unicornnews: Comms challenges for coalition

So, as the British electorate, media and lobbying industry get their collective heads around what exactly having a coalition government in power really means, here’s an interesting question for you: what does it mean for those charged with the task of communicating on behalf of the Prime Minister and his top team?
As expected, Tory comms chief and former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson has been appointed Director Of Communications at Number 10 Downing Street, but what lies ahead for him and his team, and what new challenges will he have to face as a result of having two political parties involved in government?

Some involved in the coalition have suggested this new era of British politics will operate with less spin, maintaining the myth that crafty PR moves by central government officials was a New Labour invention.

But that seems unlikely. Recent events in British politics have seen some of the finest moments of political PR in recent memory, from Gordon Brown’s wonderfully orchestrated departure from Number 10 as the classic father and family man, to Cameron and Clegg’s American-style love fest of a press conference in the rose garden at Number 10 Downing Street.

And, as PR Week editor Danny Rogers said last week, with a former PR man and a former lobbyist filling the top two jobs in the coalition, we can surely expect good communications – aka spin – to be high up the agenda of the new government.

Writing in The Guardian, Rogers says Coulson will have two key challenges.

Firstly, as the Tory’s comms man, he’ll need to find a way to keep the chief communicators in the Lib Dems onside, but without annoying the more right wing factions in his own party.

Secondly, he needs to avoid any further fall out from his own back story. Being a former journalist turned political advisor, rather than a neutral civil servant, some will portray Coulson as “the new Alistair Campbell”, which isn’t necessarily a persona he wants given all the possible detractors that already exist on the government benches in parliament.

And then there’s the issue of the phone hacking scandal, which kicked off on his watch at the NOTW, and which still rumbles on despite protestations from him and other News International execs that those journalists illegally hacking the voicemail boxes of celebrities and public figures did so without management’s consent.

Rogers points out a dozen MPs – including Lib Dems – are currently taking legal action in a bid to get to the bottom of the phone hacking issue, and if any dirt were to land on Coulson in the process, that could put further stress on relationships between Tory spin doctors and the Lib Dem MPs within the new coalition.

Posted Wednesday May 26 2010 by Chris Cooke

Related categories: Political Communications