One of the most interesting aspects of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s public persona is the way he appears to see his public role. For a very prominent politician, his approach to public speaking is odd. He stands before his audience and says things at it with little obvious attempt to use rhetorical devices other than the words themselves.
Starmer seems to make little attempt to engage, persuade or amuse and almost no attempt to read his audience and adjust to its mood. As we all know, it is possible to talk for effect or talk to convey information and usually whatever we say, it’s both. With Keir Starmer it’s neither and it’s strange.
Starmer doesn’t talk to convey information and neither does he talk for effect, except perhaps in a very wooden and unconvincing manner, as if he expects the unadorned words to create the effect. It doesn’t work and Starmer appears to be the only person who is unaware of this failing.
Some people talk for effect to the exclusion of information except as a prop for the effect. Some people appear to talk to themselves in this way, directing the persuasive effect at themselves. It’s the internal conversation we call thinking. Starmer seems to do it all the time.
When he talks at an audience, Keir Starmer seems to be addressing himself, reiterating wooden thoughts in a wooden manner suited to his wooden nature. Perhaps this is why he constantly fails to disguise his habit of talking at an audience rather than to it. As if his audience is never quite real to him, no more real than an erratically insubordinate dream.
5 comments:
It brings to mind some really awful academic presentations where 'read a paper at a conference' is exactly what happens — head down, read in monotone, send everyone to sleep.
All this despite having a voice coach, and every senior politician since the 1970s has had a media team who coach them on how to present oneself on TV, etc.
I sometimes meet people who are like him - they seem to know that they come across badly, and have evidently learned some basic "techniques" in order to cope. When to nod, when to say your name, when to reach out and gently touch your arm, etc. It's crude stuff, though, and you can almost hear the wheels turning behind the scenes as they work out what to do.
Obviously, they are better at reading a script or following a procedure than dealing in the moment with a fluid and changing social situation. I think that explains why Sir Very Very Kleir was able to rise to the top, and can just about cope with PMQs if he is prepared. Give him a spontaneous riot, or an off the cuff question from an interviewer, though, and he has to resort to platitudes.
Anon - it's worth doing it in front of a camera a few times first, but some people never seem to be comfortable in front of an audience.
Sam - in a world of voice coaches, advisers and media teams, it's surprising that Labour people didn't know how poor Starmer's public performances would be and how inflexible he'd be towards shifting political circumstances. Maybe they thought he'd come across as a safe pair of hands after the Tories.
I’m reminded of your previous post comparing him to an automaton.
Perhaps, in the way of these things, his voice coaches have told him to imagine that his auditors are naked or that he is speaking to one of his nearest and dearest - since he has no imagination to speak of, this simply sends his frontal lobe straight to the loading screen while the rest of his brain dutifully trots out the script.
Macheath - it probably is something like that, imagine the audience is something unthreatening then trot out the script. Things would go more smoothly with a less dishonest script.
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