With another year in Westminster drawing to a close and talk turning from monetary policy to mince pies, DeHavilland takes a look at some of the defining political speeches of 2015.
Mhairi Black's maiden speech
Perhaps the most high-profile maiden speech came from the Baby of the House, whose entry into the pages of Hansard had been anxiously awaited by both sceptics and supporters.
Making her debut in a debate on the Summer Budget, SNP MP Mhairi Black decried the impact of welfare cuts and the increasing need for food banks in her constituency.
She also reached out an olive branch to the Labour Party, calling on it to work with the SNP in joint opposition to the Conservatives, while simultaneously chiding the party for supporting Government proposals on tax credits.
“I […] come from a traditional socialist Labour family”, she told the House, “and I have never been quiet in my assertion that I feel it is the Labour party that left me, not the other way about”.
The speech became a social media sensation, and was said to have been viewed online over ten million times.
Key quote: “So we are now in the ridiculous situation whereby because I am an MP… I am also the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing”.
Heidi Allen on tax credits
The Government’s first stumble in this Parliament came over its plans to make radical reforms to the tax credit system.
Although the proposals finally fell in the House of Lords, triggering talk of constitutional crises and the flooding of the Upper Chamber with Conservative peers, one of the defining moments of the debate came from a relatively new backbencher during her maiden speech.
Conservative MP Heidi Allen spoke out against the party leadership’s stance, arguing that the Conservatives were “the party of the working person”.
While accepting the basic principle that tax credits needed to be reformed, she argued that people needed to be supported during the transition to a "high pay, low welfare" society.
Key quote: “Conservatives pride themselves on cutting their cloth according to their means, but what if there is no cloth left to cut?”
Ed Miliband’s "Hell Yes" interview
For much of the election campaign, the pundits criticised the former Labour Leader Ed Miliband for appearing lacklustre and weak as a leader.
During an interview with Jeremy Paxman, however, many felt that the turning point had come as Mr Miliband finally struck a defiant tone against the media attacks.
While this late bloom ultimately came to naught, this was the moment that gave the election a sense of real suspense and may be seen by later generations as both a doomed flicker of potential and an indication of what Mr Miliband could have been.
Key quote: "Am I tough enough? Hell yes I am tough enough!"
Nick Clegg’s resignation speech
On the Election Day that felled three party leaders, perhaps the least surprising result was the electoral collapse of the Liberal Democrats.
Viewed by many as a foregone conclusion, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg’s resignation could have passed without much notice were it not for his “heart-rending” speech, as the Mirror described it.
He hailed the party’s record in Government, arguing that “there can be no doubt that we leave government with Britain a far stronger, fairer, greener, and more liberal country than it was five years ago”.
However, he also issued a clarion call for the importance of liberalism in the nation, arguing that “the politics of identity, of nationalism, of us-versus-them is now on the rise”.
While ultimately a footnote on a momentous day, the speech was said to have driven some to tears and is likely to go down as one of the greatest speeches from a man whose record in Government will be a source of debate for years to come.
Key quote: “One thing seems to me is clear: liberalism, here, as well as across Europe, is not faring well against the politics of fear”.
George Osborne’s Conference speech
In what some have seen as a victory lap following the party’s electoral triumph, Chancellor George Osborne took to the stage at Conservative Party Conference in Manchester to rapturous applause and delivered a speech that reaffirmed the party’s economic position.
He once more repeated his pledge to take the public finances into a surplus in order to “be better prepared when the storms come”, and also furthered the devolution agenda by giving local government the ability to control business rates revenues.
Crucially, however, the speech positioned him as the architect of the party’s victory at the ballot box and placed him in prime position for the long campaign for the Conservative party leadership.
Key quote: “We are the builders”.
Hilary Benn's Syria speech
Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn took to the Despatch Box in the dying days of 2015 to make a speech that directly contradicted the views of his Leader and helped secure the vote on British military intervention in Syria.
During his vigorous defence of the merits of intervention, he emphasised the security risk that ISIL/Daesh posed but also positioned the conflict as a battle of values in a speech that led to tears and, unusually, applause in the Chamber.
While doing the rounds on social media, many made a comparison with a speech made by his father, the late Tony Benn, in a speech on intervention in Iraq in 1998, in which he exclaimed: "Aren’t Arabs terrified? Aren’t Iraqis terrified? Don’t Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die?”
The fallout from Benn the Younger’s speech included many touting his prospects as a future Labour Leader.
Not everyone was a fan, with Alex Salmond suggesting that Tony Benn would be “birling in his grave” over his son’s speech. However, Hilary Benn’s intervention appears to have played a crucial part in shaping the vote in the Commons and has further strengthened his position as the party’s leading statesman.
Key quote: “They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy - the means by which we will make our decision tonight - in contempt”.
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