Everything wrong with Keir Starmer’s media strategy - and how to fix it

0:01This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:05Jon Sopel:Next week, we are being promised a reshuffle and a reset for the Labour government, that it's going to be a new page turned, a new start, a fresh beginning. But there are some mighty problems for them to confront. Will any reset, any reshuffle, any new policy really make the difference in resurrecting Keir Starmer's government fortunes if they can't sort out one central question, one question that John and I, in one form or another, feel like we've been discussing all summer. What is wrong with the government's communications and what can they do to finally sort it out? Welcome to The News Agents.

0:56The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And we thought we'd have this discussion because we were talking last night and thinking about the summer, the political summer, which is, of course, nearly over. Parliament's back next week. Prime Minister's back from his holiday. And it's occurred to us that in a way, John and I, over the last four weeks, we've sort of been having, in amidst all of the different events that have taken place, it has been quite a busy summer in different ways. But in the midst of all of that, we've kind of been orbiting around, skirting around one conversation again and again and again, which is how can it be?

1:31How is it that we've got this government, a government with a huge majority in the House of Commons? It's still in just about year one, early part of year two in office. It should be commanding, albeit it's got these very difficult circumstances. Yeah, sure. But we've rarely had a government with all of that, all those things on its side. And yet it has felt so embattled, so unwilling or unable to command the conversation. And we think that part of that is about its communication strategy or perhaps lack of communication strategy, a strategy which is perhaps a little bit out of time and a bit out of date.

2:09And so we thought that we'd have this discussion about why that is and what might be done to improve it.

2:16Jon Sopel:So if you think back to July, if your kind of mind hasn't been addled by too many Negronis or Aperol spritzes over the summer holidays, to think back that in July we had the government getting into a huge amount of trouble over its welfare reform proposals. We saw the kind of terrible sight of Rachel Reeves in tears at prime minister's questions. And there was this talk that there was going to be a reset. There was going to be a clearer focus. We were going to see a more kind of, I don't know whether polished is the right word, but a more concentrated effort to communicate what it is that this government is about.

2:51Jon Sopel:Now, they have appointed someone to be a permanent secretary of communications at a senior civil servant level, David Dinsmore, who used to be the editor of the Sun newspaper. And he is coming in to grapple this. Now, you know, in terms of communication skills, you've been at the Sun newspaper. You know a lot about journalism. You know a lot about what makes a story. I mean, whether you can bring all the different parts of the civil service together and kind of make them sort of sing to your tune is another question. But it's been striking just how little the government has felt to be on the front foot.

3:26Jon Sopel:Now, it's August. These are when people go away on their holidays and try and recharge their batteries. But it's an opportunity which Nigel Farage, we've seen, has been taking advantage of. And yet the government, for the thousands of publicity and press officers that are employed by the civil service, what have they been doing? I think it's extraordinary. And I know for a fact, I think we both know from different conversations we've had over the summer, that frustration with the kind of government's communications absence is felt by very senior people at the top of the government and around the government.

4:00And like you say, John, it is summer, but summer's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity for the government, which has the bully pulpit of politics, to be able to command the agenda. And I think what we've seen over this course of this summer is an exact embodiment of the way that the government handles its communications, how it can create a vacuum and allow others to command it instead. Because what the government has done, what's the main conversation that we've been having basically all summer, we keep coming back to again and again, in British domestic terms anyway? Well, it's about small boats.

4:31And it's about the kind of sense of powerlessness that the government seems to have about small boats. Can you think of a single moment, a single day, when you and I have been working for all of August, can you think of a single day or a single moment where the government has been on the front foot on that story? Can you think of a single day where the government has planned to do something, where it has done anything, some pictures, some events, some press statement, some anything about how it's got on the front foot and how it's tackling that problem? I can't think of one. And the net result is what happens is you allow the Farages of the world, and not just the Farages, even worse than the Farages, the kind of radical right, far right force of this world, to command both the digital and traditional broadcast press opinion.

5:16And I think that's bizarre, if nothing else.

5:19Jon Sopel:Well, you know, I have to be careful how I tread here. Because yesterday we had the minister responsible for EU relations, Nick Thomas Simmons, in the studio. And we love it that ministers want to come on the podcast. But I suppose I was left with this sort of nagging doubt after we had done the interview. and after we had had a lot of obfuscation and evasion and an ability to crisply engage with some of the issues about yeah i do agree with that and we've got to change that or no we're not going to change that because x y or z it just kind of was very vague and the feedback we got from our audience on social media was geez this is why politicians are losing the public you know it was just wasn't a clear answer to any question what and i suppose if you can't answer those questions to put a minister up to for the morning round to go around the various broadcasting studios what do you achieve if you have nothing to say and you're just playing a dead bat to everything i just think it turns people off i think you do need to have some answers so the net result of basically the government not exactly leaving the pitch because as you say they still come on every morning on the morning round and whatever and you know they're still there but the net result of them having little to say or anything new to say or frankly to just re-announce means that the conversation is not of their making the way that i could tell this there was a clip that did the round yesterday that i thought was very interesting and this was of rylan uh you know the well-known television presenter yeah he was on this morning and normally this morning is not the place where you know matters of high politics are that often discussed they do have politicians on from time to time but it's you know it's not that sort of show rylan ended up doing this clip talking about small boats and talking about basically how he feels that it's got out of control and rehearsing many of the talking points that we've seen litigated all summer here's just a small bit of that clip this country is built on immigration legal immigration you know that a lot of the nurses the doctors that have saved my mum's life have come over here from other countries are They're living a great life.

7:29They're paying into this tax system. They're helping this country thrive. I find it absolutely insane that all these people, one, are risking their lives coming across the channel like that they are. But two, when they get here, it does seem, and I think this is why a lot of Labour voters as well are now sitting there going, there's something wrong here. It seems, welcome, come on in. This is the narrative we're being fed. Here's the hotel. Here's the phones. Here's the iPad. Here's the NHS in reception of your hotel. Here's three meals a day. Here's a games room in the hotel. Have a lovely time and welcome And then there's people that have lived here all their lives that are struggling Yeah, they're hot that how homeless let's not even discuss our homeless that people living on the streets Veterans all of this, you know, this isn't me getting on my soapbox because let me be honest Everyone's gonna have an opinion about this and you're gonna upset someone some which way I believe that something major needs to be done about this.

8:24The money that it's costing us, the amount of people that are in this country that we have no idea who they are, what they've done, what they're capable of, and clearly we see a lot of it in the press at the moment, some of what some are doing, it's not all, what some are doing to people in this country. How can, if I turn up at Heathrow Airport as a British citizen and I've left my passport in Spain, I've got to stand at that airport and won't be let in and got to get this, but if I arrive on a boat in Calais, I get taken to a four-star hotel. Now, I thought what was so revealing about that, A, the fact that they're talking about it, the way that Rylan is talking about it.

8:58I'm not saying I disagree with him about everything. I don't. And I think in many ways, what he's talking about will resonate with a lot of people and some of it is certainly reasonable. He's also rehearsing some of the inaccuracies which have flooded the zone over the course of the summer. I mean, the actual truth is, you'll usually get, if you're an asylum seeker, you'll get£50 for each person in your household. You're not particularly likely to go to four or five-star hotels. Wells, you know, we all know that in many ways the life, the lot that an asylum seeker has is not a happy one. But nonetheless, he's rehearsing that.

9:27And one of the reasons that is the case is because the government have allowed a space to open where they are not even, it feels to me, trying to direct the flow of conversation. Now, the government might not be able to have total success in doing that, but there have been no counter narratives. There have been no counter arguments made. There have been no attempts really to even fact check some of this stuff. And so as a result, what happens is most people are not connected with or paying attention to the day to day politics in the way that we are. But when you have day after day, week after the week, the government sort of stepping back from that and the agenda being what it is, you end up with it being discussed on this morning by well-known television presenters talking in that way.

10:07Jon Sopel:No, we pointed out earlier on this week when Nigel Farage made his big speech on immigration and kind of they were going to deport illegal immigrants, that Downing Street's reaction was not to contradict him saying it was an invasion that was taking place. It was like Downing Street didn't want to say anything that might result in a fight with Nigel Farage. And if you are just going to say, I'm not sure what we can say. We'll just talk about the small bits of progress, incremental bits of progress we've made. I'm afraid you're going to lose the room. The room is not going to be paying attention.

10:45Jon Sopel:And I suspect that Ryland, for factual inaccuracies, though there may have been the, you know, in politics, perception is reality. and what Ryland was saying yesterday will chime with an awful lot of people. I think it was more nuanced as well. It wasn't saying he was anti-immigrant. I mean, he was saying that this country, the greatness of this country has been built on immigration and the people in the health service who've saved his mother's life, who have come from abroad. So I don't think he should be... He's exactly the sort of person the government needs to be talking to. Completely. Not an ideologue.

11:14He's exactly the sort of, I would say, probably where a median voter kind of is.

11:18Jon Sopel:So the easy answer to this discussion is to say or the i think facile answer is to say well whoever is in charge of press and communications at the government is doing a bad job because we're talking about government communications being wrong i was very struck by a senior minister i spoke to he said the downing street operation is like this he said you've got a lot of people high on power because they're in downing street and low on knowledge because they don't know what Keir Starmer himself thinks or wants. And I think that is a critical point right now for this government, that if you're going to be sailing in a certain direction, you want the captain on the deck to be saying, right, this is where we are heading.

12:03Well, this is absolutely central and key, which is that in order to sell a message, you've got to have a message. And in order to have communications, you've got to have something to communicate. And very often, and this is felt at the very top of the government, And Keir Starmer is not someone, we've talked about it many times, he's not someone who wants to articulate a vision. He wants to show rather than tell. And as I've said many times, you've said many times, it is simply not an adequate prospectus in modern politics. You have to be showing and telling all of the time. And to be honest, as disparaging as it might be, the telling is often more important in modern politics than the showing.

12:36Because the way the current media environment is, you have got to be everywhere all the time. What I find amazing about Starmer and about the way that they do communications is that it feels to me as if it feels very often like from another age. It feels to me not only is it from another age in a sense that they don't understand that so much of modern politics is content rather than communications. We can talk about that more. But the other thing is, is their entire tone feels so brittle and so old fashioned. We saw it with Nick Thomas Simmons yesterday. It feels like a sort of late 20th century interview style where they're so afraid of saying anything.

13:15It is like, as I was saying yesterday, they're constantly in the crouch position. Doing the media is just something to be got through, to be endured. And hopefully you can get to the end of it without fucking up, without making a mistake. That is a completely, in my view, antiquated way of looking at the media. Trump, for all of his problems. Exactly. I was going to talk about that. For all of his being a deeply unsatisfactory and in many ways immoral kind of political figure in all these ways, he shows the way. He makes mistake after mistake or creates fiasco after fiasco in interview after interview.

13:47You know what he does? He just does another one half an hour later. He does another one an hour later because he knows that he has the bully pulpit. And actually, the more media you do, the more interviews you do, the more you allow people to get out there. Actually, the less each individual interview matters. but the net result of it is that you and your party command the agenda hour after hour day after day that is why you see trump who is the ultimate incarnation of this sort of politics for good or real that is why you see trump never missing an opportunity to talk to the media when he's on air force one what is he doing he's just hanging out there cameras are there starmer i'm afraid i know he won't like this because he doesn't like a lot of modern british politicians they don't like talking to the media it makes them nervous he thinks a lot of us are really facile i would agree with quite a lot of that but i'm afraid starman needs to be talking to the media more than he does probably all of the time because that is the way that the government commands the agenda rather than when was the last time we heard from him when was the last time we

14:44Jon Sopel:saw him yeah we saw him last week in america at the white house with that meeting that was taking place with european leaders and donald trump about what happens next with ukraine and you wonder whether and this is something else we've spoken about on the podcast whether kia stama is so overwhelmed by the kind of weight of international issues on the agenda that he just hasn't had time to focus this but if you look at trump he floods the zone there is endless communication and he's carried on exactly where he left off you know when i was in there which was that he couldn't walk past a camera or a microphone without stopping to chat and it made him very accessible you'd get four or five different stories of him walking out onto the south lawn before getting on marine one to go to andrews air force base where he'd just go up and down the line of us reporters answering all our questions and creating a kind of news blizzard of stuff that he has just put out there and with this government you think okay well they'll do the morning round just something else And this is a micro example.

15:50Jon Sopel:Today on BBC News, they were talking about how Keir Starmer is having fired the principal private secretary at number 10 Downing Street. Or this person is being moved because they didn't do the job properly. Now, one, when have I ever heard about the slagging off of a senior civil servant in that way? The principal private secretary at number 10 Downing Street is normally kind of the creme de la creme of what the civil service has to offer. But I've spoken to someone who's pretty well connected to how this government is communicating. And this person says to me, oh, well, I think it was probably briefed by someone junior.

16:29Jon Sopel:They've got a very high regard for her. Well, if you're communicating stuff that the prime minister himself doesn't believe. And we've seen that, you know, over all sorts of ministers where briefings have gone out that Keir Starmer is at odds with X or Y. And then we find out, no, they're not. Well, then Keir Starmer ought to be the one saying, hang on, guys, this isn't right. I don't want any of this. It's him who's got to set the course on this. Well, yeah. When I say that their entire tone is kind of old fashioned, I mean that in not just their interview style, but even the way that they do even their digital content.

17:02right and i said before we said it talked about it last week you know my view is is that modern communications is not really communications it's content you've got to really stop thinking about what journalists are writing and when i can take them out for lunch and try and influence them no just make sure your content is electric and spellbinding and gets everybody talking and then everything flows from that as robert jenrich whether you like him or not has shown he's commanded the content and that has commanded the communications because then everyone suddenly is like oh look he's dominating the conversation he's everywhere he's going to be the next conservative party leader etc etc tweet that the pm's account put out last week said this britain's future is being built right now in classrooms youth clubs and communities across the country through our plan for change we're giving our young people the opportunities they deserve so they can thrive it is so anodyne it's so boring it's so nebulous it's so meaningless you know like people just don't engage with politics in that way anymore right i was talking to a cabinet minister long ago and they were saying they've got quite a small department they've got hundreds of press officers in their department 200 press officers or people who work for the wider press and i couldn't i couldn't believe it he said well i don't know i can't believe it either and you sort of sat there and thinking well what i cannot remember the last bit of government communications that i saw that had any kind of visceral quality had any kind of virality to it had any means of sort of spreading around and it is not hard to do this stuff what you really need is to get some great 20-somethings who just understand social media.

18:29That is where politics, whether we like it or not, is being prosecuted nowadays. And one of the reasons our politics at the moment, go back to that first question we started with, one of the reasons this government feels so rudderless and buffeted around by the right, by the radical right, is because right now, particularly on certain sites, they are owning social media. They are owning the content machine, right? You need an alternative, a centre-left, progressive, whatever. You need an alternative viral voice. I mean, just in terms of that aggression, like, I'm going to be a bit crude here. People might not like this.

18:59But, for example, you know, your mum might be listening and you're going to get into a lot of trouble. Mum, I'm sorry. Please turn your ears away now. I actually think that they started to get onto something on the online safety debate when it was brought in and you had Farage going on about it and the radical right going, this is a disgrace. We're turning into the Stasi, all of this nonsense. And then they came out with those tweets and stuff about basically and those articles basically suggesting that he was on the side of Jimmy Savile and all this. Now, that was a bad idea just because of some of the previous stories that people have tried to link Jimmy Savile with what happened to him and Keir Starmer.

19:30So that was a bad idea. But it was on the right lines in the sense that they could do with being more politically aggressive. So if I were them, and again, it's a little bit crude, but I would have been much more inclined to say something or put out a gif or do something or send West Street out there to say, you know what, the thing about Nigel Farage is he's more interested in having a wank instead of being able to know. No, no, but seriously, instead of actually putting your idea and looking after our kids, that's what I would have said. You know, you send someone to say something as that or to masturbate or to look at porn.

19:58You know, I know it's crude. I don't really like it. As you know, I don't really like this sort of crudeness in politics. But imagine that would have got everybody talking. It would have dominated, dominated the online space. And it would have actually had, honestly, it would have had, it would have also been adverting to a central truth, which is that their side cares more about sort of quite kind of like rarefied bits of online freedom. We care more about looking after kids and making sure they're not looking at porn. It's crude, but it will get people talking.

20:27Jon Sopel:So this is where, you know, I think that the government would say in its defence, and I think they would be wrong to say we're the government. We can't communicate like that. We mustn't be the ones who are kind of debasing the coinage in political discourse. well look at what has happened in washington dc look at the way the trump administration is communicating and some of it is absolutely heinous and there are terrible things going on but in terms of the communication they are keeping their supporters on board they are keeping their base happy they are doing the things that they said they would do in a way that is punchy and aggressive and it's kind of pugilistic almost in the way that they are going about it and as you say what you get on the social media accounts and the tweet you just read out is a classic of its genre is just blah it's just vanilla blandness that could be a badly written press release from the 1970s yeah no exactly and i think that we are again i mean we might not like these developments in modern politics and how sort of more crass things have become.

21:38In the attention economy that we're living in, how much louder and more crass and brash you might have to be to get your political message across. But that is the political media world that we're living in. And if Starmer doesn't want to be, I mean, as I say, I think the way that it could improve things is by, A, doing more media, not less. And that is all media, by the way. Why are they still bothering? I mean, we've got an interest in saying this, but this should be. See, what my frustration is, is that actually... Feeding an old-fashioned beast that doesn't move any dials. No. And, like, my frustration is, I actually think that all this new media world, as sort of slightly scary and a bit worrying as it can be sometimes, I think of all the parties, it's the biggest opportunity for the Labour Party.

22:18Because the Labour Party historically has struggled with a complete lack of established media buy-in from the newspapers, which translates to the broadcasters and the BBC because they're afraid of the newspapers, right? They have a lot of hostility from the traditional right-wing press. That is something this government has had in spades. It's not even had a honeymoon in the way that even normally a Labour government has. It's had direct hostility from the press, from the Daily Mail, from the Sun, from the Rothermirs and the Murdoch, from day one. But suddenly those newspapers have never mattered less.

22:51Suddenly there's this whole world where you can command. you can find a whole new media ecosystem of podcasts of youtube of online digital life where you can talk directly to people and also there are all of these new channels that are popping up that don't have that hostility yeah so that fragmentation is a tremendous opportunity for you that they are just not exploiting because they're still stuck in these old-fashioned ways of thinking of course

23:16Jon Sopel:i agree with absolutely everything but then you're saying in politics you need to be a character you You need to be a personality. You need to be able to kind of project this stuff in a way that Trump does, in a way that Boris Johnson did, in a way that other leaders who have got that sort of, you know, flair for self publicity have got. And I just think the trouble is, what would be a tweet from Keir Starmer that would feel authentic? I mean, I think that, you know, Trump's great appeal is the authenticity, the comedy, the brutality that, you know, when you read something from Trump on Truth Social, you know, it's his voice.

23:56Jon Sopel:You know he's written it because it's got spelling mistakes. There are grammatical errors. There are full stops. It was, it's demotic. It's kind of, you know, slightly nuts. But you know it's him. And that is what gives it its power because you're hearing directly. What would be the authentic message you would hear from Keir Starmer and think, oh, wow, bloody well said, mate. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. I think there are things, though. I mean, he's actually, as politicians go, he's actually a politician. He's one of the most egoless politicians, actually, that I've met. Well, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

24:25Well, I think it could be a good thing or a bad thing, but it does allow you to be quite self-deprecating and it could allow you to be a little bit more lean into that side of yourself than other politicians can be. Two, I think, even if... Also, it doesn't always have to be Starmer who's doing this. He's got this reshoffer coming up, right? So it's not going to be the major figures, but some of them... You know, my main thing, if I were Starmer right now, advising Starmer, would be like, yeah, of course, kind of, you know, ministerial competence matters and we want people in the departments, but we've got to think far more about who are the best communicators we've got and who we're sending out all the time.

24:55We need better communication. And we're not just on the traditional grounds, whatever, but on the digital side, on the content side. What can we be doing? Who are the people out there who can, if it's not the prime minister, who are the people out there who are spreading that message? And that's the third thing is, it goes back to what you said, John, is like, and what is the message? Now, my understanding is that this summer, this autumn, they're going to like major on fairness and this sort of themes of fairness. Again, this worries me because I just think that, again, this is a very nebulous concept, fairness.