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Warrior in the war-room
New Labour in power: special report
You might just think that this has been a busier, more confrontational, week than usual for Alastair Campbell. There was his savage letter to London Evening Standard editor Max Hastings complaining about the paper's coverage of Tony Blair's speech about the NHS. There was a trenchant article in the Daily Telegraph ridiculing the claim that the Times has become a government poodle and challenging the notion that the only real journalism is critical journalism. There was a note to Panorama editor Peter Horrocks about the programme's "outrageous" claim that the government is losing control of its devolution project.
In between, there were the usual twice-daily encounters with lobby correspondents that have become the stuff of legend. If they were televised, these contests between Campbell and the parliamentary journalists would surely win a Bafta. If you want just a flavour - expletives deleted, all contributions summarised - log on to the government's website www.number-10.gov.uk/default.asp?PageID=31 and enjoy! Friday's questioning on Mozambique is a fine example of the genre.
Convinced that the government has acted too slowly, and confident that there has been a row between ministries, if not ministers, the journalists ask the same question over and over while Campbell, obviously in increasing frustration, repeats a series of denials. A verbatim account would be a great deal more informative (and entertaining) but the fact that we can all get some idea what is said at lobby briefings does help to crack the ridiculous mystique of this outdated ritual.
Anyway, to get back to the point. The week was, in fact, business as usual for Campbell. Both the public and private rebukes to the press do not represent a turning point. He isn't doing anything particularly unusual. That's how life is nowadays at the No 10 press office or war-room, as it should be known.
While it's doubtful that the government will, in the words of my colleague, Polly Toynbee, "launch a full-frontal attack on the press," it is certainly going to maintain its guerrilla war.
An analysis of the Evening Standard story shows why. First, the headline: "Crisis? What health crisis?" This suggested that Blair was refusing to accept that the NHS was facing difficulties. Yet in a key passage of his speech he said: "There are real problems, some of a deep and long-term nature and they will require time and money and change to put right."
Given that sentence, how can the editor defend such a biased headline? Incidentally, it was doubly bad because it was a calculated echo of an infamous headline in 1979 ("Crisis? What crisis?") which is generally thought to have sunk another Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, when he came back to Britain during a period of strikes known as the winter of discontent.
Yet Callaghan never said those words. They were composed by an editor and have been misattributed to Callaghan ever since. They were a disgrace then, and the Standard's headline was equally heinous.
One further point from the Standard dispute. The paper made much of the fact that a woman who shouted "liar" at Blair "was quickly escorted from the building," suggesting that she had been evicted by government officials. In his letter to Hastings, Campbell pointed out that the woman left the building of her own accord. In her account of what happened, the Standard's health correspondent Jo Revill admitted that, in her report, she did not say the woman was escorted out. How then did it get changed back in the office, and why?
The answer is that the Standard has an agenda, just as every paper has. Its news reports are written and headlined in accordance with that agenda. The concept of a separation of facts and opinion does not exist and never has in most of Britain's press. It is partisan and it does not hide that fact except, of course, from readers.
When the prime minister speaks, writes, gives an interview, even makes a casual remark, every line, every word, is scanned to see whether it can "make a story." Does it betray a disagreement with his deputy or the chancellor? Is he softening his line or hardening it? Can he, best of all, be accused of a u-turn?
Note the way in which his completely unremarkable, though sensible, statement on genetically modified food was pumped up into a giant change of policy when any reading would show it was nothing of the sort. Again, the government website offers a very different perspective.
Campbell's frustration is tempered by an understanding of the nature of a press for which he once worked, and by an understanding that it is impossible, even with the most rapid and active rebuttal system, to counter every example of bias. To do so can lead to hopelessly inadequate responses, such as the Daily Mail media monitor which died as soon as it was born.
Campbell is also aware of the dangers of becoming too high profile himself, despite the media's fascination with him. That's why suggestions that he might cast aside the unattributable lobby system in favour of US presidential-style briefings are wide of the mark. As one wag pointed out, he would then need a spin doctor of his own.