A Political Christmas
From JCPR, I was thrust into the world of Public Affairs. It seems that 5 weeks (the length of a single grad rotation) is exactly the amount of time needed to get to know people and settle in to a department, so every new rotation feels like a bit of wrench from what has become somewhat familiar! But change can only ever be good…
The PA group is the smallest of the main departments in terms of staff, although its client list seems to be one of the longest. I was exposed to a huge range of accounts, from Anglian Water to the British Virgin Islands, to Sainsbury’s and the Open University. For these accounts I carried out a range of tasks including monitoring governmental committee meetings and the media, compiling stakeholder lists, contacting stakeholders, carrying out desk research and preparing biographies of relevant MPs. I helped out at a couple of events, one of which took place in the Lord Mayor’s Parlour in Westminster City Hall.
Public affairs or lobbying, as it may more commonly be known, involves a huge amount of political intelligence. It seemed to me that the foundation for all the work the PA team does is up-to-date information about what is going on in Westminster – as well as in the parliaments of Berlin, Paris and Brussels. The team are a fount of political knowledge of who is doing what where. What’s interesting is how engaged each member of the team is personally – all are members of a political party and are usually active within them – and are thus stakeholders themselves (partisan politics are however confined to inter-pod repartee and all-group emails!)
I learnt more about politics in 5 weeks than in the last 5 years, and I enjoyed making sure I kept abreast of current affairs. The amount of IP coming ceaselessly from the PA team is remarkable – they produced several items while I was there, such as a report on the Autumn Statement, analysis of the London Mayoral Election and the EU treaty veto, the Edelman Capital Staffers Index and multiple breakdowns of parliamentary meetings, bills and reports (such as the Portas Review). The speed at which these documents are put together is impressive; there is so much going on that much of the skill lies in stripping back the irrelevant information from the essential.
In keeping with tradition, every member of the House of Lords celebrated the festive season by dressing up as Father Christmas
The penultimate week before Christmas was particularly fun-filled for me, as it covered both the all-group Christmas party and the PA trip to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. The Edelman Christmas Party 2011 kicked off at the office with an internal awards ceremony (The “Edelman Honours”) – which included such prestigious accolades as the messiest desk and the worst use of PR jargon (the extent of the latter’s incomprehensibility means I will never be able to repeat it) – then continued onto a night club in Covent Garden where we were treated to food, drinks and circus dancers. This was a great chance for us grads to be able to chat to all the people we’ve met throughout the office and it was lovely to see everyone relaxing in social context. We were greeted with bacon and sausage sandwiches for breakfast the next day, which made the run-up to Christmas all the sweeter. I was off for the PA team afternoon and dinner on the Friday and managed to time my leave nicely taking the final week off.