Rightly or wrongly, spin will be forever a defining characterisation of Tony Blair’s government in the way that sleaze was for John Major’s. Yet few commentators have been able to offer a serious analysis of the complex relationship between politicians and the media, and the profound effect it has had on the way the public perceives and engages with our democratic process.
In what is now his fourth book on the issue, Nick Jones, the former BBC political correspondent, catalogues a host of colourful examples of how ministers and government advisers have leaked information for political advantage. For Jones, such activity has weakened parliament and helped to undermine the neutrality of the civil service. But, somewhat extraordinarily, those journalists who are on the receiving end of such activity are often portrayed as innocent, na•ve or – at worst – reluctant collaborators, forced to play a game demanded of them by a competitive media environment.
For all its well-researched detail, Jones fails to provide much additional insight into the seemingly endless debate about spin, although his exploration of the motives and methods of ‘leakers’ from within the civil service is both interesting and new. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the book is Jones’s admission of his own key role when at the BBC in leaking to a Sunday newspaper off-the-record remarks made by John Major in 1993 describing three of his cabinet colleagues as ‘bastards’. It’s enough to make at least one former spin-doctor feel very smug.