Hearts & Minds: The swift return - a modern comms conundrum

He quits; he returns. Zia Yusuf’s exit from chairing Reform, followed by his appointment 48 hours later to run an Elon Musk-inspired Doge unit, was remarkable, even for Nigel Farage’s nascent organisation.

There Yusuf was, posting on social media that working to get a Reform government elected was not ‘a good use’ of his time., Next, he is back, trying to get that same body into power.

Communicating a turnaround is, to say the least, tricky. Yusuf, a former banker, put his decision to quit down to ‘exhaustion’ and said it was a ‘mistake’. Time will dictate if lasting damage has been done and whether his U-turn is forgotten. That will depend on Reform becoming the political bulldozer that Farage claims, pushing opponents and their criticism aside.

The general rule in business is that comebacks are not a good idea, they do not sit easily with investors and are ready meat for the media. Typically, they are provoked by a crisis, that the successor did not fit. There are, though, two failings the comms team must deal with. One is the calamity that created a vacancy; two is the admission that no one else is qualified, only the return of the former boss will suffice. In Yusuf’s case, such was the shortness of the timeframe that there was a third, having to explain the circumstances of his departure while his reappointment was actively underway.

A corporate episode that took some beating occurred at Littlewoods, the football pools, retailing and mail order group. There, after a profits slump, its formidable founder, John Moores, resumed the executive chairmanship, aged 84. Littlewoods was a private company, owned by him and his family. It was theirs to do with as they pleased. He was also responsible for building the firm, creating the brand. That is when the second coming is allowed, if the person returning brings them with a history of knowing the business inside out and can articulate convincingly where it has lost its way and how former glory will be restored. It was the case recently with Allan Leighton’s re-emergence at Asda. The ex-CEO was welcomed as the ‘person most likely to’, best equipped to press the right levers and re-energise the chain.

In sport, the re-run is common. If victories follow, doubts are buried. It is the same in business and in politics, with the likes of Yusuf. Ultimately, the results do the talking.

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.