Tomorrow's Business Today
In a PR battle is fight or flight the smarter move?
Revenge is a dish best served cold, everyone says.
Henry Staunton waited a positively warm two weeks after being sacked from the Post Office before launching a carpet bombing in the shape of a Sunday Times interview.
It splashed the paper and led the news for three days all the way through to PMQs on Wednesday.
He claims he was told to go slow on compensation payments for postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal. Business secretary Kemi Badenoch says he is lying.
Good for him you might say. Hell hath no fury like a gammon scorned? Possibly.
Certainly, he made life uncomfortable for the government and the Secretary of State.
And the Staunton camp might feel that they are righting the wrong of what many saw as a nakedly political sacking.
But folk who actually know about PR, rather than just bang on about it in a newsletter, see it differently.
They say they tend to ask clients who are about to lob a grenade: will this move things forward to our advantage or will it just make you feel better?
The more sage operators think this question through carefully and usually conclude that, on reflection, putting the pin back in might be the smarter move.
Or do what normal people are encouraged to do when furious about something.
Write about your fury in an email you send to yourself. Leave it a day. Then press delete.
For us hacks, business folk picking fights with the government is exactly what we are after.
The truth is that governments of every hue know a bit about PR. They aren’t that bad at it.
And there are plenty of hardened business veterans who start out in politics thinking they can wipe the floor with the Westminster village people, but end up blindsided by the actual brutality of front-line politics.
CEOs just aren’t used to being talked to even in private the way MPs talk to each other in public.
So did anyone have that conversation with our ‘enry? Given the trajectory this story is now taking with accusations of bullying and underperformance coming thick and fast from the opposing trenches, perhaps someone should have.
At the moment a Pyrrhic victory seems the best he can expect. If someone had whispered that in his ear before the start, would he have started?
Press release of the day
UK workers clock up an extra 104 hours of work a year for free, says this from Michael Page.
So-called “Boundary-blurring” leads to four out of 10 staff taking on extra responsibilities for no extra reward.
Doug Rode of Page says: “Our research has revealed a growing trend of workers accepting additional responsibilities above and beyond their contracted remit.”
Tell me about it.
Stories that will keep rolling
1) Nvidia shares jump after AI “tipping point”. FT
2) Audi’s F1 project faces fresh uncertainty. Motorsport.com
3) China’s rush to dominate AI depends on US technology. NY Times
4) Electric vans to secure Vauxhall’s Luton plant. Sky News
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