

Pound to save, but Haig wasn't.

We've asked you on to talk about this because for the last couple of weeks, especially British politics has been sodden with references to speeches that are going to be made.

And I've always been rather knocked by this process of hearing on the radio in the morning, in a speech this evening, the Chancellor will say, and then going through it in some detail.

And there was one where Streeting was a couple of weeks ago highly publicized to be giving on a Saturday evening about reform and Nigel Frage.

And it was all over the Times that morning.

No coverage of it in the evening because it sort of felt like, well, we don't actually have to cover the speech now because we've quoted all the juicy bits as a prelude to it.

Maybe he didn't give the speech.

Maybe he didn't give the speech.

Has that ever happened, Rob?

Has anyone ever trailed a speech and then gone, well, actually, I sort of, I feel like I've done it, really.

I could probably go home.

So could be an email.

There is an excellent answer to this question.

One of the most important speeches of the last two decades didn't happen, which was when David Cameron went to the Netherlands to announce that there was going to be a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.

This had all been trailed.

Reporters had gone out to watch him make the speech.

And then there was a combination of absolutely terrible snow and a terrorist attack somewhere in North Africa in which British citizens were caught up,

which meant that both the prime minister sort of needed to be in Britain being prime ministerial and also that it was impossible to get from London to Holland that morning.

So we had this weird situation where

we'd had the crucial facts breathed out.

You know, the prime minister will say, and then he clearly was not going to say it, but you couldn't pretend that he hadn't announced the thing that he was going to announce.

This speech became the Bloomberg speech, which people talk about.

So did people report it as having happened that evening?

No, no, you couldn't.

You couldn't, you couldn't.

But if you said we're going to, you know, he's making a speech today and he's going to announce a referendum on the European Union, you can't then sort of all say, oh, well, forget that.

Everybody, everybody back in your boxes.

So, what do you, what do you do in that case then?

Do you, do you know, in a speech that he was going to have said, he might have then said this, but he didn't.

But the assumption is that he did.

Well, I mean, you could report that because the fact that Britain was going to have it, you know, this did turn out to be quite important.

The fact that there was going to be a referendum was a big deal.

This was also enlivened by the fact that it was impossible.

All these reporters were stuck in Holland.

And so we were watching all of our colleagues fight their way back through the snow so does that mean there was a room was there oh yeah no there was a room ready for Cameron to walk into yeah but I think they were told that morning I think they essentially but with the nature of these things they may well have already got to the place where the speech was not going to be happening um but the policy the bridge with the policy was then the policy but then he still had to go and make the speech and so yeah because i worked for bloomberg there was i was involved in these sort of tense basically got this frantic phone call some saying you've got a space could we use it and i was like yeah yeah sure absolutely you know um at your work right not the like your shed or something like that right yeah no yeah those my broom cup it's here and that's why it became the bloomberg speech interesting question when does a policy become a policy you know does it become a policy when it's thought about or when it's said well if if if a speech is brief but is cancelled does it make a sound um it's a deep philosophical question hang away but let's let's back up a little bit because the whole idea of the fact that speeches are brief we're sort of aware of but it is quite weird my presumption is that the speech only exists really as a way of the government saying we care about this this is important please write about this but there was a whole week of you know Rachel Reeves is going to say go ahead with a third runway so it was a bit of an anti-climax when she said it because of the build-up let me take you through it yeah

in fact about two weeks to a month before a big speech you will start it will start getting briefed to the sort of the political columnists, the people who write think pieces.

And they'll say, oh, yeah, no, Rachel Reeves has got a, she's good, she's a bat, she's going to make a big speech on the the economy.

And that will just be the sort of the arguments that she'll be making.

And that partly because those guys want to sort of want to be able to look informed.

And this is sort of far out pitch rolling.

And then the Sunday before a big speech, so the Reeves speech is on a Wednesday, the Sunday before the big speech, you'll get specific lines will have been briefed into the Sunday papers.

All of them or do they do they feed it to the choose one or is this to everyone?

It depends.

Often the general deal with a Sunday paper is you will get better coverage if we've got it exclusively.

But on the other hand, if you give it to everyone, it'll go everywhere.

And sometimes you'll have a mix of both.

You know, everyone will get a bit of the speech, but maybe the Telegraph will get a bit more or something.

This seems quite archaic, though, in the nicest possible sense.

The media grid, to some extent, still relies on newspapers, which, you know, don't get me wrong, still have a lot of power, but have seen a dramatic fall.

And I presume the broadcasters are involved too, and their audience declines have been lessened.

Do they go and brief influencers in the way that the Biden White House tried to invite a load of influencers to the Democratic National Convention or Trump went on his podcast tour?

You know, who is our equivalent of Joe Rogan?

Is Rachel Reeves out hanging out with, you know, well, that's a good question.

I mean, I think the milk boys.

Thing is, quite a lot of the Labour people are having one way or another been around since the Blair era.

I mean, Keir Starmer's Director of Communication, Matthew Doyle, used to work for Tony Blair in Downing Street, so it's certainly for Gordon Brown in Downing Street.

So, like the rest of us, they're doing things the way they did them 30 years ago.

Also,

who is is the Joe Rogan?

You know, I mean,

what would you sort of brief it to?

The rest is politics or something?

Yes.

Is Rory Stewart the Joe Rogan of the UK?

I don't think that Rory is...

I don't think R.

Joe Rogan and their Joe Rogan should fight, if that's the case.

The one that's the black belt in martial arts might win that one.

But I'm asking something about, you know, if you go back to the, you know, distributing bits of the speech to various newspapers on the Sunday,

why?

What is the ultimate aim?

What is the desired effect?

Look, why do peacocks have big tails?

I don't know.

It's part of the whole mating ritual to attract his.

So Way Streeting is distributing bits of his speech on reform and Nigel Faraday as a part of a mating ritual.

Isn't it more like a kind of cargo cult thing, right?

That if you build something that looks like a plane, then maybe the planes will come back.

There's a sort of, if you build something that looks like a briefing to a Sunday paper, maybe it'll be the 90s again and everyone will listen to you.

Completely.

So you get the stuff in the Sundays, and that gets you on to the Sunday show.

I mean, you know, the existence of the Sunday shows.

Yes, on the Sunday shows, they're asked about the speech and all through the interview, they go, well, I can't say that now.

I'm going to be talking about that in more detail this evening.

Yes.

Or, well, I don't know.

I don't know what Rachel's going to say.

You know, that's her speech.

You'll have to wait for the speech, but you've got the lines out there.

I haven't seen her speech.

Well, if you look at the Sunday papers

and get some scissors, you could more or less construct it paragraph by paragraph.

No spokesman should ever read the papers before going to answer questions about anything because then they could just say, no, I'm sorry, I just haven't seen Esther.

I can't, I can't talk about it.

It also strikes me that this opens up a possibility of being quite brutal to the media.

I'm sure that, you know, the tension between the press and the politicians is very well established.

But is there ever a situation in which something gets briefed out and everyone goes, ugh, this is a terrible idea.

Why would you do this?

And then it quietly gets dropped from the speech and everyone goes, oh, the typical press just lying to us once again.

So definitely there is a version of that.

I mean, you talked about kite flying.

There is kite flying, which is either something something we'd like to do or something that we're not going to do but i would i a minister would like us to be doing and so you put it into the press uh to see how it see how the kite flies yeah so you go maybe we should rejoin the eu anyone with me no no okay no one's with me no one's with me no we no we shouldn't okay i just remember david willitz being interviewed by so he was the tory schools minister at the time he was he was being interviewed by andrew marr and he was defending a policy and on the sunday show and the policy was cancelled mid-interview and he was told that the policy had been cancelled and had to spin round.

Well, I always thought it was a terrible idea.

Yes, there have been ministers who've gone up and moved an amendment and then voted against it afterwards because

they didn't like it but were told to do it.

But that is a feature of a government in trouble, isn't it?

It's the fact that they, I remember Boris Johnson used to do this to poor old Matt Hancock quite a lot, where Matt Hancock would go out and defend something and then Boris Johnson would cave on it and you just, I mean, it made me feel quite sorry for Matt Hancock, which was a new and exciting experience but this is a government with a huge majority so why does it feel it has to very carefully lay out in this very very traditional like old media way

put these little kind of scraps of meat with journalists so that they'll come to the speech itself what's it like at the speech is it it must be right so before we before you between the sundays and the speech then on the night before the speech the key lines of the speech are briefed under embargo right under embargo and those are then briefed to the daily paper journalists and the wire reporters like me.

So for people who don't know what an embargo is, it will say at the clock, embargoed until 2200 or 0001.

That means your story can't appear anywhere until then.

And that briefing will normally be three paragraphs of the speech and, you know, key facts.

It probably won't actually say, for instance, Heathrow Third Runway.

But you already know that it's Heathrow Third Runway because there's that's sort of that's been reported and not knocked down.

So you're in this weird world sort of monday and tuesday last week where everyone was saying well it's the heathrock third runway isn't it and people going to just have to wait for the speech you know and uh well yeah but you're kind of telling me by not telling me so you've got those bits and actually a surprisingly large amount of my life has been spent sitting around in places waiting for someone to hand me that piece of paper so that I can just write the damn story.

Ed Miliband's people used to insist on coming around and briefing it to each of us individually.

And I'd be sitting there on a Friday evening thinking,

I'm writing four paragraphs.

I just need, I just need the quotes.

And eventually, sort of his man would turn up and I'd have to sit and listen to a little spiel about how, you know, Ed was paving the way for a new society.

Thanks, thanks.

Can I just have that piece of paper?

Thank you.

Right.

Okay.

Off you go.

File my story.

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Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theatre, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

I mean, the whole thing seems like this sort of slightly elaborate kabuki theater ritual from a different age, in which, you know, because people can now just sort of tweet it out.

You're right, the idea of a story just holding for 48 hours is now kind of mad to me.

The idea that you can just go, we all know it's a third runway, but we're not going to say it for 48 hours.

And no wonder everyone, it feels like everyone's gone slightly mad in that intervening time.

Yeah, I mean, look, I can't defend it.

to you the way that this is.

We're not having a go at you.

I'm interested in what, I mean, what do you, you know, you've had the piece of paper with the juicy quotes, you've done your story, but presumably you then have to attend the speech.

So what's going in through your head and the head of everyone else who, you know, are trundling off to whatever it is, you know, a sewing machine factory or a...

Well, Rob luckily can just write mean things about the people who are there.

That's the joy of being a sketchwriter.

But, you know, your political correspondents, what are they doing thinking, we've now got to go to a Bouncy Castle manufacturer because they want to talk about how we're making stuff grow.

But we've got the speech.

Why are we now here?

Right.

So the sketchwriters, like, me as I am now, I would not have had all the pre-briefing and I don't want it.

In fact, I still get some of it and I just don't read it because I want to sort of experience the speech.

Yes.

Experience the magic fresh live.

Reminds me of going to this wonker kind of world that is just a terrible like a really bad theme park.

Designed by AI.

The proper journalists, the reporters, are going along so that they can ask about something that isn't in the speech.

Right.

So I watched Kier Stanley's speech on the NHS and wanting 24-7 clinics and almost all the questions were then, would you like to continue your feud with Elon Musk, please, sir, so that I've got something to write in my paper?

Yes.

Which I always feel a bit bad for the politician who, because by definition, as you say, but they've created this whole situation in which the speech is the least interesting thing because everyone's known about that for days.

So, it's, I don't, you know, you can't really hold that against the lobby feeling like we've done, we've done the NHS bit.

Can't they invite the press in at the end of the speech?

So, the speech is delivered to an empty room, but with a camera on you, so you've got the footage, and then invite the press in.

In fact, you know, you don't even need to say the speech, just say the last few words.

Invite the press in for the questions.

You say this, yes, but there is a whole world of whether the speech happens yes so apart from you know sort of this is like quantum physics the brexit thing there is with boris johnson we had this specific problem that you would get lines briefed in advance and then he wouldn't say them And that was because, and I, I chatted, this was a real problem for us at Bloomberg because we took accuracy very seriously.

And I'd be like, I've had a story all day that says he's going to say this.

Now he hasn't said it.

What am I, what am I supposed to do with this story?

That's now wrong.

Instead, he's just gone on a riff about presumably Peppa Pig or something.

Yes.

And his team sort of said to me, Well, the trouble is that Boris just writes the speeches himself and he keeps rewriting them until the last minute.

So really, what we're doing the night before is going and this is not how they put it, but going and grabbing bits of paper out of the waves paper bin and sort of

trying to find three or four lines that look plausible.

So Boris's speech, we can assure you, just from the contents of the bin,

speech has got to be about fixing Brexit, something about Wrigley Spearman, gum, but that might just be a wrapper.

And

neither would it have encouraged the press to come along if in advance they'd issued a paragraph saying he will talk about Peppa Pig.

Really?

That's the main headline.

Yeah, there is Ed Miliband,

who decided to do a speech from memory in 2014.

He completely forgot to talk about the economy.

And forgot to talk about the economy.

And my bit part in this is I had the text he was working from.

And normally, my job in this thing was to be sending headlines very fast.

You get the text and you're reading through it quickly, going, What are the what are the headlines?

What are the what's the news?

And you're waiting for him to say each thing so that you can send the headline that says he said this thing, but you've got them written.

And then, because your brain is in about three places at once, uh, it's like, hang on, hang on, we've got all the you know, because we had all the economy headlines.

Yeah,

did he, did he, has he, has he said those that none of us have noticed?

And we're trying to, or is he going to?

And sort of frantic phone calls.

And he'd just forgotten.

So at no point did someone think in advance we will put someone in the front row who will mouth things like the economy.

You know,

like that Bob Dylan video, they just hold up like a series of placards.

Just go.

Possibly.

When I do stuff in front of an audience and it's a set, you know, there is usually a clock or someone at the back going, five minutes, get her off, get her off.

Didn't he pay for someone to shout, the economy?

Yeah, but that was the whole thing.

He could have had an autocue.

He simply could have had an autocue, but the whole thing was like, he's tough enough.

Tough enough, as he said, tough enough

to do it from memory, which is seen as this bravado, bravura kind of, you know, look, I'm a leader because I can just walk into a room.

To talk about the economy.

There is a kind of autocue story about Bill Clinton when he was president.

He was doing his first State of the Union address, which is in the joint session of Congress.

Al Gore as vice president is president of the Senate, so we're sitting behind him.

The autocue came up and Al Gore went, it's the wrong draft.

It's the wrong draft.

So Clinton live saw the OtterQ just go dead, spool through and just vamped for 10 minutes.

He just riffed on his campaign themes.

And apparently it was the best 10 minutes of Bill Clinton anyone ever seen.

That is why he could be president and I couldn't be president because that's like a that's a nightmare.

I was going to say the worst thing when they're finding out you're naked, which again, if you're Bill Clinton, probably not as big a trouble for him as also for some other people.

Can we talk about fashions in political speeches, Rob?

So there was a phase when everybody kept coming out from behind their lectern to show you that they weren't a typical politician.

That happens a lot, I think.

There was a phase when everyone memorised stuff.

But the one that we're still in, and I don't understand it, is when you receive a political speech, it's a series of very long, unconnected sentences, like the world's worst fridge poetry, you know?

I think that that is an autocue thing.

So, yeah, no, all of the speeches that I get emailed the text of or indeed sort of handed, rather than sort of neat paragraphs, as you might see in a book or a newspaper, they are little phrases, dot, dot, dot, and then some more phrases, dot, dot, dot.

And then a final phrase, full stop.

And if you look at Keir Starmer's

auto-cue when he's doing these.

with some of the best one, with some of the landing phrases, there's a little asterisk, which is to tell him that there might be applause here.

And actually, at that health service one that you watched, Helen Wes Streeting who was standing alongside was watching the auto queue and frantically clapping every time the star came up yeah because Wes knows what his job is and you can hear you can hear it in the delivery anyway when they're expecting applause and when it doesn't happen because they go and that's why I will fight for more

on to the NHS now and

yes Liz Trash with Blesser was the absolute master of that just the stop look around for applause that never comes yes haunting I mean all these fashions I think are David Cameron's fault in the sense that he did the walk and talk, and everyone, ooh, walking and talking.

And then he did the speech from memory in 2008.

Everyone, speech from memory.

It was actually really striking at the Tory leadership contest that three of them did walk and talk, and James Cleverly, who everyone agreed did best, had just got elected.

And like, no, I'm...

I'm just going to speak.

When you say walk and talk, you don't mean like the kind of Aaron Sorkin shot of just going through corridors.

You mean

wandering around the stage?

Paced on the stage.

Pacing the stage like a prowling tiger because you're just so full of energy and things to say and it's just just coming to you out of your and it's like look nobody thinks that somebody makes makes a speech just come out of their head i think maybe it is an aaron sawkin thing that you like the idea that the president might just throw his papers away

it's to look impressive isn't it it's to look like in command of the situation and control and and so you know i i am able to not just walk and talk but talk from memory and and it sounds sensible and it's really just the overall sense of strategic approaches to how i handle my party and Europe that has let me down.

Rob, what is the best political speech you've ever seen in terms of either content or delivery?

I think the Gordon Brown one in a, I mean, this didn't change anything for Gordon Brown, but the one, it must have been conference 2009, where he just sort of started listing all of the things that Labour had done in office.

And the applause kept mounting.

And, you know, the funny thing about Brown is he could be incredibly stiff, but he could also be an incredibly good speaker.

But he also had some goods, didn't he?

That's when we mentioned things like the minimum wage and sure start and taking pensioners out of poverty.

And you're like, okay, that I say is quite impressive, actually.

Yeah, you know, and the conference loved it.

And they started clapping and he just kept going because he had more to give them.

And they just kept.

And that was, I mean, that was quite an electric moment.

Well, can I take you back to the panic room?

That is the room that the speech has been trailed to.

Because I'm just fascinated by just the logistics and mechanics of it.

The asking for questions, is there a procedure for that?

Is it a bun fight?

Because I've always heard that there is a very set order in which journalists are called to give questions.

You always have to call the BBC first.

I think that's in the Bill of Rights.

And then Sky and ITV.

So it used to be hands in the air.

It depends on the leader, basically.

And they've always tried to control it.

One of the...

things that journalists like least about this government is that Starma, Starma's people, when the the invite to a speech comes, they always say, tell us if you want to ask a question.

And then he is just presented with a list of people's names and he just reads through that.

I mean, that's fine if you're the BBC.

If you're Chris Mason, you're going to get called.

One of the things that I liked about, say, Tony Blair, when I was a very junior reporter for a relatively obscure outfit, was I could stick my hand up and he might just point at me and say, go on.

And he wouldn't know who I was or what I was going to ask about.

A similar version of that happens at Prime Minister's Questions, doesn't it?

Where you have some people who are planted to ask questions questions from their constituency and you just think, why are we all here?

Why are you taking up my time to say, would the Prime Minister agree that the new shopping centre in Little Dibbling on the Wald is an excellent idea and will bring much needed reinvestment to this brilliant Labour voting area of the country?

And then the Prime Minister goes, yes, the idea.

And you think we could, that really could have been written down and just...

Isn't that so that that MP can go back to their constituency and say, I've had backing from the Prime Minister?

But he could have put that on there.

He could have written that on a postcard and sent it to them and we could have all got on with our other things.

Who else are the other people in the room?

How are they chosen?

You know, the normies, you know, the non-journalists, the non-politicals, the non-staff, the, you know, you're at a kind of carpet factory or whatever.

What are they expecting?

Are they having a great time?

Because they very often,

they don't know quite why they're there.

When Starmer did a speech at Pinewood recently, a colleague of mine was getting off the train and saw a chap in a smart suit who sort of who looked lost

going to pinewood everyone looks lost so he said are you going to pinewood he said yeah yeah for a speech this chap said and my my colleague said yes yes and he the chap said do you know who's giving the speech and this guy this was a chief executive of a of a reasonably successful coffee company yeah who then sort of invited Did you think it was Tom Cruise to come?

Because the invite will say something like a senior government minister will give a speech, which journalists, again, journalists know what that means.

What does it mean?

It means Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves, basically.

And it almost always means Keir Starmer because Rachel Reeves doesn't give very many speeches.

Did this person have a good time?

He seems to even seem slightly baffled by that.

I mean, I think it's probably an interesting thing to do once.

Yeah.

But there's just a huge amount of standing around.

And

in election campaigns, you know, you'll go to a factory or something.

And you'll, I suppose it's a it's a change from sitting there driving rivets.

No, that's also my list of why does this happen?

You know, the fault opportunity, you know, today while visiting a dairy, the Prime Minister outlined his war plans.

You know,

just that,

why are you doing that?

You know, you're not making a TikTok video, which you can do in 30 seconds.

Or, you know, what's

that's taking half a day out of your very valuable time.

Why are you there?

Sometimes that has become a feature, hasn't it?

That's what the Liberal Democrats have done.

That was Ed Davy's entire plan during the election campaign: was get on the log flume.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Did you get to go to Thorpe Park with Ed Davy at all, Rob?

I was invited at the last minute and I thought, actually, it's a long way to go and i have to write can you write it on the log flume

but you laugh i mean that would have been the smarter thing to do but for instance we i went with um rishi sunak went to a factory in devon where they make sort of all-terrain military vehicles with guns yeah and it's like and of course he stands in front of them but he never goes on them and at the moment he'd gone did this i've got a great phone of all the sketch writers sort of climbing up i want to go in the gun turret i want to go on the the huge you know machine of death.

Why wouldn't you?

But I heard that when I was in Florida covering the governor's race in 2022, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, he had a rally that was at a muscle car museum.

And it was just awesome.

There were just these huge, you know, there was kind of like sort of soaring rock music behind him, people letting off fireworks.

There were these vintage muscle cars behind him.

And I remember thinking, this is so different to British politics, where it would be like, could you like to come to the spoon manufacturer in the West Midlands?

I did like when you mentioned Ed Davy, there was at least a kind of point to those silly things when he started using them to lit, that goes back to flooding the zone, to literalize the metaphor, because he had the, you know, we're going to take a hammer to the blue wall and he'd take out a hammer and there'd be a blue wall.

And was it Boris Johnson clear the,

was it clear the block, break, breaks it, break the blockage, you know, the blockage and you've got a date

through a big wall.

And, you know, that kind of makes, I'm looking forward to, you know, when somebody wants to do the shit's going to hit the fan.

And, you know, catapults.

At the pig farm yes right

cats catapults a defecating pig at a wind turbine or something just for the mess i mean it would certainly get in the news i'd report on that yeah yeah yeah rob would probably write a hell of a sketch about that

i'd be there right i'd get an early seat actually for that one there's a thing that they do that's the opposite which is and there's money was awful this terrorism went to um florence to make a big speech about our relationship with the european union florence legit one of the world's most beautiful cities uh can't stand anywhere without the thing behind you looking amazing.

And they took with them a grey backdrop.

So, so that she went to Florence and all the press went to Florence to watch her.

And she then stood in front.

All the pictures are just of her in front of a grey screen.

And Boris Johnson did it.

He went to the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

There's a big, beautiful hall.

I don't think it's part of the museum, but you know, sort of one of England's glories.

And again, big grey screen.

See, if Theresa May had stood next to Michelangelo's David,

that would have been all over our front pages.

Is there not some room in Downing Street that has like bits of Birmingham and bits of Manchester and bits of carpet factories and bits of, you know, fishmongers and so on, you know,

on card as a backdoor that you could just...

Makes it sound like the holodeck in Star Trek that they can just program in anything and suddenly you can get AI.

You know, all going on about the use of AI.

Well, that was the point of the Downing Street briefing room, wasn't it, Rob?

Does that still exist after its sad adventures during covid the cursed downing i mean you talk about being buried being built on unconsecrated ground um it's uh that i mean that was the room that that ended the career of

spokeswoman yeah the allegoristratton memorial briefing suite and kind of ended the career of rishi shunak in that he chose on a day that it was pouring with rain not to use the briefing room but to go outside to announce for no reason for no reason no well again that was a backdrop thing i think i think he wanted to be in in downing street He certainly got his drop.

Yeah.

And he was tough in us as well to be outside.

Yeah.

And then the briefing room has been reopened.

And they went to a Titanic centre, didn't he?

That's right.

Talking about.

Yeah, the Titanic quarter in Liverpool.

Yeah.

Oh, that was a

Belfast colour.

Oh, was it Pelfax?

Yes, yeah.

But you say that the briefing room now exists again, rides again.

Unfortunately, in an unfortunate error, the Conservative government managed to paint the briefing room in Tory blue.

and

no idea how that happened, complete oversight.

So Starmer refused to do any briefings in there and it has now been repainted in a sort of Starmaite grey.

If we ever get a Lib Dem government, that's not going to flatter the skin tone of whoever, if you have an all-yellow briefing room.

I suppose the SNP didn't.

The idea is that the grey will stay, but

I'm sure the idea among the Conservatives was that blue would stay, but you know, thus perish the dreams of all mankind.

I think that's a very good slogan for Kier Starmer's next campaign.

The grey will stay.

That's all we've got time for, Rob.

I understand that you may have a book out now called The Illusionist, but I couldn't possibly comment on that.

And you are a sketchwriter for the critic.

Thank you for joining us.

My pleasure.

Well, before we go, I just want to read a little bit of our correspondence.

Oh, yes.

Which is from Tom Crane, who says, Hi, Helen Armando.

Love the show.

Want to get your thoughts on a phrase which has gained prevalence, especially in recent interactions in the House of Commons.

I'm talking about the concept of taking no lectures on subject X, usually from the opposition, and usually before offering a lecture of their own about how awful the opposition is.

Interested to know your thoughts.

I think I can sum up my thoughts on this one very quickly.

I find it the most tedious, preachy, weasly little phrase.

And

I could absolutely agree with everything someone's saying.

And as soon as they go, I'll take no lectures from you,

I'm against them.

And you know, you are then going to get a lecture.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So we solved that one for Tom.

I hate it.

Talking of language and lectures,

there was a story doing the rounds, and I always thought it was apocryphal, but apparently it's true, where a language expert at MIT gave a talk on how, in lots of languages, two negatives can mean a positive.

I mean, it happens in English.

So, there are no languages where two positives can ever mean a negative.

Right.

So, you say, I don't not love it, means I quite like it, but you can't say, I really very love it, means I hate it.

Yes, exactly.

And he said at the end, Does anyone have any questions?

And a philosophy professor at the back shouted, Yeah, yeah,

and thus it was debunked Exactly.

Thank you for listening to Strong Message Here.

We'll be back next week.

All our episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

I'm Alex Kratoski.

And I'm Kevin Fong.

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