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Timing is everything.
Iain Duncan Smith mounted the rostrum this morning, and paused. Great Orators do this; they stand in silence until the anticipation is unbearable, and then they wait just one extra beat. And then they say something to bring the house down.
He paused. He looked around. Everyone waited. The anticipation was unbearable - but in a curiously impatient way. He stepped forward, and waited that extra moment. Then he opened his mouth - and paused. The air came out of the balloon. And then he spoke.
"Two years ago," he said forcefully. And paused.
It went on like that for some time. He built up to a crescendo of very quiet thundering. And then, God help him, he got into his material. Jokes, you see; trenchant political humour to steal the soundbite - or, perhaps, teatime titters for the blue-rinse set.
"I've heard," he announced, with the air of one who knows he's going to score big points, "that the only colour Carol Caplain won't have inside Downing Street is - Brown!"
They laughed. Well, they had to. It's just a shame that Caplain's been ditched. The gag looks a bit old.
He went on to warn John Prescott that this time, the punch was coming from the Right. There was another round of desperately enthusiastic applause.
The Conservative Party is faithfully awaiting the moment when he catches fire. They laugh at these really awful one-liners in the hope that it will ignite him. Suddenly he'll rip open his political shirt to reveal a blue symbol on his chest and fly away with the election. What they are slowly realising is that he already has. This is IDS at full throttle, and if he were a car, he'd be doing sixty in the left hand land with a long-eared dog poking out of the sunroof.
The Conservatives put their stage in the middle of the conference hall. It looks a bit like the bridge of Patrick Stewart's starship. At also looks like the bullseye of a dartboard. When Duncan Smith pauses to move to his next topic, he looks a little lost, and slightly nervous, as if he's concerned about who might be behind him. Then he presses on. And about fifty minutes into his speech, he actually says something powerful.
Honesty, he says, is above all else. It recalled Martin Bell's successful stand against sleaze. It very nearly sets the place alight. For Tony Blair, he says, everything is about politics. If this had come at the beginning - if it had been the central thread to a speech about the Labour Government's failings and failures - it might have been a battle cry to carry him into a serious political fight, and reclaim Middle England from Mr. Blair. Coming after an hour of low-end pub jokes and improbable policy initiatives, it was a brief white horse of Tory hope on an otherwise oily, inky sea.
Timing is everything. |
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