Today’s resignation of Andy Coulson, No. 10’s Director of Communications, teaches us all a valuable lesson; the ability to judge when to brief a bad news story is a very useful skill to have in this sector, but misjudge an announcement and you leave the hole open for somebody else to bury theirs.
The last 36 hours have been full of newsworthy stories - a breakthrough in the Joanna Yeates murder investigation, the resignation of Alan Johnson and the subsequent rumours, and Tony Blair’s appearance in front of the Iraq Inquiry to name a few. Each of these stories on an ordinary news day would be enough to dominate the headlines. This amount of distraction would have buried most stories, unfortunately for the Government and Andy Coulson, his resignation has today eclipsed them all.
The consistent drip drip feeding of News of the World hacking scandals, the vigorous and sustained attacks launched by the Opposition and the Guardian newspaper, and rumours of Mr Cameron declining a previous resignation ensured that levels of anticipation were at a premium and any announcement of this nature was always going to be headline news.
What started out as an uncomfortable day for Ed Miliband – the resignation of Alan Johnson, the appointment of Ed Balls and Tony Blair’s final swansong – has ended with Labour on the offensive. To rub salt in the wound, the king of spin – no not Graeme Swann, Peter Mandelson – delivered a reminder in how to surf the wave of other people’s bad news as his announcement on a new job at investment bank Lazard was left almost totally untouched by the media.
I am not sure what the strategy was for today's announcement, nor how much of today’s timing was deliberate or just serendipity. What is clear is that if the aim was to get the news out on a day when other stories would dominate, then that has not been achieved.
Ted Ryan works at PLMR. He previously volunteered on the Rt Hon David Miliband’s Campaign for Leader of The Labour Party
