The Decline of Eloquence in British Politics
28th July 2026
There is a rot at the heart of our political system. It casts its shadow over Parliament, through the chamber, at the dispatch box and along the (largely empty) green Commons benches. It pervades our political culture, often recognised yet rarely analysed. And no, it’s not the product of an establishment stitch up, thuggish populism or a hidden gestapo, policing the behaviour of our political classes. It is the decline, in nature and in practice, of political oratory.
As Tom Tugendhat so brilliantly pointed out, in one of the few parliamentary speeches worth listening to these days, members have put less attention, care or thought into their speeches; or even, it seems, into attending parliament unless they’re whipped into it. The very phrase, I rise to speak, innocuous though it may seem, barely troubled the record a decade ago and yet now recurs constantly; emblematic of the Americanisms that have beaten their way into our political discourse. These, and the increasing use of ChatGPT and other assorted AI, have only served to cast a light on a decay that had been festering for years.
Of course, it would be idle to assume Parliament could return to the days of Chatham, where the thunder of one man could collapse governments and the fate of a nation hung on the words of a speech in the Commons. But for good oratory we need only go so far back as the 1960s, to the era of Macleod’s ‘Brotherhood of man’ or even Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’. In place of eloquence, we have been left with vague aphorisms and meandering ‘mission statements’. Instead of Prime Ministers who could proudly declaim “Never had so much been owed by so many to so few” or had the eloquence to expound of “the winds of change is blowing through this continent”; we are left with yet another prime minister who, lectern and notes discarded, could reach no higher than a promise ‘to make politics work, to make it work better’.