Gordon Brown: "I want to book onto Black Belt"

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Finally it’s happened! A politician, or rather one who’s soon going to be looking for another profession all together (anyone brave enough to hire him as their director of comms?) has at last admitted that he should have taken a course in communication skills.

Former Prime Minister and now free man Gordon Brown, yesterday visited Adam Smith College in his home constituency Kirkcaldy, Fife in Scotland, and told an audience of students that he had contemplated applying for a course in communication skills on his journey to the institution.

His excellent statesman-like leaving speech this Wednesday aside – which I personally thought was wonderfully and very candidly delivered – Brown, in the public’s blue and yellow coalition-coloured eyes, arguably suffered from a lack of personality in the last few weeks of the Prime ministerial campaign. Calling a lifelong female Labour supporter a “bigoted woman”, grinning to the audience during the televised debate as if he had just witnessed David Cameron inadvertently putting his foot in a bear trap and rather unfortunately misspelling a deceased soldier’s name in his note of sympathy due to his poor eyesight, all contributed in some way to his sad and eventual downfall.

But hey ho, now he’s left number 10 he can concentrate on other things and what better way to make up for lost time and potentially encourage a new and rather inexperienced coalition cabinet to brush up on their communication skills. After all even our new old Etonian PM isn’t immune from the odd verbal gaffe or two.

Remember when he compared Northern Ireland to a former communist state, or when Jewish groups and MPs rounded on the Conservative leader after he dismissed funding to send schoolchildren to visit Auschwitz as “a gimmick”, or his latest communication cock-up when, being interviewed by gay publication The Pink Paper, he was accused of slipping up over his party’s votes on gay equality issues.

After suggesting he might take a communication skills course, Brown then even went so far as to say he “might do public relations, then maybe media management – or drama and performance”. Come on Gord, PR isn’t the way to go now really is it? Internal communications could well be the ideal career for you now you’ve left that rather pressurised public facing role behind you. Oh, and by the way, if you do decide to head in-house, rather than heading to the House of Commons or even the Lords, why not give Melcrum a buzz and we’ll give you a great discount on all three excellent Black Belt training course modules that cover everything someone aspiring to become a world-class internal communicator could ever hope to learn.

Surely anything's better than hanging around with Nick Clegg? Who you say? Exactly.