Irrespective of what number of occasions it occurred – and in my 4 years as a authorities director of communications, it occurred six occasions – I all the time had the identical nervous feeling once I met my new secretary of state for the primary time.
This sense was usually compounded by the dearth of “heads up” that a reshuffle or change is coming. It may really feel very private – I’ve labored with ministers and political advisers who I like quite a bit on a private degree, and have loved main their comms efforts. But in what can really feel like no time in any respect, they’re gone with no time for even essentially the most cursory conventional office goodbye.
I’ve labored in each the Division for Science, Innovation and Know-how, and the Division for Enterprise, Power and Industrial Technique. Typically you’ve got a good suggestion who your new minister is likely to be – actually because they’ve proven curiosity within the subject earlier than – however usually, you don’t have any clue till moments earlier than they bodily enter the division.
This makes this election considerably uncommon – we all know what the result’s anticipated to be, given the final Survation MRP showed a 99 per cent probability of a Labour landslide, and Keir Starmer’s crew are displaying all of the indicators of reappointing most shadows to their frontbench positions.
That is in all probability about as a lot of a lifeless cert as you get within the Civil Service planning machine. And definitely extra discover than once I moved to the brand new Science and Tech Division the place I had nearly sufficient time to get my dad down from Leeds to assist take care of my canine (that’s a 2hr 20 practice journey’s value of discover).
When a brand new minister is appointed, there’s a “traditional” order of conferences they do, beginning with their new parliamentary non-public secretary, who will probably be their senior adviser and operating their non-public workplace. That’s adopted by the Everlasting Secretary (the CEO of the division) after which the director of comms (me).
This implies there’s not many individuals so that you can evaluate notes with beforehand, although if the minister has come from one other division, the chances are you’ve already received a really thorough WhatsApp summary in your telephone from one other authorities colleague. You hope for “very good, in a position communicator,” however I as soon as had “has no concept what the purpose of presidency comms is”.
Then the assembly begins. You should present you’ve got concepts, but additionally that you’re receptive to theirs. That you just perceive {that a} change has taken place and also you’re prepared to instantly meet their expectations, regardless of not figuring out what they’re.
In actuality, you and your crew have spent months, generally years, crafting language primarily based on another person’s voice, arranging visits that your earlier principal would get pleasure from and have their media prep preferences etched into your mind. That’s earlier than we even get to their grammar errors and realising that your pitch for his or her first profile piece is with a publication they fell out with in 2013 over a neighborhood planning concern.
Social media has much more pitfalls. The seemingly innocuous “inform me how you want to make use of social media?” has elicited responses wherever on the spectrum of “I don’t have social media” to “I solely prefer to publish issues which may go viral”.
Most likely my most successful early socials pitch was when Grant Shapps agreed to do an “elevator pitch” within the “well-known” Enterprise Division spherical lifts on his second day on the job as enterprise secretary in 2022. Though I’m not positive the remainder of my colleagues within the division would agree it was successful – we shut down the lifts within the seven-storey constructing for an hour at lunchtime and wouldn’t let anybody via the reception to depart as we filmed.
When Jacob Rees-Mogg arrived – full with a really robust following on X/Twitter – later that 12 months, it actually helped our explainer movies about Liz Truss’s new vitality schemes reach millions of people. Nevertheless, what we hadn’t banked on was that his celebrity following would make filming on the road (which we had all the time performed usually with earlier ministers) would contain “pap” pics of civil servants simply doing their job and fixed interruptions from passers-by.
For these taking over their first departmental obligations as a minister, one of many predominant adjustments is usually that they’re going from relative freedom to undertake press interviews – solely risking the odd rebuke from central workplace if they are saying one thing off message as they construct their very own profile and private model – to no freedom in any respect. Or no less than this has been the case beneath the final authorities.
It’s definitely my least favorite a part of that preliminary first assembly – and you actually do must say it early on so nobody can say they had been unaware – explaining that each one media now goes via a central grid system run by No 10 who give the inexperienced (or pink) gentle to any communications plans.
For the extra media shy minister, it’s a superb excuse for them to show journalists down (“Sorry, the pc says no. Subsequent time!”) however for these eager to get on the market, it’s a continuing and infrequently fraught triangulation between the minister’s diary, the media’s curiosity within the story, and No 10’s placement of it of their media administration grid.
You possibly can briefly cowl inner communications – which at this stage virtually definitely means asking them to do an “all workers” occasion and briefly cowl any main campaigns the division runs, equivalent to on public well being or, in my case, a marketing campaign to cut back your boiler circulate temperature (which additionally wanted to elucidate to folks this wasn’t the identical as turning your boiler down, and didn’t make you chilly. And for the minister to argue this wasn’t a statist plot to inform residents easy methods to dwell their lives, simply making an attempt to assist folks get monetary savings on their payments).
As with most jobs, that first assembly is daunting, adopted by the primary weeks and months the place it’s good to pivot from “the outdated manner” you probably did comms and ensure the division is ready to ship in opposition to the way in which your new boss desires to current themselves and their priorities. I left simply after the election was referred to as (a coincidence!) for a brand new life engaged on tech and science communications. However hope is on the horizon for my former colleagues.
Assuming Labour wins, Starmer has stated he intends to have fewer reshuffles and fewer “chopping and altering” of ministers – so tomorrow’s “Day One” is likely to be the final one for a very long time.
Abigail Morris is affiliate accomplice at Shearwater International, and a former director of communications for the Division for Science, Innovation and Know-how and the Division for Enterprise, Power and Industrial Technique
