Gordon Brown, we are told by the Telegraph, has sought advice on poetry from Sir Andrew Motion, the recently-retired poet laureate. The Prime Minister apparently spoke to Sir Andrew about one of his own favourite poems, Thomas Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and asked for examples of similar modern poems.
The Telegraph drily observes:
It is thought Mr Brown could be attempting to liven up his speeches, which are known for their academic language rather than memorable words and phrases.
That was certainly the case when, in the early 1990s, the then shadow Chancellor’s speeches were written by a bright young man called Ed Balls. Balls managed to insert into one of them the astonishingly clunky phrase “post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory”, which was dutifully regurgitated by Gordon and was memorably lampooned by Michael Heseltine at the 1994 Conservative party conference:
“There you have it! Labour’s brand-new, shining, modernists’ economic dream.
“But it’s not Brown’s; it’s Balls’.”
If Heseltine could have such fun with the surname Balls, what, I wonder, would he say if the PM’s speeches were found to be inspired by a man called Motion?
