Spot the difference between the leaders’ conference speeches

So, farewell party conference season.

The hours of discussion about the party leaders’ speeches are over. But what did they actually say? Well, David Cameron and Nick Clegg said about 6,000 words each and Ed Miliband said about 8,000 (not all of them different of course).

To get a flavour of what the leaders were on about, here’s a text analysis by Wordle, using transcripts of each speech:

David Cameron:

Nick Clegg:

Ed Miliband:

The New Statesman has kindly provided the transcripts which Wordle consumed to come up with those analyses.

I think David Cameron’s transcript must have come straight from his speech writer as it includes handy headings for the speaker (THATCHER, LABOUR’S MESS, OUR MISSION) and is set out in breath-sized lines for easy delivery:

In a land of opportunity there's another thing people need.

the most important thing of all.

more money in their pockets.

These have been difficult years.

People have found it hard to make ends meet.

That's why we've frozen council tax.

and why we are freezing fuel duty.

But we need to do more. I know that.

No doubt, for all the dodgy punctuation, Cameron’s speech writer is highly qualified, perhaps with a PhD in free verse. I suspect the above was influenced by the likes of Carl Sandburg:

Fog

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

UPDATE - October 4

At the suggestion of a reader of the above, I have put the text of Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 “the lady’s not for turning” party conference speech into Wordle to compare with today's speeches:

In some ways there aren’t many differences between Thatcher’s speech and those delivered in the past few weeks: the most used word by Thatcher, Cameron and Miliband is 'people'. It’s also a big word for Clegg, but pipped for the top spot by his interest in 'Government'.

'People' count:

1. Miliband - 73 times

2. Cameron - 63 times

3. Clegg - 30 times

4. Thatcher - 27 times.

But the Thatcher speech is also notable for words that aren’t part of the contemporary debate: there’s 'Soviet', 'community' (as in European Economic) and 'Geoffrey' (Howe, her chancellor).

And 'unemployment' is one of her top three words, appearing 12 times in the speech and not once in any of the three contemporary speeches.

Is that because unemployment isn’t the political issue it once was? Or do party leaders’ speeches today simply prefer to gloss over negative stuff and leave their audience feeling good? Well, it’s true that Thatcher mentioned more 'problems' in her speech than today's trio. But she only had six, while David Cameron had five, and Ed Miliband four.

Only Nick Clegg gave an almost 'problem'-free speech with just one occurrence, which doesn’t really count anyway as it comes in the uplifting sentence: “We’ve cracked problems that single-party governments have struggled with for decades.”