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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
How to Write a Parliamentary Speech is a practical guide to effective speechwriting from one of the best in the business. In this fresh, funny, practical guidebook, Paul Richards deploys his thirty years' experience writing parliamentary speeches to offer tips, tricks and sage advice. From the maiden speech to the resignation farewell, via tributes, apologies, second readings, adjournments and all points in between, this book gives you the inside track on how it's done. How to Write a Parliamentary Speech will help politicians and their staff write and deliver better speeches. But, more than that, it provides anyone interested in politics with a behind-the-scenes view of how our politicians make their arguments, use (and misuse) language and, ultimately, make the laws of the land. David Cameron, Tony Benn, Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Castle, Charles Kennedy, Tony Blair, Liz Truss, Aneurin Bevan, George Galloway and Michael Gove all make an appearance as Paul Richards pulls apart their speeches and sees what we can all learn. There are one or two stinkers too – to see how not to do it. There are lots of books about speechwriting – but this is the first one in 800 years about how to write a parliamentary speech.
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iiiii
PAUL RICHARDS
HOW TO WRITE A PARLIAMENTARY SPEECH
A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR POLITICIANS AND SPEECHWRITERS
vThis book is dedicated to Sarah, Alex and Ollie.vi
vii‘Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.’
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
‘The business of the orator is not to convince, but persuade; not to inform, but to rouse the mind; to build upon the habitual prejudices of mankind (for reason of itself will do nothing) and to add feeling to prejudice, and action to feeling.’
William Hazlitt on William Pitt the Elder
‘I dreamt that I was making a speech in the House. I woke up, and by Jove, I was!’
Duke of Devonshire (1833–1908)viii
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Olivia Beattie and Ryan Norman at Biteback and Tom Brown at Dods. Good ideas came from Dave Brinson, J. P. Cherrington, Laura Williamson, John Ludlow, Alan Beattie, Bethany Green and Sarah Richards.
I must thank all the current and former Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords who have allowed me to help them with their speeches over the years, including half a dozen current members of the British Cabinet.x
Contents
Foreword by Lord Watson of Wyre Forest
I’ve spent more time than is strictly healthy making speeches in Parliament – from the Commons back benches to the lofty heights of a government minister and, rather astonishingly, as deputy leader of the Labour Party. You might assume that after all this, I jump up in the House of Lords with the confidence of a man who’s just won gold at the Olympics. Alas, no. The truth is that delivering a parliamentary speech is still as nerve-racking as the prospect of public nudity in the main hall at the Labour Party conference. One slip of the tongue and you find yourself at the mercy of the press, which can be relied upon to pounce on your every gaffe with the zeal of a butcher’s dog at a tray of meat.
This is why I was particularly cheered to hear that Paul Richards has put together a guide on how to write a parliamentary speech. The fact that such a manual didn’t already exist is as perplexing as discovering the gender-neutral toilets at the offices of GB News. I’ve known Paul since I could still lace up a pair of ten-hole Dr Martens, and I can assure you he has the xivrare talent of turning the driest of subjects into something one might enjoy listening to. His book is a lifesaver, a sort of ‘How to Avoid Being an Ass in Public’ for the political class.
Now, I’m aware that the boffins down in the labs have been tinkering away with something called artificial intelligence, which promises to churn out speeches with the speed and accuracy of a Boris Johnson drinks order in the American Bar at the Savoy. And while the idea of having one’s speech generated by a machine is undeniably appealing, particularly when faced with a Friday parliamentary debate, there’s something rather soulless about the whole business. A speech written by AI is as palatable as one of those rubber-chicken dinners you have to eat in railway arch restaurants for candidate fundraisers.
The speeches that stick in the mind are those with a bit of human touch, a splash of passion here, a dash of humour there and perhaps the odd mistake that makes one’s audience feel that, despite the suit and the title, you’re just as fallible as the next guy or gal. AI might be able to assemble the words, but it can’t add the sort of sparkle that makes a speech memorable. And believe me, I’ve heard plenty of speeches that could have used a bit more sparkle – or, failing that, a decent interval for the audience to take a restorative nap.
Paul highlights the peculiar reluctance of the UK’s political class to acknowledge the role of speechwriters – a stark contrast to the superstar status they enjoy in the United States. Yet few speeches suffer from the insight of a professional; most are vastly improved by it. There’s no shame in seeking such xvsupport, especially when speeches should reflect the gravity of our democratic institutions and the people we represent.
So, let us toast Paul Richards, who wisely champions the craft of speechwriting over the sterile allure of AI. Perhaps one day, Westminster will be filled with robots delivering speeches to holograms. But until that day, we’ll persist with our human imperfections and occasional oratorical triumphs. Immanuel Kant noted that we must work with ‘the crooked timber of humanity’, and our speeches should continue to reflect that.
LordWatsonAugust2024
Preface
Sliding doors
Itwasadisaster. It would probably have been better if the speech remained unspoken. If only the Speaker had failed to call the member. How much better that would have been! The problem was the lack of time to rehearse it. The speechwriter had done their best with the time they had, but a few brief, rushed conversations were no match to the task. It started badly, without a clarity of purpose or direction. The joke fell flat, not just because the punchline was mangled, but also because the content was too close to the line. In fact it was so far over the line, the line was barely visible. The numbers came out all wrong, with a ‘billion’ appearing instead of a ‘million’. And who knew it is pronounced ‘Beaver’ when it is clearly spelled ‘Belvoir’?
The anecdote failed to fly because it seemed unrelated to the topic, although it was never terribly clear what the topic was. When the MP turned the page of their tightly typed script, p. 4 became p. 6, with p. 5 lost to history.
Or was it? P. 5 seemed to reappear, decontextualised, distressed and alone, like a child lost in the supermarket. And xviiijust as the peroration was revving up, the Speaker called time, cutting the member off mid-sentence. The member sat down to near-silence, wishing the green benches would swallow them up.
Itwasatriumph. The tea room was abuzz within minutes of the member sitting down. They had spoken with charm and wit, eloquence and humour. The joke about the other side had raised genuine guffaws and already social media was spreading it far and near. At 4 Millbank, the broadcasters were clipping for the evening bulletins.
Time in preparation had paid off. Yes, four or five drafts of a four-minute speech seemed excessive, but the time invested was repaid five-fold. Even the last-minute read-through revealed a couple of places where the text could be tightened. The anecdote chimed perfectly with the main thrust of the speech. The use of signposts guided the member, and the audience, through the three main points of the speech. The clever metaphor shone like a torch in the night. It was timed to perfection, with the final stressed syllable landing as the final second clicked by. The only sound was the Hear,Hearsreverberating round the chamber, even, begrudgingly, from the other side.
Later, colleagues congratulated the member on their speech (even the ones who had not heard it), but best of all was the constituent in the Co-op that weekend, who repeated back the key line and said how much they enjoyed the speech. ‘So nice to hear an MP speaking sense for a change,’ they said with a grin.
Introduction
Parliament is the proper place to parler
The Norman Conquest in 1066 brought mixed results. It was bad news for the Anglo-Saxon landowning and ecclesiastical elites who were dispossessed of their land, riches and status, and good news for the Norman French, Bretons and Flemish elites who replaced them.
The Normans, having massacred the last vestiges of English resistance, established a system of government across England and with it the language of the new governors. They brought ‘adultery’, ‘treason’ and ‘vice’, but on the plus side they delivered ‘pleasure’, ‘leisure’, ‘courtesy’ and ‘bacon’.
Norman French was this new language of the new political and religious elite, and there are scores of words in English that derive from the business of being in charge: ‘bailiff’, ‘chancellor’, ‘council’, ‘minister’, ‘baron’, ‘count’, ‘dame’, ‘duke’, ‘marquis’, ‘prince’, ‘sir’, ‘exchequer’, ‘sovereignty’ and even the word ‘government’ itself. When the British monarch signs a parliamentary bill into law, he or she writes LaReineleVeultor LeRoyleVeulton the bill itself to show their assent. In xxand around Parliament, you can see the serjeant-at-arms who runs the place, see the portcullis emblem everywhere and hear about the guillotine in a debate.
However, the most important Norman French word for our purposes is ‘parliament’, which anyone with a GCSE in French will tell you is derived from the word parler – to speak. This is what Parliament is all about – making speeches. For a thousand years, men, and for a hundred years, women and men, have been taking to their feet to make speeches. It is not for nothing that old-school London cabbies refer to the Houses of Parliament as ‘the gasworks’.
The sad truth is that historically most of them have been a bit rubbish. Lacking focus, devoid of interest, overlong, rambling, indistinct, bombastic, insincere, disingenuous and just plain dull. If you watch Parliament for any sustained period, even just for an afternoon on the Parliament Channel, you can witness occasional glimpses of oratorical skill, moments of genius or just fleeting passages of entertainment, elucidation or knowledge. But most of the time, unfortunately, it is pretty dire: the oratorical equivalent of Nytol.
There has never been a golden age of parliamentary oration. Each generation complains about the quality of contemporary speeches and looks backwards fondly to their antecedents. However, the reality is that when we consider some of the truly great parliamentary speeches, from Cromwell to Churchill, what makes them great is usually that they stand out from the crowd. They are great because they capture the national mood, presage a major shift in policy, make or eviscerate a reputation xxior drip with invective. In short, they are great because they are distinct from the speeches before and after them. Most speeches in Parliament are run-of-the-mill and eminently forgettable, even by the MPs delivering them.
It might be because the MP is unprepared or under-briefed. They may have been told to make a speech by their whips with little notice. They may be arrogant and assume their words will flow like honey. They may have had one or two too many drinks in Strangers’ Bar.
This is a crying shame, because it is easy to turn a poor speech into a decent one. There is no magic here, just the application of some simple rules and tricks of the trade. Turning a decent speech into a great one is harder – it may rely on forces beyond the control of speechwriter or parliamentarian. The ancient Greeks, about whom we will be hearing more in the following pages, talked about kairos. This might be loosely translated as the moment, the occasion, the right time.
Occasionally, the circumstances transcend the words. Perhaps the most famous parliamentary moment was the Norway debate conducted on 7–9 May 1940, when the war against fascism was going badly. This was an ordinary adjournment debate (a debate at the end of the ‘jour’, or day) that turned into a no-confidence vote on Neville Chamberlain. The beleaguered Prime Minister won the vote (281 to 200) but lost the argument. The next day he resigned, and Churchill became our wartime leader. Parliamentary speeches shaped the nation’s destiny in a very real way.
Most parliamentary debates are not like the Norway debate. xxiiThey concern changes to our taxes, by-passes, drains, schools, dentists and the rest of the fabric of the nation. MPs are thrust into the Chamber with scribbled notes and handouts from lobbyists, and their speeches come and go without touching the sides. But to enhance the quality of speeches in Parliament is not hard, it is in all of our interests, and provides the driving mission of this book.
You might ask – does it matter? No one is watching. Few speeches are reported on. The old joke is that the best way to keep a secret is to announce it to the House of Commons. Most speeches are inconsequential, without impact on legislation or the way we are governed. If 600-odd MPs want to gather for a few days a week and make speeches to a couple of dozen colleagues, then should we just leave them to it? We tolerate all manner of eccentric behaviour, from collecting beer mats to trainspotting to nudism, so why not just let them get on with it? They’re mostly harmless. Power exists well away from Parliament – in the Cabinet, in the boardrooms of mighty corporations, in the mainstream media, in the nameless denizens of the Establishment – or at least that’s how the argument runs.
Not so. The reality is that parliamentary speeches matter because Parliament matters.
There are plenty of good books on how to write and how to deliver a speech. I can recommend Max Atkinson’s LendMeYourEars, or Richard Heller’s HighImpactSpeeches. There are great compendiums of speeches: ThePenguinBookofModernSpeeches, Philip Collins’s WhenTheyGoLow,WeGoHigh, or Yvette Cooper’s SheSpeaks. YouTalkin’toMe?by xxiiiSam Leith explores the enduring power of rhetoric in our modern culture. Yet for MPs new and old, and for their staff, and for the people who write speeches for MPs and peers, there is no official guide and no obvious handbook. Given that the 2024 general election saw a major new intake of MPs, with 335 who have never been an MP before, a new guide is essential.
All effective communication starts with the audience. So, who is this book aimed at? I imagine the person reading this works for an MP. You might be someone charged with writing speeches as a new part of the job or someone new into the job with this as part of your role. You might, in other words, be like me, aged twenty-three, with a new job in Parliament but without much experience other than student unions and NUS conferences. You might be a seasoned old hand looking for some fresh tips. You may be a student of politics, literature, or rhetoric. You may be someone working in another Parliament, looking to compare and contrast your system with ours. You may even be a Member of Parliament seeking out some sound advice (once you’ve looked to see if you’re named in the index).
This book is aimed at those who woke up this morning with ‘write speech’ on their to-do list. There are plenty of checklists and top tips. Plenty of examples of good speeches. And almost all the examples and case studies are drawn from the Westminster Parliament, rather than the usual fare in other books about speeches: Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Michelle Obama and so on. There’s a huge amount to learn from the likes of these, but speeches in Parliament xxivare different from these barnstorming inaugural addresses, platform performances or rallying cries.
Once you get past the parliamentary protocols and arcane language, at their best, parliamentary speeches can stir the soul, raise a laugh or a tear, capture a mood, coin a phrase or lift the nation to greatness.
The quality of our parliamentary speeches should reflect the quality of our politics. Better politics mean better speeches, and conversely, better speeches mean better politics. A parliamentary speech that is artfully crafted, rigorously thought-through, robustly constructed, intelligently argued and delivered with style, wit and technical skill is a sign that all is not lost in our struggling political system. It serves as a bulwark against the rising tide of populist sloganising and the rancid cesspit that is social media.
Parliamentary democracy is the best system, full stop. It is the way we avoid commissars and the gulag, book-burning and the jackboot, rule by anonymous boardrooms and bad people we cannot eject. The system of politics that involves citizens standing for office, getting elected to serve their neighbours and conducting their business through speech and argument not force or violence is the most effective and noble.
As Labour MP Jess Phillips says in her book:
Politics is the reason that women have the vote, it is the reason that when you break your leg there is a place for you to go and get it fixed … the reason that a man can no longer legitimately rape his wife in marriage. Politics is the xxvuniversal education that exists in the great majority of the world. Politics is the vaccination programmes that rid the world of smallpox, are close to ridding it of polio and are today helping to bring it back from the worst health crisis in many generations.
Politics, in short, is life. Those who say they have ‘no interest in politics’ may as well say they have no interest in food, air, water, work, play, other people, or themselves.
As Tony Blair told the House in his last speech as Prime Minister in June 2007:
I have never pretended to be the greatest House of Commons man, but I can pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that from the first until the last I have never stopped fearing it. The tingling apprehension I felt at three minutes to twelve today I felt as much ten years ago and every bit as acute. It is in that fear that respect is retained.
Some may belittle politics but we know it is where people stand tall. And although I know it has its many harsh contentions, it is still the arena which sets the heart beating fast. It may sometimes be a place of low skullduggery but it is more often a place for more noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well and that is that, the end.
For all the hot air and vacuousness, evasion and obfuscation, not to mention half-hearted speeches to a mostly empty Chamber, our Parliament is still the place where the life-changing xxvilaws are enacted, where the mighty are brought low, where the lowly can be raised up, and where, on occasion, great oration can make the political weather. This book, alongside the hard yards of drafting, editing, revising and delivering parliamentary speeches, can ensure that your speeches are worth listening to, have some sort of impact and maintain their rightful place in the repertoire of democracy. Better speeches, better politics.
Chapter One
What are the rules and conventions?
Parliament, like any debating chamber, has its own rules and conventions, laid down in Erskine May. These have evolved over the many centuries that Parliament has sat.
For example, ErskineMaycovers relatively recent developments such as e-petitions, the election of select committee chairs and the idea of ‘backbench business’. It also covers ancient conventions of debate and procedure, or what Sir David Natzler, a former clerk of the House of Commons, calls ‘the wonderful world of parliamentary procedure at Westminster’.
Erskine May (1815–86) was an actual person who started out as a junior clerk in the House of Commons and published his TreatiseupontheLaw,Privileges,ProceedingsandUsageofParliamentin 1844 when Tory Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister and the Whigs’ John Russell was waiting in the wings.
ErskineMayis one of those works, like DasKapitalor the Bible, from which people quote but few have read cover to cover. It’s vast. Sir David Natzler KCB wrote, ‘Thomas Erskine May’s original work of 1844 was unmistakeably a book, albeit 2one which would have challenged any reader to peruse from start to finish.’ If you’re really interested, they recently made ErskineMayavailable online, all gazillion words of it.
STANDING ORDERS
Far more useful and manageable are the Standing Orders. Standing Orders are written rules covering the House of Commons and House of Lords. They cover, for example, how the business of the House is organised, how time is allocated in both Chambers and the rules relating to committees. The latest version was published in May 2024 in a handy A5-sized book and formed an invaluable guide to the legions of new MPs after the 4 July election.
As you might imagine, there are lots of Standing Orders, covering how and when to make speeches, how to behave and what happens if you don’t. There are now 163 House of Commons Standing Orders for ‘public business’ and around 250 for ‘private business’.
For example, here’s a newish Standing Order relating to proxy voting to give you a flavour:
39A. Voting by proxy. A member eligible … may arrange for their vote to be cast by one other member acting as a proxy (a proxy vote) under a scheme drawn up by the Speaker in accordance with this order and published by him. A member is eligible for a proxy vote by reason of – 1 (a) childbirth; (b) care of an infant or newly adopted child; 3(c) complications relating to childbirth, miscarriage or baby loss; and (d) serious long-term illness or injury subject to the conditions set out in the scheme published under paragraph 1 of this order.
Parliamentarians should know the Standing Orders, and the speechwriter should dip into the sections relating to the conduct of the debates before starting to write.
For example, SO47 covers the time limits on speeches in debates, whereby the Speaker may ‘announce that he intends to call members to speak in a debate, for no longer than any period he may specify, and he may at any time make subsequent announcements varying the terms of an announcement under this paragraph’. This means that a carefully time-scripted speech may become truncated with little notice, thus testing the member’s ability to think on their feet and self-edit as they speak.
Or SO42, which covers the conduct of a member who ‘persists in irrelevance, or tedious repetition, either of his own arguments or of the arguments used by other members in debate’. In such a case of a member droning on with the same points, the Speaker may ‘direct him to discontinue his speech’, which is a polite way to say the Speaker will tell you to shut up and sit down. This means that the speechwriter must come up with a logical, sequential flow of arguments in a speech, with as much fresh material as possible. This is where local examples from the constituency are most useful, rather than the generic points from the lobbyists’ handouts. 4
CUSTOM AND PRACTICE
A legendary and much-missed former general secretary of the Labour Party is reputed to have said ‘it is a rule, but it isn’t written down’. What was true of the Labour Party is also true of Parliament. Much of parliamentary procedure has evolved over centuries and is not codified anywhere in the 250 pages of Standing Orders.
This is known as ‘custom and practice’. The practice of bills being ‘read’ three times in both Houses is not in the Standing Orders, for example. Other procedures have developed through precedents such as rulings made by the Speaker and resolutions of the House. There’s a seating plan, for example, which is purely convention. Most Parliaments have named seats for members. Ours doesn’t even have enough seats for all the MPs. If all 650 turned up at once, some 200 would have to stand or sit on the floor. If an MP wanted to sit next to their friend in the opposition or take a breather on the front bench, even if they are a backbencher, there is no rule that says they cannot.
In June 2022, ahead of a Second Reading debate on levelling up, the Speaker of the House reminded MPs of some of the conventions which they should observe:
Before I call the minister to move the Second Reading, I wish to remind members of the House’s conventions. With a large number of members seeking to participate today, Members will recall that if they participate in the debate they should be present throughout the opening speeches and the 5wind-ups, be present for most of the debate, and, as a minimum, remain in the Chamber for at least two speeches after their own. Also, while we appreciate that interventions are an important part of our debates, if Members intervene repeatedly they are likely to find themselves being called later in the day than might have otherwise been the case. This is so that we all respect others and treat each other fairly and in the best possible way.
So in short, the Speaker is saying observe these guidelines, or your chances of getting called to speak are remote.
For our purposes, here are some of the main rules that you need to obey when speechwriting and speaking.
USING ELECTRONIC DEVICES
You may want to use a script for your speech, to ensure all the points are covered and all the facts are correct. However, the convention is that members cannot read their speeches. Once, if an MP was spotted reading from notes, other MPs would call ‘reading, reading’ at them to shame them. However, these days, the rule has become somewhat relaxed. ErskineMaysays:
In principle, a member is not permitted to read a speech, or a supplementary question, but may make reference to notes. Similarly, a member may read extracts from documents but such extracts and quotations should be reasonably short. The purpose of this rule is to maintain the cut and 6thrust of debate, which depends upon successive speakers meeting in their speeches to some extent the arguments of earlier speeches; debate is more than a series of set speeches prepared beforehand without reference to each other.
The new rules even allow for the discreet use of a ‘hand-held electronic device’ (a tablet or phone, rather than an electric toothbrush or drill, presumably) as an aide-memoire.
So, you might want to use bullet points or cue cards to structure your arguments and key points, but full scripts on A4 sheets of paper are discouraged.
PARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE
There are various conventions on how to speak in Parliament. There’s a certain civil and courteous style that needs to be mastered and written into the drafts of speeches.
For example, the MP should say something complimentary about the previous speaker.
For example, here’s Sarah Sackman MP in the King’s Speech debate in July 2024: ‘Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville [Suella Braverman].’
Next, the MP must address the Chair, not other Members of Parliament. The debates are conducted ‘through the chair’, not directly between members. That means that any reference to ‘you’ only means the person in the Chair – the Speaker or one of their deputies. Everyone else must be addressed in the third person and never, ever by their actual name. 7
The MP needs to know their constituency and other aspects of their status. The main ways to address a member are as follows:
If an MP is not of your own party, you address them as the honourable Member for (name of the constituency) or the honourable member oppositeIf an MP is a member of your own party, you address them as my honourable friendIf an MP is a member of the Privy Council, you address them as either the right honourable Member for (name of the constituency) or my right honourable friendThere is a pleasing convention whereby lawyers who are King’s Counsel (KC) are addressed as the right honourable and learned Member for (name of constituency). As we just saw, this was how Sarah Sackman MP addressed Suella Braverman MP, one lawyer to anotherAnd those members who have served as commissioned officers in the armed forces are known as the honourable and gallant Member for (name of constituency)The official rules state that ‘learned’ and ‘gallant’ have ‘largely fallen out of use’, which is a shame. In April 2022, I note that Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, referred to Sir Keir Starmer like this: ‘The right hon. and learned member is making a very powerful speech.’ So it hasn’t entirely fallen out of use.
You can address a government minister as ‘the minister’ or ‘the Secretary of State’ if they are one. Or ‘the Prime Minister’ 8or ‘the Leader of the Opposition’. Also you can use a title such as ‘Chair of the Defence Select Committee’ if accurate.
Then you must refer to anyone else as ‘they’, ‘he’, she’ or whatever their preferred pronouns are. The only ‘you’ is the person sitting in the Speaker’s chair. Occasionally, MPs, especially all the new ones, forget the rules and say ‘you’ to mean another MP, and get told off for it.
To ask a question to the minister during a ministerial statement, the member must ‘bob’ up and down to catch the Speaker’s eye. This means standing up at the end of each member’s contribution in the hope of being called by the Speaker. On 19 July 2024, the new member for Milton Keynes Central was called without knowing she was bobbing:
Mr Deputy Speaker:
I call Emily Darlington.
Emily Darlington:
I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was not bobbing but I am happy to ask a question. Are you sure it was me you were calling on?
Mr Deputy Speaker:
Please go ahead. The clerks are struggling a bit with new members.
And thus, Emily Darlington got to quiz the minister. 9
UNPARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE
ErskineMaysays that ‘good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language’.
This advice was overlooked or ignored by Alison Thewliss, the SNP MP for Glasgow Central, in May 2024 when she said to the immigration minister, ‘It is hard to know where to start with this complete and utter drivel. The minister comes here today proud of this tawdry, pathetic, self-defeating piece of fascist nonsense [interruption].’
The Speaker did not admonish the member for use of ‘fascist’, but Thewliss sailed close to the wind.
In July 2010, Tom Watson, the then-MP for West Bromwich East, challenged the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, over cuts to school budgets. This is the exchange between Watson and Mr Speaker:
Tom Watson:
He can embarrass himself, he can disgrace his party, but what is intolerable is that he has cynically raised the hopes of hundreds and thousands of families. You’re a miserable pipsqueak of a man, Gove. You have—
Mr Speaker:
Order. Before we go any further, I must ask the hon. gentleman to withdraw the term that I think he used. I think I heard the term ‘pipsqueak’. The hon. gentleman must withdraw that term. It is not appropriate… 10
Mr Watson:
Out of deference to you, Mr Speaker, I withdraw it.
In previous eras, this moment would have gone largely unnoticed, but in the emergent social media era of 2010, the clip was watched by many millions of people who would never usually follow debates in the House of Commons.
There is a story about Dennis Skinner getting into trouble for saying half the government are crooks, being told to withdraw it by the Speaker and replying that half the government are not crooks. People will swear blind they’ve seen the clip. It’s a good example of the Mandela Effect, whereby people collectively think they’ve witnessed something they haven’t. Alas, the joke is as old as the hills and was not coined by Dennis Skinner.
Refusal to withdraw a comment might lead to an MP being disciplined. For example, the Speaker could ‘name’ the member. Naming a member means disciplining an MP for breaking the rules. In extreme circumstances, the Speaker can suspend a member who has already been named under Standing Order 44.
There is no definitive list of unparliamentary words. MPs are advised that the question of whether something said is a breach of order depends on the context. As well as the obvious sweary words, the following terms have been discouraged by Speakers down the ages:
BastardBlackguard 11CowardDeceptiveDodgyDrunkFalsehoodsGitGuttersnipeHooliganHypocriteIdiotIgnoramusLiarPipsqueak (which is why Tom Watson got a telling-off)RatSlimySodSquirtStoolpigeonSwineTartTraitorWartSo just to be clear, calling a member a ‘warty tart’, a ‘lying guttersnipe’ or a ‘drunken ignoramus’ is definitely out.
There’s a bit of a myth that MPs cannot name ‘the House of Lords’ out loud, like Voldemort. The convention is that the House of Lords is referred to as ‘the Other Place’, but the 12official guidance is that there is no rule banning the phrase ‘House of Lords’ and no MP has ever been struck by a bolt of lightning for saying it out loud.
If you want to look like you know what you’re doing, the MP can refer to the ‘Treasury Bench’, which means the government front bench in the Chamber.
You’re not allowed to sing songs or chant in the Chamber. Occasionally, the strains of ‘The Red Flag’ have rung out from the Labour benches, notably as MPs voted to nationalise the coal mines in the 1945 parliament and during the no-confidence vote in 1979, when it is said the singing was led by Neil Kinnock. At the high point of drama during the Norway debates in 1940, Labour’s Josiah Wedgwood led a verse or two of ‘Rule, Britannia’, joined by Tory rebels including Harold Macmillan.
Clapping is forbidden too, although MPs are sometimes compelled to applaud when the moment merits it. The Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons stated in 1998 that spontaneous clapping at the end of a speech could lead to the success or failure of a speech being judged not by its argument but by the length of the applause. Craig MacKinlay earned his applause after his appearance in the Chamber after the amputation of his hands and feet after sepsis. As did the Ukrainian ambassador when he appeared in the gallery in 2023. If you want to show approval, you are meant to say ‘Hear, hear’. ‘Hear, hear’ derives from the encouragement by members to ‘hear him, hear him’ when they agreed with the MP speaking. The shortened version has been in use since the late 1700s, and is still going strong. 13
SPEAKING ENGLISH
Despite all the Norman French words littering the Palace of Westminster, one important rule is that you must speak English. Many Members of Parliament speak other languages, from Swahili to sign language. But the rules are clear. ErskineMay says ‘speeches in the Chamber and in other proceedings must be made in English’.
That’s not to say MPs don’t sometimes slip in other languages. Back in 1959, Dingle Foot dropped this into his speech: ‘At this late hour of the night, I would commend to ministers who are still on the Treasury Bench, the words of Dr Faustus – O lente, lente currite noctis equi.’
Since 1996, the exception is the use of Welsh. This was formalised in a Resolution of the House of 1 March 2017, which states, ‘Whilst English is and should remain the language of this House, the use of Welsh be permitted in parliamentary proceedings of Select Committees and of the Welsh Grand Committee held in Wales and at Westminster.’ Hansard records both the Welsh language contributions and an English translation, if reasonable notice is given of the proposed use of Welsh.
A rather wonderful breach of the rules happened in March 1993, when Derek Enright MP and Nicholas Fairbairn had the following exchange during a debate on education:
Mr Enright:
What an extraordinary statement. Teachers in any school know best what will fire the imagination and enthusiasm 14of their pupils. They use a whole variety of methods to stimulate their pupils – as I did. To help my pupils discover what the optative and subjunctive are all about, I translated Beatles songs into Latin – which would no doubt be to the fury of the hon. gentleman, but it contributed to effective teaching. Many teachers do the same and it is wholly absurd of the hon. gentleman to ridicule teachers who are working effectively at the chalk face, at a job which he could never do.
The Secretary of State talks of giving increased choice, but what increased opportunities for choice do pupils have—
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn:
Will the hon. gentleman give way?
Mr Enright:
I will do so when I have finished making this point, even though the hon. and learned gentleman has only just strolled – I nearly said the wrong word – into the Chamber.
The Secretary of State deliberately refused choice to sixteen-year-olds of the equivalent of the baccalaureate, thereby reducing their choices at eighteen-plus. I give way to the decorously dressed hon. and learned gentleman.
Sir Nicholas Fairbairn:
As a classicist myself with first-class honours, I should be interested to hear a rendition of a Beatles song, with all the words in English translated into Latin by the hon. gentleman. 15
Mr Enright:
Certainly.
‘Habitamussubvitreo,Subvitreo,
Sub vitreo.’
Mr Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. gentleman has been a member of the House long enough to know its rules full well.
Mr Enright:
I apologise unreservedly, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I could not resist the hon. and learned gentleman’s challenge.
The rules are there to maintain a high quality of debate, and the Speaker and their deputies are there to see the rules are followed. A member will soon know if they have transgressed the conventions of the House because they will be admonished. Most members soon pick up the language, rhythm, style and pace of the Chamber. For a new member, the best advice is to spend some hours in the Chamber without speaking, just observing and imbibing the conventions and rules.
For the speechwriter, the best advice is to tune into the Parliament Channel frequently and hear how speeches are crafted and delivered, good and bad. You can hear what works and how certain approaches land. As with most things in life, it is about learning by observing what works for others and honing your own craft through practise.
