Deputy PM Nick Clegg is PR Week's Communicator of the Year. The judges - 62 senior PR professionals - chose to honour Clegg for "his smart general election communications campaign that positioned him as a fresh alternative to the other political parties."
They rightly point to his success in the televised leaders' debates, in which he projected a straightforward honesty and an ability to engage with viewers that seemed beyond both Brown and Cameron. And the LibDems did go on to increase its share of the votes (but gained five less seats, so hardly a triumph).
This would be great if the story ended there. Clegg had shown many of the skills those in the PR industry would want to highlight and to a degree his party had reaped the benefits of having a leader who seemed more human than both PR disaster Gordon Brown or the rather too slick David Cameron.
The problem, of course, is that he is now performing elaborate somersaults to try and reconcile what he said before the election with what is being done by the Coalition Government.
OK, one can argue that this is realpolitik - all politicians have to adapt to changing situations, and words like "promise" and "pledge" mean something different in an election campaign than they do when other people use them to create certainty and trust.
But the fact remains that the Public Relations industry has chosen to honour a communicator who has achieved spectacular results by dint of polished presentation but has gone on to deliver something very different.
Public Relations is about trust... and the PR Week judges and the PR industry in general must accept that rather fewer people trust the Communicator of the Year today than did in May.
Actions speak louder than words.
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