Prime Minister Brown: 2007 –

Prime Minister Brown: 2007 –

¶4.1 The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP was Prime Minister between 27 June 2007 and 11 May 2010. Mr Brown was asked to comment on the strategy New Labour adopted in the mid-1990s; he said:96

¶"My efforts were to persuade every media group that what we were doing was serious. Look, we were trying to rebuild the National Health Service, improve our education system, get more police onto the street, legislate for freedom of information. We had agendas on civil liberties, on issues like gay partnerships. All these issues, you needed to have an understanding, at least, on the part of the media, and you needed to talk to them. As for any particular media group, I don't think I was involved in any sort of way that I would feel uncomfortable about now with any particular media group at all."

¶4.2 Mr Brown said that he had few dealings with Rupert Murdoch at this stage, and by implication that close engagement with the press was left to others.97 He also stated that he had no involvement in what he called the 'particular issue' of winning the support of The Sun in March 1997.98

¶4.3 Mr Brown said that he had intended from the start of his premiership to set a new tone in the Government's relationship with the press. He explained that he was concerned to ensure fair access to Government, including by meeting regularly with all media groups without giving preferential treatment to anyone.

¶4.4 Mr Brown's evidence, however, was that he faced a hostile press almost from the very outset, and that the hostility came to be of a very personal nature. Lord Mandelson said:99

¶"Mr. Brown comes in and he has good, rather easy relations with the media. It didn't last, as we know. It took a very significant dive".

¶4.5 Mr Brown described his initial approach:100 I "When I came in in 2007, we had no mandate in our manifesto to propose reform of the media. I did want to make a change, and I did try to move away from what I thought was the excessive dominance of what is called the lobby system, and what really has led to these allegations of spin … I tried to move away from that. One, we moved away from having a political chief of communications to having a civil servant doing the job. That was to send a message that we were not trying to politicise government information; we were trying to give the information that was necessary for the public to understand what was happening. We then tried to move back to a system where announcements were made in Parliament. They were not pre-briefed, they were made in Parliament, and therefore that moved away from a system where, to be honest, there were a selected group of people who previously could expect to get early access to information, and I think that's been a problem with the way the media system has worked, but I'm afraid it was wholly unsuccessful, and I see that the current government have moved back to having a political appointee … and the lobby system remains intact. It's not the lobby system per se that's the problem, it's this small group of insiders who get the benefit of early access to information, and I think that is one of the problems that prevents the greater openness that we have to see. … The changes that eventually we tried to make we didn't make successfully I'm afraid because there was a huge resistance to them, and to be honest, if you announce something in Parliament or announced it in a speech, it was not being reported. Unless it had been given as an exclusive to a newspaper, they tended to put in on page 6, rather than page 1."

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¶4.6 In relation to changes to the lobby system, Mr Boulton commented:101

¶"... Under the Brown and Cameron governments there has been a concerted attempt by press colleagues to use the Lobby system to constrain their competitors in the electronic media by imposing artificial embargos on information given in order to benefit print deadlines. This practice is particularly irksome on foreign trips in different time zones and has resulted in several calls to ban Sky News for allegedly breaking the rules. Downing Street habitually takes the side of print on the pathetic ground that 'we've got to give the hacks something to justify the cost of the trip.'"

¶4.7 In June 2007 the personal relationship between Mr Brown and Mr Murdoch was said to be close, and appears to have become so over the preceding years. However, by September 2009 it had cooled, associated with a shift in political support in The Sun. As Lord Mandelson explained:102

¶"Q: You presumably detected that shift in support, which was gradual, from Mr. Brown to Mr. Cameron; is that right? I A: Yes. That was during 2009. Yes, during the course of that year. Q: Had you seen signs of it the previous year in 2008? A: It was hard not to get Rebekah Wade, or Brooks, as she became, to wax eloquent about the inequities of Gordon Brown and the so-called coup against Tony Blair. She had strong views. I remember on one occasion ... she tipped into this great tirade against Gordon and these others who had brought Tony down and whatever, and

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¶Mr. Murdoch said 'For goodness sake Rebekah, can't you let history be history? Let bygones be bygones. Let's not go into that anymore.'"

¶4.8 Lord Mandelson's focus was on the personalities involved, but Mr Brown chose to emphasise what he called NI's public agenda:103

¶"News International had a public agenda. What's remarkable about what happened in the period of 2009 and 2010 is that News International moved away from being – I think it was under James Murdoch's influence, not so much Rupert Murdoch's influence, if I may say so – to having an aggressive public agenda ... I don't think I had a conversation with Mrs. Brooks in the last – I think I had one conversation in the last nine months of our government. It became very clear in the summer of 2009, when Mr. Murdoch junior gave the MacTaggart lecture, that News International had a highly politicised agenda for changes that were in the media policy of this country, and there seemed to me to be very little point in talking to them about this".

¶4.9 In terms of his personal relationship with Mr Brown, Mr Murdoch expressed the matter in this way:104

¶"I felt a personal connection with Gordon Brown. He is Scottish, as was my grandfather, and we spent time discussing the fact that we are both descended from a long line of Presbyterian ministers. He gave me a lovely gift, a book of his father's sermons. My wife and his also developed a friendship, and my children and his played together... I certainly thought we had a warm personal relationship. ... My personal feelings about Mr. Brown did not change my view that, just as I had earlier concluded that the Conservative Party had grown tired in its approach in 1995, I concluded in 2010 after 13 years of Labour Party rule the country needed a change. I am afraid that my personal relationship with Mr. Brown suffered after The Sun no longer supported him politically. I continue to hold him in high personal esteem."

¶4.10 Mr Brown's evidence was as follows:105

¶"Q: Mr. Murdoch himself describes a warm relationship he had with you. Is this a fair characterisation? A: Yeah, I think the similar background made it interesting because I think I understood where many of his views came from, and I do also think he's been, as I said ... a very successful businessman, and his ability to build up a newspaper and media empire, I not just in Australia but in two other continents, in America and Europe, is something that is not going to be surpassed easily by any other individual. But I think you have to distinguish again between the views that you have about him as an individual and the red line that I would draw, the line in the sand I talked about, between that and any support for commercial interests ..." Q: Were you not concerned at ... the signs of The Sun moving away from you to support the Tory Party?

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¶A: I think that happened from the time I became Prime Minister. I'll be honest. I think they had severe reservations that were expressed in the European campaign, the Broken Britain campaign, their Afghanistan campaign, and I think, as I said, also there was a new agenda that Mr. James Murdoch was promoting about the future of the media policy in Britain. So I was not surprised at all when The Sun – I was perhaps surprised about the way they did it ... but the act of deciding to go with the Conservatives, I think, had been planned over many, many months."

¶4.11 On a personal level, Mr Brown was also quite close to Mrs Brooks and his wife, Sarah, was described as a good friend. In the context of coverage of his son's medical condition, which is considered above,106 Mrs Brooks explained:107

¶"You have to remember that the – this is 2006. This is only five years later that Mr Brown had ever said anything – that he was in any way concerned about my behaviour, the behaviour of the Sun, how we handled it. Indeed, after 2006, I continued to see them both regularly. They held a 40th birthday celebration party for me. They attended my wedding. I have many letters and kind notes. Sarah and I were good friends..."

¶4.12 Neither Mr Brown nor Mr Murdoch accepted that their relationship had been 'too close' during Mr Brown's time as Prime Minister, nor that NI had provided support for Mr Brown or his Government in its newspapers on the express or implied basis that the company's commercial interests would be safeguarded or wider political agendas espoused. Asked about this, and whether there could even have been legitimate concerns about perception, Mr Brown told the Inquiry:108

¶"No, because the implication is that I would be influenced by Mr. Murdoch was saying about these big issues. I mean, I thought that it was wrong to join the euro ... but I didn't agree with him on most of these other issues, and the idea that Mr. Murdoch and I had a common bond in policy is, I'm afraid, not correct. Mr. Murdoch was probably more on the flat tax school of policy than in the school of policy that was identified with what we were doing. ... I have never asked a newspaper for their support directly and I've never complained when they haven't given us their support. I don't think you should be dependent on people by begging them to support you in this way, and perhaps it's a failing on my part that I never asked them directly, but I never asked them directly and I never complained to them directly when they withdrew support from the Labour Party".

¶4.13 The issue of the so-called 'pyjama party' held at Chequers to mark Mrs Murdoch's fortieth birthday has, however, been cited as evidence of a legitimate cause of concern about the I blurring of relationship boundaries between the personal and the conduct of public affairs. Commentators such as Mr Boulton spoke of this in extremely critical terms:109

¶"Well, I think you can be blamed with hindsight if a lot of people think it looks wrong, and – you know, the famous Wendi Deng pyjama party, for example. I remember a then member of the cabinet telling me about that at the time and I just thought: "This is completely bonkers that this sort of intimacy is being indulged in between the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's wife and a senior proprietor's wife", and I thought at the time, you know, it will end in tears. But we all find ourselves in social circumstances or awkward social circumstances which we perhaps have been recruited for, which we didn't seek out but we've ended up in."

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¶4.14 Mr Brown described himself as having been unfairly and personally hurt by an attack in The Sun following the publication of a handwritten letter he had sent to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. Email correspondence between Mr Brown and Mr Murdoch ensued,110 following a telephone conversation which took place on or about 10 November 2009.111

¶4.15 A number of commentators have suggested that Mr Brown had enjoyed a close relationship with Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre and that, although their political perspectives differed, they shared similar values. About that he said this:112

¶"A. I didn't see Mr Dacre that much, as you can see from the records. Mr Dacre and I disagreed about many things on politics. I think he, like me, believes that there should be an ethical basis for any political system and that that is an issue that is not properly addressed both in our media and in our politics, so there is sort of common ground on that, even though we may disagree about what that means in practice. He was personally very kind, as Rupert Murdoch could be personally very kind, when we had difficulties with our child, our first child, and I have not forgotten that. But to be honest, I got no support from the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail was totally against the Labour Party, and when it came to the election, you may see that I had a meeting with Lord Rothermere, as I talked to Paul Dacre, and I said, "Look, you're entering a situation where you have a party that's got a relationship with the Murdoch empire and their commercial interests and you should be very wary of it", and I did warn them that that was one of the problems that was going to happen. Q. Some have said, including Mr Alastair Campbell, that the Daily Mail was less hostile to you personally when you were chancellor, owing in part to your position on the euro. Do you think that's a fair comment or not? A. I don't know whether it was. Look, one of the huge dividing lines in British politics over the past 10 years has been the euro. Most of the newspapers, of course, were against it. I was in a minority within our government for a very long period of time of being sceptical about the euro. My colleague, Ed Balls, who was the economic adviser to the Treasury at the time and was later a Member of Parliament, did this enormous amount of work that proved to my satisfaction that the euro couldn't work, but it I was a hugely divisive issue. But if the Daily Mail supported the objections that I had to the euro, then that's absolutely understandable, but I'm afraid to say on just about every other issue they were wholly against us and they wanted to see a Conservative government, as you know."

¶4.16 In his oral evidence Lord Mandelson explained his perspective in this way:113

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¶"Q: Did he become an ally of Mr. Dacre or vice versa? A: He was, much to our astonishment, incredibly close to Mr. Dacre. I'm not saying that it's wrong to be a friend of Mr. Dacre; I too sometimes enjoyed Mr. Dacre's company. I enjoyed his company more than his treatment of me in his newspapers. But he – Gordon and Paul Dacre had a great friendship and I remember Paul Dacre describing to me the virtues of Mr. Brown in contrast to Mr. Blair in fairly graphic terms. And that continued, actually. Even when Gordon, as Prime Minister was, you know, having a really tough time, you know, following the financial crash and what happened to our economy as a result of the financial crash, and the Mail and the Mail on Sunday would be laying into the Labour government left, right and centre, there was always an element, an element, of laying off Mr. Brown and so I think that friendship continued. Q: Did that friendship, in your view, have any influence on Mr. Brown's political and policy thinking, particularly in the context of Europe? A: I think Mr. Dacre's influence in their friendship would have accentuated his cooling on Europe and the single currency, but that was by no means the only influence. A far greater influence would have been his economic adviser and minister throughout the period, Ed Balls... Q: Do you think Mr. Brown had an eye on the Daily Mail, Mr. Dacre's view, in terms of policies for which he was responsible? A: As Prime Minister, he was responsible, in a sense, for all policies. I'm not sure. In mean, the only thing I can vaguely remember was something to do with data protection. There was an issue to do with data protection."

¶4.17 Mr Brown was asked a number of questions about alleged anonymous briefings to journalists which it was put to him were in fact given by Charles Whelan and Damian McBride, who worked for him as his special advisors, the former until 1999 and the latter until April 2009. Mr Brown denied that they gave any such briefings, or that if they did so it was without his knowledge or sanction.114

¶4.18 Many political commentators have expressed surprise at this evidence. The current Leader of the Opposition has said that the reason Mr Whelan left his position was 'because of the style of his operation', and that he had raised a specific concern with Mr Brown about some of Mr McBride's activities.115

5. Political news management

¶I Background "The truth becomes almost impossible to communicate because total frankness relayed in the shorthand of the mass media becomes simply a weapon in the hands of opponents."116

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¶5.1 A thread running through a quantity of the evidence to the Inquiry about the relationship between politicians and the press was the issue of the extent to which politicians attempted to affect (or, put less neutrally, to manipulate) press coverage in their favour, not this time at the level of personal interactions or potential interchanges of influence, but simply by seeking to control what information is released about their thoughts and plans, when, how and to whom.

¶5.2 This is an issue of interest to the Inquiry, first because it offers the prospect of insight into the dynamics of the relationship and, in particular, where power lies. To the extent that a politician can control the news agenda he or she is in a position of relative dominance in the relationship. It is also of wider interest from the viewpoint of the general public interest because it has a potential to affect the clarity with which the public can understand what is going on and the ability of political journalists to do their job of promoting free debate and holding power to account. It has a potential to have results which are partial, misleading, distorted or placed out of context. On the other hand, it also has the opposite potential, namely to counteract whatever tendencies might exist in the press to drive the political agenda, if not public opinion, in any particular direction.

¶5.3 It is an issue which is accordingly very hard to deal with objectively. It largely comes down to a matter of standpoint. It is therefore dealt with relatively briefly in this Report. I have nevertheless concluded that there are some interesting patterns which can be picked out, and perhaps one or two lessons which can be drawn.

¶5.4 The issue probably owes its contemporary prominence to the critique of 'spin' associated with the news management techniques of Lord Mandelson and Mr Campbell.117 Both, when invited by the Inquiry to do so, painted a picture instead of a need to counteract unfair press hostility.

¶5.5 Mr Campbell's role was certainly one that trod new ground in the history of relations between politicians in Government and the press. Some commentators described it as a wholly different approach to the imparting and presentation of information from Government. Others take a longer view. The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP was able to remind the Inquiry of historical parallels with the Roman Republic.118 Lord Mandelson suggested that the first 'spin doctor' was appointed by Clement Atlee, and that Baroness Thatcher's press spokesman when she was Prime Minister, Sir Bernard Ingham, was as high profile and controversial as Mr Campbell.119

¶5.6 Sir John Major provided the Inquiry with an illuminating perspective on these issues:120

¶"Now, we've had political spin forever. Every politician since the dawn of time will I put a gloss on something to ensure that it is presented in the best possible light. We've all done it. Everyone does that. But I think there is a distinction between a gloss and a deliberate attempt to deceive in the way in which the news is presented, and my concern was that once you move towards the politicisation of the government information services, which is what it was, you did move into a sphere where the news could be perverted rather than presented accurately and without spin to the media at large. I think you also saw some other things which journalists are better able to talk about than I, but that they've certainly mentioned to me: people being given stories when other people weren't and presenting them with a particular tilt, so that when the story hit the public news, immediately it had a favourable tilt for the government rather than a neutral or perhaps even a deservedly unfavourable tilt. A whole range of things like that, which I'm sure this Inquiry has heard about, so I won't tediously run through them all. But in short, I think the straightforward, clear cut certainty of an honest presentation of policy from the information service that was there when you had civil servants presenting it on behalf of the government was lost when you moved to a political information service.

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¶The New Labour perspective

¶5.7 As indicated above, on 27 July 1994, Mr Blair appointed Mr Campbell to be his press spokesman and jointly responsible with Lord Mandelson for election strategy.121 It was put to Mr Campbell that Mr Blair's memoirs had referred in terms to the value of appointing a tabloid editor,122 an assessment which he only partly accepted:123

¶"No, what he said to me when [he] finally approached me was that he wanted somebody that was strategic, that understood the press and that would be able to do the job that he wanted done. So I don't recall it being particularly he wanted somebody who was from the tabloids, but he wanted somebody that kind of knew that world."

¶5.8 Mr Blair's own perspective was as follows:124

¶"I cannot believe we are the first and only government that has ever wanted to put the best possible gloss on what you're doing. I would be surprised if governments hadn't done that throughout the ages. That is a completely different thing from saying that you go out to say that things that are deliberately untrue or you bully or harass journalists and so on. I read a lot of things we are supposed to have done. I actually dispute we did those things, very, very strongly. My view is this: I totally understand why there's a kind of symmetry in being able to say, "Oh, well, the government was spinning and so the media had to react to that". In my view – but you can take a different one – that's not what happened. I mean, the truth is, in 1992 Alastair Campbell wasn't heard of. If you look at the way that election was covered – and by the time I took over the leadership of the Labour I Party, we'd lost four elections in a row. We'd actually never won two consecutive full elections in our history. The longest we'd ever been in power was six years at one go. So – I went through that election. I remember it. It was etched on my memory and yes, I was absolutely determined that we should not be subject to the same onslaught."

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¶5.9 Lord Mandelson was asked directly about his news management strategy and the label of 'spin'. His explanation was as follows:125

¶"I think 'spin' is a derogatory term. I mean, what we determined to do, really from the time that Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, was to speak as far as possible with a consistent voice, and to – perhaps to go back to your earlier question, to try to ensure that the media understood what it was that we were trying to achieve. So yes, I mean, there was more discipline about what we said, how we said it, who we said it to, than there certainly had been through the many years of Labour in opposition. Q: Did it lead to a breakdown of trust between the public on the one hand and the politicians on the other? A: I don't think it was – I don't think it was that that led to a breakdown of trust in the public. I do think that we were always too reliant on the support of newspapers, and I think that in the context of everything I've said earlier ... our expectations were too high of the degree to which the government's story could be conveyed through the newspapers."

¶5.10 Mr Campbell's personal, retrospective evaluation was that the critique of 'spin' was itself a symptom of the problem which he thought he faced, and that suggestions that the quality of public discourse was corroded were rarely supported by evidence:126

¶"I can remember, for example, one briefing where, at the end of yet another frenzy and journalists accusing me of lying and the politicians then getting roped in saying I should resign – I can remember saying to all the journalists there in the room: "Right, come on, just say what the lie is and then provide any evidence whatsoever". And they never could! So just – that in itself is a form of spin. You sent me Peter Oborne's essay that he did for the British Journalism Review. "Most lobby journalists [he said] have been deliberately misled or lied to by Downing Street". Followed by zero evidence whatsoever. "New Labour's culture of deception or manipulation of statistics, secretive smear campaigns...." No evidence whatsoever."

¶5.11 Mr Campbell was also asked about Lord Mandelson's views:127

¶"Q: Lord Mandelson, one of his concluding observations – ... "There was a great emphasis on managing the media at the expense of managing policy. There was a sense that if you'd got the story right, you'd achieved something and that's not how government is." Do you think there's any validity in that comment? I A: No. I think the policy process was always taken more seriously, but I think we all spent far too much time focussed on – and I speak as the guy who was in charge if this. The politicians spent way too much time worrying about this stuff."

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¶5.12 Interestingly, there are perhaps echoes of this in Mr Cameron's public statements in April 2012 about wider failings in politics: the concentration on presentation over the content of the message itself.128

¶5.13 Mr Blair's evidence was along similar lines. He accepted that there were problems in the carrying over of the techniques of Opposition into Government. He also accepted that Mr Campbell was somewhat of a 'combative figure'. Asked about whether there had in fact been bullying or intimidating of journalists, or alternatively the favouring of certain journalists, Mr Blair stated:129

¶"If you take someone like Andrew Marr, who is a very good journalist, I would be astonished if he felt that he'd been bullied or intimidated. If he did feel that, then I'm sorry about it, and I certainly wouldn't have known about it. .... But I suspect he is feeding back this thing that has grown up. You know – and also, some of these issues are different. For example, there will always be an interaction with the newspapers. If you're going to launch a major campaign, and let's say there's a particular newspaper that's been interested in this type of campaign – let's say you were going to do a big thing on anti-social behaviour. It would make sense to talk to the Mirror, the Sun, maybe, about that. We probably, in the later part, would have hesitated before talking to some of the papers that were utterly hostile for fear of the fact that you would simply have the story distorted in some way, so maybe that gives rise to that. Briefing against people – I just want to make this clear: I couldn't abide that. If I ever thought anyone was doing it, I would be absolutely down on them like a ton of bricks. I remember, for example, stories – I remember there were a lot of prominent stories at a certain point in time in relation to the late Mo Mowlam, and how I was very angry because she got a standing ovation at a party conference and we were briefing against her ... It was completely untrue. ... Q: I think the thesis being advanced is that the masters of the dark arts, whether they be Lord Mandelson or Alastair Campbell, tended to pick on junior reporters or producers... and let off people like Mr. Marr himself. A: No, that's my point, really, that in the end they receive this as sort of second-hand – look, I have no doubt that we used to complain strongly if we thought that stories were wrong. You know, I think that's perfectly legitimate. But I always felt – and I'm probably not the right person to be objective about this at all – but I always felt that their actual pushback against us was because for the first time, the Labour Party ran a really effective media operation, where we were able – and also, by the way, we were in circumstances where, for the first time politically, the Labour Party was able I to go on and win successive elections. As I said earlier, we'd never won two successive first terms, never mind three, and I felt you had to have a strong media operation, but I completely dispute that it was part of that to go and brief against ministers".

¶5.14 Towards the end of his evidence was this interesting series of answers from Mr Blair:130

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¶"Q. If, as I think you are not, you are not accepting even a kernel of truth in a thesis which may be exaggerated, how is it that this mythology has built up around you that people like Lord Mandelson, Mr Campbell, at your instigation, were the masters of these so-called dark arts? A. It's got to the point where I almost hesitate to dispute it with you, because I know these people just say, "Oh, how dare he dispute the fact that actually they were out using black arts and briefing against this person and that person?" The fact is, you know, I never authorised or said to someone: "Go out and brief against" – I hate that type of stuff. It's the lowest form of politics. It's just a complete diversion from everything that is important. Now, I don't doubt, by the way – look, in any system you will have people that will say things or do things or brief things that they shouldn't be doing, but I simply say to you my view is that the – what I think a part of the media felt – and this is the odd thing, and I used to comment on this sometimes – is that to the outside world, when you're Prime Minister, you seem as if you're all powerful, and for that first period of our time in government, it looked as if we were carrying in everything. You know, the opposition were very poor, we didn't just win one landslide, we then went on to win two, and I think part of the media frankly felt we were far too powerful, we had to be taken on and curbed and so on. But, you know, in relation to this stuff with black arts, look, I don't – I don't know whether Peter was doing it or Alastair was doing it, but if they – all I know is that my interactions with them, we were aware that you start doing all that stuff, all it does is blow back on you. I'm a real believer in this regard that what goes around comes around. So for me, the important thing was to have a strong effective media operation. I think that what Alastair produced for us in Downing Street was that, but I think it was a perfectly proper media operation. Q. I'm really coming back to the point about the draining of the poison, and perhaps who is responsible for the implantation of the poison. If one focuses too much on the press, it might be said that one is arguably missing the wrong target. How about this as a possibility: we might have now a poisonous state of affairs which is a contribution really of both sides to this equation – the press on the one hand, the political classes on the other – and accidentally or unwittingly, they've created something which has grown beyond either of their contributions. Is that a possible analysis? A. Look, it's certainly a possible analysis, and I'm not saying we don't bear any responsibility for this situation – don't misunderstand me – as a political class, but I think if I'm frank about it, the primary responsibility is not having confronted it and dealt with it."

¶I 5.15 Mr Brown offered this perspective on his personal approach:131

¶"I did want to make a change, and I did try to move away from what I thought was the excessive dominance of what is called the lobby system, and what really has led to those allegations of spin – by the way, spin assumes that you got success in getting your message across, even if it's superficial and I don't think anybody could accuse me of having a great success in getting my message across. But I tried to move away from that. One, we moved away from having a political chief of communications to having a civil servant doing the job. That was to send the message that we were not trying to politicise government information; we were trying to give the information that was necessary for the public to understand what was happening".

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¶5.16 Mr Brown did suggest that there had been risks to the public interest in New Labour's approach to news management. Asked if there were any lessons to be learnt from the period 1997 to 2010, he indicated:132

¶"Yes. We should have ... changed the system where people relied on exclusive briefings and had a far more transparent system of addressing the country through the press than we have even today, and I obviously have to take some responsibility for this ... So yes, there needed to be more openness. We inherited a system which was based on, if you like, exclusivity. It was also based on insiders winning over outsiders, so a lot of people were excluded from that system".

¶5.17 From one standpoint, then, the priority of the politicians learning the lessons administered to them by the press in the 'wilderness years' of the 1980s and early 1990s was both to persuade the press that they had nothing to fear from a change of Government and to reach the public in a less adversely mediated way. From another standpoint, this was at the expense of a breakdown of public trust engineered by political self-interest. For politicians trying to manage the agenda, it was about getting a fair hearing; for journalists resisting the management of the agenda, it was about manipulation and favouritism. Neither standpoint is neutral or objective. In the relationship between press and politician, in circumstances where political positions are not aligned there is a contest of wits (or megaphones) in which each viewpoint seeks to outmanoeuvre the other in a contest to dominate the public debate. Sometimes that can benefit and enrich the public debate and a balanced perspective can emerge. Sometimes it can have the opposite effect: the public is so overwhelmed by the messages delivered by competing megaphones, it does not have the chance to sort the wheat from the chaff or to discern the true kernel of the issue.

¶5.18 If New Labour did not invent 'spin', it nevertheless found itself in an unprecedented place in relation to news management as an agenda item in its own right. On the one hand, its election-winning strategy in 1997 explicitly had in mind the lessons to be learned from the recent past. On the other, there is an obvious question about the extent to which a media strategy of 'neutralising' those sections of the press which had been hostile to the party in the 1980s and in the run-up to the 1992 general election became a victim of its own success, and resulted in diminishing public confidence in political communications.

¶The perspective of journalists and commentators

¶5.19 Andrew Marr offered this overview in his book "My Trade", from his long perspective of I political journalism in the print media and more recently working for the BBC:133

¶"... As trust crumbled, so did reporters' willingness to defer to the government. Tales of how New Labour had bullied junior reporters or producers spread through the warren of press gallery offices and between broadcasters' headquarters. The backlash was slow, but it came. By the end of Blair's first two years, it was a badge of honour to be 'bollocked' by Campbell or Mandelson, and to shout back just as loudly. The persistent attempts to dictate what should appear on a front page, or at the top of a running order, became infuriating and hardened journalistic hearts.

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¶Even before the 1997 election it was obvious that Labour had spies tipping it off about running orders, script lines and correspondents being used for news programmes and was attempting to ambush them before they went on air to get more favourable coverage. In lobby meetings, Alastair Campbell and others would single out and ridicule the correspondents of editorially hostile newspapers ... Favoured reporters were given special treatment, just as their editors were made much of in Downing Street and invited to weekends at Chequers. But political correspondents have a certain esprit de corps alongside their professional rivalry, and the cynical way in which some were favoured because they worked for Rupert Murdoch, while others were sneered at because they worked for Conrad Black, disgusted many who worked for neither."

¶5.20 In oral evidence to the Inquiry, Mr Marr was asked to expand on this final paragraph. He said this:134

¶"I think that a decision was taken that it was very important to keep the Murdoch papers, so far as was possible – it wasn't always possible – on side and to have a close relationship with their leading journalists and their leading reporters. They were inside of the tent, if you like, as were some Labour friendly newspapers too, while papers like the Daily Telegraph were indeed kept at arm's length, made to feel unwelcome. From time to time their correspondents like George Owens [sic] would be mocked during lobby briefings. There was very much an attempt, I felt, to divide this core – this group of journalists into the favoured ones, the ones who were sort of part of the project, almost, and the ones who were off in the wilderness."

¶5.21 Peter Oborne, chief political commentator at the Daily Telegraph, also commented on this issue from his own perspective. He observed as follows:135

¶"Q: I'm going to read the opening quotation of chapter 7 of your book ... The Quotation is from Robert Shrimsley, who is the news editor of the Financial Times, and it reads: "When I joined the lobby in 1992, I would abandon a story if Number 10 denied it. By the time I left, I sometimes felt justified in merely recording the denial at the bottom." A: Yes. Q: How accurate a summary is that of the change in government communications during that period? A: I completely agree with Mr. Shrimpley136 ... I felt that what was true – I think what we had when New Labour emerged in power in 1997 was really a – what I'd call a new epistemology, which was that truth was really seen as something which served I the purposes of government or the party in power. It wasn't – the rigorously testable, empirical truth was of no interest – of a kind which would be of interest to this Inquiry – was not of interest to New Labour spokesmen. They were interested in the truth as it served their political purposes, and so that was a different definition of truth. That, I think, is what Mr. Shrimpley137 is referring to there that denials or assertions became really an instrument of government rather than an instrument of telling the truth."

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¶5.22 Simon Walters is the political editor of the Mail on Sunday, a position which he has held since 1999. He has been a journalist since 1974 and a member of the lobby since 1983. In his written evidence, Mr Walters noted that:¹³⁸¹³⁸ p4, paras 21-22, http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Witness-Statement-of-Simon- Walters.pdf

¶"During Mr. Blair's government, much energy was devoted to ensuring all departments were 'on message' – repeating the Downing Street line on any given issue. From the point of view of the Government, this greater degree of political control makes sense. But it can be argued that this is not in the public interest or that of the media. For example, if Number 10 is trying to cover up a politically embarrassing story, it is easier to do so if there is central control over the entire Whitehall media machine".

¶Reflections

¶5.23 This Chapter has focused on aspects of news management during the 13 years of the New Labour: insofar as it has become relevant to the Conservative Party and the Coalition, this will be analysed in the course of Chapter 4. But precisely because more than one view is possible about the advantages and risks of news management techniques, particular care must be exercised to ensure that the message – an encapsulation of the facts and policies which politicians of whichever party wish to share with the public – is not lost in distractions about the packaging.

¶5.24 Once again, the substantive issues which remain are to do with public perception. If the public do not have confidence in the politicians to provide a straight message even, where necessary, warts and all and the public do not have confidence in the press to provide a fair (although not necessarily balanced or impartial) account, everybody in our democracy loses. Holding power to account can be partisan, but if the public detect that it is not fair, one way or the other, the consequent loss of faith will damage both politicians and the press. Furthermore, if 'favoured' relationships and the transaction of exclusives play a prominent role in the presentation of issues or, on the other side, simple error is always portrayed as venal, corrupt or wanting in integrity, public trust will be lost and the currency of public debate devalued.

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