James Fisk: If Conservatives get back into power they need to overhaul the way Government communicates online
The headline tells the story.
James Fisk works in digital communications and is Director of Communications for the Next Gen Tories.
Why does the Government have Instagram?
The answer that has likely popped into your head is “to communicate with younger people”, or “to bring the state into the 21st century.” or even, “to reach a bigger audience”. These are very fair answers, and the attempt by the Civil Service to evolve its communications, and endeavour to more effectively communicate policy and information is noble.
The problem, however, is that the methodology and success metrics deployed by the Civil Service for departmental social media accounts, risks fundamentally undermining the relationship between the individual and the state. In short, we need to ask if it is right for the Government to ‘go viral’.
Cast your mind back to 1st October 2025. For those not as chronically online as me, this is the day that the Department for Education posted a video promoting Labour’s new free school breakfasts policy, where Civil Servants interviewed a variety of parents asking questions about how the policy will benefit them.
The video, from a technical standpoint, is good. The edit is smooth, the hook is engaging, and it certainly got a lot of views, but it went down like a cup of cold sick.
The most common criticism, on our side of the aisle, was expressed in comments such as “why am I being taxed so these lazy parents can go to coffee mornings with their mates” – a valid point, based on a genuine answer in the video. Meanwhile, on the left, the video was widely criticised for being too “middle class”, having been shot entirely in London, and not “telling the working class story”. It’s fair to say, if a policy about giving schoolchildren free food is criticised from the left and the right, the comms has probably failed.
This is not a criticism of the DfE Digi team, far from it. In fact, the reason I picked this video is because I was put in a very similar position myself last year. I have spent my career working in digital communications, and when working in the Caribbean for a political party, they introduced a free school breakfast policy. To tell the truth, I had a lot of similar ideas to the DfE digital team, and I found it quite amusing to see similar video ideas deployed by the British state and a foreign governing party.
The difference, however, is that the creative risks I took were taken from the account of a political party. My objective was not just to communicate a policy, but to win votes. The state is not in that position, and shouldn’t be, ever. That is why I believe this video is emblematic of everything wrong with the way the Civil Service runs departmental social media accounts. In their noble attempts to look good online, they naturally risk looking bad and …
The headline tells the story.
James Fisk works in digital communications and is Director of Communications for the Next Gen Tories.
Why does the Government have Instagram?
The answer that has likely popped into your head is “to communicate with younger people”, or “to bring the state into the 21st century.” or even, “to reach a bigger audience”. These are very fair answers, and the attempt by the Civil Service to evolve its communications, and endeavour to more effectively communicate policy and information is noble.
The problem, however, is that the methodology and success metrics deployed by the Civil Service for departmental social media accounts, risks fundamentally undermining the relationship between the individual and the state. In short, we need to ask if it is right for the Government to ‘go viral’.
Cast your mind back to 1st October 2025. For those not as chronically online as me, this is the day that the Department for Education posted a video promoting Labour’s new free school breakfasts policy, where Civil Servants interviewed a variety of parents asking questions about how the policy will benefit them.
The video, from a technical standpoint, is good. The edit is smooth, the hook is engaging, and it certainly got a lot of views, but it went down like a cup of cold sick.
The most common criticism, on our side of the aisle, was expressed in comments such as “why am I being taxed so these lazy parents can go to coffee mornings with their mates” – a valid point, based on a genuine answer in the video. Meanwhile, on the left, the video was widely criticised for being too “middle class”, having been shot entirely in London, and not “telling the working class story”. It’s fair to say, if a policy about giving schoolchildren free food is criticised from the left and the right, the comms has probably failed.
This is not a criticism of the DfE Digi team, far from it. In fact, the reason I picked this video is because I was put in a very similar position myself last year. I have spent my career working in digital communications, and when working in the Caribbean for a political party, they introduced a free school breakfast policy. To tell the truth, I had a lot of similar ideas to the DfE digital team, and I found it quite amusing to see similar video ideas deployed by the British state and a foreign governing party.
The difference, however, is that the creative risks I took were taken from the account of a political party. My objective was not just to communicate a policy, but to win votes. The state is not in that position, and shouldn’t be, ever. That is why I believe this video is emblematic of everything wrong with the way the Civil Service runs departmental social media accounts. In their noble attempts to look good online, they naturally risk looking bad and …
James Fisk: If Conservatives get back into power they need to overhaul the way Government communicates online
The headline tells the story.
James Fisk works in digital communications and is Director of Communications for the Next Gen Tories.
Why does the Government have Instagram?
The answer that has likely popped into your head is “to communicate with younger people”, or “to bring the state into the 21st century.” or even, “to reach a bigger audience”. These are very fair answers, and the attempt by the Civil Service to evolve its communications, and endeavour to more effectively communicate policy and information is noble.
The problem, however, is that the methodology and success metrics deployed by the Civil Service for departmental social media accounts, risks fundamentally undermining the relationship between the individual and the state. In short, we need to ask if it is right for the Government to ‘go viral’.
Cast your mind back to 1st October 2025. For those not as chronically online as me, this is the day that the Department for Education posted a video promoting Labour’s new free school breakfasts policy, where Civil Servants interviewed a variety of parents asking questions about how the policy will benefit them.
The video, from a technical standpoint, is good. The edit is smooth, the hook is engaging, and it certainly got a lot of views, but it went down like a cup of cold sick.
The most common criticism, on our side of the aisle, was expressed in comments such as “why am I being taxed so these lazy parents can go to coffee mornings with their mates” – a valid point, based on a genuine answer in the video. Meanwhile, on the left, the video was widely criticised for being too “middle class”, having been shot entirely in London, and not “telling the working class story”. It’s fair to say, if a policy about giving schoolchildren free food is criticised from the left and the right, the comms has probably failed.
This is not a criticism of the DfE Digi team, far from it. In fact, the reason I picked this video is because I was put in a very similar position myself last year. I have spent my career working in digital communications, and when working in the Caribbean for a political party, they introduced a free school breakfast policy. To tell the truth, I had a lot of similar ideas to the DfE digital team, and I found it quite amusing to see similar video ideas deployed by the British state and a foreign governing party.
The difference, however, is that the creative risks I took were taken from the account of a political party. My objective was not just to communicate a policy, but to win votes. The state is not in that position, and shouldn’t be, ever. That is why I believe this video is emblematic of everything wrong with the way the Civil Service runs departmental social media accounts. In their noble attempts to look good online, they naturally risk looking bad and …
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