A sort of peer (he’s a bit more experienced and successful than me) who I respect a lot, recently tweeted some pretty direct criticism of the way the UK Government has communicated around it’s COVID policy
It made me smile, because I agree with the sentiment – that HMG has been “totally shit” at COVID comms. It also got me thinking about a few things that have been in the back of my mind for some time.
One of the interesting things about the Boris Johnson Prime Ministership and its communications operation, is that he has successfully painted himself as the outsider. The way he and his team communicate, you’d think he’d been in opposition for the past 10 years and that the Conservative Party had not been in various forms of government since 2010.
An connected issue is the way that certain players in the current leadership team have looked to position themselves as insurgents, or guerrilla. They use political communications tactics equivalent to “hit and run” and “ambush” and cultivate broader relationships that can act as force multipliers. Just like the Viet Cong or the IRA.
All of this would appear to be born of the Brexit struggle. The communications strategy that helped overthrow decades of UK diplomatic and trade policy, remain the standard operational procedure for the current Government Comms operation.
Covid is teaching one of the toughest lessons for the insurgent. It’s a hell of a lot easier to fight dirty, and win by a thousand cuts than it is to actually govern. From Michael Collins to Mohammad Najibullah, the team that wins the war is often not the team to deliver lasting peace. They can’t let go of the Semtex and Kalashnikov. They can’t change.
Yes, I’m aware there’s countless examples to prove me wrong, that people can change and that one can be a vicious and ruthless guerrilla and a more magnanimous and consensual politician. But that would ruin my argument, so shhhhh.
So why can’t they change? Because they’ve been successful thus far by (a) not having to take responsibility, but criticising everyone else, (b) offering a potential future where everything will be ok, and finally (c) not having to deal with a 12 story crisis, with magnificent entrance hall, carpeted throughout, with an enormous sign on the roof that says “this is a large crisis”.
If there are rules of crisis comms, they’ve broken them , because they can’t give up the guerrilla / campaigning mentality. A few to consider:
- Demonstrate an awareness of the severity of the situation, that you are (a) in charge, (b) morally, if not legally responsible and (c) you and you will fix this
- Timely decision making and communication. Don’t dawdle, don’t rush.
- Clear, succinct information: don’t sugar coat bad news
The reason that the Boris Johnson Prime Ministership comms have been “totally shit” is his near pathological need to be liked.
As a comms advisor to sovereign states, the energy industry and finally the burgeoning investment migration industry, I am comfortable not being (professionally) liked. I don’t expect it. I know however that I don’t have to be liked to be both a credible and successful communicator.
Johnson’s need to be liked (more than the average narcissistic politician), combined with the guerrilla approach, means that this Government has not communicated with the seriousness and proficiency that is necessary.
In this sort of situation, there are rarely “optimal outcomes”, just a series of really hard decisions that individuals will have to live with being replayed and judged in hindsight, for the rest of their lives.
Johnson doesn’t want to demonstrate how, in some ways, he can’t fix this; or at least can’t fix it quickly. He is petrified of saying “x” policy will save “y” thousand lives, but then have to explain how the economy will be kept afloat. He’s petrified of saying “keep the economy going” and accepting casualties of “z” thousand.
If this government were a corporate actor in a crisis, George or I might advise that – at least internally – the Government needs to understand the following factors:
- How many people will die without intervention and over what time? Who are they in terms of demographics etc?
- What does that death or the results of the intervention mean to the country: psychologically, sociologically, economically and politically?
- Is their an effective hybrid policy as regards intervention and maintaining some sort of economic activity?
- Understand and explain the trade offs
The challenge with this sort of approach is that Johnson would eventually have to explain why some people have been deemed expendable. And he can’t do this for all of the reasons considered above, and that it may well be political suicide. Also, just maybe, they lack the intellect and courage to do so?
To use a further military analogy, Johnson wants to be Churchill, but not the Churchill that really existed. Johnson doesn’t want to deliver any of the Churchillian epic speeches because they were calls for defiance before thousands of British and allied people were going to die. There aren’t many great valedictory speeches because he didn’t get to make them. Any time before the Normandy breakout, there was a chance that the UK would suffer horrific casualties either at D-Day or the campaign that followed it. Once the war was clearly won against Germany and it was only a matter of time, the statisticians were considering how many hundreds of thousands KIA would result from the invasion of Japan. Then Churchill was voted out before the war was won.
So to conclude, HMG comms has been “really shit” because:
- The can’t throw off the insurgent tactics and learn how to govern
- They want to be liked
- They lack the intellectual and political discipline to run a truly strategic defensive public health and economic protection operation
What a **** mess.
Booze, Balls, Bollocks & the Blewers 