Control freak out of control

Spectator, The, Feb 14, 1998 by Glover, Stephen

Stephen Glover on why the government's chief spokesman spells long-term trouble for Mr Blair because other media will prove harder to bully than the BBC

IT IS difficult to exaggerate the spinechilling effect which two attacks by Alastair Campbell and Tim Allan have had on journalists at the BBC. `It undermines self-confidence,' says one senior BBC journalist. `Reporters are frightened of an official complaint.' Another BBC executive says, `We are obviously vulnerable.' He means that a public service broadcaster can hardly ignore the feelings of a political cadre that may be in power for ten or more years

Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister's pugnacious press secretary, picked on John Sergeant, the BBC's rosy-faced chief political correspondent, during a press conference in Washington last week. Mr Sergeant had politely asked whether Mr Blair was worried that he would be questioned about Monica Lewinsky. Mr Campbell exploded, as he so often does. He accused the BBC of being a `downmarket, dumbed down, over-staffed, over-bureaucratic, ridiculous organisation'. This was a little rich coming from a man who only three years ago was an assistant editor on the now defunct Today newspaper.

On Friday, two days after the blameless Mr Sergeant had been ritually humiliated, Mr Allan, who is Mr Campbell's right-hand man, attacked the BBC World at One programme's coverage of a speech by the Labour MP Brian Sedgemore. This eccentric left-winger had criticised Tony Blair for being `above God' and described Labour's female MPs as `Stepford wives'. World at One, which is broadcast on Radio Four, devoted 13 minutes of its 40-minute programme to Mr Sedgemore's speech.

In the opinion of a Labour party official, this demonstrated the BBC's `complete loss of perspective and their increasingly trivial agenda which we have come to expect'. He did not single out World at One but broadened his criticisms to include the entire BBC in language reminiscent of Mr Campbell's. In fact neither BBC lunchtime television news nor the BBC six o'clock news that evening made any reference to Mr Sedgemore's speech. But the World at One's news priorities drew Downing Street's fire on the entire Corporation. Lady Thatcher did not work up a head of steam against the BBC until the mid-Eighties, and even then it was Norman Tebbit who blew up. But now, after nine months, this government characterises the BBC in more extreme terms than were ever employed by the Tories.

Alastair Campbell is a powerful man probably more powerful than his fellow spin doctor, Peter Mandelson. Before fetching up on Today he was a Labour propagandist on Robert Maxwell's Mirror, where he appears to have served his master with the same loyalty he shows for Tony Blair. His ascendancy has been almost unbelievably rapid - as though he had been transferred overnight from overseeing a small Siberian salt mine to a senior position in the Politburo. Other than Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, it is difficult to think of anyone in the government who carries more weight. No one who has dealt with Mr Campbell could doubt his abilities. But he is a bully. He bullies those who are critical of the Blairite 'project'. These tendencies doubtless reflect his own character. But they also reveal something deeper about Blairism: its ultra-sensitivity and intolerance of criticism, and its desire to silence discordant voices.

It is within the lobby - the group of political journalists briefed daily by Mr Campbell or his aides - that most pressure is applied. We only know about Mr Campbell's attack on the BBC because it took place in America, and thus escaped the restrictive conventions of lobby reporting in Westminster. In fact Mr Campbell's stockin-trade is to `bawl out' journalists who have written something that has irritated him or who work for organisations in which other journalists have said or written something critical. The wonder is that there has not been more complaint. `If the Tories were doing it, we would be up in arms,' says one left-wing political journalist. This Tuesday Campbell was at it again, criticising the BBC at the daily lobby briefing because the radio news that morning had led with a story that the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, was worried that force might be used in Iraq. This was a 'ridiculous' story, according to Campbell.

Independent-minded lobby journalists say that Campbell still behaves as though an election is on. Along with Peter Mandelson, who works no less assiduously behind the scenes, Campbell honed to perfection the instant rebuttal and the immediate complaint. Then the BBC was generally anxious to co-operate. It certainly did not wish to be accused of impeding a Labour victory. In government the Blairite PR machine expects the same compliance. It also thinks it can control the flow of news as effectively as it did in opposition.

Apart from the BBC, the main object of Blairite hatred is the Guardian and, to a slightly lesser extent, its sister paper, the Observer. Michael White, the Guardian's political editor, recently described in his paper the treatment which he and his colleagues have received at the hands of Mr Campbell. `Alastair Campbell regularly berates the Guardian at lobby briefings,' White wrote. Some people may find it difficult to understand why a paper that is generally supportive of the government should so enrage Mr Campbell. The point is that it is read by Labour activists, so any criticisms its columnists may make and any bad news which its reporters may convey are believed by Blairites to be damaging. In a recent speech in Luton, Mr Blair said, 'I don't spend a lot of time reading the Guardian now. I prefer to read a Labour paper.'