At the end of the day, tumti-tum-ti-tum
HOW TO SPEAK ELECTISH (PART 1)
Absolutely honest with the British people about the big challenge we face, I’m being: When asked a tricky question, begin your answer in this way. Agenda: Agenda is the Electish word for anything unspeakably unpleasant that your opponent keeps hidden. ‘I have convictions. You have opinions. He has a hidden agenda.’ Approach: Always ‘bold’ and ‘new’. ‘I have a bold new approach. You’ve changed your mind. He has performed a U-Turn.’ Aspirations: Catch-all Electish phrase for anything that sounds appealing but which you will never be able to deliver. ‘I have aspirations. You have hopes. He is all pie in the sky.’ Avenue, Every: Whenever you employ the phrase ‘every avenue’, always remember to add that it is ‘worth exploring’. Together, they form the perfect catch-all phrase for filling up airtime. ‘So, do you intend to fix this terrible mess?’ ‘Well, Andrew, to be absolutely honest, it is my firm conviction that every avenue is worth exploring.’ Best deal: See ‘Best possible deal’. Best possible deal: Electish for ‘whatever they let us get away with’. Challenges: Never employ the word ‘challenges’ without prefacing it with ‘long-term’. Choices: Always ‘tough’. Commitment: Always ‘passionate’. Community: Always ‘close-knit’. Complexities: ‘I recognise the complexities. You wrestle with the alternatives. He can’t make up his mind.’ Conclusions: Not to be leapt to. ‘So your party has lost all its seats. This is bad news, isn’t it?’ ‘Let’s not leap to conclusions, Andrew.’ Costed: Never just ‘costed’. Always ‘fully costed’. Crackdowns: Always ‘immediate’. Day, At the end of the: A perfect time-wasting phrase, the Electish equivalent of ‘turned out nice again’ or ‘tum-ti-tum-ti-tum’. But avoid using it as an answer to the question: ‘In what circumstances would you employ the nuclear option?’ Deal: Always ‘best possible’. Repeat as often as possible, in the hope of convincing swinging voters that you have no intention of holding out for the worst possible deal. Decisive: ‘I am decisive. You haven’t thought it through. He constitutes a very real danger to society.’ Dirty tricks: Electish for whatever your opponent gets up to. ‘We have a strategy. You play hard-ball. They indulge in dirty tricks.’ Discussions: Always ‘wide-ranging’ and/or ‘full and frank’. Divisions: Always ‘deep’. Doorstep: The one place where news never seems to carry. ‘A total electoral wipeout is expected.’ ‘Well, that’s not what I’m hearing on the doorsteps, Andrew.’ Easy answers: There are no easy answers. Ebullient: ‘I am ebullient. You are over the moon. He is blind drunk.’ Economic plans: Always ‘long-term’. Every avenue: Waiting to be explored. Experts: Never to be trusted, because they lack a gut instinct. ‘Can you believe it! My dentist claims to be an expert on teeth! But my gut instinct tells me they’re much better left unbrushed.’
Families: Always ‘hard-working’. Fears: ‘I raise timely questions. You sound the alarm. He plays on people’s fears.’ Figures: The one thing that everyone knows about figures is that they never add up. Unless you’ve produced them yourself, in which case they have been ‘costed’. First name: Be sure to mention the first name of your interviewer every few seconds. ‘Well, Andrew’, ‘I’m glad you asked me that, Kirsty’, ‘As I’m sure you know, David.’ Finish, If you’d just let me: Electish phrase that precedes a lengthy repetition of statements already uttered. Forwards, not backwards: Excellent for inserting in a platform speech when you find that you’ve forgotten what to say next. ‘And I tell you this, my friends! Um. Er. Um. Yes, we must go forwards, not backwards!’ Frank, To be perfectly: Electish phrase to be used immediately before any fib. ‘To be perfectly frank, Andrew, that’s something I never said, or, if I did, it was taken completely out of context.’ Gauntlets: Invariably to be ‘thrown down’ and/or ‘taken up’, but never both at the same time.