‘Speak clearly, if you speak at all’: How to win an argument – by those who do it best

Three crucial elements make a politician an effective public speaker, writes John Rentoul

It has long been the convention to dismiss the parliamentary skills as old-fashioned or trivial (Getty Images)

Nine years ago I listed Nicola Sturgeon as one of the Top 10 most interesting politicians in the UK. She had just taken over from Alex Salmond as first minister of Scotland, and was so little known in England that when the Conservatives wanted to scare the voters in the election the following year they had to photoshop Ed Miliband into Salmond’s pocket.

She turned out to be successful, in that she lasted a long time at the top, but ultimately failed to make any progress towards the goal of Scottish independence, which remained the only test for her.

If I were to repeat the exercise now, her place in the Top 10 would be taken by Stephen Flynn, the new leader of the Scottish National Party in the House of Commons. He is still only 34, and yet he has already made a mark as one of the best speakers in parliament, even as his party goes into a tailspin in Scotland.

He was interviewed this week by Nick Robinson of the BBC, and I was struck by his description of how seriously he took the art of public speaking. He said: “When I’m listening to people doing interviews or speaking, I like to pause it and think, ‘What would I say? How would I answer that?’”

He said he thought that made him sound like “a bit of an anorak”, but on the contrary I thought it was impressive that he prepared for one of the most important parts of his job with such dedication.

He has an unusual life story, in that he spent most of his teenage years bedridden by a bone-wasting disease. He said it gave him a lot of time to read, and to think. The parallel with another Scottish politician who is a great rhetorician is striking: Gordon Brown spent months in hospital as doctors fought to rescue his eyesight after a rugby accident when he was 16.

When Flynn was elected to parliament, after three years as leader of Aberdeen City Council, he still used crutches, but he says that a hip replacement has transformed his life.

Unlike many MPs, he seems to have entered the Commons having thought deeply about what it takes to be successful in that hostile environment. “The ability to control the chamber is quite a thing,” he told Robinson. Asked who he thought had that ability, he mentioned Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary. Loyally, he added two of his SNP colleagues, Tommy Sheppard and Stewart Hosie, and threw in Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, as well: “I’m a big fan; very entertaining.”

This is quite something: a politician who is open about the craft of politics. It has long been the convention to dismiss the parliamentary skills as old-fashioned or trivial. Who needs to make a speech or engage in debate when you can get the soundbite you want on the news or in a social media clip?

Labour Party members even went so far as to choose a leader who was the opposite of a Commons performer, and it worked surprisingly well in the 2017 election campaign. But usually being respected in the Commons is essential to effective party leadership.

It is not just that other MPs have a high opinion of good orators, which helps build team morale, but that many of the skills of parliamentary debating transfer well to the TV studio, where election campaigns are won and lost.

My list of good parliamentary performers would be different from Flynn’s. Tugendhat’s lament for the retreat from Afghanistan, when he “had the entire chamber in the palm of his hand” in Flynn’s words, was too emotional for my taste, but it was enough to power his Tory leadership campaign through to the third ballot last year.

Rishi Sunak has been able to hold the chamber from the moment he emerged as a fully-fledged politician of the first rank as chancellor during the pandemic. And Michael Gove is the one person who, if I see his name on the annunciator screens around the Palace of Westminster, I will go into the press gallery to watch in person.

But the significance of Flynn’s interest in the art of rhetoric is to remind us how few good practitioners there are – and how even someone such as Angela Rayner, a natural debater, lost the chamber completely by reading out a laundry list of everything the Tories have ever done wrong at Prime Minister’s Questions this week.

As for Keir Starmer, his dependence on notes puts him at a permanent disadvantage at the despatch box. In the old days, MPs would heckle “reading!” if one of their number looked at notes while asking a question. Perhaps they should bring that back.

Learn your lines. Put your notes away. Listen to what the other side is saying and respond to it. That is the way, as Flynn put it, to “land the blows”. But it is also the way to win arguments and elections outside the chamber.