Friday 22 November 2019

The longest road accident in history - and it’s not over yet

Picture: BBC
It is Friday, by my reckoning, which means it is now a week since news surfaced that Prince Andrew, Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD, ADC(P) and Vice-Admiral, Royal Navy, had granted the BBC an interview that would hopefully clarify his relationship with the now-deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. One week on, the news cycle shows no signs of abatement. In the interim, Andrew’s interview with Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis has gone to air and, rather than quelling interest in his association with Epstein, has opened up a whole world of hurt about the duke’s lifestyle, expenditure, domestic arrangements and health, and afforded Woking a publicity jaunt that it was rather hoping would have just been provided by the launch of the Beeb’s new dramatisation of The War Of The Worlds, which kicks off just outside the Surrey town.

Standard Operating Procedure for anyone in the PR business is that when a reputational crisis breaks, you do all you can to reduce its impact, to diminish its effect, to get a grip on the news agenda and hopefully tackle the subject matter so that it runs out of steam of its own accord. Well, that’s the theory. What has happened with Prince Andrew is the media equivalent of an Atlantic hurricane gaining strength and even acquiring new energy somewhere over the Azores. The big difference is that normally such storms are reduced to torrential rain and winds causing disruption to the rail network by the time they reach British shores. In the case of Andrew, this tropical depression has spiralled out of control.

As someone who has spent the last 25 years (bar the last month or two...) in corporate communications it’s easy to be the ‘Monday morning quarterback’ on a story like this. But, sometimes, a crisis is so heaving that it never goes away. That is probably where we are in the case of Prince Andrew. Those of us who ply their trade in PR will have been in nodding unison over the last seven days at how all of the best-practice wisdoms of the industry have been blown into the gutter like autumn leaves as Andrew's attempt to repair his reputation backfired spectacularly. Indeed, anyone (including me) who has crowbarred into a PowerPoint presentation Warren Buffet's much used quote about reputations taking 20 years to build and 20 minutes to destroy will have been grinning sagely at the smarts of such a notion of the fragility of public perception.

It must start with the decision in the first place to do the interview with Maitlis. 2019 is clearly turning out to be another annus horribilis for the Royal Family, what with the Duke of Edinburgh’s automotive tribulations, his grandson Harry’s self-declared war on the media (somewhat justified, given the weirdly obsessive attention afforded he and Meghan by the Mail group turning themselves inside-out to find another angle) and the reporting of a certain froideur between the Cambridge and Sussex households. The last thing the 93-year-old Queen needed was her somewhat casual second (and, it is rumoured, favourite) son becoming embroiled in an association with a particularly repellent individual like Epstein, replete with compromising photographs of the duke with his arm apparently around the waist of Virginia Guiffre, née Roberts, who, she alleges, was trafficked by Epstein for the sexual gratification of his associates (“He knows what he has done,” she has said of Andrew, whose own comment on the alleged incident was: “It didn’t happen. I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened”). In the words of Dickie Arbiter, the veteran royal correspondent and former Buckingham Palace spokesperson, it was an “excruciating” interview. “My guess is that he bulldozed his way in and decided he was going to do it himself without any advice,” he told the BBC. “Any sensible-thinking person in the PR business would have thrown their hands up in horror.”

Picture: BBC

This is not the first time that a member of the royal family has been embroiled in foul matters of the flesh (and that story about the true identity of Jack The Ripper has never really gone away), and given the track record of all our monarchs and their scions over the centuries, ‘Randy’ Andy’s alleged behaviour as the party prince will probably pale by historic comparison. Not that I’m endorsing or apologising for anything he is supposed to have done. But moral judgements aside, the bit I’m most interested in is the decision to take up the BBC’s offer of an interview to begin with. Ever since the first stories appeared of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, there wouldn’t have been a television channel, radio station, newspaper, magazine or website that wouldn’t have wanted an opportunity to ask the prince to explain himself on the record. But even with the interest - and coverage - reaching cacophony level in recent weeks, even giving Harry and Meghan some respite from their own battles with the press, there was still no reason to cave in. 

Rightly or wrongly, the royals are never like us. They’re not meant to be approachable, accessible. They’re meant to exist as noble national figureheads. The accountability that other public figures - politicians, business leaders, senior clergy - are expected to provide has never been in the royal brief. So, whatever internal PR advice within Buckingham Palace was being offered or even imposed, someone - perhaps Andrew himself - stupidly ignored it and mistakenly agreed to sit down with Maitlis, some months, we understand, since Newsnight first proposed that they did.

If this was a choice based on the fact that alternatives - the atrocious egomaniac that is Piers Morgan comes immediately to mind - would have given an even more pugilistic encounter, they were patently wrong. In fact, Maitlis, a formidable interviewer, gave Andrew a fairly measured ride. And yet still he messed it up, chortling in some of his replies to serious questions about his friendship with Epstein, and making trite remarks about how he “kicks himself daily” for not ending the relationship sooner. And, still, no contrition at all about those Epstein is alleged to have trafficked and facilitated the abuse of, including the as-yet unexplained relationship with Guiffre-Roberts, who has recorded a BBC Panorama interview that is only going to extend the news cycle into a second full week. 

It was without doubt one of the worst interviews ever given by a public figure trying to extricate himself from scandal. In the meantime, Andrew has been withdrawn/is withdrawing from public duties. To all intents and purposes, his mum has sacked him, albeit - we read - with his elder brother’s influence. Charles, currently on a royal tour in New Zealand, could not have been flying the flag at a worse time. And with the Queen gradually handing over greater responsibility to her heir, it presented him with an opportunity to exert his authority. This might sound like fratricide, or even the sort of Machiavellian politics normally found in an episode of The Sopranos, but it perhaps proves that the House of Windsor has learned from the anni horribiles of 1992 and 1997 - the former being the original of the species, the latter being the year of Princess Diana’s death. As grim as those periods were, the royal family learned vital lessons in how they managed their PR, with the Queen herself proving to be more of a moderniser than anyone gave her credit for. And that includes her appearance with Daniel Craig in that James Bond skit for the London Olympics. 

The Queen’s decisive action to fire her own son is brutal, but effectively smashes the glass to put out a real fire that was in danger of doing serious damage to the entire royal operation. We might have sympathy for Andrew, but ultimately his lifestyle, and seemingly directionless career since he left the Royal Navy in 2001, brought this on himself. Choosing to address it on camera was the mistake that unravelled it. It certainly wouldn’t have been my advice to a CEO, knowing that the media properties of the notoriously republican Murdoch and Rothermere families would have erupted into a feeding frenzy that stupidly even managed to knock a general election no one wanted off the front pages. Actually, make that the front several pages, and counting. A week later.

Last Sunday, the front page headlines chimed in unison: “Not one single word of remorse” (Mail on Sunday), “No sweat . . . no regret” (Sunday Mirror), and “I didn’t have sex with a teen, I was at home after a pizza party” (Observer). A week on and even the normally impassive Times has run ten separate stories today on the duke’s denouement, including new angles and the outcome of a YouGov survey revealing that only 6% of the 1600 people questioned believed Andrew was telling the truth. No wonder corporate sponsors of the duke’s various philanthropic ventures have been quietly and not-so quietly walking away.


Now, that is precisely what Andrew himself needs to do. His brutal removal from frontline royal duties means that he will now be reduced to cameos on the Buckingham Palace balcony during Trooping The Colour, though I imagine plans are already in place to smuggle him in to church on Christmas Day for The Firm’s traditional outing en masse. But, to return to the central premise of this post, it’s about PR, not royal duty. Andrew’s actions have affected the corporate reputation of the royal family, and that, in corporate or regal life, cannot be countenanced. The story isn’t over, still, with the very real risk of US investigators probing Epstein and his associates looming. “If push came to shove and the legal advice was to do so, then I would be duty bound to do so [be investigated],” Andrew told Maitlis in the interview. Again, no contrition, just a man sinking ever further into quicksand that was quite demonstrably signposted.

Wednesday 20 November 2019

Be careful what you wish for

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur FC
What a time to be alive. Senior members of the royal family trying to grease their way out of guilt-by-association, doing it badly and keeping the news cycle going for almost a week; the leaders of our two biggest political parties showing themselves to be about as trustworthy as a balsa wood ladder in heavy weather; and then Mauricio Pochettino being sacked as Tottenham manager on the Tuesday night, only to be instantly replaced next morning by the high-maintenance, highly expensive and highly self-opinionated José Mourinho.

As a Chelsea fan I am supposed to be shocked, appalled, even, by this news. After all, Mourinho is the man who said, in 2015, he couldn’t manage Tottenham because his emotional attachment to Chelsea was so strong (though to be clear, after Roman Abramovich sacked him for a second time, he was legally prevented from managing another English club for two years. Ironically, that sacking came after an abysmal away game at Tottenham, at the end of which Diego Costa petulantly threw his training bib at the Portuguese manager, and Chelsea hovered over the relegation trap door). The truth is that I’m not shocked at all. Frankly, I don’t think that Pochettino had been doing anything particularly badly, but 14th place in the Premier League is clearly not where Spurs would want to be, given the talent at their disposal. But something clearly wasn’t right, and despite Tottenham’s persistent excellence, nothing ever came of it in terms of trophies. Oddly, there were parallels in Tottenham’s fortunes to Chelsea’s profile under Mourinho in his last spell there - overseeing a decline that took them from Premier League champions in May 2015 to 17th place by the beginning of December. Being a serial runners-up just doesn’t cut it in modern football.

Spurs’ decline isn’t anything near as bad as Mourinho's final denouement at Chelsea, but you’d have thought that going from a Champions League final in June to midway of the bottom half of the Premier League in November is hardly conducive to support from Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman. Rumours have swirled in recent weeks of Pochettino becoming progressively detached from his squad. It’s hard to judge whether this was simply the Argentinian running out of enthusiasm for a “project”, to use modern managerial parlance, that had, over five and a half years, seen him preside over Harry Kane’s progress as one of England’s best-ever strikers, the development of Dele Alli - as objectionable an individual as he might be - to be a forward of some lethality, along with the evolution of Dier, Eriksen, Walker and Son as players of great potency. It’s just there hasn’t been any product from it. Too many Spurs players have gone missing at vital moments. Too often the team has gone Spursy.

So, when considering the lack of any silverware to line the trophy room at Tottenham’s lavish new stadium in N17, it makes obvious sense to look at Mourinho, even more so than apparent left-field candidates like Eddie Howe, the star-on-the-rise Brendan Rodgers, or the experienced Carlo Ancelotti, who’d apparently hinted at throwing his hat in, should the Spurs job come available. It is, perhaps, too easy to point directly at an empty trophy cabinet and blame that for Pochettino’s frustration and subsequent departure. But there’s no doubting where Levy was coming from when he declared that: "In José we have one of the most successful managers in football" - 25 trophies spanning seven clubs is not a stat to be ignored. How he acquired those trophies is another matter.

When he was appointed as Chelsea head coach for the first time, Mourinho had just won the Champions League with Porto in 2004. In between his first and second spells at Stamford Bridge, he won a league/cup/Champions League treble with Inter in 2010 and led Real Madrid to the La Liga title in 2012. Back at Chelsea, he won the Premier League, again. None of these achievements have been without their strife, and when Mourinho took over what had been pitched as his ‘dream job’, Manchester United, the dystopian spiral only continued.

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur
Which makes his appointment to Tottenham, while undoubted box office news, questionable. Yes, by reputation, he may bring Spurs closer to silverware than at any time since their last trophy, the League Cup in 2008. But this is assuming that Levy is prepared to bankroll the programme. Mourinho is already rumoured to be earning double Pochettino’s weekly salary, which means someone - presumably José’s agent - has managed to prise open Levy’s wallet wider than it had been previously known to hinge. And, as previous proprietors have found, Mourinho will want money to buy in Europe’s most expensive talents, a move likely to make Spurs’ accountants as nervous as the youngsters Pochettino blooded through, even if not to ultimate success. For his part, Pochettino was already harrumphing back in the summer about his lack of influence over club decisions in areas like player acquisition (the club failed to buy anyone new for two successive windows). Compare this with the £89 million Mourinho persuaded Ed Woodward to pay for Paul Pogba, or the £75 million for Lukaku. And look where that got him. It may be wise to stock up on popcorn before the January window opens.

Whatever happens, things around Tottenham Hotspur are unlikely to be dull for the next three seasons (the typical length of a Mourinho managerial cycle). One of football’s more enigmatic managers is now in charge of one of football’s more enigmatic clubs. Where this prospect might fall down is, crucially, on the field of play. Will Tottenham’s young stars, who have at least been afforded the freedom to be creative under Pochettino, adapt to Mourinho’s notorious brand of pragmatic football? We Chelsea fans put up with five-and-a-half seasons of jeers and jibes about parked buses, criticism that never abated as the silverware rolled in. In fact, it only increased, and it’s only now under Frank Lampard’s stewardship of youth that neutrals and the occasional rival are beginning to say nice things about the club. Not wishing to curse the coming months at, arguably, our bitterest London rival, I do wonder just what the José Effect will be. And just how much Arsenal fans might be breathing easier right now.