Do Downing Street’s problems stem from a comms failure or politics?

The original slogan: “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives” was arguably one of the most effective communications campaigns in recent political memory.

People were so persuaded by the catchphrase that it has since proved difficult to lift the British public out of lockdown.

Yet following a string of apparent U-turns over track and trace, air bridges and now face masks, Downing Street has been criticised for a lack of clarity and consistency in its coronavirus messaging, as restrictions have slowly been eased in recent days.

Compounded by the PR disaster surrounding Dominic Cummings’s 260-mile trip to Durham, many have questioned the quality of the “comms” operation at No10, spearheaded by Downing Street’s director of communications, Lee Cain.

The former journalist, who was head of broadcast for the Vote Leave campaign, was a special adviser to Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom before joining Mr Johnson’s team when he was foreign secretary.

Having memorably been deployed to taunt David Cameron, the former prime minister, dressed as a chicken when he worked for the Daily Mirror, the adviser has become an easy target for Tory MPS and ministers disgruntled with the Government’s Covid-19 response.

But do Downing Street’s problems stem from a comms failure or a government one? And with Mr Johnson’s trust rating now higher (31 per cent) than it was before the general election (22 per cent), according to Ipsos MORI, is the media out of step with the public when it comes to its damning analysis of the handling of the outbreak? Sir Craig Oliver, who was Mr Cameron’s director of communications, believes the voters have a lot more sympathy with the unprecedented circumstances Mr Johnson’s fledgling administration has had to contend with than Twitter would have you believe.

“This is completely virgin territory, it’s a nightmare. The Government is trying to manage a situation where often there are no clear answers – only degrees of difficulty. Most people accept that the Government is in an extremely difficult situation. The Westminster bubble view starts from ‘everything is completely screwed up’, but there’s much more willingness to give the benefit of the doubt out in the country than there is on social media.”

Tony Blair is quoted as saying: “You can’t fix a bad policy with good comms”, and allies of Mr Cain point out that, less than a year into the job, he has had to deal with the biggest national emergency in peacetime, with the PM admitted to intensive care at the peak of the pandemic. Government failings over the timing of lockdown, the lack of personal protective equipment and failure to protect care homes arguably have little to do with its PR strategy.

Sloganeering, of course, is another matter. The successor to “Stay at home” was always going to have to be more nuanced and some feel the criticism of the replacement “Stay alert” message was overblown, since Yougov polling found that 70 per cent of people understood it (even if a third were left baffled).

If there are any regrets it is that “Stay alert” was briefed to The Sunday Telegraph before Mr Johnson’s Sunday night primetime broadcast on May 10, creating a news vacuum that was inevitably filled with criticism.

Yet, like Mr Cummings himself, there is seemingly little contrition over the Barnard Castle eye-test debacle. The PM was told in no uncertain terms that the quickest way to end the media backlash was to fire his chief adviser.

He refused, seemingly believing the former Vote Leave supremo was worth a week of negative headlines. According to one insider: “Everyone knew there was cut-through from day one. The decision has already been made to stand by him so that’s what happened. Will people still be talking about it in four years’ time? Probably not.”

The daily press conferences, designed to be as transparent as possible, have also at times appeared counter-productive. They will inevitably be scaled back as Britain’s returns to a “new normal”, with the weekend pressers already cancelled.

Good Morning Britain will continue to be boycotted, however, in light of host Piers Morgan’s “tendency to shout at ministers in order to notch up more Twitter followers”, according to one source. Relations with Today on Radio 4 are said to be “improving”.

A more pressing concern for No10 right now is the amount of leaking from members of Sage. As Nick Wood, former media adviser to Conservative leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, observed: “It certainly doesn’t help when [the scientists] start publicly briefing against the Government they are supposed to be advising in private.”

‘The Government is trying to manage a situation where often there are no clear answers’