Gillian Keegan has made headlines again.
“Not fair. Why me?” It’s a common complaint.
But not normally one heard from the education secretary.
When Gillian Keegan let off steam after her interview with ITV News, it made headlines for all the wrong reasons. And, this being Britain, she was roundly mocked for her comments. It’s the latest in a round of ways in which people seem to have failed to prepare for a media interview.
As a piece of communications, she missed the mark because part of the role of being a leader is to stand up and take the flak to protect your team. That’s what leaders do.
And, of course, every PR person now has a new clip to replace Gordon Brown as the latest example of ‘never let your guard down until you know you are out of the building with no audio equipment still switched on’.
Was it deliberate?
But one part of me wondered whether she knew exactly what she was doing.
She was smart enough in her choice of words so no journalist can be totally sure she was complaining about the interviewer or even the media in general. Who hasn’t felt exactly that way about their own lack of recognition once in a while? I can imagine many a camera operator or news producer thinking, “She’s got a point there.”
And we can hardly demand more authenticity and vulnerability from our MPs on the one hand and then complain when we get it.
More importantly, her remark about others ‘getting off their arses’ got her message out far more quickly and widely than anything she said in the actual interview could have done. What would have had a few seconds on ITV News and been forgotten received coverage on every UK news outlet you can think of with her unique call to action being repeated for days.
And schools are making very quick remediation efforts – complaining themselves that their earlier efforts had fallen on deaf ears at the Department for Education.
If buildings get fixed and children get back to school soon, Gillian Keegan may reflect that getting egg on her face was actually a bit of a success. If not, well voters will give their verdict next year. Assuming we get off our arses and vote, that is.
(The official picture of Gillian Keegan MP is published under Creative Commons licence.)