Measurable targets and ‘securonomics’ have replaced values and vows. If only our leaders would ‘deliver’ some honesty
I’m not quite sure when it happened, but at some point over the past year, politicians’ language was taken over by a sort of corporate speak. Corpspeak, as it has been informally called, is a dead-eyed repetitive white noise that sounds like a cross between someone reading a PowerPoint presentation and a lawyer answering questions on behalf of a client they cannot trust to speak for themselves.
Most guilty of it is Rishi Sunak, a man who has probably said the word “deliver” more than any other during his premiership. Sunak is, above all, “focused on delivering for Britain”. Have any questions about Scottish independence? Sunak’s
answer
is that he is focusing on the things he can do to “deliver here for people in Scotland by working constructively together”. Just suffered a wipeout at the local elections? You guessed it, delivering is the answer. After those local election results he had a rousing
moment of self-reflection
that he shared with the nation: “The message I am hearing from people is that they want us to focus on their priorities and they want us to deliver for them.” Asked to reflect on how he feels when he loses,
Sunak replied
: “My focus in this job is to deliver for the country.”
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