Keir Starmer’s new communication chief must prioritise capability building inside government

David Dinsmore, a former editor of The Sun, has been appointed as the head of the Government Communications Service (GCS).

The reporting about his forthcoming arrival in this “top comms job” has majored on the prime minister having been impressed with his grasp of the government’s challenges, and his sometimes-controversial record at The Sun.

But if he is to succeed, he will need to focus on getting the GCS’s house in order rather than writing or making headlines. It is not the job of the leader of GCS to craft the Labour message, or to respond to the daily and weekly media hurly burly. That is for the head of communications at No10 – a job which is already occupied – and there will be unmanageable tensions in the centre of the government’s media machine if Dinsmore strays into this territory. He will need to resist his journalistic instincts and lean on his more recent managerial experience at News UK.    

Dinsmore’s job is to lead and manage civil service communication professionals

GCS describes itself as “the professional body for government communicators” and Dinsmore’s core role will be to maintain and build communication capability across government. The advert for his new job stressed a “radical redesign” of government communications, sharpening its social media presence, and the more prosaic but important work of ensuring messaging is consistent across government departments and using new analytics to measure the success of communication campaigns.

For all the interest in this new appointment, the head of GCS is quite a managerial and inward-facing job. Dinsmore’s job is to work on the plumbing of government communications rather than briefing journalists or responding to the day-to-day demands of the media. 

Perhaps the biggest early decision for Dinsmore will be on how far to centralise government communications. There are good arguments for and against. With ever-more fragmented media there is a strong case for government to concentrate resource and speak with one voice. But that will mean lower priority messages might get completely overlooked and make it harder to tailor content for specific audiences, interests and platforms. Individual ministers will also always bridle at too much central control. Dinsmore’s approach here will be a telling sign for how he wants to do the job.

A constantly changing media environment will continue to be challenging

Facing inwards does not mean Dinsmore’s job is unimportant. Far from it. He was appointed at permanent secretary grade – as recommended by the Institute for Government – and has an essential role to play.

First, he needs to build on some good work by his predecessor. Simon Baugh’s GCS strategy in 2022 slimmed down a communications function that had grown too large through Brexit and Covid. He refocused its core work on co-ordination across government, and pioneered some forward-thinking work on technology and AI. Building a strong bench of communications directors in departments, using that network to strengthen the GCS, and ensuring communication professionals have the skills and knowledge they need, are all further essential parts of Dinsmore’s new job.

He will also need to keep a constant focus on a rapidly changing communications landscape. This means building the authority and credibility of government messaging, while adapting it for multiple channels to reach more citizens. For example, he should prioritise a review of the social media platforms used in official communications. Twitter's regrettable decline means it is now narrow and compromised, but is still being used as a major official channel. The government is expanding its reach into Instagram and elsewhere, but Dinsmore should ensure the balance of platforms is the right one.

Setting high ethical standards and giving tough advice are a core part of the job

The incoming GCS boss also needs the confidence, savvy and ethical underpinning to ensure high standards of government communications, and to give good advice  to the prime minister and cabinet secretary on how the civil service communication machine best supports ministers.

Previous governments started to play fast and loose with the propriety guidelines, notably making disingenuous claims on social media and undermining trust in official messaging. Baugh rightly helped clamp down on that, and Starmer, on coming into government, made much of resetting ethical standards. Dinsmore will need to show that he both understands the difference between political and official communication, and be prepared to police the line to ensure government communications stays on the right side of it. 

Dinsmore should also help No10 avoid silly missteps like their counter-productive “gagging” of public officials. If the restrictive guidance is still in place when he starts later this year, then he, with No10 communications director James Lyons, must quickly sort out the problem. The civil service communications team should be an enabler, not a blocker, of strong engagement between civil servants advising and implementing policies, and the public, civil society and businesses.  

There is no shortage of work to do to improve the quality and operation of government communications. Too often in recent years strong personalities have been at loggerheads in No10 – sometimes over politics and policies, but at other times because of incoherent or overlapping remits. Dinsmore needs to avoid that trap by finding his place as part of the core professional supporting team for the prime minister, and to convincingly show that he is the right man in the right job.