A case of premature rejoicing
Paul Routledge
THE WAGES OF SPIN by Bernard Ingham John Murray, £18.99, pp. 261 ISBN 0719564816 In recent days, Alastair Campbell has been demanding money with his distinctive blend of charm and menace. His objective is to raise money for leukaemia research, in memory of his friend John Merritt, the Observer's chief reporter who died from the disease at the age of 34, and whose nine-year-old daughter subsequently succumbed to the same cancer. Merritt was my friend too, and I happily offered £50 towards Big Al's sponsored run in the London marathon, upped to £100 after he accused me of being 'a rich bastard'.
This is the benign side of New Labour spin: bullying for a good cause. I hear that the Prime Minister's director of communications has raised at least £100,000 for cancer research, much of it up front just in case war intervenes and he cannot get his running shorts on. I do not expect my money back if Campbell is obliged to steady Tony Blair's nerve that weekend. In
any event, the cheque has already been cashed.
The marathon is a useful analogy for the era of spin, which Campbell did not quite invent but certainly brought to perfection with new Labour. Has it run its course? Bernard Ingham, who was Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street spokesman for a decade, certainly thinks so. And he can scarcely contain his pleasure in The Wages of Spin that this should be the case. 'Rejoice! Rejoice! Spin is sunk!' He doesn't actually say that, naturally, because he is trying to watch his words these days. But that is the message he seeks to get across.
On the way, he has some very unpleasant things to say about the 'media-mad' Prime Minister, and his over-powerful chief spin doctor. Some strike home. Campbell's cull of top-level government information officers around Whitehall was both unnecessary and expensive. The newcomers, on £90,000 a year, are not noticeably more competent, though they are more on message'. The craven obeisance of ministers including those in Cabinet (with the exception of Gordon Brown) to the Downing Street spin machine is stomach-churning.
Ingham draws a wider conclusion, postulating his own 'domino theory': the collapse of Cabinet, parliament and the civil service under the judgment of spin. 'Never before in postwar Britain have all three dominoes fallen like this,' he thunders. I say, steady on, Bernard! Don't get so red in the face! Besides, if spin has proved a disaster, how can it, at the same time, still be in possession of the field?
The answer is that it is not. Ingham's bad luck is that his extended essay in selfjustification (for that is what the book is: its underlying theme is 'this would never have happened in my day') appears when it does. War against Iraq is proving more seditious to spin than anything Ingham or the Conservatives can throw at it. Labour MPs have stirred from their criminal indolence to reassert backbench power in the Commons. Clare Short has torpedoed the Prime Minister's carefree hegemony in Cabinet. Where politicians go, the civil servants may summon the nerve to follow.
Ingham proposes a whole new regulatory system, to put the spin genie back in the bottle. Of course, in the opinion of the Iron Lady's spokesman, it must have 'iron
rules' to depoliticise the government's information machine. It seems most unlikely that this or any future government, including the Conservatives, would take such a radical step. Spin is far too useful to the politicians. It is here to stay. It has taken a battering, because spin doctors got too far ahead of the game. But they will adapt to changing conditions, not least because that is why they get hired. They can change their policies faster than their suits. Principles take a little longer.
Polling evidence that spin has induced a terminal loss of public faith in the Blair government, another Ingham argument, seems unconvincing to me. Admittedly, the Jo Moore/Martin Sixsmith affair was damaging, but who remembers either of them now? Surely, the Prime Minister's recent slump in the opinion polls has much more to do with a credibility gap opening up between him and the voters on Iraq. That will be the ultimate test of spin. Perhaps it will leave Alastair more time for training.
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