The Week Unspun: Friday September 25, 2025

Farzana Baduel (00:09):

Right. Hello and

Doug Downs (00:12):

Fancy opener.

Farzana Baduel (00:13):

Oh my God. I know, I know. Well done to our lovely, lovely producers, Emily and David. Now welcome to the world Onan. And this is going to take place every Friday at 5:00 PM UK time. Doug, Eastern time. That is noon, right?

Doug Downs (00:30):

Absolutely. Hi, noon in New York. They're out getting out visiting the Mr. Softy trucks, getting hot dogs from the stands, busy on the streets.

Farzana Baduel (00:39):

That sounds lovely. Now why are we here? It is all David's fault. David, over to can you explain,

David Gallagher (00:47):

I dunno if it's my fault, but I guess I'll take credit if it's the fault of anyone. It's the 1200 PR people, media people, marketing people around the world that are part of the Advisory Club WhatsApp group. I call it the PR mega chat. Many of you hopefully are already participating in that. Some of you kind of prefer to have it digested for you and you may know that for a year or so. I've tried to do a weekly summary on LinkedIn looking at what people thought were the interesting posts and submissions. If you're trying to picture this, it's literally a text chat. There are 24 hours a day comments, posts, sometimes breaking news about what's happening in the PR world. So I've tried to discern what I thought was most interesting, that's obviously got my filter on it and I thought it'd be much more interesting to involve some trusted friends and colleagues with Doug and Farzana. In fact, we were having a conversation in a different setting about the chat. Actually, why don't we just do a live conversation. So this is our first experiment and thank you everyone for taking a little bit of time out of your midday or your end of day or wherever you are to join us in this conversation. You're free to put comments in the chats. We're going to be talking back and forth, but we'll try to bring your comments forward too just like we do in the text chat.

Farzana Baduel (02:04):

Fantastic. And so I'm based in London. David is a Texan in London and we have dug downs based in Canada. So we will be talking about the news across the world and we'll try not to make it dominated by the UK and North America, which I suspect today will be now breaking news. What is happening right now immediately? So right now we've just been seeing splattered all over the BBC and other channels. Angela Rainer resignation and a cabinet reshuffle. And so Doug, we've had a chat about this just before we came live and Doug was like, what did she do?

Doug Downs (02:43):

But this is top of my Google feed when I go on Google. This is top of my feed right now. So this is the news of the moment. Yeah,

Farzana Baduel (02:50):

I've always been

Doug Downs (02:50):

Politician who, what'd she do? What'd she step in? She's resigned. Is that what she's done?

Farzana Baduel (02:56):

Yeah, she has resigned and basically it's quite a blow for ki because it's been

Doug Downs (03:03):

Your prime minister.

Farzana Baduel (03:04):

Yeah, our prime minister. And so it was after revealing that she underpaid approximately about 40,000 pounds in stamp duty on an 800,000 pound flat in Hove, which is by the sea. And she sort of signposted it was to do misapplied legal advice and to reference herself to the independent ethics advisor and stepped down. And that has precipitated a reshuffle. So we have now our foreign secretary is Yvette Cooper. David Laie has been promoted to Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary and Shabana Mahmud becomes home secretary. And there is a PR story on this because Ki Stama was somebody that everyone was hoping was going to come to the UK give us a much needed stability and I don't think he's quite managed to do that. What's your thoughts, David?

David Gallagher (03:56):

Well I wonder is she being held to a different standard do you think than if she were a Tory? If she were a male, would she be subject to the same kind of scrutiny? And I guess my real question, is this a PR story or is this a political story or is it a little bit of both? And as you think about that, I literally learned about this story from the WhatsApp chat. So that's one little feature of being plugged into the chat. But what do you think pr, political,

Doug Downs (04:23):

Something else? Can you separate the two if it happens in politics? Isn't politics just a giant PR exercise these days with good measurement because there's an election at some point?

David Gallagher (04:35):

Yeah, I'm beginning to think that there was a time when I thought politics was mostly policy wrapped up in good pr. Now I'm beginning to think politics is mostly PR that occasionally touches on policy. But Farzana the one, you're the one who brought the story to our attention. What do you think?

Farzana Baduel (04:53):

Do you know what? It is a huge distraction because here in the UK it is party conference month and party conference month is where you set the stage for your big policy announcements. You bring all your activists and your followers and your supporters and the media under the tent and this is our big direction. So I think timing matters critically in PR and her resignation is going to be all that everyone talks about and the reshuffle, and I feel sorry for all of the public affairs teams, all of a sudden they have to understand that they have to switch to other ministers. And this reshuffle right before party conference where the public affairs teams are working incredibly hard this month we've got reform and we've got labor and conservative and so all of these and Lib Dems of course. And so there's going to be all sorts of ramifications on public affairs teams across the land for the upcoming Labor Party conference.

(05:48):

Now I want to say a warm welcome. We have our friend who has joined us, David Alexander and what does he have to say? He has, as he said in the politics group, labor is seriously lacking when it comes to charismatic and compelling. Spokespeople and reform have many of them. I think that's true. I was in the green room, I think it was B, B, C, and I think Nigel Fraud was next to me getting his makeup done and his hair. And I was getting my makeup done for two different shows. And I remember observing him and we didn't say hello or anything like that and I was observing him and do you know what? He was so charismatic and he was chatting to the makeup artist and just talking to everybody but me and I did grudgingly realize that he has got that charisma. And I remember also back in the day coming across Boris Johnson had that same charisma.

(06:40):

And charisma takes you really far in politics. And do we really vote with our head and our rational lens on policy or with our, do you know what? I'd like to have a pint with that guy at the pub. And I think, so likability really matters in politics. And so David, he's absolutely right. It's about charisma and compelling spokespeople and in terms of strategy, messaging and delivery of its comms labor is failing according to David Alexander. And Reform is dominating the agenda despite a lack of mps. I kind of agree with David, I really do. I think reform are doing so well in their messaging. I just had a look at the party conference pages across labor lib, dem conservative and reform and just in terms of basic getting information and looking to sign up. I mean whoever's doing the website Comms of reform and party conference, they're doing a great job. They're understanding that no one wants to, they want things to be intuitive and easy and this attention deficit sort of mindset that we all have, they just want easy messaging. And I kind of think reform's doing really well. And also actually maga the MAGA spokespeople, they totally get it.

Doug Downs (07:55):

You see Emory Blake's comment here, I think that's good.

Farzana Baduel (07:59):

Oh yeah,

Doug Downs (07:59):

Charisma, competence. We've been asking that for how many years, right? Yeah. Well no, we want charisma Emory, that's how we elect on either side of the pond who connects with people from a populous kind of standpoint. That's kind of where we've gone. How big a deal is this politician? Is this an important politician? Can she just not that lost from cabinet, no big deal. Or is this a heavyweight that's disappearing?

Farzana Baduel (08:29):

She's a big deal. She's a connection with the left of the party. Incredible story. I mean for me, she's a little bit like that sort of that princess from Disney's brave, she's redhead, fiery, strong, amazing backstories single mother was living in council housing and I found her really inspiring actually. And so I think it is huge loss to the party to have lost her and she's not the only minister they've lost. I mean in quick succession there's been quite a few, but we must move on now. We do have another story and I'm going to hand it over to our friend in Canada. Doug, tell us what your neighbor is up to.

Doug Downs (09:16):

I'm pulling off of this story. This is about 40,000 pounds. What's that? $65,000 impropriety here. That's the monetary value of this. Good grief. I don't even know if that would register over on this side of the, if it registered we'd elect them, we'd elect them president. So based on that, if you could pop up the photo from Al Jazeera of President Trump at his news conference. To me, this was kind of the story that unraveled through the week. Is he dead? It's like Paul McCartney from the Beatles. Is he dead? Is he walking out of Step Down the Abbey Road? And Al Jazeera had a neat article there where their perspective was how did this false rumor spread so widely? And we had Shaylin on the Stories and Strategies podcast about a year and a half ago. A lot of folks on the WhatsApp channel will know for those who don't know her runs a behavioral science agency.

(10:21):

It's not the way she wants to describe that, but that's, sorry in my terms, that's how I describe it. Brilliant. Look at behavioral science and how people behave. And she had broken down on the episode how disinformation spread so rapidly on social media and within that recipe, not so much what created the disinformation. So usually something kind of small, but then bots step in and help spread it. But at some point the accelerant is influencers that have a political or monetary or some other kind of motivation to spread the rumor. And in this case, in the Al Jazeera story, what they're suggesting is sure enough, that's exactly what happened within the story. The journalist words were liberal minded influencers and they named a couple of them on TikTok, the Shar and from the Midas Touch podcast, which you can sing on YouTube, Ben, I think it's mis, they were two of the ones that helped spread this quite strongly. And I think Rosie O'Donnell actually repeated this as well, but it's the same from a PR lens. It's the same recipe that influencers who have gained audience, which is surely gained on trust are part of the culprits who are spreading this disinformation. David, your thoughts on that?

David Gallagher (11:47):

Well, that was going to be my story of the week as well. I'll come back to how it resolved. And I think there's another way of looking at this six day window where the speculation of whether he was still alive or not was running rampant. And I have no doubt and I follow Midas touch, I think there was some kind of fuel thrown on the flames for that. Another way of looking at this, he was literally out of the public eye for six days, five days off of social media for four and a half of those. And that's pretty unlike him. Some of the photos that were distributed by the White House suggesting that he was alive and well were shown to be faked or if not faked like a month old. So there was definitely some efforts to fill in the information gap and I think many parties tried to bend that to their purpose.

(12:39):

One explanation was that it was another distraction from the fury over the Epstein files. I think that's a little bit of a stretch in that. That's just a lot. But I've come to a belief that there's three different things that happen from the White House right now. Some things are literally designed to be distractions from the Epstein debate. Some things I think are just weird and conveniently served to be a distraction from the Epstein Fury and some things are just weird. And I don't know which one of these it fit into, but the fact that in his press conference he was 40 minutes late, it was time to coincide as the leadership of the Russian government, Chinese government and North Korean governments were meeting, it felt a little staged and the press conference a little suspicious. So people are going to interpret this the way they want to interpret it, but it did create a lot of speculation and I guess everybody tried to run with it. I kind of want to go to the press conference, but I don't want to exhaust your story about just,

Doug Downs (13:42):

Well no, what jumped out at you from the news conference? Did he look sickly to you?

David Gallagher (13:47):

Well, he didn't look great. Like I say, he was late knowing that most cameras were standing by waiting to go live. So he did build, whether it was intentional or not, he built optimal drama for it. I thought the parade of praise that came out before he made a fairly innocuous announcement. The whole announcement about moving the space command from Colorado to Alabama, Alabama, I'm not saying that's not news, but I don't think, it's not usually a live oval office press conference that's usually for a declaration of war and then sort of this parade of praise was weird. It is just not usual. So again, I don't know, was that a distraction by design? Was it a distraction by accident or was it just weird? I don't know. But what struck me and I get out of the politics for a moment, just the idea of the press conference and it seems to be limited now to statements from the government or a government or maybe after a big match or game match or game. I don't know that live press conferences happen that often anymore. And I felt a little bit nostalgic just for the, I mean I'm old enough, I used to worry about press conferences a lot. I think there are probably a lot of people in the business now who've never thought about recommending the press conference, much less organizing one. And I just felt a little bit nostalgic. Again, the design, the setup, the staging, the news itself was

(15:19):

Not that dramatic. I thought nobody mentioned the point though that my hometown, I was actually born at Redstone Arsenal military hospital in Huntsville, Alabama, which is the place where the space command is. And every single journalist missed that point. So make of that what you'll,

Doug Downs (15:38):

You got to trek back home man to see something down there.

Farzana Baduel (15:43):

I wanted to bring up just David Alexander just made a really interesting point about Obama. He was the king of charisma, which allowed him to get things done and get support. What are the differences between how Obama ran his presidential comms versus Trump? That's a huge question. I mean, I'll tell you why, because I've been really following the White House on the Instagram and I find it really fascinating. I think they're kind of good. You have the MAGA minute and the MAGA minute is just literally a minute of here's the top things that have happened. And then when you look at the copy in the Instagram post, they've just got a little emoticon with a couple of words for each policy. I mean it is as top line as you can get. Actually. I think it's probably more likely that that's going to have eyeballs and there's going to be some sort of feeling from the person that something's getting done rather than a handful of policy wonks that read a 50 page report that comes out three months later. I do think that they get immediacy and how to be as brief as possible. And I can't remember what Obama's comms were like. I can't remember following the

David Gallagher (17:02):

White House a little bit.

(17:05):

I worked for the campaign in a volunteer capacity and I was a fundraiser for him here in the uk. So I was in pretty early with his style. This is all pre-social media or at least very early days of social media. So 2007, 2008 wasn't like it is now, but he did understand obviously the appeal of cool and he thought very carefully and presented himself thoughtfully and he tapped into a lot of popular cultural memes and vibes, the sort of preme but vibes. I think he did get the vibe environment. He just didn't necessarily have the channels that are available now. I think you're right. And as much as it pains me to say I do think Trump does get popular culture and he knows definitely how to wire himself into virtually every story. And in fact he makes every story about him and he makes it almost impossible to cover anything else.

(18:00):

Got this whole muzzle velocity approach to announcing something new and crazy or at least new, sorry, putting my own view in there, but something new and shocking every day and it drowns out the rest of the new cycle. And I think that's clever. I'm not saying it's good, but it's clever. And going back to Annemarie's comment earlier, I think of course we want to choose competence over charisma, but we're humans and we feel before we think. And I think that that's something as communicators, it's a lesson for us to think about. You think about Gavin Newsom, he's the governor of California and he's mounted this kind of anti-Trump social media campaign and many people in the middle and on the left aren't comfortable with that. It feels like in their views they're stooping to the same level. I don't know if it's effective or not, but it's gotten Gavin Newsom a lot of attention. It's brought him to the front of the opposition. So I think we just need to accept that charisma is at least as important in people's minds as competence, if not more. And there's not a lot we can do to change that.

Doug Downs (19:12):

David, let me ask you, the last US president elected based on competence I would suggest was Jimmy Carter. And that ever since then, ever single president George Bush Sr. I'm not sure what charisma was there, but probably pulling off of Ronald Reagan's incredibly at least popular eight years as president, I think in US politics anyway, it's been totally style over substance.

David Gallagher (19:38):

Yeah, it's definitely, sorry, I'm

Doug Downs (19:40):

Including President Obama in there as well.

David Gallagher (19:43):

I wouldn't agree. I think it's been style led. I think in Obama's case he did try to follow through with some policy, but for the most part it has not been, I dunno where we put Biden on that. Not a lot of style or stuff in the he style. It

Doug Downs (20:02):

Was get rid of Trump, right? It was anti

David Gallagher (20:04):

Style. Yeah, it was still kind of drafting off that. So sorry for means something else.

Farzana Baduel (20:11):

Yeah. So Joshua here, he has written Trump wins because he's not formulaic, he's not overly edited, he's not rehearsed God, he's a bit like us authentic. He's not perfect because authenticity is paramount. Americans really want to connect.

Doug Downs (20:29):

They do

Farzana Baduel (20:30):

And he does that.

Doug Downs (20:31):

They do. And he's touched a vein. He's found a feeling within a lot of people where they feel estranged from the so-called system where they feel the system has moved beyond them. It's probably, I don't want the big cities telling me how I should be able to live. That's probably what it drills down to.

David Gallagher (20:52):

Yeah. Well I think, and I know we don't want to spend the rest of the whole show on Trump, but I think this is why the Epstein

Farzana Baduel (20:56):

Epstein

David Gallagher (20:57):

Thing has been, well, I think it's why it's been hard for him. He wanted so desperately to walk away from the Epstein thing and I think this is part of the beast that he's helped create or he's at least been part of that too, is wired into popular culture. I mean it's shocking, it's horrific. It's everything that people don't want to believe is happening. Trump's been talking about happening in other sections for a long time and now I think he can't understand why he can't just put that one to rest and it's not going to go away anytime soon. So I do think if you're going to get in the cage with the bear, you're going to have to live with the bear. And I think he thought maybe he was the bear, but that's not the way. It's not the public opinion works. So

Farzana Baduel (21:43):

I mean whatever your political leanings, he's a great storyteller. He knows how to connect. He has redrawn the map in political communications. We have a insight from Mr. McEwen being logical though in politics, charisma is essential to leverage

Doug Downs (22:02):

Competence.

Farzana Baduel (22:03):

Absolutely. So perhaps there's not one or the other, perhaps It's kind of both.

(22:08):

Goes on to say he tells people what they want to hear and actually we lean into comfortable conversations to reinforcing our core beliefs and our sort of suspicions. So maybe it's just human nature and he just has this incredible instinct to connect and accept humans as we are flawed beings.

Doug Downs (22:31):

If I tell you what you want to hear though, I'm not necessarily assisting the advancement of us as a society at some point I need to be unreasonable to change things to make them better. No change is ever done without being unreasonable. No good

Farzana Baduel (22:46):

Change. It depends what success looks like. Does success look like winning and being in power or is success thinking about other goals

Doug Downs (22:56):

Helping people?

Farzana Baduel (22:56):

Yeah, right now we have other stories, right, Doug? David, should I dive into one or is there another angle you want to explore? Because Trump does dominate a bit,

David Gallagher (23:11):

Rattle my cage on Trump, so I don't want to say anything more about that. I think you should say what interested you this week, and I know you went to some interesting places, so I'd like to hear where you were this week.

Farzana Baduel (23:21):

Yeah, so through the WhatsApp group of David Gallagher and an introduction, I met this incredible guy called Julio Romo and oh, Julia Romo, I think the Brits call him Julio and the Spanish call him Julio. And there's people like me who pretend that we're very international. I'm going to try and call him Julio. And he's a super smart guy. He has worked across number of roles in government and outside. And I was invited to the launch of a soft power report by the Foreign Policy Center in Westminster. And I thought, who should I take? And he is a great wingman. So we went along and he's written a fantastic blog about the report on soft power on his LinkedIn, which you could find. And he's also got a fantastic newsletter as well, which I always read. And just a little bit of a framing about soft power. So it was coined by the Harvard Scholar Joseph s Ni Jr in the late 1980s. Soft power describes the ability to achieve desired outcomes through attraction, not coercion, via culture values and policy legitimacy. And he sadly passed away in May 20, 25, a few months back at the age of 88. But he's legacy of strategic diplomacy in jaws. Now if we think about soft power, now I say from a British lens, BBC, premier League, Fortnam and Mason, what would you say, Doug? What are the soft power assets for Canada?

Doug Downs (24:54):

I think soft power is probably the strongest power because it creates an atmosphere where I'm making my own decisions and even after some reflective thought, I realize I have made my own decision and that I was not coerced at most. I was informed and maybe encouraged. So I think of nudges as a form of soft power. To me that's the strongest form. I don't think we're necessarily living in that world from politicians, from most big marketing companies. It's much more form of hard power and pushing people to the place you want them to be because we're in a rush. We don't have time for this soft power crap that could take years.

Farzana Baduel (25:39):

And what about David? The soft power assets of the us? I'd say Hollywood, obviously McDonald's,

David Gallagher (25:48):

Hollywood, fast food for quick surf food, music, increasingly some American sports. But all that too is being questioned right now and not trying to drag us back into earlier topics, but there's feelings that maybe some of that's too woke and which is a bigger discussion, maybe a discussion for a whole show. I would say in US history it's things like entertainment, professional sports. The military in some ways help create greater social cohesion

(26:24):

Us across races, across sexual orientation, across gender. And all that's being completely, literally dismantled through hard power mechanisms. So my views on that, but I think we're living really in a really strange time where curves and arcs that have been in motion for decades have suddenly been records for each stopped. And I don't know what replaces it. This is not just an American phenomena, you're feeling it everywhere.

Farzana Baduel (26:53):

Now back to the report. We have some photos of the launch and so this is the report and we're going to have a link that we'll share to the Foreign Policy Center report that you can download the future of the UK soft power and foreign policy and beautiful Westminster. It's always a joy to go to events there. And so we had representatives from the Premier League, that's John Whittingdale, who's a former culture secretary and also was a former chair of the SEC committee. Susan, she heads the foreign policy center. And what does a report in essence talk about? So it says it emphasizes the importance of a coordinated long-term UK soft power strategy and it urges a digital gateway to unify educational assets, scientific, cultural, because the UK actually, we've got Oxford, we've got Cambridge, we've got these incredible schools that people from all over the world send their children to.

(27:51):

And it's really about not just looking at education as a business and as an export business, but actually looking at it as a soft power. If you go to school in the UK for instance, or you do a course in the uk, you then have these sort of positive feelings hopefully if you're not offended by the weather. And then later on where you then go and get a job and get a business and get in a position to invest, perhaps you'll think about investing and soft powers is incredible area where one connects to another. So sort of like culture, like film builds a familiarity that then can build to tourism. So you then go and visit more tourism can then build to, oh, maybe I'll trade with somebody from this country that could then lead to foreign DI investment. So it really does, it is about connecting the dots. And in essence, a report was saying we need to really harness UK soft power strategy, not take for granted that we have English that has spoken around the world and we've got the Commonwealth and we've got this incredible creative industries and we need to really think about it strategically and sort of asked for 20% government thinking around strategic. And then 80% let the public sector and the private sector just do their thing. And that also includes British charities as well who are out there and is card because at the moment you've got a lot of international aid budgets. And so that is

David Gallagher (29:10):

I'm huge comment, that comment from, he's so right. I'm glad he said that. Just the idea. Well, you can read it language. I totally agree. I mean, I'm saying this on dual national. So in my adapted home country of England, great Britain, it has extraordinary disproportionate power in the world by the virtue that people speak English. And I'm not taking anything away from my fellow citizens of Great Britain, but that is probably the best example of soft power I can think of.

Doug Downs (29:41):

Agreed. I just had British conversation yesterday with a colleague. We were looking at a map of the world and they were noting they knew England was an island or the UK was basically an island. But to see it, to visually see it and see how small it actually is in terms of a footprint and between us, the comment came up and yet we all speak the dang language that more or less, and that's from accelerated in the Victorian age. You're right, language is so powerful and morphing and changing because Mandarin is becoming more and more spoken as well as Spanish is spread rapidly.

Farzana Baduel (30:23):

We have come to an end. Thank you everybody for joining and thank you for all your comments. We will be back on Friday at 5:00 PM UK time and noon eastern time. And if there's any stories that you want us to discover, then those in the WhatsApp group hit us up. And those not all on LinkedIn, Instagram, you name it, we're on there. Reach out to us and we'd love to hear from you. But thank you for our experimental Friday. All the best. And thank you to our producers, David Jedi and Emily Page. They're behind the scenes and they've been helping with all the tech, so we adore you both. All the best. Thank you. Bye-bye.

David Gallagher (31:04):

Bye guys.