by Mike King
As if the recent expose of Bell Pottinger’s underhand lobbying claims wasn’t bad enough for the firm, Matthew Norman in the Independent has now written a scathing personal attack on Lord Bell, Chairman of Chime Communications, Bell Pottinger’s parent company. In it he pulls no punches, with comments like ‘Why he eschewed the title Lord Bell-End of Much Tossing Over-The-Heath is beyond me. He was a gigantic tool then, and so he remains...’.
Amazingly, for a man with unrivalled experience in the PR industry, Lord Bell’s reaction to the expose has made the whole situation worse. When the story first broke I wasn’t particularly surprised at MD Tim Collins claims that Bell Pottinger has direct influence at the heart of the British government. This is, after all, essentially what the lobbying industry exists to do and this is certainly not the first time lobbying, or even Bell Pottinger, has been in hot water over its activities.
The surprise for me came with Lord Bell’s reaction and his reported claims that Bell Pottinger had been the victim of “an attempt by unethical, underhand deception to manufacture a story where none exists” and that “there is no public interest in this story.”
Is he serious? To claim there is no public interest in a story about corruption and underhand influence over senior British government figures is farfetched to say the least. As for his claim of underhand deception, could that be because the journalists involved posed as potential Bell Pottinger clients and secretly recorded Tim Collins’ claims? This, coming from a man who’s firm represented Rebekah Brooks, is not without some degree of irony.
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