The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government

There was much merriment at the end of last month over the handbagging Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for Southeast England, gave Gordon Brown during a speech in the European Parliament.

For one thing, the speech was well delivered; a surprising number of politicians appear to be incapable of such good oration. More importantly Daniel Hannan was also, in my opinion at least, right on most of the points he made.

Amazingly, a video of the speech was the most-viewed video on YouTube. That is a spectacular achievement, and one that many other politicians will wish they could replicate. This popularity had been put down to a viral spread rather than specific publicity; people liked it and sent the URL onto others.

I foresee this occurring increasingly frequently during the run-up to the forthcoming election; the parties will use their best orators (not necessarily the politicians with the highest profile) to make stirring speeches that will be put straight onto the Internet. This gives them a very different route to reach the electorate than the traditional media-based approaches.

Will it succeed? Will it actually help them? Possibly not. But it is an exceptionally cheap way of getting your message across. It also cuts out the traditional media, which, whilst being attractive to political parties, could have problems for all of us.