CorpComms Magazine

What makes a good party conference speech? A rallying cry? Or just simply dodging controversy? Conservative leader David Cameron managed to steer his speech away from trouble by removing a reference urging the public to pay off their credit cards. The comment stirred up dissent on social media after it was trailed on the news prior to his conference speech and was promptly removed.

Some pundits poked fun at Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg's lack of reference to the Tories in his conference speech as he chose to speak more euphemistically about government, rather than expressly mention his coalition partners by name.

After the predictably frequent use of 'our', the Lib Dem leader uttered the word 'government' 27 times, the second most frequent word in his speech and mentioned the Conservatives just three times. The most common four-word phrase in Clegg's speech was 'not easy but right', a comment he used four times.

There were some clear points of common ground between Cameron and Clegg. Clegg used the word 'children' 12 times to Cameron's 14; Labour party leader Ed Miliband used the word just three times.

There were also clear differences between Miliband's speech and those of the coalition partners. Miliband's contained 40 mentions of the word 'values' compared to Cameron's once and Clegg's four.

The length of the speeches loosely reflect the relative number of seats held in parliament. Clegg's diminutive speech was just shy of 2,500 words long, Miliband's was more than 3,200 and David Cameron's was more than 3,500 words long.

Top words

Nick Clegg

Top four-word phrase: 'not easy but right' 

Top words:   

• Government        27
• People                 22
• Right                    22
• Every                    20
• Economy             20   
• You                       20   
• Liberal                19
• Why                     17
• New                    16

David Cameron

Top four-word phrase: 'we're going to'

Top words:

• We                      61
• You                     58
• People              52
• It                         30
• Get                     29
• Back                  27
• Right                 25
• Know                 24

Ed Miliband

Top four-word phrase: 'you've been told'

Top words:

• You                   77
• People            52
• It                       41
• Values             40
• What                39
• Your                 38
• Right               33
• Country           30
• Britain             28

Image source: Cameron's speech on Wordle.net

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