ALL FOR GORDON
Profile: Charles Whelan,
spinner, drinker, ex-communist, but neither fool nor fall guy
AND NOW for a case story of spin doctor- ing. Charles Whelan, spin doctor to the Chancellor, did not care for Peter Mandel- son, the Minister without Portfolio. Fur- thermore, he bore a temporary grudge against the political editor of the Sunday Times. And so, in a moment of blinding genius, he invented a plan that scuppered both of them.
Mr Whelan had reason to believe that Mr Mandelson leaked like a sieve to the Sunday Times. So, in a casual conversa- tion six weeks before the budget, he hint- ed to Mr Mandelson that mortgage interest relief was to be left unchanged. This appetising titbit was duly passed on by Mr Mandelson and formed the basis for the Sunday Times front-page story of 8 June. Everything was wrong with the story. It was, indeed, the opposite of the truth. Far from leaving mortgage interest relief unchanged when the big day came, the Chancellor slashed it by five pence in the pound, as Charlie Whelan knew he would when he led Mr Mandelson up the garden path. The Sunday Times was left with egg all over its face. Mr Mandelson's credibility was badly dented. And yet nei- ther of them could do anything about it, particularly Mr Mandelson, who should never have been leaking budget secrets in the first place. Game, set and match to Whelan.
It could be, of course, that this story is entirely without foundation. Yet it is believed around Westminster and that counts, in the debased currency of spin doctoring, for truth. In that currency, appearance and reality are identical, and the great budget scam story forms, for insiders, an important part of the Whelan legend.
Mr Whelan is far and away the most engaging of the Labour spin doctors. They tend to lack human characteristics: he most emphatically does not. Most of them are clipped, formal, businesslike, controlled. Like Peter Mandelson or Alastair Campbell, they drink orange juice rather than hard liquor. Charlie Whelan is loquacious, outspoken, barbar- ic. He is rarely without a drink in his hand. In his way he harks back to a lost world of journalism. He does his business in pubs and bars. Inside the Commons he prefers the Strangers, the Sports and Social and the Press Gallery bars. Out- side, he likes the Two Chairmen at Queen Anne's Gate and the Red Lion in Whitehall, from where it is claimed (wrongly as it happens) that he broadcast the latest changes on government policy on EMU last Friday night over his mobile phone to selected journalists.
There is another reason, apart from a marked difference in style, why Labour's Millbank tendency is deeply suspicious of Mr Whelan. He represents an alternative power centre. In New Labour everything is organised and centralised around Tony Blair. To a control freak like Peter Man- delson, a man like Whelan, whose loyalty is to the Chancellor rather than the Prime Minister, can only be an intense irritant. About a year before the election, Gordon Brown was leant on to sack Mr Whelan. Mr Brown refused. He was wise to do so. Mr Whelan provides him with a media power base which works independently of the Blair machine. The lack of a figure like Whelan is one reason why the Chancellor was so poorly prepared to launch a leader- ship bid after John Smith's death in 1994.
Mr Whelan was once well described by the New Statesman as 'an engaging bully who says "bollocks" a lot', but his aggres- sively proletarian approach to life belies a solid middle-class upbringing. His father was a civil servant and he was sent away to Ottershaws, a Surrey boarding school. He read politics at City of London Polytechnic and after a false start in the City found his true role at the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. He was for a time personal assistant to Jimmy Airlie — the firebrand behind the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders dispute — and gradually built up a reputation as a tough and skilful han- dler of a hostile press. At some stage during the early 1970s he joined the Communist party. He has this in common with a sur- prisingly large number of men and women around Tony Blair, including Mr Mandel- son. Perhaps this is not a coincidence. While New Labour may embrace capital- ism, many of its methods are Leninist.
It was, piquantly enough in the light of future events, Mr Mandelson who recruit- ed Mr Whelan to New Labour after the 1992 general election defeat. Whelan insisted that he would work only for Mr Blair or Mr Brown, and was appointed press officer to the shadow Chancellor. He made an instant difference. In his early months as shadow Chancellor, Mr Brown gave the impression of having abundant but largely misdirected energy. Mr Whelan gave him focus by halving the number of media interviews and putting a stop to Mr Brown's habit of sending out press releases on every subject under the sun. In opposition there is no question that Mr Whelan was an effective press agent who carried out the Chancellor's dirty work with brutal and accomplished relish. The question is whether Mr Whe- lan's methods can be made to work as well in government.
His enemies — he has plenty, that is one of his most endearing features — will work hard to make sure that he ends up the fall- guy for the EMU fiasco. But does he deserve the blame? There is no evidence to suggest that he was responsible for the Financial Times story that set the EMU story alight a month ago. Indeed, Whitehall insiders are certain that his hands are clean. He was certainly not responsible for its promulgation in the Daily Mail ten days later — the guilty party was Doug Hender- son, Minister for Europe. Nor can Mr Whelan bear full responsibility for the debacle of the press briefing that accompa- nied the Chancellor's Times interview last Friday, for the operation was carried out jointly with Downing Street. It is hard to resist the conclusion that many hands were at work as the government spin machine spun out of control, and that Mr Whelan's was not the most significant.
Perhaps a greater error of judgment was to allow himself to become too prominent a public personality. Spin doctors, like spies, operate at their best in the dark. A television programme shown during the Labour party conference in Brighton was meant to be about the Chancellor but the real hero was beyond a doubt Mr Whelan, the man of the people, as he duffed over journalists and was perhaps a fraction too open about the discreditable secrets of his trade. By allowing himself to emerge as a public figure, Mr Whelan made himself vulnerable. Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press secretary, has (after a few early mistakes) been rather cleverer at stay- ing out of the limelight. It is a lesson that Mr Whelan needs to learn.
But there are many lessons that the gov- ernment needs to reflect on as a result of the EMU shambles. One of them is whether the New Labour spin machine, which worked so brilliantly in opposition, is not more of a hindrance than a help in gov- ernment. Changes are afoot. Mr Brown is likely to conclude, however, that Mr Whe- lan is still a man he wants by his side.
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