13 Mar What’s the Story?
As Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt enter the most important week of their Premiership/Chancellorship, OVID Health Partner, Roudie Shafie, shares her analysis on whether the Number 10 communications machine can land the messages they want.
“Get your story straight” may sound like words of advice from The Sopranos, but they are in fact from Boris Johnson’s former Director of Communications at Number 10. Last month OVID Health met with Guto Harri to discuss where the space can be created between the story government wants to tell, and the one the media wants to play.
In any communications, but especially government communications, knowing what story you want to tell is critical to message control. “Before looking at activity, platforms and grids, work out what you are telling people” was Guto’s advice to his former bosses. Liz Truss wanted growth, Boris wanted to get Brexit done, Keir Starmer wants to fix broken public services. The story Jeremy and Rishi will tell us this week is that they want to make us feel economically safer. Reducing inflation and controlling energy prices are at the heart of this, but the story is about safe, centrist economic stewardship.
That’s a great story but can it land among the sound and fury of any given political crisis?
Guto’s reflection is that many journalists decide what the story is before they even turn up. They are the journalists from newspapers with an agenda; you know who they are and there is a level of transparency in knowing their agenda. The much harder challenge for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor this week is that lobby journalism has become a “competitive sport”. They want more than a story; they want to land scoops. In today’s frantic political tailspin on the back of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp message leaks, the bar for political chaos is set higher and higher.
The conversation with Guto left me imagining what a typical “day in the life” of a UK Prime Minister’s Director of Communications looks like.
6.30am: Three or four journalists call you to find out if the PM has had a fixed penalty notice, sacked a Cabinet Minister or knows the price of his wife’s slippers.
8.15am: The first of two daily 30min lobby “briefings”. Getting the team prepped and ready with a free for all fire round of questions. They’ll ask about numbers of doctors and small boats; we want to talk about childcare and energy price cap!
Later in the morning: Lots of meetings (it is, after all, still a comms job).
Afternoon: Second 30min lobby briefing, but this time the Westminster machine is awake, and journalists are getting tips of “difficult” questions to ask.
Show and tell time: Tell the story in pictures on the evening news (most people don’t read the papers). We can show the UK people that we won’t stand for Russian aggression, let’s find an oligarch’s yacht to impound!
Heading home late at night: Wading through hundreds of missed calls and emails from internal colleagues, all jostling for space on the grid.
If that’s a typical day, then on budget day, I’ll spare a thought for the current Director of Communications, as the day comes with another layer of facts, data and complexity which may not fit into anyone’s story.
At OVID Health we help our clients tell their stories impactfully. Get in touch to find out more.