At this time of year, my time is usually filled up with helping FTSE companies prepare their interim statements. This year has been no different, but times are tougher than usual and this has thrown up some interesting linguistic dilemmas.

When I first became a Cabinet speechwriter ten years ago, I was told that I should always write in the active voice and never write in the passive - EVER.

This advice remains prevalent - but it is complete tosh. Yes, the active voice is appropriate when the speaker wants to clearly identify the main protagonist and what they have done… but such clarity is not always helpful, in business or politics.

Take Nixon’s, ‘Mistakes were made’. Or Bush’s, ‘Collateral damage has occurred.’ The expedient use of the passive voice neatly side-stepped the issue of culpability.

Likewise, in the recent interim results. The more abominable the results, the greater the use of the passive voice.

Hence, this morning we heard the following glorious passive statement from Michael Grade at ITV’s: ‘Our financial results for the half year reflect the impact of the unprecedented downturn in television advertising…’ It makes ITV sound helpless. A victim of events. ‘Not our fault, guv!’

Has it worked? Well, the share prices is up 3.5% on trading and still climbing… We should never under-estimate the power of the passive.

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I just watched the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons. It wasn’t his finest hour. It reminded me of some of the theories set out in George Lakoff’s amazing 2004 book, “Don’t think of an elephant”.

Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, argued that the right wing’s dominance in US politics came from speaking in terms of visions and values whilst the left spent too much time talking about initiatives and programmes.

Brown’s speech today was stuffed to the brim with the usual mind-blowing investment figures, stretching targets and gargantuan forward work programmes, but was almost completely devoid of over-arching vision or underpinning values.

The problem is that voting is an emotional act: people need to be excited and motivated to vote; they need to be made to care. And initiatives simply don’t touch our emotions, they only get as far as the rational parts of our minds. It would be hard for anyone to get too weepy about market incentives to support carbon capture storage or reviews of the communications infrastructure, worthy and worthwhile as they may be.

Brown’s speech should have been framed within a compelling vision and rooted in deeply held values. It should have reached deep down into people’s hearts, wrenched them out of their current inertia and lifted them to the stars.

Labour will pillory Cameron for his response, describing it as flimsy and lacking substance. It is true that his response comprised little more than high level values statements. But, if Lakoff is right, it is precisely this approach which is needed to win elections.

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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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