Why stage-managed speeches do nothing to break the Westminster bubble

You tend to find out the day before. “Theresa May will give a speech in X location.” Trains are hurriedly booked. The same faces depart at the same time from the same London station, to whatever part of the country 10 Downing Street has decided is required to make some political point or other.

On Friday, it was Grimsby in Lincolnshire, a town that voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union and has particular nuance through its fishing industry, which, since the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, is not what it once was.

The media never really find out how quickly these events come to be arranged. May, probably, was hoping that the pictures for the TV news channels might reflect a bit of Grimsby and its fishing industry. In the end, she spoke at the warehouse of an offshore wind company. It was directly opposite Grimsby fish market, barely 50 yards away, but unless you were there – which practically nobody was – you’d never have known.

The “audience of workers” as Downing Street described it, sat entirely unheard in front of the prime minister for the entirety of the occasion. It isn’t always like this. Sometimes they get to ask questions. But, even in this highly stage-managed environment, in which workers ask questions in front of both the TV cameras and, more often than not, the CEO of the company that pays their wages, things don’t always work out so well for May. Not so long ago, in Sunderland, someone asked her what she does to relax, she replied: “I enjoy cooking, which has a benefit, you get to eat it as well as make it.”

Ever since the 2017 election, there has been considerable doubt over the point of this kind of stage-managed political stunt. May went around the country, from marginal seat to marginal seat, but addressing only community centres filled with hired activists, waving placards handed to them on arrival and given instructions on how to wave them. “Up and down, not side to side.” I heard these words with my own ears.

Quite what the backdrop of Grimsby offered her, I can’t say. To me, this kind of sanitised politics now seems at best pointless, at worst counterproductive.

Perhaps she thought that, with absolutely nothing new to say at all, something vaguely new was required. But to travel three hours away from Westminster to speak to an audience of entirely silent workers then travel three hours back again does not break the Westminster bubble at all. If anything, it re-enforces it.

Yours,

Tom Peck

Political sketch writer