Why can politicians never get the hang of a decent after-dinner speech north of Watford?

Every city in England has a big Chamber of Commerce dinner once a year. They always try to get a Minister to speak. Often they are successful. Almost invariably, the Minister's speech is a disaster. Last Friday in Leeds, the Secretary of State for Defence was absolutely dreadful. He was not an exception.

The minister's task ought to be straightforward enough. What is required is about 15 minutes of talk containing a few bits of funny material (which do not have to be original), a few complimentary references to the host city for the evening and a body of serious material which is informative and original. What we get is a half-hour monotone full of turgid Government statistics, with no humour and containing about as much originality as a Christmas cracker joke.

I ask why they always get it wrong, but really I know the answer. They don't write the speeches themselves. The speeches are written for them by civil servants who have no concept of what the audience wants. Usually, the speech writers do not even attend the dinners. They slave away in the mad illusion that the audience will listen to their boss simply because he (or she) is the minister.

A couple of years ago when I was president of the Chamber in Bradford we were going to have Harriet Harman as our speaker. She had to let us down at short notice but promised us another minister in her place. That turned out to be Geoffrey Hoon, yes, he who is now Secretary of State for Defence. His office confirmed he could come but said he had to be in York by 10pm and so could he be away by 9pm please? I said the speeches would not start until 10pm. Well then, they asked, could he make his speech before the dinner? I said he had better not come at all in that case and we would find someone else. This made them annoyed. Mr Hoon, they said, would consider that "ungracious". They were nice people and I guess they had first-class degrees from really impressive places but they clearly had not got the foggiest idea of what a Bradford Chamber of Commerce dinner was like.

Actually, we may bring part of the problem on ourselves because we are much too polite. The minister is usually given a glowing introduction by the president and, however bad the subsequent speech, is usually led to believe that he has actually been quite good. A generous letter of thanks will follow.

Even the politeness is understandable. If you want to influence someone it doesn't usually pay to be rude to them first. But a few firm words to the top civil servants in the local Government Office ought to be spoken in those circumstances and they very rarely are.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.