Dan Hannan’s speech to the European Parliament has now been watched by 1.7 million people and counting: by far the most successful British political speech ever to have been shown on YouTube.

So why did this get 1.7 million views when most Ministerial speeches struggle to get 170 views?

I think it comes down to four things.

• It was counter-cultural and therefore in keeping with the web’s ethos, which is inherently anarchic, supporting the little guy against the big guy. What could be more counter cultural than a total nobody (or at least he was until last week) slamming the sitting Prime Minister to his face?
• It was a short. Just three minutes, so perfect YouTube length. Web users rarely spend more than a couple of minutes on a video clip. People want instant gratification on the web.
• It was signposted from hundreds of different sites, particularly US sites, with rave reviews, guaranteeing traffic.
• It was a damn good speech, stuffed to the brim with rhetorical tricks.

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Obama’s election has sparked a new enthusiasm for social media. All across Whitehall, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are being declared the panacea  to political disillusionment.  The argument is that as Generation X watches YouTube, all politicians have to do is put their videos on YouTube and Generation X will see them.

But many are only getting a couple of dozen views. From the look of these glitzy productions, this can’t represent value.

Nor can it be claimed that they are a sincere effort at promoting engagement? In most cases the “comments” option has been disabled.

The most viewed political speech is Brown’s 2008 party conference speech, with 30,000 views. But 900,000 people have tuned in to watch Guido’s footage of Brown picking his nose.

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Rhetoricians often rave about the magical rule of three, known as tricolon. This is when soundbites are built up on three individual parts, eg “Education Education Education” or “I came, I saw, I conquered.” or “This, that and the other.” The effect produced is one of completeness and finality. It appears to wrap up an argument and close off alternatives.

But, in his speech to Birmingham Chamber of Commerce last Friday, David Cameron seemed to be toying with a new “rule of four”. The main rhetorical flourishes at both ends of the speech were in fours.

At the beginning: ”Orders are down. Sales have slumped. Import costs are rising. Credit has dried up.”

Ar the end: “We’ll get through: stronger, better, richer and fairer.”

The main argument of the speech was also a four: ”Tackling debt. Rebalancing our economy. Getting people back into work. Regulating our economy properly. If we do all these things, we can confront - and will overcome - the fundamental weaknesses of our economy.”

Both of these sections sound a bit peculiar to me. Slightly off-beat: like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, the bar goes on just slightly longer than expected.

One of the cardinal rules of using rhetoric is not to be caught using rhetoric. And the rule of three can sometimes sound a little tired and obvious, it has been devalued and diminished through over-use. By spurning this old rule, Cameron may be reinforcing this idea that he is a new kind of politician with a new kind of political language.

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The pre-briefing suggests that Brown will use his speech to  the Joint Houses of Congress to compare today’s economic struggles with the fight against Nazi-ism in the 1940s.

War metaphors are handy devices for embattled leaders. They rally audiences, invoke evocative memories and reduce critics to traitors.

This is not the first time Congress has witnessed a politician use this strategy.

In 1964, Lyndon B Johnson declared a “war on poverty”. In 1971, Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs”. In 1974, Gerald Ford declared a “war on inflation”. Nixon’s hyperbole was staggering. He said inflation threatened to “destroy our country, our homes, our liberties, our property and our national pride, as surely as any well armed wartime enemy.”

Of course, it’s not just an American thing. Here we have had our wars against illiteracy, waste and crime. In fact, the only Department which doesn’t like to declare war is the MoD.

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