The Curse of the Professional Communicator: Why We Can't Just Watch a Resignation 

Any grizzled comms pros reading this will immediately recognise it: the curse that is perpetually viewing everything through the prism of professionalised communications. And I do mean everything. PTA WhatsApp groups…wedding invites…intra-family squabbles…social media swipes…brands in meltdown…political faux-pas after faux-pas. You name it.

And so it was this week, with not one but two massive resignations in the UK. First, the ultimately inevitable stepping down of Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Then, hot on his heels, the explosive demise of Ben Stokes as England's legendary cricket captain. One, the other or perhaps even both will have caught your eye. In the world of professional communicators, it’s almost impossible not to assess them as we would any other executive crash and burn.

The reflex is always the same. Before the news has even settled, I am grading the statement. Was it the right length. What got quietly buried in paragraph four. A resignation is never just a resignation to the comms pro. It is a piece of timing and a set of words that someone agonised over for hours. We read the staging long before we read the meaning.

Starmer's exit had the feel of a decision taken weeks before it was announced. The lines were tidy, if not characteristically boring, and the tone was measured. That kind of order rarely happens by accident, even if his raw emotions peeked through on the day.

Stokes was a different watch entirely. Sport rarely allows for a careful script and his announcement carried a rawness that politics tends to sand away.

Here’s the odd part. One a politician, the other a cricketer. Their worlds could hardly be less alike, yet the professional communicator reaches for the same checklist either way.

None of this is cynicism. Instead, it’s more about a trained ear, the kind our freelancers bring to a client on day one. Spend enough years shaping other people's messages and you cannot help auditing everyone else's.

The lesson under all of it is fairly plain. No statement can talk a business out of a genuine mess but a badly judged one can take a recoverable situation and turn it into a crisis. And people notice. Staff, clients and journalists all clock the tone, the timing and the things left unsaid, often before they even begin to judge the decision itself. The difference frequently comes down to who was drafting.

Both men will be judged on far more than how they bowed out. Even so, the manner of the exit shapes the first draft of the story. And first drafts have a stubborn habit of sticking.

Which is why the worst moment to be a comms leader down is the moment one of these stories breaks about you. The gap rarely waits for a tidy hiring process, and reputations are often won or lost in those first few weeks.

This is exactly where The Work Crowd comes in. We connect organisations with senior freelance and interim communicators who can step in within days, steady the message and hold the fort while the permanent search runs its course. If a gap has opened up, or you want cover on standby for when it does, get in touch and we will talk you through who we could put forward.  Better still, we can connect you with the strategic counsel or media training your organisation needs before a crisis even lands.  We’ll be talking more about that at our forthcoming event later this month.