Royal public relations machine manages to come out on top in a Catch 22 situation

IN PUBLIC relations there is a rarely acknowledged truism: it is easy to represent businesses, causes or people you believe in; but near impossible to fight the corner, promote or champion those you don't.

The problem faced by Buckingham Palace when Nick Griffin was sent his garden party invitation in June was a horrible Catch 22, created by that simple set of circumstances.

As head of state - symbolic or otherwise - the Queen doesn't have to try too hard to champion democracy in the mother of parliaments. Normally garden party invites for politicians present no public perception problems. Yet, when one of those MEPs is a far-right extremist whose views are reviled by huge swathes of the public, cleaving to the dogma of democracy suddenly becomes particularly and unusually unpalatable. The Buckingham Palace PR machine faced that age-old dilemma: damned if you do, damned if you don't. An eager media were on to a winner with a guaranteed story however it played out.

In this case, the vast majority of Britons will forgive Her Majesty for compromising the integrity of democracy just a teeny bit. If Nick Griffin had been allowed to attend the party the entire process would have been tainted forever - and many would never have forgiven the monarch.

The Queen and her team, I believe have scored a major PR win.

• Scott Douglas is co-founder of public relations agency the Holyrood Partnership