Whoppers and showstoppers of 2022!

“I want to show that politicians are just human beings too” announced Matt Hancock MP to a stupefied nation as the year drew to a close. For the ex-Minister for Health, this meant indulging in a diet of camel penis and sheep vagina. Which may explain his apparent lack of empathy with much of the human race during lockdown.

Hancock was not alone in sounding a little out of kilter with the rest of us. In April, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, demonstrated her digital credentials on TikTok. She described her responsibility for “making sure we all have superfast broadband so we can downstream movies”, suggesting she was yet to master the concepts of downloading or streaming, amusing Ian Farrington 🗣 . Those hoping that she would balance this with a tight grasp of sport were equally baffled by her plan to make sure we have “tennis pitches” where we can "play and exercise your sports”.

Oratory is no longer a qualification for High Office. President Biden candidly observed in May that “every once in a while I make a mistake; like, well, once a speech.”

In Biden’s defence, it’s hard to disagree with much that he says, simply because it’s almost impossible to understand. Unlike President Putin, whose secret code was easier to decipher: hear what I say and believe the opposite. On 18th February he declared that "These military exercises, drills, are purely defensive and are not a threat to any other country. They were planned and all the objectives of these drills have been achieved." Six days later his troops invaded Ukraine. In October, he explained that “there is no need for massive strikes, in any case, not for now. In future, we’ll see. We do not set ourselves the task of destroying Ukraine. No, of course not.” Which doesn’t quite tally with the images of decimated cities beamed live from the country. Nor the calculation of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence of Ukraine that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has exhausted about 50.7% of its missile arsenal in a blizzard of lethal missiles.

But this is an age in which there may be more than one version of the truth. Meghan Markle opened her speech to a conference for young leaders in  Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall “it’s very nice to be back in the UK”. Perhaps she was. Or possibly it just felt like the right thing to say at the time. Which may have been why Chris Rock made this year’s Oscars one to remember by referencing  Jada Pinkett Smith’s alopecia: “Jada, I love you – I can’t wait for GI Jane 2”. This was met by laughter by some, silence from others, and a very public slap in the face from her husband Will Smith.

Unlike Smith, there was a distinct lack of follow-through from the English FA in Qatar. Mark Bullingham, its CEO, was committed to Captain Harry Kane wearing a ‘One Love’ armband in contravention of a FIFA directive. “I think there’s a possibility that we might be fined. And if we are, then we’ll pay the fine. We think it’s really important to show our values. And that’s what we’ll be doing.” FIFA responded by threatening to punish Kane with a yellow card. This escalation led to the armband being packed away for the remainder of the tournament. Along with the values. Which may have surprised those (including Corrie Jones ) who heard FIFA President Gianni Infantino's monologue in inclusivity: "Today I feel Qatari. Today, I feel Arab. Today, I feel African. Today, I feel gay. Today, I feel disabled. Today, I feel a migrant worker." Lucky them.

Abraham Lincoln famously advised that it is "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Prime Minister Liz Truss spoke out on 19th October, parroting Lady Thatcher in claiming to be “a fighter not a quitter”. A week later she quit, quoting the Roman philosopher Seneca. Or as she referred to him, “ger-ger-Senec-ah” sounding like a cross between a terrace chant and a mouthwash.

Perhaps she was inspired by her predecessor, Boris Johnson, who had left office, characteristically, with a Classical simile. “Like Cincinnatus I am returning to my plough”. It was left to Mary Beard to point out that Cincinnatus’s cause was against the common citizens, known as the plebeians and that “he was in fact an enemy of the people”. It didn’t require an eminent historian to correct Whoopi Goldberg who declared that the Holocaust as "not about race" because the Nazi genocide of the Jews involved "two groups of white people".

Fortunately, there were those whose communication was spot on. Some managed it without saying a word. Like the Iranian schoolgirls who demonstrated extraordinary courage in the face of repression by holding signs saying “woman, life, freedom”. And the country’s footballers who, on the most public stage of all, refused to sing the National Anthem, well aware of the possible repercussions.

Greta Thunberg, so recently the COP poster girl, followed her criticism of COP26 (“a two-week-long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah”) by describing COP27 as “an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing”.

In August Ketanji Brown Jackson crowned her magnificent Supreme Court confirmation speech by putting her appointment in perspective: “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. But we’ve made it. We’ve made it, all of us, all of us. And our children are telling me that they see now, more than ever, that here in America, anything is possible.”

So the spirit of ‘Yes We Can’ lives on, despite the shadow cast by the 45th President who demonstrated a different approach to the possible before the mid-terms. He described potential Republican nominee Ron DeSantis as “Ron DeSanctimonious”, explaining that “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife”. Trump would, no doubt, be included in Suella Braverman's list of "Tofu Eating Wokerati". (thanks Anna O'Kennedy )

Not so long ago Vladimir Zelensky’s communication was similarly lightweight. He won the Ukrainian version of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and starred in a five minute piano recital played by his penis. In 2022, President Zelensky was my orator of the year for his inspirational response to the invasion of his nation. In February, as the world awaited the inevitable Russian advance towards Kiev, the US offered to evacuate him from the capital. His response, communicated via a selfie, “I need ammunition, not a ride” set the tone for extraordinary levels of national defiance and resilience. As Jason Foodman put it so perfectly, Zelensky has provided "a free masterclass in leadership and speech delivery".

Finally, on a grey day in September, the King of England addressed the Nation and the Commonwealth from his desk in Buckingham Palace. His words were deeply moving and finished by quoting Horatio’s tribute to Hamlet: “May ‘flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”. An Elizabethan bard concluding a second Elizabethan era. Words may not always be well chosen, but their power remains eternal.