The Team Brown communications strategy is a shambles and Downing Street desperately needs to draft in another Alastair Campbell or Andy Coulson, according to a former Labour Party chief press officer.
Since leaving the post in 1992 Colin Byrne, now CEO of Weber Shandwick UK, had remained tight-lipped about his feelings on Labour's current PR strategy.
But Brown's latest PR blunder, in which he urged the public not to waste food shortly before arriving at the G8 summit for an eight-course slap-up meal, finally prompted Byrne to speak out.
Byrne also questioned what had prompted the incompetents in the Number 10 bunker to have the PM telling people to eat up their crusts one day and be photographed waving a glass of wine around the G8 dinner table as he tucked into conger eel.
He also said that nobody knew what message was coming out of Downing Street that defined his premiership.
Number 10 needed to have a very clear political strategy, he added, which then translated into a clear communications strategy.
Byrne was particularly scathing about Brown's special advisor on press, Damian McBride.
He claimed that all McBride was doing was losing Labour friends in the media.
It needed to get in an Alastair Campbell or Andy Coulson type of figure, he concluded, as at the moment there was no-one who understood the media.
hello@octopuspr.co.uk 
01785
229530 
