Hearts & Minds: how to avoid making promises you know you can’t keep

The clock is ticking down to the end of the month, when Rachel Reeves will finally unveil her first Budget. Until then, there is endless speculation – some of it accurate, much of it not. The UK Chancellor traditionally likes to spring a surprise or two but the good money is settling on a rise in National Insurance or NI, contributions.

If so, prepare for a row - it’s already started - as Sir Keir Starmer’s government is accused of reversing a manifesto pledge not to raise NI contributions. Ah, but what they implied was that employee contributions would be frozen, not employer contributions.

That may be so but it will still provoke much anger, and wriggling by Starmer, Reeves and their comms teams. It won’t be pretty.

What’s being tested here is the time-honoured comms tactic of coming up with a catch-all phrase that they believe, hope, will withstand future scrutiny. The CEO is asked, are there any plans for redundancies? They’re briefed to reply: ‘Right now, we’re focused on getting the basics right across all aspect of the organisation.’

Three months later, they unveil a major redundancy programme. In the past, that non-committal, holding answer might have been enough to avoid them being pilloried for not being open and honest. Now, it’s unlikely.

Giving evidence in a trial in 1992, the Tory politician, Alan Clark paid tribute to ‘Our old friend… economical with the acutalité’. He was reworking a previous remark, from the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong in the 1986 ‘Spycatcher’ case. Said Armstrong: ‘It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.’ Both comments sparked ridicule. It was difficult to justify back then; it’s even harder now.

Not being entirely truthful invites a charge of lying and that leads to a loss of credibility and damage to the CEO’s most valuable asset: their reputation.

Circumstances can change and people, even critics begrudgingly, can be accepting of that. Reeves is able to point to the £22bn hole in the public accounts she has found - the Tories heavily dispute this – so could acknowledge what she’s accused of and follow a script that says: ‘It’s true we said that before the election but if we’d known then what we know now we wouldn’t have said it.’

With the redundancies question, the best approach is to leave the door open: ‘I would be lying if I said redundancies were not one of the options under consideration.’ No one can say the CEO lied and that’s what counts.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.