Amor Real Telenovela - He thrilled them with his constitutional reform statement in 2007, he made them sigh at the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, he made them clap at the St Paul’s Institute. Now, just in time for Easter and indeed for Fathers’ Day, a collection of all these moments and many more are available to own in a single weighty volume. Today, Gordon Brown’s greatest hits arrives in bookshops up and down the country.
The Change We Choose; Speeches 2007-2009 contains the Prime Minister’s most exciting speeches from the past three years.
Those who seek inspiration in the oratory of Gladstone, Disraeli and Churchill will now be able to turn to Mr Brown’s discussion of the Millennium Development Goals, his appeal for global solutions to global problems and his promise of a points based immigration system.
Notable by its absence, however, is the speech containing his promise of “British jobs for British workers”, that caused controversy in 2007 and was later taken up by the BNP.
The arrival of this 300-page volume has already provoked something of sensation among publishers and disbelief among speech writers and academics.
At Politicos, the publishing house, an employee was temporarily lost for words. “How grizzly,” he said at last. Collected speeches of Churchill and Aneurin Bevan still sell in great volumes and in great volume, but he was not sure there was a market for Mr Brown.
“I suppose it would be great for insomniacs,” he ventured.
Asked to fit Mr Brown within the pantheon of Parliamentary orators, Brian Jenner, head of the UK Speech Writers Guild, said he was “up there with John Major”.
Others described him as the worst Labour speaker in fifty years. Johnathan Tonge, a professor of politics at Liverpool University, thought it possible that the Prime Minister was a better speaker than Clement Attlee.
“The trouble is, his most famous lines are also his most damaging ones,” he said. “‘No return to boom and bust’, that was a hostage to fortune.” More recently, he said, “there is often a lack of substance and even the jokes are laboured.”
The chief problem, according to Phil Collins, formerly a speech writer for Tony Blair, now a leader writer for The Times, was that the Prime Minister wrote his speeches himself.
While Mr Blair would write 25 minute speeches in fountain pen at the last minute, Brown is continually building a database of his thoughts on a laptop. Parts of his 45 minute speeches are then cut and pasted from this vast source.
“He is always determined to have ten announcements in every speech,” said Mr Collins. “Structurally, that is very hard to tie together.”
His speeches are frequently “a patchwork of different arguments for different people,” he said. “British jobs for British workers doesn’t fit within the speech that he said it in. It was just a line to appeal to a certain group of people.”
Unbowed by such criticism, Mr Brown has been a prolific publisher of his own speeches. Fans of his oratory may already own Speeches 1997-2006. There is also a parallel anthology from the same period, entitled Moving Britain Forward.
In the Edinburgh offices of Mainstream Publishing, the house behind the latest book, managing director Bill Campbell was bullish about its prospects. “We don’t expect it to challenge Harry Potter,” he said. “But it’s a significant contribution to the politics of our time.”
Mr Campbell is a longtime friend of the Prime Minister and has been publishing his writing since they was at Edinburgh University together. “I used to edit the student newspaper,” he said. “He was my main features writer - very prolific.”
In Downing Street, a spokesman for the orator himself said the book was being released by popular demand. “A number of people have been asking him over time for collections of his speeches,” he said. “I hope it will appeal to people from across society, from the average punter in a bookshop to academics and political observers.”
The Change We Choose; Speeches 2007-2009 contains the Prime Minister’s most exciting speeches from the past three years.
Those who seek inspiration in the oratory of Gladstone, Disraeli and Churchill will now be able to turn to Mr Brown’s discussion of the Millennium Development Goals, his appeal for global solutions to global problems and his promise of a points based immigration system.
Notable by its absence, however, is the speech containing his promise of “British jobs for British workers”, that caused controversy in 2007 and was later taken up by the BNP.
The arrival of this 300-page volume has already provoked something of sensation among publishers and disbelief among speech writers and academics.
At Politicos, the publishing house, an employee was temporarily lost for words. “How grizzly,” he said at last. Collected speeches of Churchill and Aneurin Bevan still sell in great volumes and in great volume, but he was not sure there was a market for Mr Brown.
“I suppose it would be great for insomniacs,” he ventured.
Asked to fit Mr Brown within the pantheon of Parliamentary orators, Brian Jenner, head of the UK Speech Writers Guild, said he was “up there with John Major”.
Others described him as the worst Labour speaker in fifty years. Johnathan Tonge, a professor of politics at Liverpool University, thought it possible that the Prime Minister was a better speaker than Clement Attlee.
“The trouble is, his most famous lines are also his most damaging ones,” he said. “‘No return to boom and bust’, that was a hostage to fortune.” More recently, he said, “there is often a lack of substance and even the jokes are laboured.”
The chief problem, according to Phil Collins, formerly a speech writer for Tony Blair, now a leader writer for The Times, was that the Prime Minister wrote his speeches himself.
While Mr Blair would write 25 minute speeches in fountain pen at the last minute, Brown is continually building a database of his thoughts on a laptop. Parts of his 45 minute speeches are then cut and pasted from this vast source.
“He is always determined to have ten announcements in every speech,” said Mr Collins. “Structurally, that is very hard to tie together.”
His speeches are frequently “a patchwork of different arguments for different people,” he said. “British jobs for British workers doesn’t fit within the speech that he said it in. It was just a line to appeal to a certain group of people.”
Unbowed by such criticism, Mr Brown has been a prolific publisher of his own speeches. Fans of his oratory may already own Speeches 1997-2006. There is also a parallel anthology from the same period, entitled Moving Britain Forward.
In the Edinburgh offices of Mainstream Publishing, the house behind the latest book, managing director Bill Campbell was bullish about its prospects. “We don’t expect it to challenge Harry Potter,” he said. “But it’s a significant contribution to the politics of our time.”
Mr Campbell is a longtime friend of the Prime Minister and has been publishing his writing since they was at Edinburgh University together. “I used to edit the student newspaper,” he said. “He was my main features writer - very prolific.”
In Downing Street, a spokesman for the orator himself said the book was being released by popular demand. “A number of people have been asking him over time for collections of his speeches,” he said. “I hope it will appeal to people from across society, from the average punter in a bookshop to academics and political observers.”
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