There is every chance that Keir Starmer's speech today will be hailed by those in the Labour Party's leadership as a model of statesmanship.
It will be carefully drafted, each sentence polished to scan well. The syntax will be faultless. But the semantics — the meaning, content, substance — will be almost entirely absent. That, in fact, is the point.
First, syntax matters in politics. Syntax is the structure of language: subject, verb, object, the rhythm of a phrase, the rise and fall of a period. Syntax reassures. If the sentences line up neatly, we are invited to believe that the ideas they convey must also line up neatly. Style becomes a substitute for substance.
Second, semantics is what we should actually care about. It is meaning: the content of what is being said. A sentence may be grammatically perfect, but if the words add up to “growth, renewal, ambition, discipline, fairness,” it communicates nothing but mood music. That is what we will hear today — words that sound good together, but never resolve into a commitment that can be tested or challenged.
Third, this is politics by evasion. Syntax without semantics lets a politician appear bold without risking specificity. The speech becomes a hall of mirrors: every phrase reflecting back what the listener wants to hear. If you want reassurance, you hear reassurance. If you want toughness, you hear toughness. If you want hope, you hear hope. The words are sufficiently hollow to carry any load.
Finally, the problem is that any government, and this government in particular, requires a clear understanding of the semantics of its messaging. Policies must be chosen, budgets must be appropriately written, and decisions must be made. Syntax does not fund hospitals. Syntax does not decarbonise the economy. Syntax does not tackle inequality. Without meaning, syntax is nothing more than noise.
So when you hear the applause today, notice what it is really for. It will not be for the substance of what has been said, because there will be almost none. It will be for the reassuring rhythm of language, for the syntax that keeps uncomfortable truths at bay. And we will all be poorer for it, which summarises everything about Starmer.
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I whole heartedly agree with all that.
Reeves accepting life as she finds it on the TV the other day! Like Darren Jones!
Tell me now those of you who are working or have worked and recruited – if someone you were employing to do something told you that their approach would be that they would just accept the way things worked – would you hire? Is that what you would be after?
Yet we have hired politicians through FPTP talking of change before the election now capitulating to reality once in post. Effectively giving up – did they ever start?
Honestly – what did Hobbes and Beckett call it – absurdity. That is it folks! Absurdity.
You will of course have seen Robert Reich’s post this morning: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/what-the-democrats-need-least-a-new?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
“At least since Richard Nixon, Republicans have been honing a cultural populist message telling working-class Americans that their problems are due to Black people, brown people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, government bureaucrats, “coastal elites,” socialists, and high taxes on the wealthy.
Democrats could have been honing an economic populist message that told working Americans that their problems are largely due to monopolistic corporations, greedy CEOs, rapacious billionaires, and Wall Street gamblers. And therefore what the nation needs are high taxes on the wealthy and big corporations, including a wealth tax, that allow the nation to meet the minimum needs of average working families for housing, health care, child care, and the rest.
This economic populist message is a winner. The most prominent candidate to capture the Democratic Party’s imagination this year, Zohran Mamdani, won the primary for mayor of New York by focusing on working families’ needs for affordable housing, groceries, and child care, to be financed by a tax hike on the wealthy.
This message also has the virtue of being accurate.”
We might not agree exactly on his solution (i.e. ‘a tax on income from wealth’, not ‘a wealth tax’), but this would clearly work here too.
Agreed.
A good post.
Thanks for drawing attention to it.
For politicians, language is everything, but although it might move people emotionally, it would have to be very profound and true to stir people into action. That action would need to be directed at something creative and things aimed at improving the lives of citizens I don’t believe Starmer can be profound and true, as you explain above.
Many men and women have changed the course of history for the better with mere words, spoken or written. People have acted upon these words in a positive way, yet they must be truth if they are to have a beneficial effect. We know that liars and charlatans are often silver-tongued, playing to emotions and offering less than nothing. I fear that’s the way we now see modern politicians.
“each sentence polished”
can one polish the spoken turd?
🙂