No10 Communications Needs Less Firefighting And More Storytelling
5 min read
Why does No 10 frequently fail to seize the political news agenda? Lee Cain, a former Downing Street director of communications, argues that wholesale structural changes are needed for prime ministers to communicate their messages effectively
Downing Street has a communications problem. After barely 100 days in power, the Prime Minister had already reset his top team after weeks of bad headlines and plummeting polls.
As usual, parliamentarians and pundits have been quick to blame the No 10 spin machine for the shaky start – but is it their fault, or does it belie a deeper problem that has beset numerous Downing Street operations?
For decades, the primary focus of the government has been media management – attempting to control the daily news cycle and responding to, usually negative, stories (often referred to as ‘spinning’).
There is no attention given to serious strategic communications – the crafting of a powerful moral story that allows the public to make sense of government decision-making and its direction of travel.
Keir Starmer’s team appears no different. After 100 days, there was still no song to sing for ministers because there was no serious thought to strategic communications. Like its predecessors, this is a government being consumed by spin.
During my time in politics, I lost count of the people boasting ‘strategic comms’ in their title – yet met hardly any genuine specialist in the discipline. Most still believe the fabled ‘No 10 grid’ to be the apex of strategic communications, when in reality it is little more than a basic tool to organise departmental announcements.
The key 8.30 am Downing Street meeting is almost entirely dominated by discussions of what’s in daily newspapers (not broadcast or social) and how to respond to them.
Hundreds of press officers are tasked with compiling detailed lines and scripts on that day’s events for a spokesperson to read out to ‘the Lobby’ – the UK’s powerful political journalists.
Governments of all political persuasions can quickly feel more like a media rebuttal service as they allow themselves to be shaped by events rather than shaping them – as the recent freebie fiasco highlights.
This outdated and counterproductive system exists because few people inside Parliament, government, or the media understand communications outside of daily media management.
After an election, the under-fire inhabitants of Downing Street often forget that their real audience remains the electorate. Instead, they talk primarily to the media, hoping to dampen negative coverage.
If a government is to succeed it must be able to manage the media while also telling a simple story to the country about why it is taking decisions – connecting what it is saying with what it is doing.
A big part of that challenge is the structure of the communications team and whether it attracts the skills required, or provides the necessary time available, to develop and execute this story.
The opaque role of the director of communications – a title Tony Blair stole from the White House in 2000 to keep an increasingly headline-grabbing Alastair Campbell away from the daily Lobby briefing – is part of the problem.
In the American system, this is a position for a strategic thinker; someone who creates and implements the president’s narrative while the press secretary handles media management.
Due to its poor implementation, the No 10 system does not incentivise this approach. Downing Street’s media chief is overwhelmed with fire-fighting and media management, meaning it is impossible to undertake any sustained strategic planning.
However, delegating media management responsibilities can create different problems for the director of communications. Understandably, the Lobby doesn’t care about the government’s strategic agenda. It survives on the daily media cycle, working under intense pressure to file copy and fill airtime.
Achieving this is easier with frequent access to the PM’s most senior communications adviser. When this is removed, many in this highly competitive, and occasionally paranoid, profession interpret a lack of interaction as incompetence or even hostility.
Negative briefings are spun. MPs are told by journalists that the media team is failing and needs a change – something they all too readily lap up as few understand communications outside of spin.
The quickest and most effective way to repair this broken system would be for No 10 to axe the role of director of communications and return to the old system of a respected and empowered press secretary to fully oversee the daily media management.
Separately, Downing Street should look to recruit an experienced strategic communications operator to develop, coordinate, and execute the government’s message.
Critically, this role will not be tasked with interacting with the Lobby. Instead, it should oversee the research team creating the government’s political narrative.
It would also control the sprawling and wasteful Government Communication Service (GCS), an operation of staggering scale overseeing cross-government advertising, marketing, and media operations with a budget in excess of £500m.
It comprises about 8,000 professional communicators spread across 25 departments and arm’s length bodies (ALBs) – overseeing more than 160 campaigns each year.
The GCS needlessly wastes hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year. Every department is hugely overstaffed (no department needs 200-plus press handlers), drastically underqualified, and forced (by ministers) to run pointless campaigns without even basic metrics for success. It is also totally detached from the government message.
The system has improved under the new chief executive of government communications, but needs political leadership to provide a radical overhaul. This could save the taxpayer millions while also dramatically improving government communications.
By releasing strategic communicators from daily media management, and focusing government on talking to the public, instead of the Lobby – it may finally break free of the chains of spin it has wrapped itself up in for decades.
Lee Cain is the founding partner at strategic communications firm Charlesbye and former Downing Street director of communications.
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