Setbacks see Blair prepare to do battle on `populist' front

The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has been severely embarrassed twice in as many days. Nor is this a case of "spin journalism", as his official spokesman, Mr Alistair Campbell, might like to have it.

The general consensus is that the Spinmeister himself emerged unscathed from Saturday night's BBC profile. Indeed, any disappointment might reside with the BBC for, entertaining as it was, the film failed to reveal much at all about Mr Campbell's practice of the job's black arts.

In his heyday, Mr Campbell has been a brilliant government operative. He is better by far than he appeared on the BBC, surrounded by sycophantic staff feeding him lines to take. But if he emerged looking good from this Downing Street fly-on-the-wall documentary, the same cannot be said for his master, Mr Blair.

Chancellor Gordon Brown's former spin doctor, Mr Charlie Whelan, pulled no punches. The Prime Minister, he asserted, "was made to look a prat".

Mr Whelan is doubtless driven by personal animus, having been forced out of No 11 in the aftermath of Mr Mandelson's homeloan affair. However, his crude characterisation will have chimed with many people watching.

Mr Blair's first appearance in the film appeared wholly unscripted. Initially bemused, he came to sound petulant. And who would blame him? What on earth was he doing there talking about tea bags and mugs, and how that famous one bearing the imprint of his first three children came to be in his hand when he appeared before the cameras on the day Leo was born?

Certainly, it seemed a massive role-reversal to have the Prime Minister being interviewed at all about his press secretary. And it will have been galling for Mr Blair to watch the sequence in which Mr Campbell abruptly terminated a press briefing, prompting the press corps to abandon the scene with the Prime Minister still centre-stage.

One glimpse of New Labour's media professionalism came with the footage showing Mr Blair's photo-call with President Vladimir Putin being monitored on-screen behind the Downing Street door; the aides falling back into a reception line as the two leaders stepped inside. The contrast between the two incidents spoke volumes: Mr Campbell could not be looking out for Mr Blair when he himself was performing before the cameras.

In the great scheme of things it need not have mattered much. Alistair the Movie 2 would appear an unlikely project. And by yesterday Mr Campbell would have hoped to be chiding journalists to focus on the truly big picture, today's spending review designed to regain the initiative for government on key issues like crime, health and education.

Instead, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson, was leading an inquiry into the second damaging leak against Mr Blair in as many months, this time a memorandum penned by the Prime Minister acknowledging a perception that he and his government were "out of touch with gut British instincts".

The immediate consensus here was that the fact of the leak was more damaging than the Prime Minister's recognition that his government is seen as "weak" on the family; "soft" on asylum and crime; and "insufficiently assertive" in defending the national interest.

The leak follows last month's disclosure of a memo from Mr Blair's "focus group" guru, Mr Philip Gould, prompted by the Prime Minister's ill-fated speech to the Women's Institute. Describing it as "static" and lacking "energy, verve, dynamism and change", the memo said the result was "a speech that looks once again like TB is pandering, lacking conviction, unable to hold a position for more than a few weeks".

Directly addressing the Prime Minister's problem with "middle Britain", the Gould memo continued: "TB is not believed to be real. He lacks conviction, he is all spin and presentation, he says things to please people, not because he believes them."

That, predictably, was Mr William Hague's response to yesterday's fresh embarrassment for No 10. Mocking Mr Blair's call for "eye-catching initiatives" to counter false "perception" of his government on crime and other issues, the Tory leader claimed he was now setting the agenda.

"They don't really know where to turn next," declared Mr Hague. "We have got a government that is only in government in order to fight elections."

Obviously Mr Blair's demand for "something tough, with immediate bite" on street crime backfired spectacularly when chief constables dismissed as unworkable his plan to march drunken yobs to cash points to pay instant fines. His evident shock that "any government I lead" should be seen as weak on the family, and his insistence that he be personally associated as much as possible with the requested new initiatives, will reinforce for some the impression of a Prime Minister consumed by personal image.

Certainly, the Tory leader will have properly divined the deep-seated insecurity about the extent to which the New Labour project has taken root, and Downing Street's acute awareness of the extent of its dependence still on the personality of the Prime Minister.

The warning for Mr Hague, however, is that Mr Blair is already gearing up for that next election. For the leaked memo was penned on April 29th, in advance of Labour's defeats in the local and London mayoral elections, and well before Mr Gould's dark warnings.

President Clinton once famously advised Mr Blair never to forget the people who had voted for him for the first time. With crime, asylum, the family and defence topping his list of priorities, Mr Blair is clearly determined to reconnect with the "gut" instinct of the British electorate. Which suggests a tough fight on the "populist" ground Mr Hague appeared lately to have made his own.

How that plays in the Labour "heartlands" remains to be seen. It will certainly cause dismay and anxiety on the left, from where Ms Diane Abbott MP yesterday offered the plaintive suggestion that it was possible to lead, as well as to follow, public opinion.

The prospect of government announcements on asylum "highlighting removals" - as well as the granting of "genuine" claims - will alert those already critical of a seeming competition between the two main parties they fear fosters racist sentiment.

But, similarly, those who may have thought the government right not to be panicked by reaction to Mr Tony Martin's life sentence for killing a burglar will not hold sway in election year. Any more, one suspects, than those who have been urging Mr Blair to challenge the "gut" instinct by pressing for early British membership of the euro.