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May 12, 2020

Mark Borkowski: The Tories have campaigned in haiku and are governing in gibberish.

The Drum

The famous mantra of hard-nosed political communication is that you ‘campaign in poetry and govern in prose.’ Well, the Tories have campaigned in haiku and are governing in gibberish.

What we saw yesterday was a communications disaster. Is there anyone that is willing to stand up and defend Her Majesty’s Government’s dodgy Powerpoint played over the sounds of an unfortunate table being firmly pounded by the Prime Minister?

But I don’t think, as some claim, that this was a piece of conspiratorial skulduggery, I have worked in PR for thirty years and I can see a PR cock-up from a mile away. The first rule in a crisis is that even if the temptation is great, you don’t just speak for the sake of it. That a professional blatherer like Johnson couldn’t maintain a disciplined silence doesn’t shock me, but that the team around him didn’t halt him.

Dominic Cummings has made his name with rigid discipline focussed on hyper-short slogans and it works. Although I’ll always prefer Yes We Can to Take Back Control, the nebulous stirring staccato of either slogan has to be admired. What a sweet irony that the iron fisted kind of conciseness can’t keep a man, who never saw a meaningless digression he didn’t lunge for, under control during the most important crisis of our generation.

After the repeated (and often contradictory) press briefings hyping up the statement, it looked as if the extent of Cummings’ messaging control was to get Johnson to cut his hair.

It’s the day after and Dominic Raab has already adjusted the date of change to Wednesday so if the message is getting confused between the Prime Minister and the guy who was Prime Minister a week ago, then how are we supposed to know what is going on? The Government is battering own goals at such a rate that Keir Starmer just needs to get out the way, stand there and scratch his head to take the lead.

And if that seems like too much – that the press will support Johnson to come what may – then look at The Daily Mail’s landing page. It brings me no pleasure to attack the Government at this horrible time. The Prime Minister needs to get his house in order and reach out to the communications sector in London. In their words, we are in a war – and in wartime we all must do all we can.

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2020/05/11/mark-borkowski-the-tories-have-campaigned-haiku-and-governed-gibberish

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