Comms from No 10 - a new low

On Saturday evening the Press Conference from No 10 descended to a new low in government communications. First of all it kept us all waiting. Announced for 5pm it started 100 minutes later. Yet there were no surprises; the message had been leaked 24 hours before to the Times so we all knew what was coming. So why the delay? Well certainly it was not so a competent comms professional and designer could get the slide pack together.

What was Cummings up to? The slides were a piss poor amalgamation - a cut and paste of Cobra and NHS stats that might have made sense in a Cabinet briefing (had there been one) but were unreadable on a TV screen and ridiculously over-complex.

I can't believe that Alex Aitken and his team of government comms experts could have been in the room when this shitshow was cobbled together. In this morning's Times Ron Neil, who knows a thing or two about communicating complex news stories on the BBC castigated No 10.

Anyone working in communications in large organisations during the pandemic can look in the mirror and know that none of us is doing a worse job than than No 10 in communicating the science behind the UK's lockdown. It is not as though they did not have the time; the opposition predicted this news conference a fortnight ago.

God knows what a hash they will make of communicating Brexit.