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As I know people will be waiting with baited breath for my prognostications on the Labour Party Conference, I thought that I had better pen a quick summary starting with the main non events of these past few days.

The Rebels did not rebel, Cherie Blair was ‘nice’ – well as nice as she can be and John Prescott did turn up wearing a bad haircut or a syrup of figs and dressed as the Punch and Judy man, perhaps he thought they were marching on to Blackpool for a rally.

Party Conferences are like Live Concerts

Some years ago when I was doing ‘Security’ I can remember a Roadie explaining to me that the people who turned up to see their favourite Rock Group weren’t interested in the ‘studio recording sound’. They were happy as long as the band played all their big hits so that they could sing along and be part of the event. Party Conferences are just like that, bit of “face time” lots of the old bullshit and lies so they don’t feel lonely.

Alistair Darling’s Speech

Alistair’s speech was to his usual standard, oratory delivered in a Welsh accent with a troupe of Mongolian flaming sword dancers performing discreetly in the background. The essence of it all was; “Yes we are in the shit, we won’t raise taxes we’ll just borrow loads more so the Tories will be totally buggered when they inevitably win the election and I’ve lost my seat and retired.”

All in all it was a fair summary of a plan which after depriving the electorate of a vote on the EU, is only the second one this Government has come out with in 15 months. There was some talk about replacing Alistair as Chancellor with Ed Balls so I had to intervene in this which I did by writing the following contribution to the national press:

“You are all wrong, the word on the street is that Harry Potter is going to be the next Chancellor because it will take a lot of magic and a major miracle to sort out the mess Gordon has made.

Mind you, I do understand that Gordon really wanted Gandalf for the gig as he wanted to add a bit of gravitas to his Cabinet of half wits but the Elfs put a block on it because apparently word has it, Peter Mandelson and his ring is off with the Fairies.”

Next Out the Trap Milibands Speech

Some years ago I used to occasionally ‘train & mentor’ managers in making PowerPoint presentations to live audiences. The graphics side, because I can do that was dead easy and generally amount to cutting their 42 slide opus down to 6 slides which encapsulated the ‘message’ but training them on the actual presentation bit, was always hard. A common problem was someone because he was the “boss” thinking that he had to make the presentation himself when psychologically, he wasn’t up to it. I always tried to find someone in his team who could and persuade the ‘boss’ to delegate.

The basic rules are simple but the very first is that you need to know your subject thoroughly because it gives you personal confidence and whether you only use part of your knowledge, projects authority. You also need to be a bit of a showman and want the audience to enjoy your presentation – think “them” not “me”, if you enjoy doing the presentation, there is a fair chance that many in the audience will too. But the bottom line is that you always must be genuine and never try to do something you just aren’t capable of like say attempt a “Funny story”, either you can do that stuff or you can’t.

My motto was regardless of outcome, be yourself and give the audience a chance to like you part of which is never present too long and never bore, they have had to sit through 100s of these !

Although not just him, speakers at TUC Conferences are even worse, David Miliband lacks any of the essential qualities required of a communicator of any kind. I am at a total loss as to why anyone with a half a brain would consider him “Leadership Potential”, in private industry the only reason people like him get to a senior position is because they are the Bosses Son.

He is not likeable, lacks personal warmth and ‘engagement’ with other people and worse of all, his face and body language are rubbish. A ‘trick’ I used with people was to think of them appearing as a character in a TV ad and then fit their whole performance around ‘that approach’ because it often helped them to keep in character. For David Miliband, those wonderful ads Rowan Atkinson did for Barclaycard immediately come to mind.

Politicians by nature are egotists which is fair enough because regardless of political party, in the UK you will come in for a fair amount of personal abuse however, “people blatantly on the make” don’t fare too well. David Miliband is a political spiv and I would dislike him as much if he were Tory, he is a cheap copy of Blair but without the charm.

He actually had the audacity to claim: “Promoting democracy is a Labour value” Ha, ha, ha. Not only isn’t it when it comes to picking the Leader of the Labour Party which, one might say is their problem, but it also isn’t when it comes to Bondage to Brussels. Clearly “Democracy” to a worm such as this amounts to : “You can only vote if you give the Right answer otherwise, bugger off because I’m busy being important !”

Brown’s Speech

It is odd that since “Loads of Money Blair” left, the Labour Party lacks a single person who can deliver a speech of any passion and substance.

However, someone perhaps aided by fear had been at work on Brown who’s average speech sounds like a roll-call of this year’s tractor production figures complete with serial numbers. The beginning of the speech in terms of political management was by Brown’s standards excellent. Getting Sarah Brown to introduce him, the early references to his children being “people” and so on is what he should have been tutored in whilst still Chancellor to prepare him for this role, but I’m afraid, that is where it stops.

The main body of the speech betrays just how vulnerable he is to being attacked on his record as both Chancellor and now Prime Minister. Although it is incorrect to call another man coward that you do not know, if he had the courage to embrace and explain his mistakes, he might have been able to turn things around, the classic example was his apology to Congress, not the electorate, over the 10p tax ‘mistake’.

In case you have forgotten it was slipped in by Brown a year before in his last Budget. He did this without telling Blair prior to his Budget Speech who rumour has it, went ape when he left the Chamber following Brown’s announcement because he immediately saw the political bear trap Brown had set himself. Brown can fairly claim that most of the turmoil in the financial markets is completely outside of his or any Prime Minister’s control but so much of the domestic consequences are like the 10p tax, a consequence of the deeply flawed judgement of Gordon Brown, personally and that is what will sink both him and Labour in May 2010

I would expect a small say 10% bounce for Labour in the polls over the next few days but next week is the Tory Party Conference and I’m expecting a vintage Cameron performance. Let the dust settle, the polls will fall again for Labour because and we will all still be faced with the same useless Prime Minister and Government with 18 months left to go but, go they will – Thank Heavens.