Workshop 1: The State of Political Speech

This first workshop concerns the perspective of practitioners. We will invite current and former politicians and speechwriters, civil servants and journalists to form a user group and to explain how they think about and experience political speech and argument, what they think makes a great (or awful) speech, the training they have had to become speechmakers and speechwriters, and the criteria they apply when assessing rhetoric. We will discuss how they perceive the crisis of rhetoric and what their remedy would be. This workshop will inform the content of the subsequent events. Speakers will be invited to reflect a range of institutions, ages, parties and backgrounds.