He’s quite the orator. Listen to him pinion Mandelson. It’s about 25 mins in all.
First part, second part with the best bit, and the last part.
Cardinal Wolsey indeed!
Right. Because criticizing Mandelson (aka The Sleaze That Walks Like A Man) is just so hard to do …
My speakers are on the blink. Is this up to the standard of Hague’s seminal performance at the 1977 party conference?
Thanks for this Quartz.
Another pearl. He manages to command attention through the entire speech, despite its length. Fluent, witty and clever.
Which position do you think he’ll eventually end up in the putative new Tory cabinet? He’d be great as Deputy PM at PMQs, should Cameron be on holiday.
It’s very hard to do it as well as Hague does it.
No idea, but it’s well up to the standard of this one.
I wouldn’t be a Tory supporter if in the UK but it’s a shame that he took the leadership so early in his political life. He is a great speaker and a politican I’ve always respected even when i disagree with his policies.
Great speech.
I don’t think he’d be good as Deputy PM: the jibes over having previously been the leader would be too obvious. And he won’t want to be seen as a combination of Gordon Brown and Michael Heseltine. Further, we only really hear of him with the prepared speech and not off-the-cuff remarks. I wonder why?
Was this not always his problem though? He’s a great orator/stand-up comic but that’s not the same thing as being a great politician. He nailed Blair pretty consistently at PMQs for years but it didn’t do him a blind bit of good, because he couldn’t control his party and he couldn’t formulate any policies people would actually vote for.
He’s a great cheerleader for the Tories, and by all accounts a very intelligent and well-informed man, but Deputy PM with special responsibility for PMQs is not exactly the top of the greasy pole.
To be fair to him, he came in at a time when the Tories were still getting to grips with themselves, and still tainted by the disastrous Major years. And he wasn’t up to the job. But he’s clearly matured, and perhaps he now has the experience to be up to the job. But I’m not so sure.
Comebacks have happenned in other countries: France is the obvious example. Could it happen here?
I always quite liked him as leader and think he wasn’t given a fair crack, particularly given what the Tories ended up with afterwards (IDS and then Howard, IIRC). He could easily rise to the top again, and his timing should be better next time.
Hague will ever be skewered in the public mind as having a preternatural interest in politics at a time when he should been going out getting drunk and trying to get laid like every other young man.
*“Are you coming to the disco tonight, William?”
“Sorry, I’ve got to go bald and lead the Conservative Party”
He’s like me, only getting into politics instead of being obsessed with elections. I don’t get drunk or laid either.
I managed to get drunk, but the other always eluded me. Going to a single-sex school didn’t help.
Frankly, I’m not feeling the love for Hague … he might be marginally preferable to some of the other dead weights and empty suits in the Shadow Cabinet, but that’s not really saying much.
On the other hand, Labour should have scraped Mandelson off the sole of its collective shoe many years ago. So a plague on both their houses. Come the next round, I shall just have to hold my nose and vote Lib Dem again.
Unfortunately I can’t forget him as a snotty nosed kid during Thatcher’s reign.
He has got a good sense of humour though - I’ll give him that.
I’ll have to do the same. It’ll be a wasted vote because in my part of Surrey there’s not a hope in hell of the Tory being beaten.
Regardless, it’s important that you do vote, even if it’s for a candidate whom you expect to lose. It’s actually in your longer-term benefit. Firstly, all parties pay close attention to the results, and steal and adapt policies from each other; secondly, a better-than-expected showing may result in your party expending more resources next time around, or promoting the candidate to a more winnable seat.