Sir Keir Starmer called for a return of the 'sausages' from Gaza when making his first speech at a Labour party conference as Prime Minister. Sir Keir likely meant 'hostages' as he addressed a crowd in Liverpool and called for de-escalation between Lebanon and Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza.
I won't say I sympathise with Sir Keir Starmer after he madly called for the liberation of sausages from Gaza. I shall treasure the memory for years to come. I shall also never cease to wonder how he did it.
For many years I have attempted a little light public speaking, and I know pretty much how the Prime Minister will have felt, on a smaller scale. As a Trotskyist undergraduate I used to harangue the York University Students' Union on great issues of the moment, with some success, demanding support for miners, postmen, power workers, railwaymen and other toilers who were, in those days, constantly striking in defiance of poor old Ted Heath's Tory government.
I knew as I spoke that it wasn't going to come out right and - fatally - paused. And so my enemies had the chance to get me. 'There are no docks in Leicester!' cried a mocking voice. This is of course quite true. The room, rejoicing in my discombobulation, dissolved into laughter. He pretended he could not understand it, scornfully bawling 'Shto!?' at me in front of about 100 rivals who - having initially been impressed at my apparent feat – now rejoiced at my embarrassment. Once again, the ground failed to open beneath me. I had to sit there in the room for what seemed like a week, hot with shame, waiting for the chance to escape, desperately hoping to avoid any expressions of sympathy afterwards. The whole rest of the day is a blank in my mind.
But when the moment came, my memory jammed fast and I stopped halfway through. That was bad enough, as the enormous hall fell into an awkward silence, but my brother did not merely complete my chosen lines but also threw in a nasty later bit about 'lesser breeds without the law' which I had most definitely been planning to leave out. It would have been much better if I had called for the worldwide liberation of sausages.
But isn't all this a bit too organised and pre-cooked? Shouldn't a speech be a living thing? This is why I rather favour heckling, a sign that the audience at least are awake and alive. Prime Ministers deserve to be heckled. It tests their wit and their self-possession. I am sorry that stewards nowadays so often fall upon such interrupters and drag them from the hall.
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