{"id":87688,"date":"2016-04-13T09:56:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T09:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=87688"},"modified":"2016-04-13T09:56:36","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T09:56:36","slug":"camerons-masterclass-in-how-not-to-handle-a-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/camerons-masterclass-in-how-not-to-handle-a-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameron’s masterclass in how not to handle a crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having worked in PR before politics, David Cameron knows a thing or two about spin. His skills have been put to use throughout his premiership, during which he\u2019s worked the media and dodged the kind of disasters which would make most public figures quake. Let\u2019s not forget, this is the man who rode out Pig gate. But last week, after the revelations of the Panama Papers and the slow, inconsistent response from the Prime Minister\u2019s team, we saw Cameron slip. Where did he go wrong, and what lessons can be learnt?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a PR crisis it pays to communicate as much as you know, as quickly as you can. In light of this, Cameron\u2019s response last week was a\u00a0surprising one. His team offered an array of responses to the Panama Papers, the most damaging being that his tax affairs are a \u2018private matter\u2019. For a Conservative leader whose party has been dogged by tax avoidance rumours, sweeping this under the carpet was never going to make the story disappear. On the contrary, it emboldens critics who see Cameron as part of an elite which doesn\u2019t care about avoiding tax, and doesn\u2019t think the public should either.<\/p>\n

Next came Cameron\u2019s interview with Robert Peston on Thursday, where he admitted the link between his finances and his father\u2019s offshore account. A face to face interview was always the best response, but it should have been the first step rather than a last resort. No matter the public outcry over his links to tax evasion schemes, tackling the issue head on would have made for a quicker, less painful news cycle and given Cameron a chance to move past the defensive. He lost that, and by the time the interview took place it looked like he was cornered.<\/p>\n

Will this do any lasting damage? Cameron gave a confident, passionate defense in the House of Commons on Monday, and the Conservative party have formed a united front behind him. It\u2019s unlikely that this will be any more than a dent in Cameron\u2019s legacy, but it\u2019s been added to a list which keeps getting bigger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having worked in PR before politics, David Cameron knows a thing or two about spin. His skills have been put to use throughout his premiership, during which he\u2019s worked the media and dodged the kind of disasters which would make most public figures quake. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":87690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7271,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}