Over the years and in particular, the 21st century, there’s been some bad political speeches that have been remembered for quite some time after. With some in fact, doing no favours for those in power and sometimes resulting in a drop in election votes. The elections are always ongoing, but with so many issues in the world today, the latest election odds are always changing too. We’ve seen over the years some bad speeches, which has resulted in us viewing political leaders in a different light, especially when it comes to them running a country.
So, we know the power that a bad speech can do in terms of the election odds, but let’s take a look at some of the worst political speeches of the 21st century, that are often still remembered and spoken about, even years later.
Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 Speech for Labour
In Jeremy Corbyn’s first conference speech as the party leader for Labour. The speech was actually quite boring, he was expected to shake up the established way of how things were done, but it was soon obvious that he had no original ideas on his own to show off. However, it was in 2015 that things went even more downhill for him.
The most memorable line from his 2015 speech was ‘We need to be investing skills, investing in young people and strong message here, not cutting student numbers’. Obviously, there was part of this that should’ve been left on the teleprompter and not actually read out, but it became comedy gold.
Jo Swinson’s 2019 Lib Dem Election Campaign
This speech seemed to leave a lot of people disappointed. In the speech there are two main things that unfolded; the end of Lib Dem resurgence and that Brexit was definitely happening. In the short speech, the leader basically demonstrated that the party was unprepared for the upcoming election, which obviously isn’t promising for them at all.
In part of the speech, it was mentioned that a Liberal Democrat government will stop Brexit, which now looking back, we all know how that turned out. Although she said this in the speech, she also went on to say how they had no strategy at all on how to stop Brexit, so there wasn’t much truth when it came to the whole speech.
Theresa May’s 2017 Conservative Party Speech
This speech has been known for being terrible. From the falling letters on the sign behind and the P45 prank played on her, there wasn’t much that was going to save this speech from the start. During her time as prime minister, there was a series of awful speeches involving her, so it’s hard to choose one.
In the speech she stated that every generation should live the British dream, but then the speech following this, showed how that would never be true. It showed just why the Conservative party should’ve stood her down after the general election that took place that year. There were no answers as to why her party failed so badly a few months prior to this. The main focus was around Brexit, which later on, we found out that even she, didn’t believe a word of. This just shows the shocking power that these leaders have and the examples they are setting, which are all really just fake.
Liz Truss’ Speech to the Conservative Party
In 2014, Liz Truss’ made a speech to the conservative party, which was so bad, it made it good. She delivered the speech in quite a confused way, which didn’t give anyone much hope. It doesn’t take long until it’s your typical dull and boring conference speech that most leaders give. However, towards the end of the speech, she takes a turn. She starts to talk about how much cheese we import, telling everyone it’s a disgrace. She goes from shouting about how importing food is bad, to quickly talking about the need to open up markets to free trade. Most of the speech was confusing, with no clear answer as to what she was actually wanting.
Ed Miliband’s 2014 Speech
Finally, we have Ed Miliband’s speech as Labour leader, back in 2014. Now, we know he has made many bad speeches, but this one has stood out in particular.
The start of the speech is about 25 minutes of him recounting random stories, which had nothing to do with the point of the speech itself. It is thought that he was trying to show the fact that he is a normal person, but it does the exact opposite of that. It showed him to be a weirdo who chats up middle-class students. This didn’t create a good image for the Labour leader, which may be a reason as to why his time in power didn’t go too well.
So these, are up there with some of the worst political speeches from the 21st century, although it’s hard to choose out of so many.
