Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference made frequent use of a classic rhetorical device, antithesis:
“Britain’s future will be built not on credit default swaps but on creative industries. Not low wages and high finance, but low carbon and high tech. Not financial engineering, but real engineering.”
“Credit/Creative”, “low/high” “low/high” “financial/real” – in some ways this is very accomplished list; Miliband used antithesis to convey the huge moral gulf between what is going on in Britain and the vision that he intends.
There were many other examples:
“Let me tell you what the 21st century choice is: Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers? The producers or the predators?”
And
“This isn’t about one industry that’s good and another that isn’t. Or one firm always destined to be a predator and another to be a producer.”
And again
“The new bargain in our economy must be built on co-operation not conflict in the workplace.”
“Co-operation/conflict”, “Producers/predators”– indeed at one point the “PR” content threatened to overtake the speech entirely:
“And we must challenge irresponsible, predatory practices wherever we find them.”
The Wrong Rhetoric
All of this was fine were it not for the fact that it suggested that rhetoric was having to do the work of real meaning. It did away with the need to be specific. Moreover it started to take the speaker into uncomfortable areas. For example, when talking about himself Ed Miliband said:
“What’s my story? My parents fled the Nazis. And came to Britain. They embraced its values. Outsiders. Who built a life for us. So this is who I am. The heritage of the outsider. The vantage point of the insider. The guy who is determined to break the closed circles of Britain.”
“Outsider/insider” was another tempting antithesis – but it broke down with the vague phrase “vantage point” to describe his role. The reality is that Mr Miliband is the leader of a major political party. that is not a vantage point. He has become part of the political elite: an Oxford graduate, a special advisor, now party leader: these are all examples of the “closed circles of Britain” being breached.
The reality is that he relied on antithesis to do too much: it sounded good. But in fact it undid him. For instance when it came to his central theme, contrasting the “something for nothing culture” with the “something for something” future he proposed. This was convincing when he was talking about enterprise and welfare, but when he came to the NHS it failed.
Miliband identified Labour with the NHS:
“Founded by Labour. Saved by Labour. Today defended by Labour once again.”
But of course the NHS is the epitome of “the something for nothing” – no matter who you are what you done, how much you have or have not contributed – the NHS takes care of you. You don’t’ have to deserve it. And suddenly the “something for something” positioning looked flawed; it was simply rhetoric.
Trust Clusters
This was all brought into relief by one other rhetorical device, repetition. In particular the cluster of “trusts” that Mr Miliband used to drive home that “you can’t trust the Tories with our NHS”:
“David Cameron knew the British people did not trust the Tories with our NHS. So he told us he wasn’t the usual type of Tory.
And he asked for your trust.
And then he got into Downing Street.
And within a year – within a year – he’d gone back on every word he’d said.
No more top-down reorganisations?
He betrayed your trust.
No more hospital closures?
He betrayed your trust.
No more long waits?
He betrayed your trust.”
Conversely at the front of the speech and there’s another “trust cluster”:
“Now is not the time for the same old answers. From us, on the issues that lost us your trust. From this Government, on the growth crisis we face…The Labour Party lost trust on the economy. And under my leadership, we will regain that trust.”
And it’s this antithesis which truly characterizes the divide between the two parties: people trust the Tories on the economy; and they trust Labour on NHS. The language of this speech underlined that politics in Britain is about managing this polarity. Too often the rest is just rhetoric.
To read the full transcript of Ed Miliband’s speech go to VoiceGig
