While it may seem odd, even discourteous, to start a critique of last Saturday’s Sinn Féin Árd Fheis address by Mary Lou McDonald with a reference to Sesame Street… well bear with me.
One of the great achievements of that landmark educational programme was how it borrowed methods of television advertising, jingles, and short segments to promote letters and numbers instead of product and sponsors. Each episode ended with the message today’s programme was brought to you by the letter P and the number 5… or whatever.
If last Saturday night’s address had such a message, it would have been just one word: change.
The word, the concept, permeated every section of McDonald’s 2,150-word address. It was also emblazoned in big letters across the stage in Gaeilge agus Béarla, and on the fascia of the lectern.
It could be heard in various formats and contexts: time for change; let’s make change; generational change, government for change, constitutional change, and even climate change… though maybe a little less convincingly in that case.
Only two other phrases or concepts came even close in terms of impact. The first was Gaza / Palestine, which merited 13 mentions or Sinn Féin itself, which was name checked 11 times.
The “this programme was brought to you by…” message at the end of Michael Martin’s speech a week before would have been the slightly more nebulous concepts of people and services. These two words would have been followed closely behind by future and deliver/delivery. Like McDonald, Martin frequently name checked his own party 9 times.
Turning to the mechanics of McDonald’s speech, specifically the script length, and timings, Sinn Féin’s speech writing team served their leader well.
As I mentioned above, McDonald’s script, as delivered, was approximately 2150 words long – this includes her ad-libbed (non-scripted) remarks on expelling the Israeli ambassador and re-assuring delegates that Sinn Féin would run enough candidates the next time.
Mary Lou McDonald took 23 minutes to deliver a 2150-word speech… a planned speaking rate of just 94 words per minute. She enjoyed 22 bursts of applause, including a lengthy ovation following her call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, leaving her with a little over 20 minutes of actual speaking time. Meaning an actual delivery rate of approx. 108 words per minutes.
You may recall the numbers for Martin’s speech a week earlier. Both had the same amount of allotted time. Martin’s speechwriters gave him a script that was over half as long again as McDonald’s 3390 words vs 2150 words. His planned speaking rate was 137 words per minute, compared to Mary Lou’s 94. His actual speaking rate was a punishing 150 words per minute, compared to her 108.
If we look back to Leo Varadkar’s last Fine Gael conference speech, his script was around 3070 words long, meaning a planned speaking rate of just under 130 words per minutes. Martin-esque in scale, and Varadkar is not as fluent a speaker as Martin.
And, as dearly as I cherish you all, my precious readers and listeners, nothing could persuade to listen back through that Varadkar speech and calculate his actual delivery rate. So, let’s assume it was closer to 140 plus words per minute and conclude that the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil writing teams need to stop approaching these events like civil servants – eager to include a section from every department – and start writing like communications professionals, with the audience at home in mind.
The Sinn Féin team showed their grasp of this basic concept by including what some folks might term “calls to action.” More than once McDonald directly addressed the viewers at home. She invited them to do more than just listen passively. She unambiguously asked for their support, saying: I’m asking you to back Sinn Féin. It may seem a simple, perhaps even a crude technique, but it’s the modern application of a very old concept: a vote worth getting is worth asking for.
The other area where McDonald’s speech scored slightly better than Martin’s or even Varadkar’s was in terms of structure.
It’s an old truism that the best speeches follow a set three-part structure. Dale Carnegie explained it as: “Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it, then tell them what you’ve said.”
So, you open your speech by setting out what you plan to say. That’s your beginning. Then, in the middle bit, you flesh out the points you want to make. And in the end part, you repeat and summarize what it was you said in the middle bit.
This follows the classic: rule of three. Jokes are funnier, anecdotes more satisfying and writing is more effective when they are structured on the number three. I have read analysis pieces suggesting that this based on our instinctive desire for patterns and rhythms.
This was more evident in McDonald’s speech than in either Martin or Varadkar’s. Their speeches had structure. They had the three parts, but in McDonald’s case it was more evident. Her closing flourish repeated key lines from the middle section and allowed her to build to big finish, though it was still overly florid and rhetorical for my liking.
The sing the anthem and let’s march together metaphors were a bit too Leo Maguire and the Waltons sponsored radio show for me.
So, now that I have looked at the style and structure, what about the substance?
Let me start with the biggest single section in the speech. On Gaza and Israel. It was 15% of the script and attracted not just 7 of the 22 rounds of applause, it brought the crowd in the hall to its feet, for close to a minute. This was the section of her speech that was most targeted at the activists and party members.
The purpose of this passage was to calm the real anger felt by many activists by Sinn Féin’s initial decision not to back calls for expelling the Israeli ambassador. I discussed this on the BBC’s Talkback programme two weeks ago.
The Sinn Féin leader showed that the fear of losing existing support is real. And while McDonald’s grip on the leadership and the member’s affections is not in question, she is not willing to lose any activists, even those on the margins. She may have that luxury now, but will be possible if she were to end up in government? I doubt it. And I suspect some inside Sinn Féin doubt it too.
Returning to the other 85% of the speech, McDonald’s writing team very kindly gave us a section entitled: Building Prosperity, where they attempt to define what Sinn Féin is about. At just 70 words, it is concise, but still too long for a poster or billboard.
They even use the words: That’s what we’re about, to leave us in no doubt that this is their core mission.
Resolving the housing crisis, resourcing health, providing affordable childcare, investing in higher education and skills, delivering infrastructure on budget and on time are key to sustaining our society, economy, and competitiveness.
Taking an all-of-society, all-Ireland approach and nurturing Ireland’s flair for enterprise is how we grow and protect jobs now and in the future.
Decent work, well-paid, secure jobs, workers’ rights, high productivity.
The right to retire on your pension at sixty-five.
That’s what we’re about.
This is, at once, the strongest and weakest section of the speech.
It sets out their priorities, though whether you can call a shopping list of around 12 specific commitments a priority list is another matter. The problem is that this is a list with which few others could disagree or argue. It is robustly centrist.
From the far right to the far left, almost everyone would support the idea of providing decent well-paid work, delivering infrastructure on budget, or providing affordable health and childcare. A few on the hard left may disagree with nurturing enterprise, competitiveness, and high productivity, while many on the right would question the commitment to retire a full pension at sixty-five.
But government is about more than wanting the best for all of us. It is about having the plans to deliver it, within a budget.
In another section of her speech, Sinn Féin promised to deliver the biggest housing programme in the history of the state. The audience loved it. The only hint of a plan to do this came via the line: We will roll up our sleeves and get the job done. While the image of Mary Lou, Pearse and Éoin laying blocks and sawing planks could be entertaining, I suspect we will need a lot more than 60 -70 Sinn Féin TDs on site to fix the housing and rental crisis.
But I do recognise, even as I write these words, that voters will be more forgiving of Sinn Féin and the opposition’s lack of details at this point, than they will be about the governments.
I recall, during the first week of the Feb 2020 general election, speaking with a senior Fianna Fáil-er who thought the party already had Sinn Féin on the backfoot. The Sinn Féin housing policy was being presented as a plan to build 100,000 homes at a cost of €100,000.
“Everyone knows that’s impossible,” he eagerly declared, “They are in trouble”. I told him that I agreed that voters knew you couldn’t build 100,000 homes at that price. That’s not the point, I added. They are being ambitious. A lot more ambitious than Fine Gael, and even more ambitious than Fianna Fáil. After years of squandering the economic recovery, voters want to see someone try.
Sinn Féin’s ambition on housing (which was overstated) was exposing Fianna Fail’s lack of ambition. Besides, I finished, even if the shinners are only half successful, they’ll achieve more than Fine Gael ever had.
I doubt the voters will be as understanding of Sinn Féin’s plans at the next election as they were at the last one, but the main opposition party has two advantages.
The first is that Sinn Féin knows this. They were unprepared for the weakness of the Fianna Fail 2020 campaign and the possibility of a surge to them. They won’t make than mistake again. Secondly, they see that the two main government parties have a record to defend, while they can be taken more on trust.
The big disadvantage facing all parties preparing for the next election was succinctly stated by my colleague, Gerry Howlin in his sobering Irish Times column last Friday.
No matter who gets into office next, the overall level of taxation as a share of national income will have to increase. To quote Gerry:
“Today there are two working people for every dependent, young and old. By 2051 that will be less than 1.5. This is the change that is really arriving.”
While we heard no reference to this harsh reality last Saturday, it will have to feature in Sinn Féin’s election plans, if they hope to be more than just a temporary party of a short lived government.
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