After all the pre-publication hype that Alastair Campbell’s diaries would provide "a fuller and more complete truth" about political life in Britain, the upshot three months later seems to be the reverse: his book’s superficiality has been equalled only by its apparent irrelevance.

Campbell was likewise wide of the mark in his over-blown claim that The Blair Years would become "part of the historical record of a fascinating period in British and international politics" and his belief that "millions of words will be published and broadcast…about TB, his leadership and his legacy".

Again the opposite seems to be the case. Apart from the ongoing nightmare over what to do about the tragic trauma of the Iraq war, the relevance of the Blair decade appears to be disappearing over the political horizon at a rate of knots. When contrasted with the repercussions of the far-reaching changes of the Thatcher decade -- whether their impact was ultimately thought to have been for good or for ill -- the checklist of achievements for Tony Blair during the ten years he was in office bears no comparison.

September 10, 2007 

By allowing "political storytellers" like Alastair Campbell to have so much influence in presenting the case for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush and Blair had made it more likely the post-Iraq trauma would be even worse than the aftermath of the withdrawal from Vietnam.

Sam Gardiner, a retired USAF colonel who investigates the media strategies of the US military, believes that unless Gordon Brown manages to distance himself from the way the wars were spun he will get caught up in a convulsion which is bound to damage the credibility of Britain as well as America.

Nicholas Jones paper presented to Spinwatch Conference, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. 7.9.2007

If ever a serial offender was on probation it has to be the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He promised so much in preparing for office. He gave repeated undertakings that the Labour government which he led would end its reliance on spin and turn away from the dark arts of manipulating the news media. Yet, almost three months into his Premiership, Brown has still to show any real sign of delivering on a badly-needed programme of reform to restore public trust in what the government says; to reinforce the independence of the civil service; and to help Parliament rebuild its authority.

What happened was that events took over, the focus kept changing, drawing attention away from the abuses which need correcting. Within two days of entering Downing Street, a succession of potential disasters -- a failed terrorist attack, unprecedented summer floods and then an outbreak of foot and mouth disease -- gave the new Prime Minister an opportunity to project himself in a way which no-one had quite predicted. An arch control freak and manipulator was able, quite literally, to reinvent himself. Almost effortlessly, over the space of a few days, he assumed a commanding position and immediately began to dominate the political agenda, giving the impression that he had succeeded in discarding the political baggage of the past.

The Ethical Journalist,

By Tony Harcup.

Sage Publications, £18.00.

Review by Nicholas Jones

After all the anguished soul searching of the summer months over the alleged faking of television and radio programmes, the obvious title for Tony Harcup’s next book must surely be The Ethical Broadcaster. With commendable clarity he has pulled together an invaluable compendium of the numerous ethical dilemmas which every journalist will probably face at some point in their careers, a timely reminder, if one was needed, that public trust in the news media is hard won and easily lost.

While the argument over the need for an enforceable code of conduct will continue to ebb and flow, journalists cannot ignore the fact that our behaviour and ethics are under greater scrutiny than ever before, not least because of the continuing explosion in ways of communicating and accessing information.

Our integrity is on the line as never before and while I agree with the likes of Kelvin MacKenzie that journalism cannot claim to be a profession, he must not be allowed to get away unchallenged with his most recent definition of our trade: "It is a knack, a skill or a talent - like plumbing". (Sun 2.8.2007)

August 1, 2008 

When the Democrats’ eight candidates for US President took part in a televised debate answering questions posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, they contributed to an event which was a first for American political campaigning and which will inevitably be copied and developed further by broadcasters and political parties in the United Kingdom.

New forms of media are opening up new ways of participating in politics and Britain, with its rich history of robust electioneering, is well placed to take advantage of the rapid growth in the use of the web and what has already become a highly-innovative form of communication.

But while welcoming new opportunities to engage with a section of the electorate which has been notorious in the past for its low levels of voting, there is no certainty that future turnout will be higher, nor is there any guarantee that the world-wide web will provide fairer or more accessible forms of political reporting.

When that arch media manipulator Peter Mandelson pointed an accusing finger at unnamed officers in the Metropolitan Police Authority and blamed them for being responsible for a deluge of embarrassing leaks during the cash-for-honours investigation, he could hardly have paid a finer back-handed compliment to himself.

Here was an infamous former spin doctor, who was prolific in his own exploitation of leaked information, having the gall to castigate anyone else who had dared turn the tables and tried to undermine the credibility of Tony Blair and his closest colleagues.

Mandelson, like his fellow trader in confidential data, Alastair Campbell remains in denial about the damage his manipulative techniques inflicted on both the political process and the conduct of government; together they helped change the culture of Whitehall and Westminster and usher in an era where leaking has become a way of life within the state.

In the frenetic build-up to the release of Alastair Campbell’s diaries I kept wondering whether there might be any way of reconciling Gordon Brown’s desperate struggle to restore trust in the Labour government with a spin doctor’s confident assertion that the publication of his book would be "good for Labour and good for politics".

The Blair Years confirmed that even the spinmeister himself could not hide the truth: there, on page after page, was ample proof of the damage which Campbell had inflicted on the political process through an era of squalid, sleazy spin.

What also emerged through his pre-launch bluster and countless boastful entries about the Blairite chorus of approval for the "brilliant" job he was doing in Downing Street, was that Campbell remained in denial.

But once the first, much-hyped extracts from his diaries appeared on his website even the spinmeister himself could not hide the truth: there, between the lines, was evidence of the way Campbell had driven a coach and horses through the code of conduct for politically-appointed temporary civil servants.

No wonder Gordon Brown promised in his statement on restoring trust to the political process (3.7.2007) that he would legislate to make sure that never again would a political appointee like Campbell be allowed to hold the power to give instructions to civil servants and get involved in the preparation and publication of intelligence information.

There is much to be commended in Gordon Brown’s sweeping proposals for restoring trust in the process of government but when it comes to curbing the culture of spin which has become deeply ingrained in Whitehall and Westminster, meaningful commitments are few and far between.

At least Brown deserves personal credit for having kept his word and ensured that his most imaginative constitutional changes were not leaked in advance as tended to be the case with the contents of most of his Budgets in the ten years he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Advance trailing of announcements -- or in other words state-approved leaking -- is so institutionalised within government departments there needs to be root and branch revision of ministerial and civil service codes going far beyond anything which the new Prime Minister has so far suggested.

How Conservative bloggers are out in front in the blogsphere.

Speech to Fondazione Farefuturo, Rome, July 3, 2007

For a political party in opposition, being ahead of the game in exploiting new forms of media might prove to be just as important in terms of fighting an election as devising an effective campaign message. It was the sure-footed way in which the Labour Party took advantage of the expansion in television news channels and programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s which helped to propel Tony Blair to a landslide victory in the British general election of 1997.

Ten years later, despite three successive election defeats, it is activists in the Conservative Party who are dictating the pace in using websites and blogs to promote and debate the Tory agenda. Initially the bloggers did not get much help or even encouragement from the party leadership, but there is now a better appreciation of their potential to improve the electoral chances of David Cameron while at the same time making life uncomfortable for the Labour government. And, perhaps more significantly, it is definitely bloggers from the right rather than from the left who are managing to establish themselves as a new generation of political commentators and pundits. Their views are increasingly being sought by the traditional news media, such as newspapers, television and radio. Their websites have become instant sounding boards for political opinion and as a result they are closer to the party membership