Brown's Big One

by Graham Davies

We certainly won't be seeing a repeat of the camply cringe-making theatricality of Mandelson. Brown does not do theatre. Or rhetoric. Or humour. We can expect a hard-working slog through the "achievements" of his government, combined with a clumsy attack on the the Tories and a promise to fight them on the beaches etc etc.

He has never really had much use for other people's opinions when it comes to speechwriting....or anything else, really. Tony Blair welcomed input from a wide variety of sources that were co-ordinated by a Chief Speechwriter.

Strangely, Blair was totally computer-phobic and wrote everything longhand. Brown uses his laptop constantly to create the first draft of every speech....and every subsequent draft. He does not even ask anyone else to give him jokes.

Brown is bucking a trend that has characterised most of the great speeches of the last 50 years: very few are the exclusive work of the speaker himself.

Kennedy, Thatcher and Reagan were humble enough to ask for help. Brown is not.