Spin doctors, to use the pejorative
description of PR officers, generally have a poor reputation. But having worked
with some, both in my political activity over the years and in my paid
employment, I can honestly say that they are generally professional and
hard-working. When presented with a situation where their clients have, shall
we say, ‘got into a little local difficulty’, they will always do their very
best to come up with a strategy aimed at rescuing the reputation of the individual
or organisation employing them. Sometimes, however, the task is beyond even the
best of them, and their task is never made any easier if the client believes
that he or she knows better and/or is pathologically incapable of taking and
following the best advice. And that brings us to the Prime Minister.
On Monday, he effectively tried to tell us
that he couldn’t possibly know whether a party had taken place on 20th
May 2020 or even whether he’d been present, until a civil servant had
investigated the claims and reported back to him. Whilst it’s just about
believable that a PR expert might have tried to come up with some sort of
approach to buy a little time in order to establish the facts for him or
herself (they would know Johnson well enough to know that they couldn’t depend
on the veracity of whatever he had told them), it’s hard to believe that what Johnson
actually came out with was the product of any serious deliberation. And even
harder to believe that the PR people would not have known that he’d be unable
to prevent himself smirking as he uttered the words.
It should have been obvious to anyone that
the statement wouldn’t hold for longer than it took to make it, and the PM’s own
former adviser, Guto Harri, very publicly offered the advice
that only a full and grovelling apology to the House of Commons stood any
chance of saving his skin. It was good advice; it’s the accepted norm that the
best – or perhaps I should say ‘least worst’ – option in difficult
circumstances is to come clean, tell the whole truth, get everything out in the
open and make a fulsome and sincere apology. It was Johnson’s only chance, and
he fluffed it. It’s impossible to know, from the outside, whether his own
in-house staff were trying to push him in the direction suggested by Guto
Harri, but they don’t deserve to be in their jobs if they weren’t. Instead,
what we got was the ludicrous claim that his own private office had invited 100
people to a party in his back garden after normal office hours without asking
or even telling him, and that he and his then fiancée just happened to wander
out into the garden at the appointed hour, saw people milling around drinking and
eating snacks from a buffet table, assumed that it must be a work meeting (because
aren’t all work meetings like that?) and joined in by mingling with those
present, before realising after 25 minutes that it wasn’t a work meeting at all
and returning to his own office. And, eighteen months later, when it came to
light and he was forced into delivering a non-apology to the House of Commons,
he proceeded
to tell MPs privately afterwards that he had done nothing at all wrong.
It’s unbelievable that any spin doctor
would have even countenanced advising Johnson to try such a lame and pathetic
approach. I can imagine them sitting in front of a television pulling their
hair out as he spoke. Normally, having worked in such a high-profile role as
spin doctor to the PM would be a huge asset in seeking further employment, but
who’d want to employ someone who was even suspected of going along with this
charade? And that brings us back to the starting point – no matter how expert,
professional or experienced a PR officer is, he or she can only deliver if the
client is willing and able to listen to and follow advice. Nobody would ever
accuse Johnson of falling into either of those categories.
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