A Critical Commentary on Tony Blair’s Resignation Speech (2007)

Language is the most antique of persuasion devices. By way of a circuitous manipulation of language, skilful speakers have traditionally been able to influence the preconceptions, views, ambitions and fears of the public, to the extent of causing people to accept false statements as true postulates, or even to support policies conflicting with their interests (Thomans & Wareing, 1999).  Through language, according to Fairclough (1989), an “ideology” can be created that will lead staff to more easily accept a leader or manager’s arguments. Management often plays with the listener’s presuppositions and activate pertinent mental schemata by selecting certain lexical items or rhetoric strategies to increase the credibility of their assertions and to create and diffuse a particular ideology. This often allows   managerial claims or demands to be deemed as self-evident

The manipulative nature of lexical items in the discourse of many politicians is evident in most verbal communication be it speeches or interviews. It is observed that politicians rely greatly on the expressions to manipulate their listeners. Figurative language is used to sway listeners’’ perceptions. Their selection of words is prejudiced toward certain people, places, and world events. In most cases, manipulation is done through the organization of mass speeches. They further exploit the listener’s perception by incorporating emotions over rationality. Moreover, the politicians of our own country Pakistan are called by distinct names coinciding with the kind of demeanour they have been carrying around with them. Aaminah Hassan(2018) states that phrases like “Go Nawaz Go” were continuously repeated in their coverage on news channels of Imran Khan’s sit-in. PML-N politician Rana Sana-Allah is presented as “Gullu Butt”. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher was given the title of “the Iron Lady” by a Lebanese journalist. According to Fairclough (1995), CDA of any outgoing event analyzes the connection between the three scopes that include text, discourse practice, and socio-cultural practice. Several authors (e.g. Briziarelli; Fisher; Garnham; Lovink) have argued that both popular and academic discussion around information society and digital economy is often deeply ideological as any possible problems related to the Internet and social media tend to be glossed over.

Marx saw both language and ideology as tightly interwoven with social and material reality and processes of social reproduction. Marx had a modern—interactional and concrete—view of the role of consciousness and language, and he emphasised, in particular, their connection to the material world: language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only, therefore, does it exist for me … Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. (Marx, The German Ideology 74). Relevance-seeking tendencies also provide misleading communicative ends. Wilson and Sperber (254) state that the “universal cognitive tendency to maximise relevance makes it possible, at least to some extent, to predict and manipulate the mental states of others.” Manipulating the context relies on new information adding to or modifying the old in such a way that the total of contextual effects guides the inference toward a specific conclusion (Harju, Lillquist (2018)

This speech was given by Tony Blair in 2007 in Trim don Labour Club in Sedgefield. He was accused of misleading the parliament as the victims of the Iraq War augmented. In the general elections of 2005, Labour Party’s seats decreased dramatically from 167 to 66 seats. The pressure brewing within the Labour Party after the Blair-Brown Pact, low approval ratings and the Iraq war became an amalgamated result of Blair filing a resignation. Blair was brutally criticized for not conducting a ceasefire in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.  On 7 September 2006, Blair openly stated he would quit as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference held 10–13 September 2007. On 10 May 2007, during a speech at the Trim don Labour Club, Blair announced his intention to resign as both Labour Party leader and Prime Minister, according to reports. At a particular party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, he formally handed over the control of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair’s three ministries.  Blair officially handed over his resignation on 27 June 2007 and Brown took over office during the same afternoon. Blair resigned from his Sedgefield seat in the House of Commons in the customary form of accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, to which he was appointed by Gordon Brown in one of the latter’s very last acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The resulting Sedgefield by-election was won by Labour’s candidate, Phil Wilson. Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first Prime Minister of the modern era not to do so.

Blair has kept his speech pretty easy to comprehend with mostly short and pithy sentences to ensure that what he says resonates with the audience. He begins the speech by saying that the reason he has chosen this particular location for his resignation announcement speech is the fact that this was the very place where his “political journey” embarked on. His declaration to “stand down” from the headship of the Labour Party is an example of euphemism that he used instead of using a much direct term such as resigning. Euphemism is essentially a “figure of speech that uses mild, inoffensive or vague words as a means of making something seem more positive than it might otherwise appear,” according to Jason Jones and Jean Stillwell Peccei. However, he does, later on, use the term “resignation” when it came to officially stand down from office.  He calls his decade-long tenure “long enough” for him and the country which implies that either he or the country’s people might have become weary of it. This implicature refers to the accusations that Blair had to face when the casualties of the Iraq war were surfacing. An implicature would guide the listener into deducing something that wasn’t overtly expressed by the speaker.

He uses metaphorical language when he says that “the only way you conquer the pull of power is to set it down” which means that often the way you really overcome losing of authority is just by accepting it, succumbing to it and letting go of it. A metaphor is either “an object, activity or idea that is used as a symbol of something else” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. He calls commenting on his tenure a “judgement to be made on his premiership” in his speech which pre-implies that he is going to be talking about the achievements and failures of his government in the past ten years. “Looking at my own country” is a fair example of metaphorical language being used because one literally and physically cannot look at his country. He then uses two-word phrases to describe what he perceived his country to be like. He calls it a “great country” with a “wonderful history” and “magnificent traditions” and on top of it all “proud of its past”. These are apt examples of hyperbolic expressions to instil and build up feelings of pride and excitement within the listeners.

We can notice parallel structures being used in his speech now and then. He says, “You stood for individual aspiration. You were liberal in your values or conservative. You believed in the power of the state.” This creates a super dramatic effect and gives a good tempo and rhythm to Blair’s utterance. The place where he calls people’s values “liberal or conservative” is an implicature referring to the followers and supporters of the Conservative Party, a stand-alone equal rival of the British Labour Party to which he belongs. To keep his audience engaged and interested, he keeps adding rhetorical questions here and there like “spending more money on the public realm was the answer or it was the problem?” In the place where he talks about creating opportunities, he adds “for all not an elite at the top” which presupposes that in the past, prospects were given to only the ones with a high social and financial status and not to everyone who deserved it.

He also calls ill-mannered people “conservative with a small ‘c’, implying to the people and devotees of the Conservative Party, most certainly. He calls the commencement of his term in 1997 “a new beginning” for wiping away “detritus of the past”. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the literal meaning of the term detritus is “the pieces that are left when something breaks, falls apart or is destroyed”. This presupposition means that the previous government had left its unwanted remnants of mistakes and faults behind that Blair’s government had to correct and reform. Next, we can observe the “rule of three” is made use of when he describes the expectations of people from him. He calls them “so high. Too high. Too high in a way for either of us.” Similarly, where he nudges his listeners to walk down the memory lane, he says “But go back to 1997. Think back. No, really, think back”, is also an apt example of the same ‘rule of three’ come to play. This is a structural device used particularly in political rhetoric as a three-part statement. This technique is usually used for aesthetic purposes; however, it also gives stress and asks for attention.

Another factor that can be commented on is the efficient use of different pronouns being used. Blair used the pronoun “we” in places either when he was referring to the British people collectively or when he was talking about his government jointly. Conversely,  he uses the pronoun “I” when referring to himself, his ideologies or his own work ethic, for example, here “I don’t just mean our arts that are thriving. I mean our values.” He keeps mentioning and pin-pointing the splendour of his country, Britain and keeps glorifying its redeemable qualities here and there. He declares “Britain is not a follower. It is a leader.” This is an implicature that relies on shared knowledge between the speaker and the listener. We shouldn’t forget the fact that Blair was the one who was leaving the government after a whopping ten years of service in office. By saying the statement above, he is implying that he’s standing down from his position leaving Britain ahead of its own kind in the world. He also calls his country “comfortable in the twenty-first century” again entailing the same general idea that he, in fact, is ‘leaving’ his country in such a state.

His speech, like any generic political speech, is full of presuppositions. For example, he states that Britain wouldn’t be the same as it is right now “if we were still the Britain of 1997”, presupposing that Britain before 1997 was in a horrendous condition and it would still have been if he and his government didn’t do efforts to pull it out of a cavernous abyss. The kind of language Blair decides to use for his resignation is exact, precise and ordinary however, learned and scholarly hinting that it was, of course, a formal address. A suitable example could be “Decision-making is hard.” He has played it safe with choosing short and direct sort of sentences that keeps the potency of his utterances lofty and condensed. His play on words is also pretty commendable. He says “you have to answer. Not an answer, the answer.” He uses a metaphor such as “messianic zeal” where he compares a human’s ardour to that of a Messiah. Another praiseworthy value in his speech is the effective usage of adverbs and adjectives wherever possible. The places where he says “monolithic public services”, “deeply controversial”, “hellish hard” and “bitterly controversial” are pertinent examples.

His metaphorical language surely studded and embellished his speech to make it a hundred notches pleasurable to hear. He uses an artistic example to validate his ideas and acts, where he says “the vision is painted in the colours of the rainbow; and the reality is sketched in the duller tones of black, white and grey.” He concludes his speech by voicing his aspirations and expectations from his country later on, in the future. He also apologizes for all his shortcomings as a Prime Minister and says that he did what he thought was right at that moment for his people and the country and shall continue to do so although he is stepping off from the government and his party. He also thanks the public for reposing their trust in him and wishes them good luck for the future.

In my opinion, this speech was full of presuppositions, implicature, metaphorical language, euphemisms and ‘rule of three’ come into play. These are the extraordinary qualities that make this speech so poignant because it had tinges of Blair not being so happy about leaving his charge but had to because of the undesirable circumstances which had surfaced then. However, he sounded very hopeful about Britain’s bright future and its accomplishments over the years to come. He says that his country has come a long way and it still has an even longer way to go. We can sense that this speech was of a political kind because it contained all those typical features that political speeches are notorious to contain. He used many face-saving techniques such as being diplomatic in a lot of his stances, being optimistic about the country’s future and progress although he knew deep down that then Britain had to face plenty of backlash for its role in the Iraq war going on. He also makes little sly chops at his rival Conservative party, although not directly. The purpose of his speech, how I sensed it, was to enlist all of the reforms his government had brought in the country over his tenure- seemingly purposeful and excellent. Like, improvement in the education, financial and sport sector, to name a few.

What is Modernism? Read here.