The Times:
”This is not a golden age of political oratory. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn can empty rooms with their eloquence and many MPs follow their example. The bland are leading the bland. Yet even in this rhetorical wasteland new standards for gibberish can be set. Yesterday we heard a wonderfully vacuous speech by Gavin Williamson, a masterclass in the verbal form known as “management guff”.
It was said of Winston Churchill that he “mobilised the English language and sent it into battle”. Mr Williamson, the defence secretary, has invited the English language to a focus group where he hopes to matrix the fungible potentialities and leverage some fresh communication protocols for stakeholders based on existing performance-based models.
His statement had no real purpose other than to mark six months since he had “set out headline conclusions on the modernising defence programme” and to crow about the £1.8 billion extra he got in the budget. We may have a leadership contest soon and Mr Williamson wants to remind people that he is a contender. It was hard to tell from his speech if he even has a pulse.......”