Spin, bias and sound bites
Helen Lewis and Armando Iannucci are putting the language of politics under the spotlight
- Bill Borrows
Strong Message Here is on Radio 4 on Thursdays at 9.45am. Add it to your collection.
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If you can pinpoint the inspiration behind the name of Radio 4’s Strong Message Here, then this is undoubtedly the show for you. It is, of course, the moment at the 2015 Labour Party Conference when Jeremy Corbyn accidentally read out an autocue prompt instructing him to be extra-emphatic.
“It could happen to any of us,” smiles Helen Lewis, political journalist, broadcaster and SMH co-host. “It wasn’t too much of an obvious cliché to use as a name for the show and it sums up what we’ll be talking about, which is the idea that people don’t always say the things that they’re supposed to.”
Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. Getty
The other component part of “We” is Armando Iannucci – the man behind, among many other things, award-winning political satires Veep and The Thick of It. “Strong Message Here was Armando’s idea,” Lewis explains. “He comes at political language from writing comedy about it and I come at political language from trying to dissect it, but we share a fascination with how you can lie and flatter with language and how it is used [by politicians] to manipulate. My hope is that, as well as being an entertaining listen, the show will encourage people to think about something in a new way.”
Lewis is talking to Radio Times from Pennsylvania, where she’s on US election duty, with a front-row seat at the rallies of Donald Trump – which are perhaps the most astonishing verbal pyrotechnic displays in recent political history.
We’re fascinated by politicians using words to manipulate
“The funny thing is that his speeches weave all over the place but in the moment you always know what he’s saying... it’s like a magic-eye painting, in that bits of it don’t really make sense but you step back and you can see the shark, you can see Hannibal Lecter,” to name just two of his recent off-script non sequiturs. “We might talk about that and ‘the enemy within’, a terrifying phrase he has just started using that recalls McCarthyism and [political] witch hunts.”
Helen Lewis.
Strong Message Here will also take on buzzwords, slogans, which things catch on and which don’t and the role of special advisers in all of this. “The Thick of It was a fierce satire of British politics but all the anti-heroes were adopted as heroes by the people working in it. Armando has had an amusingly profound influence on a whole generation of young politicians and special advisers. It’s a terribly backhanded compliment.”
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After pondering why people never finish the quote most usually associated with Michael Gove about experts [he went on to say “from organisations with acronyms getting it consistently wrong”] or Peter Mandelson’s on being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich [as long as they pay their taxes]”, Lewis concludes that “by talking about political language, we can talk about history and where these phrases came from, psychology and what little bits of our brain they tickle and also philosophy and traditions of thought. That makes it sound very grand, but it’s hopefully a very funny, short and sweet, Radio 4 programme.”
Authors
Bill Borrows
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