Finding someone who can read out loud in front of a camera is not as easy as it sounds, as any TV executive will tell you.
Even so, the young, TikTok-savvy, lens-aware advisers to Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt must be wondering why their bosses find it quite so difficult.
The prime minister and the chancellor have released video messages in recent days that have led to them being described variously as “a wooden puppet”, “Mr Bean” and “Ed Miliband with Prada shoes”.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Sunak then attracted the attention of police for filming another video in the back of a car without wearing a seatbelt, thereby turning the “will the PM get a fixed-penalty notice for breaking the law” conversation into an annual event.
After a quiet Christmas, the Tory leadership team has returned, starting with a prime ministerial address in which Sunak attempted to tickle the nation’s pixels with an update about his progress so far, and immediately had some social media users wondering if this was another example of the amazing capabilities of ChatGPT.
“Embarrassingly wooden,” came the reaction from rightwing commentator Isabel Oakeshott, and mutterings began among Tory MPs about their leader’s media chops, according to Politico. Could Jeremy Hunt do any better than AI Rishi?
In his video, Hunt cleared the Miliband hurdle by managing to order a flat white successfully, but his use of coffee cups to describe inflation did not give the government’s media strategy the required perk.
The chancellor’s attempt to explain why the price of a coffee had gone up by stacking paper cups with “Covid” and “Putin” written on them was quickly lampooned online and the Lib Dems compared him to Mr Bean. Even News Agents podcaster Lewis Goodall popped into a greasy spoon to order a can of Tizer and explain why inflation will fall whatever the government does.
Back to Sunak, now upgraded to a jauntier Rishi 2.0 and sitting in the back seat of a car. He was travelling around England to explain how well levelling up is going, and there was even an invitation to follow him in the act of levelling up using a Number 10 version of Norad’s Santa tracker.
Instead, the event turned into Lancashire constabulary Tracks Rishi, as officers promised to look into the seatbelt lapse, or what Downing Street described as “a brief error of judgment”.
Given the past fortnight’s difficulties, will the government continue to pump out video messages? Perhaps the answer lies in the interview Sunak did with STV political editor Colin Mackay, while visiting Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland.
Would the prime minister accept the result of a general election that would be a de facto Scottish independence referendum, Mackay asked? “What I’m focused on …” Sunak replied, several times.
“That’s not what I’m asking you, I’m asking you to focus on this,” Mackay said, interrupting the prime minister, several times.
Faced with a choice between cringe and a 21st-century Paxman, Downing Street may feel that sticking to video messages is the safer option.
