QUENTIN LETTS: Rachel Reeves’ voice was adenoidal, as if pumped from a distant cellar through rubber tubes
Rachel Reeves had remarkably few policies for the Labour conference but she is such a peculiar public speaker that she was still rather gripping.
The voice was adenoidal and chasmal, as if pumped from some distant cellar via a network of rubber tubes. The delivery was mechanical but operators had forgotten to switch on her arms. It was therefore a little like watching a speech by the Venus de Milo.
The face was intermittently animated. Devoid of emotion for long passages, it occasionally flew into tics and spasms when confronted by tricky jumbles of consonant and vowel.
Imagine someone eating vichyssoise in which the occasional chicken bone has been concealed. One moment she was zoned out and impassive. The next, oi! Her noise swerved to the left and her upper lip yanked rightwards. Then she said ‘on current trends’ and the left eyelid slammed shut.
Give her a pipe and she could have been Popeye the sailor man.
Rachel Reeves Labour MP for Leeds West, Shadow chancellor, delivers her speech to the Labour conference on Monday
Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves during the Labour Party Conference on Monday
Yes, it made for compulsive viewing for, as with a fairground ghost train, you never knew what was going to happen next.
And the hair was magnificent, miraculous, Cleopatran. Gordon Brown in an Anna Wintour wig. You could stare at that bobbed do, a shimmering curtain of indigo silk, and gawp until a bluebottle flew into your mouth and out your ear.
With that panther mop to hypnotise us, who cared if Ms Reeves had miserably few ideas save beyond imposing VAT on private schools and creating a Covid corruption commissioner? Each strand must have been individually scissored and boot-polished.
More stylists must be required to perfect Ms Reeves’ inky barnet than they have window cleaners at the Eden Project or than Earl Bathurst has gardeners to trim the yew hedge at Cirencester Park.
The speech had a succession of oratorical waves, each starting with a strangulated accusation about Tory misrule, followed by a more feathery middle passage and then a stern, quacking crescendo, the cresting of the wave if you like, as she asserted that she was going to ‘rebuild Britain’.
Delegates rewarded her with ovations, each of which Ms Reeves digested slowly. Her reaction was the same each time: a glower followed – ping! – by a baring of the teeth and two total blinks.
You thought Jeremy Hunt was strange with his peanut-bottomed walk and stiff neck? Wait till you see this one. She’s even odder.
Her warm-up artiste was Mary Portas, whose la-di-dah gushing was not appreciated by a comrade sitting near me. ‘She sounds more like a Tory,’ he growled. Indeed she did.
In fact several speakers yesterday sounded as if they were just back from Downton Abbey auditions. Yet they, too, were often short on substance.
British retail consultant and broadcaster Mary Portas speaking at the Labour Party Conference ahead of Rachel Reeves’ speech
The candidate for Plymouth Moor View, fresh out of the Royal Marines, looked and sounded terrific but his contribution was dismal padding. Sloganeering was everywhere. We had ‘take back control’, ‘Britain isn’t working’ (© Saatchi & Saatchi c.1979), ‘a brighter Britain’ and much besides.
David Lammy, Shadow Foreign Secretary and intellectual powerhouse, hunched his shoulders, shook his arms like a cocktail barman, and complained about his poverty-stricken childhood.
Hang on, he was a scholarship-winning chorister at Peterborough Cathedral. Sharon Graham, leader of the Unite union, furiously demanded higher public-sector wages and screamed ‘solidarity to you all!’, which generated a forest of clenched fists.
Various people demanded renationalisation of private industry. Lisa Nandy wanted higher foreign aid payments and was given an ovation that will make it harder for Sir Keir Starmer to sack her.
And then came Ed Miliband, whom Sir Keir would reportedly love to zap. Ed Mil’ went nuts. ‘Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!’ he bellowed, proselytising about Net Zero and ‘floating wind’.
He yelled, threw out his gnashers, flared his squashed nostrils and waggled one forefinger like a stiffened frankfurter. The arms did such windmills, it’s a pity he wasn’t connected to the National Grid.
Delegates roared. Mr Miliband stood back from the lectern and just laughed.
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