The knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss this out of hand. It’s not just crazy, it’s obvious. Surely even the voyeuristic, big brother guzzling, internet porn fed, fetid mess of a world we live in wouldn’t fall for something so desperate. It may be getting watched, but it won’t win votes.

Having said that, futurology is a tricky discipline, especially in the fad happy world of politics. Perhaps Lenart’s dance is so mad that it works. Lord knows we’ve been waiting for something to kick off the ‘digital elections’ repeatedly promised- and denied- through campaign strategies over the past few years.

Cameron fell foul of the net when his vote for change poster, complete with his staring visage airbrushed to Jordanian levels, was appropriated by a few ingenious trolls who created http://mydavidcameron.com/. The site allowed wannabe satirists to introduce their own accompanying slogans, with often hilarious results. It became one of the few truly concentrated, attention grabbing focal points of leftist criticism.

Across the pond, Boston senator Scott Brown ran into controversy earlier this year after guerrilla online tactics instigated by his communications department majorly backfired. Senior Republican advisor Eric Fehrnstrom attempted to artificially create the kind of satirical bite that grew naturally from the David Cameron affair when he set up a fake twitter account for Democrat Allan Khazei (@crazykhazei).

Apart from being disastrously unfunny (sample tweet: “Just read Scott Brown’s book. He isn’t the only one who had it tough growing up. I once got a splinter.”) the whole affair generated a storm around Brown’s use of public funds- an area of debate more or less untapped prior to the revelations. It was the exact opposite of a political communications campaign’s intended effect.

In short, whatever they say to the contrary, political brand advisors know bugger all about how to harness the internet: Obama’s web success aside, online campaigning is still uncharted territory. So who knows, perhaps in twenty years’ time Lenart will be hailed as the messiah and cabinets the world over will look like the B Team of a home counties branch of Secrets. If Theresa May is looking to try something similar, I hear Vaseline on the camera lens works a treat.

This is event TV- as are Britain’s Got Talent or the X Factor, for instance- because it gathers and broadcasts true, impactful stories in a major instance, drawing together disparate audiences and engaging them in irresistible conversation. Like the funfair sideshows of old, it’s a destination show, with unpredictable appeal and undeniable allure.

It’s a brilliant publicity stunt: with David Cameron, Prince Charles and Ed Miliband in attendance the Mirror benefits from ready-made gravitas and a direct line to the great and the good. Since John Hegarty’s seminal Guardian interview in June on the continued value of TV to advertisers, the accepted wisdom that TV is dying a death has been challenged and re-appraised. Its now official: event TV, with real stories, still has the power to grab attention, start conversation and really boost brands.

On a deeper level, though, this says something about the Mirror’s understanding of its audience, its function and its values. The Sun and the News of the World ran into trouble because they alienated their audiences- they disregarded honesty and simplicity in their practises.

The Mirror, in particular Peter Willis, whose brainchild the whole shebang was, understands the true worth of the story. The scoop and the angle are only meaningful so long as they engage with the beating heart of the reader. According to the awards’ press material, the reason for their success is simple: they ‘give the lie to the idea that we live in a selfish, cheap, materialistic society where no one cares for their neighbour’.

These are stories which provide powerful, emotive evidence in contravention to a negative zeitgeist. There’s a lot of friction there, and hence a lot of conversation generated. They’re pitched at the ideal tabloid audience: values driven, moral, switched on but not remote or overly intellectual.

It’s no wonder, of course: The Mirror has a rich heritage with this sort of thing. The reason Piers Morgan’s editorship was so heavily covered and criticised was that it broke with a long tradition of honest, grassroots reporting from a paper that was, after all, founded on the revolutionary and highly targeted ideal of establishing a newspaper for women, the paper that truly stuck its neck out with experiments like Mirrorscope, that has repeatedly and consistently campaigned against the centre-right/politically ambiguous line of virtually every other mainstream tabloid.

The Pride of Britain awards were inspiring not only because of the stories they presented- though even to my jaded old eyes some of these were truly extraordinary- but because of what these stories represent. They prove that, even amid the supposed collapse of the tabloid press in this country, some papers truly understand the value of a good story, the needs of their readers and the function of what a paper communicates to the world.

‘Call-me-Dave’ Cameron and his wife Sam’s latest PR stunt is a classic case of hubris gone awry. Why take a budget weekend break in Spain to prove to the great unwashed that he’s ‘just like us’? It is unrealistic: we all know that his life has long since left the realms of normality.

For crying out loud, Dave, you are the Prime Minister! You surely don’t really expect that taking a Ryanair flight and staying at a £100 budget hotel (bit of an oxymoron) will buy you some privacy or respect, do you? What are the paps supposed to do? “Oh the British PM and his missus need a getaway – let’s leave them in peace?” Please!

When is Dave going to get it? Public life is no longer simple. I am sure the prying lenses are not able to snap clandestine meets in the gentrified, privileged cabals of Oxfordshire. Cosy garden parties with Rebecca, Matt, James and Jeremy in the sleepy Cotswold do not require the same set up.

Come on Dave, try and find a narrative that gives more respect to the electorate. Being normal is a state of grace you’ll never achieve. Privilege and career politics is something you’re saddled with. Why not consider working on the complexities of brand honesty and offer up a distinctive narrative that we can come to terms with?

Life for those high up the greasy pole is precarious. Memo to the spin machinists – don’t try and humour the electorate because they are quite willing to shake said pole if needs be and they will always have the last laugh…

It really is fabulous news, in such tough economic times, that the cuts will not affect everything. In 2011 there will be something for the whole nation to celebrate, especially the merchandise sellers, caterers and makers of bunting. It’s really an early Christmas present for them all.

And better still, it’ll take place 30 years after Charles and Diana’s wedding. We will have a new Princess of Hearts – and the same sort of economic straits then as now. Perhaps we’ll get anniversary riots in Brixton and Toxteth too, only to have the wedding calm them down.

And if this exceptional and fabulous stunt doesn’t calm the angrily beating heart of Britain, then there will be a second pageant the following year when the Olympics comes to town. All this should make up for the fact that we probably won’t get the World Cup, shouldn’t it?

And if this pump priming of the economy still doesn’t work, we could always celebrate another anniversary in the Falklands in 2013, couldn’t we? There’s nothing quite like a war for stimulating economic revival, after all!

–

Cynicism aside, it’ll be interesting to see how the royal couple cope. It is to be hoped that the couple – and the a Royal PR – have learned lessons from Princess Diana’s trials and tribulations, but the media has changed beyond recognition in the past thirty years. How will Kate Middleton learn to cope with the pressure?

As I noted yesterday, the Palace used to shut its doors at 5pm daily. Now it is proactive and on call to respond to anything, anytime. The couple need to be well prepared for the onslaught of interest a Royal wedding inevitably brings, what with the digital explosion and easy, instantaneous access to information. I expect they will be being drilled in the ways of dealing with the media over the coming months.

They’ve got to be perfect if they’re going to act as a fillip for the economy, after all.

–

This is a one fact story – “they’re getting married” sums it up – and yet, as the day goes on, it is elongating out of all control. It’s all over the news channels and I can’t help but suspect that all sorts of brands and celebrities will be getting in on the act, hoping a little of the stardust will rub off on them. After all, David Cameron is already proudly announcing that he slept on the Mall aged 15 for the 1981 wedding…

How things change. The continued attempts to shake down Andy Coulson, who occupies Ingham’s position for David Cameron, are relentless – and are now getting to seem more than a little supercilious. Coulson is caught in the political version of some over-hyped heavyweight brawl – he is being pummelled on the ropes but his opponent is congenitally unable to administer the knockout blow.

The laundry in media land has always had some pretty grubby stains; the sort that not even a P&G miracle concoction could eradicate. Whisper it softly; the truth is that, behind closed doors, there is a huge amount of dark doings done in the name of business. Yes, those hiding and exposing a story, or playing with the truth, should remember that there are few who can hold aloft the sword of honour.

Truthyness seems to be to creeping into modern slanguage and becoming a much more ubiquitous term. I have heard, on numerous occasions, the phrase “it was true at he time”. So I strongly suggest we let he who is without sin cast the first stone, especially as most highly paid media figures do a pretty good job of escaping public inquisition.

Not that I am setting myself up as an apologist for Andy Coulson, but that does not prevent me from finding the pack pursuing him and baying for blood to be full of tiresome and sometimes unwarranted smugness.

The dark arts that can be brought to bear whilst getting a story are akin to taking drug in a sporting competition. Perhaps in 50 years time the use of drugs in sports engineering will be the norm (frankly, as sports subsidy becomes a thing of the past, the big pharma companies will be pretty much first in line to take the monetary strain) but right now, they aren’t in the slightest bit kosher.

I have seen some extraordinary liberties taken when it comes down to the business of folk protecting – and getting at – a story; they will do what it takes to ensure they provide ROI.

Unpalatable? Well, yes. It’s a dirty business trying to maintain success. But it is far too simple an approach to just focus fire on the mavericks – they are simply exotic cannon fodder.

Andy was a great tabloid editor in age of the merciless, aggressive competitor. Will he prove to be a mighty gatekeeper? Time will tell. The coalition faces some tough challenges; and not from the traction of its political foes but from the new digital articulation of dissent that the great unwashed have spread at their fingertips.

The first is the production of Yes, Prime Minister that has just transferred to the West End. It’s a great show; very funny, very well acted and rather more radical than one would have expected from a comedy institution that makes it to the stage 20-odd years after its heyday. Buy a seat now!

It plays wonderfully to its target audience but, like so much other theatre in the West End, it struggles to reach out to the next generation of audience, the ones that will keep the theatre going as a concern that moves beyond musicals and celebrity-strewn shows. It’s not just this show – West End theatre in general seems a little too content to bask in an (admittedly lucrative) ghetto. So many British institutions – from the arts to politics – are content to do so.

But theatre can, and should, be a cultural shift changer. It should be creating news events that land productions on the front pages. A first night is an event, certainly, and reviews are important, but if more serious commercial theatre is to find its way into the subconscious landscapes of the nation’s youth, then it needs to be a little more hard-arsed about marketing itself, given that traditional advertising is going through such lean times.

Theatre has done some things very well indeed and there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of money in box office for Yes, Prime Minister – a million quid in advance bookings by all accounts. It’s deservedly going to be a very successful show and the producers have done a brilliant job of providing a financial return for the investors.

But that comfortable sensation of box office wealth can lead to complacency – and that could mean that new opportunities are missed. It would be wonderful if the West End used these riches to try some of the online crowd sourcing tactics to engage the next generation of theatregoers in the same way that Punchdrunk, You Me Bum Bum Train, LIFT and Alex Poots’s Manchester Festival do. They need to remember that are living in an era where a thing or a person survives best if they can communicate successfully to the nation as a whole, not just a certain clique. They need to stir in the next generation, not just the Horlicks sippers.

Which leads me to the second conundrum of the week: Ed Miliband’s first nights as leader of the Labour Party. Labour seems to have taken several steps backwards in electing Ed as the next leader of the party, a man who looks like a truculent Portuguese Wine waiter, or perhaps the manager of an Estonian Lap dancing club. When the Mail and the Sun are so eager to attack and splash the phrase Red Ed throughout any and every article on him and given that he is an awkward, less-than-confident seeming public speaker, all I can see is Labour failing to try and regain the dialogue they had with Britain as a whole in the early days of the New Labour project. Labour has to deal with the Red Ed tag quickly – it’s one of those phrases that will filter seamlessly into the social media and digital subconscious and the British public will find themselves subliminally conditioned unless Labour move fast to stamp out its use.

Whatever you think of them, Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson were immensely effective at controlling output and creating a useful conversation between New Labour and the British public – until the relationship was indelibly tainted by their use of spin to manoeuver the country into an unpopular and illegal war. Prior to Iraq, they had dragged Labour out of the ghetto and, in doing so, helped change the face of British politics. They were mindful of the tiniest details and that is a lesson that mustn’t be forgotten.

Now, you have to be media savvy, cool in front of the cameras and able to hold your own up close. Ed’s unmarried status and his slightly ungainly demeanour is a burden for the party, given that it separates him from the majority of voters. This is not, ultimately, a game changer, but it does allow the opposition to gain an initial foothold. For this reason, David Cameron was clearly more afraid of facing David Miliband across the ballot box. Ed, at a distance from the voters and prone to having easy clichés thrown at him, does not seem likely to be anything like as much a threat. I suspect his struggle for polish will set the party back by 20 years – especially given that he follows Gordon Brown, whose lack of personability was at least leavened by many years in office. Not only is Ed not smooth and slick, he’s not long been an MP.

Clear party divisions are certainly to the fore once agian. New Labour is over: so do we have a right/left divide or do we perhaps have a Tory suited New Labour against Old Labour, finger puppets for the trade union bigwigs, looking like Arthur Mullard in a bad George suit?

Love them or loathe them, Clegg and Cameron are in the smooth and slick fit-for-purpose zone, whereas Ed Miliband and his team need to look hard at examples such as Tony Hayward – a prime instance of a figurehead dragging the whole company into the mire, as he was patently not fit to cope with the media hoo-ha. The head of a big corporate organisation or political party has to be fit for purpose. Can an organisation really afford to elect a leader on values alone in these media savvy times?

Both the Labour Party and the West End have failed to take into consideration the way the new media works, I feel. The 10-minute news cycle and the need for new audiences are paramount and, if any trick is missed and any stone is left unturned, the future will begin to look more and more uncertain.

OK, Dave is enjoying surfing on the bubbly froth of post-election hype and confidence, but frankly he is a fit-for-purpose, well-designed, media-facing PM. A shiny Middle England man in an M&S suit broadcasting his POV like a airline pilot transmitting a pre-flight weather forecast. Evan Davis could not get a word in edgeways . Instead, he was left covered in Cameron-slick as the PM steamrollered his questions.

Obviously Dave is briefed very well and is prepared for every battle; after all he is an ex #PR flak. But I detect a secret weapon lurking in his arsenal and I suspect has been trained well to apply it with maximum force. It’s a frightening technique I have not witnessed before – one that seems unique to Smooth FM Dave.

His pitch-perfect #PR front is delivered “didgeridoo style”.

According to Wikipedia, the didgeridoo is played with continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone whilst using circular breathing. This requires breathing in through the nose whilst simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks. By use of this technique, a skilled player can replenish the air in their lungs and, with practice, can sustain a note for as long as desired.

Cameron now transmits answers to questions in paragraphs using circular breathing to fill the interviews with his Middle England Democratic Kant. The delivery technique does not allow an interviewer to get in – not even a foot on the ladder – and, if and when they try, Cameron is on to the next long note, the next subsection, without taking a breath.

Cameron is setting the bar really high. Whoever is up front and centre next to him must take note. My advise would be to take a long break and get some help from an Aboriginal tribe.

Think circular. Breathe circular. Cameron’s didgeridoo interview technique is the way forward.

I can’t help but feel a little unease at the way they present themselves, and the PR wheels running the Cleggameron image juggernaut. I wonder if this honeymoon period will last longer than the usual ones – remember Tony Blair amiably wandering down Downing Street predicting that by the time he left office, the gates Thatcher had installed to keep the terrorists out would have been removed? How ironic that seems now. Or Gordon Brown’s five minutes of popularity when he took over?

I can imagine what isn’t being said in public quite easily – I wonder if the team running the company is telling Dave ‘n’ Nick to save the acrimony for a book deal further down the line?

Regardless, the PR machine has come of age – we may not have an absolutely new kind of politics (yet, at least) but we certainly are seeing a new kind of spin, one that seems set to rule the political agenda. Just so long as it can get the happy couple past the honeymoon period without them falling immediately into painful divorce proceedings, that is.

Not me. I have perceived a new threat. I am wondering nervously what the reaction will be when the nation wakes up and realises that they have, in David Cameron, an ex-PR man as Prime Minister. An ex-PR man, moreover, of whom Jeff Randall – quoted in the Mirror – said: “In my experience, he never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative.”

Could this then be the worst time ever for the PR profession, as it becomes clear that, alongside Cameron, there is an ever-increasing presence in the Commons of MPs who have stepped out of the world of lobbying and PR and into the world of government? Will the infiltration of Parliament by corporate-suited, silver-tongued chancers destroy our reputation for good?

Not so long ago, all we had to worry about was the brain-drain from journalism into PR, particularly in the wake of Alistair Campbell’s success with people like Stuart Higgins, Phil Hall and Ian Monk turning gamekeeper, presumably after seeing just how much fun Campbell was having in the close shadow of power.

Now, though, the poachers turned gamekeepers are turning landowners as well, and I wonder how many PR people will begin to see the job as just a stepping stone to greater power, with one thought in their heads: “We can do what Dave’s done. It could be us!”

The old Conservative MP and railway enthusiast Robert Adley (now dead) referred to lobbyists as ‘leeches’. He said: “There is an increasing army, frankly, of spivs around this place, some of whom seem to be able to attract the services of MPs for piddling sums of money, who are responsible in my view for perverting this place.”

And now the ‘leeches’ are taking the place of MPs like Adley: Margot James, just elected to Stourbridge, ran Shire Health Group, a public relations and clinical trials organization; Aviva head of public affairs Tracey Crouch has become Conservative MP for Chatham & Aylesford; Weber Shandwick director Priti Patel won Witham. And that’s just for the Conservatives. A Brand Republic article gives details of many more – click here to see it.

PR is becoming a feeder environment for Government and the influence starts at the very top. My worry is that the PR profession, which has never been seen in as harsh a light as estate agents and bankers, could find the tide shifting against it if the trend continues and more spin is spun in politics, even across the back benches.

The current concerns in the US about lobby power and the integral, incestuous part it plays in US politics have lead to an attempt to legislate against too much insider trading in the Senate (click here to read more). With so many people in positions of power in Westminster with PR and lobbying backgrounds, what does this say about the power of PR to influence the new house?

Forget expenses! I think that the new unbearable truth on the block is that this is the dawn of a new, corrupt age – an age of middle men in sharp suits with a special line in smooth talk and fancy promises. The dawn of a new High Profit-Margin age of public affairs. I believe lobbyists will run amok and that the new breed of politicos, who have come from the lobbying and corporate PR world, will be considerably more receptive to their dark arts.

This is a revised version of yesterday’s post.

Not me. I have perceived a new threat. I am wondering nervously what the reaction will be when the nation wakes up and realises that they have, in David Cameron, an ex-PR man as Prime Minister.

Could this be the worst time ever for the PR profession, as it becomes clear that, alongside Cameron, there is an ever-increasing presence in the Commons of MPs who have stepped out of the world of lobbying and PR and into the world of government? Will the infiltration of Parliament by corporate-suited, silver-tongued chancers destroy our reputation for good?

Not so long ago, all we had to worry about was the brain-drain from journalism into PR, particularly in the wake of Alistair Campbell’s success with people like Stuart Higgins, Phil Hall and Ian Monk turning gamekeeper, presumably after seeing just how much fun Campbell was having in the close shadow of power.

Now, though, the poachers turned gamekeepers are turning landowners as well, and I wonder how many PR people will begin to see the job as just a stepping stone to greater power, with one thought in their heads: “We can do what Dave’s done. It could be us!”

There’s plenty at it already: Margot James, just elected to Stourbridge, ran Shire Health Group, a public relations and clinical trials organization; Aviva head of public affairs Tracey Crouch has become Conservative MP for Chatham & Aylesford; Weber Shandwick director Priti Patel won Witham. And that’s just for the Conservatives. A Brand Republic article gives details of many more – click here to see it.

PR seems to be becoming a feeder environment for Government – my worry is that the PR profession, which has never been seen in as harsh a light as estate agents and bankers, could find the tide shifting against it if the trend continues and more spin is spun in politics, even across the back benches.

The current concerns in the US about lobby power have lead to an attempt to legislate against too much insider trading in the Senate (click here to read more). With so many people in positions of power in Westminster with PR backgrounds, what does this say about the power of PR to influence the new house? Forget expenses – I think that this is going to be the new unbearable truth.