I was working as a producer at Channel 4 News. On my way into work one morning I got a text: ‘Emergency Children’s Ward closing. Go with health editor and make a package. Cameraman will meet you there’.
Eleven hours and counting until transmission. Nine hours and counting until we had to edit.
Need to find worried parents, need somewhere to film. Talk to the hospital. Need to stay in control, be ahead, plan all now, lock down everything.
We jump on a train, we write the script, we find a parent to tell us their story. We arrive at the hospital, we film, we film, we film. Our parent can’t make it. We find another. Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot. Must be done and back on the road by 4. We edit in the van in the station car park. Laying down the words we started writing at 9.
6pm. All done. Standing on the platform with one foot hovering over the open door of the waiting train until the lawyer gives us the all clear. We jump on board.
At 8am we had nothing. At 7pm we had everything. A narrative. A report that defined a particular moment when policy and lives collided. Just one of a never-ending, daily cycle of human stories.
It is this telling of who we are; of policy and its impact on our lives, that we hope to hear from government. A “relentless, never ending conversation with the country about what you’re trying to do” is how former Number 10 press secretary Alastair Campbell put it this morning as he drove home how vital government communications was. Technocratic policy making wasn’t enough. People need stories to be told, and Downing Street must “develop, execute and narrate” its strategy all at once, he said.
It was a failure to do this, to keep up the momentum of that strategy, through the vital Number 10 ‘grid’ of announcements, and all the relentless focus, energy and discipline that goes with it, that has caused such an array of negative news coverage for the Prime Minister and his Cabinet over so many weeks.
Because losing control of that strategy means not only are the stories lost; all that you are and what you stand for is gone. If you lose strategic momentum, lose control of your narrative, and fail to build the architecture around your announcements: the time, the place, the message – day after day after day – the public won’t forgive you.
The Government will now be hoping that with James Lyons gripping hold of the internal communications grid, it can drive home its story and reconnect with voters. The Budget later this month is just one of those moments to do it.
