Dear Liz Truss: Please Be Cleverer

There are a few voice coaches in the City who make a very nice living improving the timbre of business leaders.

They turn competent but stiff folk into George Clooney (sort of). And bingo, they suddenly sound like CEO material.

One coach I know reckons Keir Starmer will never get elected until he avails himself of her services.

Starmer’s voice isn’t terrible. It is just a bit nasal, a bit unwelcoming, nothing that can’t be fixed.

As for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng my expert sighs and shrugs.

In their case, the problem is not how they sound, but what they say. Not her department.

Kwarteng’s voice is perfectly Chancellor like. It’s what he does that is irksome.

Truss, to me, sounds like one of the bossy sixth firm girls I couldn’t stand, but plenty of others did like them.

The trouble with her is that what she says is intellectually very simple, without giving the impression that she is dumbing it down. She only understands what she is saying on that exact level, is how it appears.

If there is anything deeper it is well hidden.

Even her just noting “it will be difficult” today made me think of political spoof In The Loop and hapless minister Simon Foster saying war will be “difficult, difficult, lemon difficult” to a bemused room of Americans.

In the FT Janan Ganesh writes that, The tragedy of Liz Truss is that she has a point.

He doesn’t agree with that point, but wishes she would at least make it clearly.

The PR advice to politicians seems to remain the Peter Mandelson position that when you are sick to death of saying the same simple thing, that’s the point at which the message might be getting home.

For Truss, we’ve got the simple bit. It would genuinely be nice, reassuring even, to hear he say something complicated.

Something that made you think: oh, that’s why she’s PM.