Ever since David Cameron first made his pitch for the leadership of the Conservative Party by ditching his lectern, the “no notes” approach to political speeches has been in the ascendancy.

It is, they say, more genuine and less strident, more conversational and less stagey. It will reach the audience more directly, they claim. They don’t say, though I fear it’s also true, that the leader who strides forth without notes or prompts looks just a little more macho than the one who cowers behind his furniture.

The flaws in that approach were only too evident last week, when a conversational Ed Miliband omitted to mention the economy in his conference speech. So busy was he remembering all the people he’s met, he forgot his policy. Thus he was relaxed and chatty, and somehow incomplete.

But even when the platform walkabout is negotiated successfully, I feel strangely underwhelmed. I miss the power and fury of the old political oratory. I feel nostalgic for the scrupulously polished put-down, the highly crafted cadence, the carefully choreographed crescendo. Whatever you thought of their politics, Enoch Powell, Michael Foot and even Neil Kinnock were masters of that.

That training in rhetoric, once the mainstay of an Ancient Greek or Roman education, has left the stage. The ability to persuade anyone of anything – once the litmus-test of a good orator – is no longer considered to be a desirable quality in a politician.

But let’s not throw out the whole of rhetoric with the bath water. One technique taught by the old rhetoricians would have been more than useful to the Labour leader.

Renaissance scholars called it “the art of memory”. The trainee orator remembered a speech in its entirely by imaging himself walking from one room of a house to another, and mentally placing objects or signs in each room to remember the course of the speech in the right sequence.

Once every room in the house had been visited, the speech was done and dusted.

I had another piece of advice to offer Mr Miliband, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.

* Dr Chris Upton is Reader in...er... some sort or history at that university in Birmingham called...