One year on

Acres of newsprint and hours of broadcast time have already been spent today reviewing the first year of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. I tried to resist the temptation to add my penny's worth but couldn’t, so here is my take on the coalition’s communications operation. In a word it has been shambolic.

I think that stung by the persistent accusations during the election campaign that he was insubstantial, Cameron took office desperate to demonstrate that he was a radical politician with a packed agenda for change. And so the call went out across Whitehall – bring out your white papers, your interventions, your consultations, even your blue sky thinking, prove to the public and more importantly to the commentariat that we aren’t light on policy. But Cameron also wanted to have a more relaxed centre so the command and control model of Number 10 established under Blair was dismantled and Departments were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted. No longer would they have to get every piece of policy signed off by Number 10, neither were they required to run all their communications plans by the Number 10 coms team. The result has been that week after week, departments have announced half-baked policies which more often that not have had to be “clarified”. Tuition fees, forests, health reforms, foundation schools, internships to name but a few. Even yesterday David Willets had to clarify himself on the issue of whether dumb people could get into university if their rich parents coughed up the full cost of tuition. Oh dear.

I can’t recall a single big announcement that has been “clean”. This has had the cumulative effect of making the coalition look incompetent. Of all his problems, this is one that is relatively easy to fix – re-establish a strong centre, check and double check the policy and the handling. This way you can avoid putting your name to the forward of a white paper which if you or one of your staff had read you would have realised was contrary to your views and breached the coalition agreement. Get a grip.

Greetings from Banjul

Very unexpectedly I find myself in The Gambia for at least the next 24 hours after the plane I was taking from Monrovia developed a communications problem (not one I could resolve) and the flight was abandoned last night just an hour and a half into the journey. The upside is that we were put up in a pretty good hotel and I spent the day by the pool. The Gambia lived up to all expectations. I can completely see why birdwatchers flock here – there were vultures and eagles roosting in trees in the hotel grounds, egrets wandering around the pool area. Alas, there were a few old English birds there as well. Yes, the other expectation The Gambia lived up to was the preponderance of British women sex tourists. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable and yet very curious, I put a couple of women and their “dates” under surveillance (I would have so loved to have been a spy). I managed to do a good 15 minutes of quality eavesdropping while they were changing money. It was all pretty tawdry – bottle blonde grandmothers with chipped nail polish and too tight clothes, handing over wads of cash to young Gambian men who were laughing and joking about the good time they were all going to have. The most jarring thing was that the grannies had west country accents – it was as if Jolene and Clarrie from The Archers had stolen the takings from The Bull and ran off for a bit of the other in Africa. Very unsettling.

All that said, I would still like to come back to The Gambia – dry heat, beautiful beaches and amazing wildlife. But I shall probably not come solo.