The Battle for the Soul of the Country

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Hello and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language.

It's Amanda Nucci here. I'm at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.

Joined this week by journalist and host of BBC's newscast, Adam Fleming. Hello.

Yes, this is it's not quite a crossing of the streams, is it? It's a merging of the. Oh, yeah, it's a full merger.
It's a full merger. Yeah, it's a coalition, really.

It's a podcasting coalition for one week only.

Will that work? Until it falls apart in acrimony.

Now, I thought, given that we've come all the way to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, I thought we'd hear the sound of delegates swooshing their lanyards and so on, but we are in a little porter cabin at the side.

We had to, to meet here, we had to go through a sign that said dog exercise area.

But I'm getting the full flavour. I find conferences very odd.
You're a political geek. You're a political.
Do you like conferences? What do you make of conferences? Can I give a very BBC answer?

I'll tell you the positives and the negatives. Okay.
And then could you then give an Adam Fleming answer? Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
Okay.

So the positives are you get a lot of FaceTime with people, whether it's activists, ministers, MPs, people campaigning for various causes or organizations.

So actually, you can just have a lot of conversations. And that's what journalism is, talking to people.
And is that stuff that you then store up for future use in terms of all off the record?

It's a combination of all that stuff. I mean, you're constantly filing stuff away anyway in this job.
The negative things are, well, yeah, the working conditions are not amazing.

You mentioned the porter cabin wherein, inevitably, you're in a porter cabin or a car park.

The food is not great. And also, you were just completely immersed in it 24-7.
And in the old days, Labour Party conferences goes on for about five days. Yes.
And it was.

Yeah, it was a slog.

And also, the Labour have this different tradition of the leader speech is not at the end of the conference. It's on the Tuesday.
Yes.

I don't know what their reasoning is behind that, but surely it then means that Wednesday and Thursday is a little bit of a kind of damp square.

I mean,

they always had things to keep occupied, so it was always worth staying to the bitter end.

And then other negative things about it, I mean, quite a lot of the time you end up sort of, you feel like you're chasing your own tail. And you're like, is this really the news?

Is this really the country being governed? Or is it just a bunch of people locked in a conference centre for a week sort of making up their own news?

Well the thing that I've always, and again, I'm a political nerd, you know, I love the drama of politics and I love the debate and the and wherever.

Obviously, I've been obsessed with it and portraying it. But for me,

party conferences are the one thing I've just never got a whole handle on. I don't understand why they're there.

I don't understand why parliament meets for two or three weeks and then stops so that everyone can get on a train to go to some cultural

second point. That was a David Cameron initiative from the era after the expenses scandal when everyone hated politicians.

A quick win for him was saying, rather than us having 12-weeks summer holiday, we'll have eight weeks summer holiday, come back for two sort of pointless weeks, and then go off again for conferences.

Yeah, we sorted politics out for good. So everyone loves politicians.
Because in those 10 weeks where you know you're going to be leaving soon, I'm sure everything gets done.

I think some people never even come back.

But also your point, though, about you as a political obsessive, and I mean that in a nice way, having never really got into the conference vibe or thing just shows shows you maybe they're a bit irrelevant because actually if you can be a fully paid up political obsessive and having not really come to them it just shows you maybe they're not that nice that was my big question I was like do they work but before that I the other conference I went to I went to a Tory party conference I think

it must have been pre-Brexit because I was on a panel I wasn't a member I was I'm independent of course but they have all these fringe debates yes fringe in all senses of yes there are stalls set out for kind of double glazing firms and ecology firms.

And they have fringe events where people come from outside politics to discuss certain issues with politicians. And I found myself on a panel.
I can't even remember what the conversation was about.

I think it was about electoral reform. Joining me was Theresa May before she was prime minister and various other journalists.

But I was asked by the BBC news coverage team who were at the time, I don't know if this still happens, were relaying the Conservative Conference live on BBC Parliament channel.

I got a message saying they'd love me to pop by their outside broadcast fan and say hello. So I popped in and there they were live following a debate with very few people in the hall.

So it wasn't a senior debate. And I asked them, you know, what do you do? Because this is deadly dull.

You know, it was a counselor speaking about something and there were about five people in this enormous hall.

And they said, well, occasionally, you know, we have one camera. We don't put it up on air, but we have one camera from the back.

And if someone is doing a crossword, we can zoom in on the crossword and do it. And it's a cheap game show.

And then they said, occasionally, I said, occasionally, you just throw up a picture on BBC Parliament live of someone asleep. And they said, oh, yeah, every now.
Oh, that is a classic. Yeah.
Yeah.

And then they said. Do you want to have a go? And so I did.
I found someone. I direct the camera.
With your little joystick. Yes.
Found someone asleep. And he popped up for three seconds.

But do you know what?

That speaks to the fact that these conferences conferences work on so many different levels because you talk about the fringe and that's like all these events where they're either hosted by charities or lobby groups or businesses.

And you have a panel of people, usually quite eminent people, talking about one of their pet subjects. I mean, I've just been, before I came here, because I wanted something fun to talk to you about,

went to a panel about how culture can be a tonic for health. And it was hosted by Angela Ripon.

And Angela Ripon was just reading off loads of stats about how scientists have proved that dance is good for your health, physical physical health. Oh, she would, wouldn't she? I should think that.

Exactly. I don't think she's impartial on that.
But what's the point of that? Not as in what's the point of anti-ripping, but why is that happening here? So, what do we aim to get out of that?

The very cynical answer is that quite often they are sponsored by a business or a particular interest.

And you can give some money to the Labour Party to host that your event within their bigger event. You can have somebody from

your CEO or your chief finance officer or your public affairs person on the panel alongside a Labour MP or a minister and some other people.

And it's a way of getting your message across because there are thousands of people here who need stuff to do. Because you can't, there's not a Rachel Reeves speech every hour, you know.
No.

There's like hours and hours in between. No, I'm officially here because I'm on a panel about the creative industries.

I look forward to coming along. Maybe Angela Rookin will be on panels, but I've no idea.

Whether I'm able to kind of turn the direction of government around by my appeal for

value of industry appreciate it yeah I do always feel in two minds when you go to those panel things because it's quite thanks it's quite mind expand because you get some interesting insights into things like I don't know child mental health that we maybe aren't talking about enough but at the same time you just think right the government is not listening to this there's not millions of people watching this at home you're talking to quite a select niche group of people who themselves don't have a lot of power but i'm sure you panelists have a great time no i'll i'll just keep that image in my head tomorrow

i'll come i'll come i'll come Angela and I dance a positive message about the creative industries.

I've also found that my memories of being a political nerd, my memories of party conferences when they were covered.

headlining the news in this like 70s and 80s where the drama there of the labor conference where Dennis Healy had to come back with a message from the IMF to you know talk about the the fight for the deputy leadership between Healy and Tony Ben and now

I think really since the Blair days, everything feels a lot more controlled. Oh, yeah, definitely.

So this venue, this occasion when everyone can come together and discuss and debate is actually a much more tightly organized thing where actually the leadership doesn't want things debated that the membership might do.

Yeah, so it might want. Yeah, in terms of what's on the conference stage, yeah, definitely much more controlled, which is why then we're on the lookout for things that are not controlled.

So the hecklers

and the people kind of behind the scenes trying to maneuver.

And that's why Andy Burnham has had a whole lot of publicity over the last few days because that's an unplanned thing by the Labour Party leadership that he's popped up to effectively challenge Kirstama in advance.

Some people might think, why don't you just report on what's happening at the conference? And it's because actually... quite often what's happening at the conference isn't very newsworthy.

It's the unplanned stuff. And we have discussed in the programme before, we're given advance notice of what's going to be said at the conference.

You know, in a speech today, the Chancellor will say or Kiostama will outline.

I'm thinking from the point of view of just a normal viewer, not a professional pundit, but someone just watching the coverage on the news or reading a summary of it in the papers and asking themselves, what is this for?

And Burnham, you mentioned Andy Burnham. A quote he said was, because he was talking about there shouldn't be a climate of fear where the message is controlled.

And he said that Labour needed to go further and have a debate about a direction.

And he criticised a a situation where, quote, a party member is suspended for liking a tweet by another political party or a member of parliament loses the whip for trying to protect disability benefits, unquote.

So he's talking about why aren't we having a proper debate in front of a membership and the cameras?

Well, he's talking in that way now when he's appealing to those members to potentially vote for him to be the next Labour leader.

And I wonder if once he gets that job, he will then want a little bit more discipline around the conference and people not taking potshots at him.

So have you noticed then this kind of this tightening of control and the agenda, what people can and can't see? I mean, I think the tightening probably happened before my day as a professional.

So all you know is complete tight control. Pretty much, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.

And I look back at those famous speeches like Kinnock in 87 talking about militant here in Liverpool and Thatcher, The Ladies Not Returning.

And I am like jealous of people who got to cover those events because they were really, really dramatic. I mean, of course, then there's the Brighton bombing at the Conservative Party conference.

I mean, what a sort of epochal news story that that must have been to actually cover. But they do develop their own momentum.
I mean,

think about the name of this podcast. Strong message.
Strong message here. Yeah.
Like, so often the story becomes the muck-up in the Prime Minister or the leader's speech. All right.

So were you present at the origin of this phrase? Yes. So this was it.
Was this in Brighton in 2015, 14, 16? I now lose track of the Corbyn era. 15.
15, thank you. 10 years.
Thank you, BBC Verify.

And I can picture myself standing in the hall. And of course, for years, I have used the strong message here as a joke in conversation because it is very, very funny.

Just for those who don't know you, what happened then?

So basically, Jeremy Corbyn was fairly new as labor leader. He was doing his conference speech.
It was pretty rambling and very Corbyn-y. And then at one point, he said, strong message here.

And he wasn't meant to say that because that was a stage instruction in his script on the auto queue in brackets that was meant to be the signal to him to like put on his serious voice.

And he just said it. And it became a perfect metaphor for the slightly less professional leadership that Jeremy Corbyn.

You see, for me, that I find that appealing in that someone who has not been trained in the

how to be a leader, book one, learning slightly on the job. Oh, yes, there's something slightly kind of vulnerable.
I mean, and actually, I went back and watched it, knowing that that's what happened.

He sort sort of in the room gets away with it. Yes, and that was what I was going to say.

Because if I really, really think about being there, I can picture myself standing there at the side of the stage.

But I don't think we realized what he'd done until we actually looked, because they send you the text of the speech after it's been delivered.

And it wasn't until we then printed it off and saw, oh, strong message here is in brackets. It's a stage direction, not a bit of script.

That we're then we're like, oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, what a, what an idiot. But actually, yeah, you're right.
He did, he got away with it.

And he got away with it because he went, and now strong message message here. We must, you know, so he came.

But also he says it in such a Corbyn way, such a sort of like pursed lips, like superior kind of way. Strong message here.

And then, of course, another example of that is when Miliband was the labor leader before him. And that was in the era of the memorized conference speech, which Cameron had started.

He was so casual with the power and so relaxed about being Prime Minister. He could walk from either end of the stage to the other, memorizing his conference speech, delivering it with no notes.

And people were really impressed. Ed Miliband felt he had to do the same thing.

And then one year he forgot the sext of the speech, which is about the deficit, just as he was being accused of not caring about the public finances enough.

And of course, that was another thing that we in the hall weren't aware of at the time

because you only noticed once you got sent the scripts. Ah, right.
Yes.

My main memory of that speech, though, was that it was just a series of anecdotes of people he had met in places like Hampstead Heath or on a bus who all conveniently wanted him to do precisely what he was doing in as leader of the labor party i just remember like all right and now derek's in favor of like energy bills being frozen and then i met jared in a park and he's in favor of us spending money on this yeah it was not a vintage bit of rhetoric but in amongst all this talk about you know the artificiality of a conference and wherever you know there are key moments in political cycles

And we're at one now where they take on a much more serious air. This week started with Kier Stamer saying, this is the the defining political choice of our times.

You know, we're here for a battle for the soul of the nation. In the time that you've been here, have you felt that battle, that heart-searching, heart-rending

search for

existential

salvation? It's quite hard when you walk into the conference hall and the first thing you see is a life-sized giraffe advertising Chester Zoo. Okay.

And you see people like, because the first thing you see. There isn't a giraffe on a panel tomorrow

advocating zoo rights.

So the thing is, like, when you, when you arrive at this thing, it is an event. And so you've got all the charities and the organizations selling their wares.

And then the real politics happens, yeah, in the hall with the speeches.

And so you don't walk in and think, right, this is a battle for the soul of the nation starting right here in front of my very eyes. It's a rhetorical thing.

What is interesting, though, is like Starmer did double down in that with his interview with Laura Koonsberg on Sunday, which is another big part of the calendar of these things, is the leader interview on the Sunday morning talk show.

And he really did double down on that thing and called reform's policies on indefinitely to remain racist.

It's interesting the use of the word racist because up until then, a lot of people, and we've discussed this on the show as well, have been discussing why Starma has sought to ape reform and its policies as a sort of reform light rather than take on reform.

I mean, it's a big decision to use the word racist because that's then implying that there is a vast difference between you and reform.

I was trying to work out what are the tactics here because he was keeping quiet when

the Unite the Kingdom demonstration was on. He kept very quiet.

He put out a tweet. Yes.

But it was very, you know, it was a mild rebuke. But he's kind of changed that because racist is like going from not to 170 in two seconds.
Yeah. It's like in Parliament when you call somebody a liar.

That is like, whoa. Yeah.
It's the equivalent of that.

I think they were probably worried, and this is now being borne out since he's made these interventions, that if you call Nigel Farage racist and his policies as racist, then you're insinuating the people that quite like the sound of them are racist too.

And so every minister now on the airwaves is having to go out and say, no, no, Starmer didn't say if you voted for reform in the local elections or you think Nigel Farage might be quite a good leader, that you yourself is a racist.

So we're seeing why they may not have done this tactic up until now because it comes with some blowback. It does, yes.

I saw polling that showed that every time Starmer tried to do a Farage Light, the numbers for reform went up because it kind of reminded people of

what a stronger version of that policy.

Yeah, but of course they'll now have to walk quite a careful path because, I mean, as we're recording this episode, Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, is going to be doing her speech in a couple of hours.

And actually,

we would be expecting her to sound really quite tough.

Now, she's going to have to sound tough in a careful way that doesn't sound too reform-y, because they're apparently now racist yes she can't look weak so that she'll be so interesting but not racist

exactly and nice tough rather than nasty tough yeah but i think what she will do is a slightly sort of technocratic answer which will be okay if people are worried about this status called indefinite leave to remain why don't we make it a little bit tougher for people to get the status and do it in a nice way where we look at the contribution you've made to national life as a whole rather than just giving out to absolutely everybody not that that's what they do so she'll she'll go for a sort of tough but not racist technical approach.

I like the quote when she was made home secretary. Somebody said that about her tactics.
They said she would start with the unthinkable and work backwards.

Which to me sounds quite sinister, really.

Oh, I was going to say that's probably quite a good way of challenging the civil service. Oh, right.
Oh, here we go. Yes.

So rather than start with like, what are your existing tools and like, what can you tweak and what can you turn the volume up on here?

Actually, start with like a quite dramatic end goal and make the civil servants come up with a way of delivering.

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That

you mentioned the Laura Kunzberg interview, and Stava talked about this fight for the Stoiler Nation. And then, when asked to define it,

I mean, I don't know what to make of this.

You tell me, as a much more acute professional observer, he said, quote, this is the defining political choice of our times, a politics of predatory grievance preying on the problems of working people and using that infrastructure of division against the politics of patriotic renewal rooted in communities building up a country brick by brick by brick from the bottom up.

Please,

in your own words,

you know, if you could make it quick. No, in your own words.
Can I do a bit of PBC verifying?

I don't think that's the quote from the Laura interview. I think he did a shorter version of that with Laura.
And I think that was a quote from a speech that he gave the previous Friday

at this progressive global something conference. I will concede that only because it then confirms that it wasn't even spontaneous.
It was written down.

Yeah, but what I was going to then go on to say, if you let me finish, please, this is like being on the Sunday program, and I don't see what it's like.

Is that

the weather?

No, that was to a conference of fellow left-wing progressive leaders from around the world and their sort of ilk on Friday.

And so I think he went for a slightly more progressivey word salady version for that audience because they prefer that i think it's because that's how they talk and that's how they think and if you look at all those things he said there that's the problem isn't it it's like we don't talk like that but they do which is why there is this this disconnect between political language and human language.

No, but on that day, Sarmer did a much more public-facing version of all that verbiage in a column in the Telegraph.

And so the bit that we were all meant to to see as punters, I think, was the column in the Telegraph. If you've got a Telegraph login, and actually, that speech with that quote for the ages, I'm sure,

was actually from a narrower audience, I think. Not that I'm here to be curious.

People want to know what his thinking is on a topic. Yeah.

And if the explanation is there will be one rather enigmatic word salady version for friendly leaders and a different one outlined in a column in the Telegraph. That's quite a complicated answer.

Or explanation. Yeah, I suppose, yeah, I suppose so.
And that's why I'm not doing that. Not doing it.
No, I know, I'm just thinking it through.

But then actually, I read, because I didn't watch him deliver that speech on Friday because I was doing something else.

And then I read the transcript afterwards and I got to that bit. And I thought, okay, yeah, that's not, who is ever going to put that on their bumper sticker?

But then he did say quite a good line later on in that speech where he said, here's how I would put it. We are diversity under one flag.
That's what the UK is. Diversity under one flag.

And I thought, actually,

that's a much neater way of summarizing what. So my question, I don't expect you to have the answer to it.

Is like, why hasn't he arrived at that definition earlier when, for example, there was a massive March in London? saying the reverse or the opposite.

I wonder if it's because he had years of preparing for a different challenge, which was rebuilding public services and like the nation's kind of feeling of hope after what he would see as 14 years of disastrous rule by the Tories.

And I think he put all his effort into thinking that was the problem he was going to have to solve. I didn't think he was going to have to.

be solving a big kind of identity politics thing on the right. And remember, he was accused of presiding over a party that was too obsessed about the identity politics of the left.

And I think he probably thought, right, I've put that to bed. I've put the anti-Semitism thing to bed.
Next task, sort out public services and give people a bit of hope.

And actually, it's turned into a much more kind of national identity kind of conversation we're having this year. Yeah.
I suspect. Okay.
Nope. Good answer.
Thank you. Good answer.

You get through to the next round. Which is strong message here.

Which is the quick fire round.

No, you did mention like Rachel Reeves' speech was a bit more the traditional conference speech of certain phrases that mean certain things to delegates there and have phrases that

don't explicitly say what you're going to do but contain hints and suggestions.

And there was a classic of that as well in her speech where so she'd she'd attacked the Tories, she'd done her new policies to please the activists like a library for every primary school in England because there's more than a thousand of them that don't have one.

And just before she got to the bit to do the attack on reform in the very middle, she talked about how she was going to stick to her iron discipline with the public finances and she talked about how how we're going to be tested again very soon.

And she talked about the rise in interest rates for governments all around the world. She talked about trade policy from the White House.

And she talked about the Office of Budget Responsibility, which this now sounds so techy, but they're about to do a massive downgrade to how productive the economy is and has been.

And that's going to give her a big headache when it comes to the budget.

So that's an example of probably the most important bit of that speech from a sort of political analysis of what's going to happen in the next few months thing was that tiny little phrase, we're going to be tested again quite soon, because that's sort of starting to prepare people for things that they don't like.

Okay.

But a lot of the discussion for the last year has been about the

doom-laden speeches and messages coming out from politicians and the lack of a positive story.

Not that something has to be invented, but that sense of, you know, the people in power at the top of the power chain should be able to kind of articulate what it is they're trying to achieve yeah and bring people along with them and that's that that has been the story of the last 12 months which is that's not happened has it well and well the classic or it's been done in a very technical way well the classic example of that is the whole Angela Raynor thing with her property and her stamp duty I was actually on holiday the week that happened so observed it all as an outsider.

And then I noticed two other stories rumbling along that week. One, which was Kirst Armer saying to Chris Mason, my colleague, oh, I'm quite in favor of ID cards, you know, or a digital identity.

And I thought, oh, that's quite an important thing. But of course, the conversation did not get underway because of Angela Raynor.

And then another thing happened, this massive deal for Norway to buy loads of naval ships from Scottish shipyards. And it's worth something like 10 billion.

And of course, that got no publicity either that week because of the Angela Rainer thing.

And I spent the start this week reading about Kirstarmer's field of donkeys and whether the field that he gave his mum was a very sweet gesture,

was taxed the right way and and whatever. But what is going on in the news cycle that those things are not, you know, the important stories aren't actually getting any kind of traction?

Have we just got worse as readers or viewers, are we just going for the sensationalist headline and not bothering with looking at the deeper story?

Well, this, oh, I mean, we could do a whole PhD on this, couldn't we? I think, first of all, it's that the news... does tend to focus on the negative or the dramatic.

And that's why you just tend not to see good news because we bank good news as journalists and move on quite quickly. And then there's the fact that so much of politics is actually about politics.

And this is one of the reasons I didn't want to do it as a 24-7 day job anymore because I just felt so much of our political system is about the politics in the system as opposed to actually a lot of the issues and the problems and the decisions.

It's all about the messaging process. Yeah.
And it just, I mean, okay, like it alone, it's the system we've got. That's how we thrash things out is through politics.

And one of the byproducts of that is a lot lot of the time we're talking about the politicians as opposed to the decisions. Well, just for a laugh, on the train here, I was coming down from Glasgow.

Had to change at Wigan and kudos to the driver of the train at Wigan. He was very, very funny.
Oh, good. Because three minutes out of Wigan, we stopped.

And he just came on and went, well, that's got a lovely journey off to have a nice slow start, hasn't it?

I mean, I'm coming from.

I mean, coming from you, that's, I mean, that's high praise. That was great.
It was great. And then he went, yeah, there seems to be some trouble with some of the lights ahead.
The drama continues.

In fact, we got here in time. It was fine.
But I take my hat off to him. I got a train that was going to Wales.
It was going to Holyhead. And so, of course, I got see it, say it, sorted in Welsh.

And I really wish I'd remembered it. I want to find the large country manor that has been bought by the person who came up with that phrase in some agency.
Apparently, they want to use it more.

They want to double down on it. See it, say it.

It says sorted.

Sorted is, so it's not a third thing you have to do it's just a it's just a full stop isn't it it's just see it and say it sorted is is is just what will happen i mean would you be happy if there was more of a pause see it say it sorted yeah it's about the delivery it's the delivery isn't it should be a different voice see it say it sorted yeah um right so i thought i would because we were talking about how um People at these things, especially if they're in power, don't want to say the wrong thing and so just give very coded messages.

So I thought I'd write my own coded message and you see if they're anywhere near the real coded messages. Are some of these going to be real ones that you smuggled in? No, no, no, no.

These are all pretend, but I just want, I just want you to let me know how close they come to the truth. So when asked by certain people,

maybe spurred on by Andrew Burnham, whether they think Gustamus should resign before the next election, I want him to be the best leader he can be.

And he has my overwhelming support for getting better at it.

I can believe someone saying that because that is a massive stab in the back, isn't it? Yes.

On trump he is of course doing things we wouldn't do and that is something that many disagree with but it's not for me to say what i think on this now do you know where that seems quite yeah i think the government would not you wouldn't hear a minister saying that because they basically have to say trump is good because they get billions of pounds of american investment so actually we're kind of beyond the days now of people criticizing trump and the government okay um should you put up taxes look there are several weeks before the budget so of course i'm not going to say now what i'll be saying in the budget but these were manifesto promises that were made and they will always have been made.

Let me be clear about that. And that's not going to change.
That is so close to a real phrase we heard this weekend when Starmer was talking to Laura Kunzberg.

And he said, and she pressed him on the manifesto commitments on tax. And he said, the manifesto stands, which has now kicked off a massive semantic debate about, well, that's present tense.
Right.

Stands. It's not, will stand.
It's not projecting into the future. It's just the description of literally now.

Gaza. Gaza is, of course, a terrible eventuality unrolling horrifyingly.
So we need all parties to heed the sense of order to feel they can make it stop.

Yes, because you've emoted but offered no help to anyone. And finally, Farage.

Look, he says things that are potentially racist, though he isn't, and it's okay to vote for him. Well, it's not, but you're not racist if you do, but please don't.

Vote for us because we're not racist, though we are tough on immigration, which is different because it's not racist, it's about immigrants.

I mean, you've basically just summarized all other political parties other than Lib Dems and the Greens there. I mean, yes.
No further questions.

I wanted to talk about what I thought was the best conference speech I've witnessed.

So why don't we, in the name of transparency, keep the fact that you've just queued this in, but I will go to what would be my rehearsed way of bringing it in. I believe you've got...

some something to say about the best conference speech. Yeah, and this is actually before I was a political journalist and I was working on Newsround, the Children's News Programme.

And actually, I was watching it at home and it was Tony Blair's farewell conference speech to Labour in 2006. Oh.

And I just thought it was, it was, it was an incredible speech because he had an audience of people who by then kind of hated him, but were also incredibly grateful for him winning three elections for them.

They were excited about the new guy taking over. The new guy ended up being Gordon Brown.

And they'd just been through so much with him and he'd been through so much with them.

And it started off with that amazing joke about he didn't have to worry about his wife running off with the bloke next door because that was the week Cherie Blair had been caught slagging off Gordon.

And so it started off like, I mean, we haven't had a political joke as good as that since then. No, Stalman doesn't do jokes, does he? No.
He doesn't.

Yeah, there is something about politicians when they know they're leaving

that suddenly they become a little more human.

A lot of people comment the fact that the best of Gordon Brown was when he actually left number 10 with his family, who he'd done an awful lot to kind of hide from and protect from

intrusions. And that was literally just him walking.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

But suddenly it was like, oh, he's a family guy, but somehow in the course of his premiership, he kept that at bay and it was much more

script. And just one other thing as well.
The Theresa May famous speech of getting handed the P45 and the coughing fit and the letters falling off.

I was actually, I was covering the EU at that point and I was in Strasbourg at the European Parliament. And I remember watching it on my phone.

And by the end, there was about 200 foreign journalists crowded around me watching it. And from a distance, it just looked absolutely dire, as it would have done in the hall itself.

And people were saying, oh, this is going to finish her. It's like, no, no, one speech, even if it's castro, doesn't finish you.
You get finished for other things.

And so that's also a lesson of these things can go horribly, horribly wrongly,

but they are just moments. And it's very rare that a moment is totally fatal.
Yes. No, but it adds to it.
It all builds up, doesn't it? Should we remember for that? And then country that I love.

There'll be that. Okay.
One final question. A very quick fire thing.
Okay. Very quick, very quick.
Do you know what the quint is? Oh, this is this new thing. Is this this new thing in government?

Go on. Where it's five senior people like Starmer, David Lamy, who's now Deputy Prime Minister, Rachel Reeves, Morgan McSweeney,

and one other person. I hope they're not listening to this, who are going to make big decisions.
One other person who's been promoted to everything, even though no one knows who he is.

Oh, Darren Jones. There we go.
Yes.

Yes. You're very good.
Who is now the cabinet office minister and also chief secretary to down the street? I think there'll be trouble if they keep using the word quint because it sounds like it's

not nothing to do with politics. It's about something else.
What? Well, it's just, it just doesn't

like a little quintet. It just sounds chaucerian.

Okay.

So, thank you very much. That was...

I thoroughly enjoyed that. Yeah, thanks for that.
And I think we've resolved everything. Pretty much, yeah.
I mean, conference season is going to carry on strong for the next hundred years after this.

Feel the rush.

Thanks for listening to strong message here. I'll be back next week.
All our previous episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you're subscribed on BBC Sounds. Goodbye.
Say goodbye, Adam.

Goodbye. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Inks, and we're back for a new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage.

We have our 201st extravaganza, where we're going to talk about how animals emote when around trains and tunnels or something like that. I'm not entirely sure.
We're doing one on potatoes.

Of course we're doing one on potatoes. You love potatoes.
I know, but. Yeah, you love chips.

I'll only enjoy it if it's got curry sauce on it. We've also got techno-fossils, moths versus butterflies and a history of light.
That'll do, won't it? Listen first on BBC Sounds.

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