Gordon Brown's latest Americanism: the Shrum speech

The heavy influence of Bob Shrum on Gordon Brown's speech.

First of all there are plenty of phrases pretty directly lifted from speeches made by Shrum clients, many of which he admits he wrote. Here are just a few, there may well be many more:

Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy.

Gordon Brown: Sometimes people say I am too serious and I fight too hard and maybe that's true......

Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I pledge to you tonight: I will work for you every day and I will never let you down. "

Gordon Brown: This is my pledge to the British people: I will not let you down.

John Kerry 2004 nomination acceptance speech: And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know

Gordon Brown: And this is my moral compass

Bill Clinton's State of the Union 1995: As we move into this next century, everybody matters; we don't have a person to waste.

Gordon Brown: This is the century where our country cannot afford to waste the talents of anyone

Then there's the structure. So many Shrum speeches begin with a story about the candidate's mother and father and what they taught him. So did Brown on Monday. And the pointing out John Smeaton was straight out of a Clinton State of the Union speech.

There are also some other telltale Americanisms. For instance, referring to soldiers as the pride of Britain echoes Colin Powell's description of soldiers as the pride of America.

What about those Bible references? Could have been the son of the manse, but my money is on Catholic Bible student Shrum. His client John Kerry was also famous for frequent references to the Bible.

And of course there was the focus-group populism and attempts at lyrical narrative.

The only way in which this wasn't a Shrum speech? It wasn't good enough.

Source: Sunday Times