In this age of uncertainty, the PR man is king — or, at least, king-in-waiting
So Mark Bolland has definitively fallen out with his public-relations ‘guru’, the Prince of Wales. Many assume that it is the other way about, with Charles the prince, Mr Bolland the PR man. But the Charles–Bolland matter is proof of one of my longstanding convictions. PR, as a rule, improves the public relations of the publicrelations people, not their clients. When PR people secure famous clients, preferably politicians, it makes the PR people famous. As a result, businessmen and corporations have heard of them. They employ them, covering themselves, if things go wrong, by assuring boards or shareholders that they went for the best on the market.
Mr Tim (as he then was) Bell was the first professional PR man to become associated with an important politician. As a result, Lord (as he now is) Bell became famous. His client, Mrs Thatcher, already was. Doubtless he gave her all sorts of sage advice. But it could not have far exceeded in value the fame which his association with her conferred on him. Presumably his business had already been doing well, otherwise the Conservative party would not have sought his services. But he did even better later as a result of his association with her. For one thing, he became a peer, which he probably would not have become had he remained in the position he was in before he worked for her and the Conservatives.
PR is the modish occupation of the 1990s and 2000s. That is because the age is ripe for it. PR in Britain is very much part of the story of our time. People in authority — politicians, business people, media moguls — are more nervous and less selfconfident than they used to be. This is true of all ages when an old order has dissolved and a new one is coming into being. It is the stuff of Balzac. The ancien régime and the Napoleonic empire had both collapsed. Self-made plutocrats, journalists and newspaper owners were now important. All distrusted the others.
In modern Britain’s case, the age of uncertainty has been brought about partly because of the rise of the grammar-school — or in a few cases comprehensive-school — meritocracy. ‘Everyone’ no longer knows everyone else. The eminent tend not, as in previous ages, to have been at school together. They therefore think they must shout louder in order that their merits become known. But they tend not to be self-confident enough to shout for themselves. They employ PR people to do the shouting or, more usually, whispering. Much of the whispering is done at the PR person’s busiest time of the day: lunch. Either then, or in the form of the phone call to one’s superior, lamenting that in a difficult situation one was not being ‘helpful’.
Peter Mandelson, a PR man in spirit though technically not by occupation, was a master of the latter. He was (still is?) gifted with the ability to spot a person’s vanities and weaknesses. I remember how, after announcing one of his stratagems as Northern Ireland secretary, he telephoned Conrad Black, who then owned the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. His message was that opposition to this stratagem on the part of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator might endanger the lives of British troops. The implicit request was: could Black help? Mr Mandelson had spotted one of Black’s vanities or weaknesses: the wish that government should need him, consult him, a desire almost to be part of government itself at the loftiest, most non-partisan level, not a mere onlooker as newspaper people should rightly be. One did not need to be Sigmund Freud to spot that aspect of Black’s character. It was apparent to anyone who had worked at all closely with him. Mr Mandelson had not, but he spotted it.
Most PR people, however, are not in Mr Mandelson’s class. Lunch with them is an ordeal. They impart nothing, other than that for their client it is all going terribly well. The main purpose of the lunches is to gather indiscretions and information from us, the lunched. These they report back to their clients, thus showing that they are on the inside. I am by nature indiscreet. I cannot endure lunches à deux in which both parties are silent. The average PR person’s gossip is useless. They know little of what one wants to know and, if they do, they don’t say. So on such occasions I do the chattering. I am therefore the PR person’s ideal lunchee. I must stop going to these lunches.
But whatever the shortcomings of other PR people, the Prince of Wales was a brilliant PR for Mr Bolland. Doubtless Mr Bolland was doing well professionally before he went to work for the Prince. But now he is famous. In our ‘celebrity culture’, fame is all that counts. The high-minded would retort that he is not just famous but notorious; because the Prince got rid of him, he ensured that the Prince’s diaries appeared in the press. That may be true. But it will not harm Mr Bolland. For another sign of an uncertain age is that the notorious are widely welcome. Such an age needs constant distractions. A disgraced or fallen politician, journalist or indeed PR person ‘reviews’ the Sunday newspapers on television or appears on chatshows, even chairs them. Future employers, through a combination of vanity and a belief in their own power, will not think that Mr Bolland will let them down. We can imagine the Prince reassuring Mr Bolland, ‘If you let me handle your account, you’ll get a News of the World column after I fire you.’ Mr Bolland: ‘And a knighthood?’ The Prince: ‘Mark, the sky’s the limit when you sign up with King-in-Waiting Communications.’ Admittedly, when the Prince dispensed with him Mr Bolland did not receive a gong. It is generally assumed that this is why Mr Bolland set in train the process by which the diaries became public. But it should not be assumed that they have damaged the Prince. It is not ‘unconstitutional’ to evade a banquet for visiting Chinese despots. Entertaining despots is part of the low business of foreign relations. Government does that best. Evading the entertaining was part of the high business of embodying the nation’s deeper values. That is best done by constitutional monarchy. The American and French presidents cannot do it so well because they are also partisan politicians, and therefore involved in the low stuff. Mr Bolland must face the unintended consequence that, in making the incident known, he ensured good PR for the Prince.
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