Your favourite British political speeches?

Read my lips, no new taxes.

i must admit george chewed them a new ** ,i still marvel at the footage

another thread pulled goring ........... fascist cnts

my friends i give you a cast iron guarantee that i will hold a referendum on the lisbon treaty

paradox, that's not British anymore if I'm not mistaken, is it?

Prophet - what's that?

"I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot."

Don't suppose there were a lot of laughs around in 1918

I'd go for Maggies as well:

28 November 1990:

"I wish John Major all the luck in the world"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/28/newsid_2527000/2527953.stm

The saintly tone.....


"I believe a referendum is right so that people can decide what is the best electoral system for the country."
15 July, BBC Radio 4 Today

"We are on the side of ordinary people against privilege, against vested interests of the public or private sector..."
30 November, Speech at the Victoria and Albert Museum

1996
"My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson."
2 March, Daily Telegraph

"I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves."
7 April, Daily Telegraph

"We have no plans to increase tax at all."
20 September, speech to CBI conference

"Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education, education."
1 October, party conference speech


"We have 14 days to save the NHS."
17 April, election campaign soundbite

"We have been elected as New Labour and we will govern as New Labour."
2 May, victory speech, Royal Festival Hall

"It will be a government that seeks to restore trust in politics in this country."
2 May, Blair's first speech in Downing Street

"We are not the master now. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people. We will never forget that.
7 May, addressing Labour MPs at Church House


"I think most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy and I am."
16, November, BBC's On The Record, during the controversy over a donation to the Labour Party by Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone

1998
"We will say to ourselves with pride: this is our Dome, Britain's Dome. And believe me, it will be the envy of the world."
24 February, speech at Royal Festival Hall

"A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. I really do."
8 April, arriving in Belfast for the talks which produced the Good Friday Agreement.


1999
"We are all tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. The debate between 'liberals' and 'hardliners' is over."
22 April, speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, defining the Third Way


"The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us."
2 October, Labour conference speech

"I take full responsibility for decisions. I stand by them. I believe they were the right decisions."
28 August, speaking at the Hutton inquiry on the need to say a suspected source for the BBC's Iraq weapons story had come forward

"The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie."
28 January, Commons debate on the Hutton report

"If I am elected, I would serve a full third term. I do not want to serve a fourth term - I don't think the British people would want a prime minister to go on that long. But I think it's sensible to make plain my intention now."
1 October, talking to the BBC after Labour's annual conference

"It was a terrible, terrible thing to have happened. I don't believe we had any option however, but to disclose his name, because I think had we failed to do so, that would have been seen as attempting to conceal something from the committee that was looking in to this at the time."
April, speaking to Newsnight about the death of Dr David Kelly


"Nobody in the Labour Party to my knowledge has sold honours or sold peerages and the fact that is sometimes excluded from the public's mind in relation to this debate is that there are places in the House of Lords that are reserved for party nominees for their party supporters."
16 July, on the cash-for-honours investigation

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough at The Putney Debates (October, 1647)

"for really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly. Sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under; and I am confident that when I have heard the reasons against it, something will be said to answer those reasons, in so much that I should doubt whether he was an Englishman or no that should doubt of these things.

Stop making things up noddy, nobody could possibly have said all that

I have never been a Labour supporter, but in recent times, Kinnock was our best political orator by a margin.

[b]I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council

F*cking hell they've kicked me out ! = Churchill 1945.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!

Makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up.

the dead sheep savaging maggie

the rivers of

I'm a bit disappointed with the lefties (what's new). There's a few cheeky one-liners but they're hardly speeches. I like gus' civil war colonel which appears to be arguing for universal suffrage(?)

I'm a bit disappointed with the lefties (what's new). There's a few cheeky one-liners but they're hardly speeches. I like gus' civil war colonel which appears to be arguing for universal suffrage(?)

I'm a bit disappointed with the lefties (what's new). There's a few cheeky one-liners but they're hardly speeches. I like gus' civil war colonel which appears to be arguing for universal suffrage(?)

Hmm, sorry abou the triplicate. I get getting some Java message which led be to suspect the post of vital importance had no been made.

Not quite Mr G

Col Rainsborough was arguing for univeral male suffrage.

He was, more or less, a 'Leveller' and his beef was with what he would pobably have termed the 'Grandees' amongst the Parliament men (including Cromwell and Cromwell's son-in-law, Ireton) who were pretty much horrified by the idea of Universal Suffrage, preferring a suffrage based on property ownership ( so you'd have been ok).

If you're interested (and its a bit of an acquired taste) there's a fascinating book which reproduces most of the 'Army Debates' of 1647-49:

'Puritanism and Libery' edited by A.S.P Woodhouse. Everyman Classics, 1986 ISBN 0-460-01057-3 (not sure if its still in print, but your library would be able to get it.

It's just like a 17th Century version of the Politics Forum, but a bit more polite!

I forgot, we have this new InterWeb thingy:

The whole text of 'Puritanism and Liberty' is at:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2183&layout=html

and the text of Col Rainborough's statement is at:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2183&chapter=201031&layout=html&Itemid=27

From a quality speech perspective, the three that spring to mind are; Kinnock slating Militant at the conference, Howe knifing Thatcher and Ken Clarke's destruction of the case for war in Iraq.

But if we're talking favourites, then IDS must take the prize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6fjoQ_esqU

Rainsborough is one of my favourites, but in my lifetime, for its entertainment value,it has to be Geoffrey H and his cricketing metaphors.

Thanks for the links and info, gus - I'll have a look.

Gj - Yeah, IDS was really terrible. Kinnock was a good one, really passionate although in general he was a windbag (no conf. debate on St. Margaret).