We’re living in extraordinary times. COVID 19 is still on the rise, intensive care beds are filling up, millions are working from home, a 24 hour news cycle needing to be fed, daily media briefings, and a deluge of information, much of it spurious, on digital and social media.

Add to this the armchair epidemiologists, conspiracy theorists, and a wide and worrying variation in the quality of world leaders, and we’re all left vulnerable to the risk of misinformation, or fake news as we’re now having to call it.

Governments across the world are having to take tough decisions, fed by researchers and clinicians who don’t always agree, and once these decisions have been taken they need to be communicated. Properly. It’s not just about communicating policy, communication is now an integral part of policy. The two have become entwined. It is vital that the public receive and understand clear and practical messages.

So how has it gone so far? Here in the UK we have a relatively new Government, albeit from a party who’ve been governing since 2010, and a Prime Minister whose ambitions with an 80 seat majority have, like his own personal health, been weakened. So how are they doing so far when it comes to policy and communications? None of this is easy, so how could things be improved? Here are ten comments and suggestions.

1. Wherever possible, be ahead of the game, don’t play catch up. Daily briefings should have started two weeks sooner than they did. It is better to communicate too often than too little.
2. Choose your best communicators. These will not necessarily be the ministers or experts most closely involved. The Chief Medical Officer, who is new to his role and media briefings, has performed well, as has the Chief Scientific Adviser. The Chancellor and Communities Secretary have been the pick of the Cabinet to date, the Prime Minister was still finding his feet before he contracted the virus.
3. If possible, limit the rota for who appears at media briefings to as few people as you can, people like familiar faces and styles. Too many people suggests a lack of co-ordination, even though there might be a good reason for it.
4. Lead from the front, but in the style that works best. The Prime Minister is better suited to individual scripted pieces to camera than he is to chairing and participating in media briefings, where he is at times prone to coming across as vague and confusing. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t chair any media briefings, he has to, but play to his strengths and avoid the potential for confusion if possible.
5. Before going public with your messages, check your facts and test your messages with others. And once you’ve done this, check and test again, and then once more. The policy difficulties on testing and PPE have been exposed by the lack of clarity in the messaging, which has been inevitable given the problems that have been encountered.
6. If things aren’t going well in some areas, say so. Be honest, if the policy is changing, for good reason, say it is and why. The public will be more forgiving, at least for a while, if you tell them that some things are proving to be problematic. Bluster hasn’t, and won’t convince anyone, it will just irritate.
7. Avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in both the policy and the messaging. The Prime Minister’s answer around seeing his mother on Mother’s Day, the Chancellor’s initial announcement about support for the self employed, who and who isn’t a key worker, and whether or not construction work should still go ahead across the board – a lack of clarity initially led to widespread public confusion and annoyance which could have been avoided.
8. Be clear about who is doing what, and talk to them first? Are Councils co-ordinating the delivery of food to the vulnerable, and how much warning were they given before this was announced? Or are NHS volunteers doing this, and how will the two work together? Agreement on the logistical arrangements has to be in place before the announcement is made, the PR benefit shouldn’t outrank the practical.
9. Identify and repeatedly publicise a small and key number of reliable information sources eg GOV.UK  People want to be reassured. But then make sure nothing is posted there before it’s been checked repeatedly.
10. Be yourself – if you’re frustrated and annoyed about people breaking rules, say so, even encourage others to challenge their own family and friends. Don’t apologise for restrictions – be up front about doing the right thing. Did the libertarian beliefs of the Government delay the introduction of more restrictive social distancing measures? Now is not the time to be half-hearted.