APPENDIX 8
Memorandum submitted by Colin Seymour-Ure,
Professor of Government, University of Kent at Canterbury
DOWNING STREET
PRESS OFFICE
The Prime Minister's press secretary had so
much influence that he "seemed to have the status almost
of a minister". That sounds like a reference to Alastair
Campbell. But in fact it was a newspaper comment about Francis
Williams, the first postwar incumbent and the first ever to have
the secretaryship as a substantial job. He was an inspired Attlee
appointment in 1945, given the task of interpreting to the press
the unexpected landslide Labour Government. Williams had been
editor of the Labour Daily Herald from 1937 to 1940 and
he was a senior official in the Ministry of Information during
the war. "Most of the cabinet were old friends of mine",
say his memoirs.[1]
He enjoyed the confidence too of the Lobby correspondents, who
were then a smaller, longer serving, more tightly knit and older
group than now. Williams took the post for two years and was judged
a great success. When he resigned the press gave him a tobacco
jar made of stone from the bombed House of Commons.
In the Blair Administration's first year Downing
Street news operations have attracted more publicity than ever
before. Francis Williams' example may help to put them in perspective.
For how far is the publicity due principally to a change of government
in an era of electronic exposure inconceivable fifty years ago?
How far, on the other hand, do the Government's arrangements raise
new issues of public interest? This paper explores some of the
factors affecting the answers to those questions.
THE DOWNING
STREET PRESS
SECRETARY: WHO
IS RIGHT
FOR THE
JOB?
1. Choices for the Prime Minister
An incoming Prime Minister confronts several
choices. Does he or she want a civil servant, or a journalist?
If a civil servant is a generalist/policy specialist better,
or an information officer? If a journalist, should it be
a print or broadcast specialist; a lobby correspondent
or some other specialist; a partisan or a non-partisan?
The prime minister might also take a view about how long the
secretary should stay.
2. Prime Ministers' Choices: the Record
Table 1 shows what Prime Ministers have done
since Attlee. With exceptions on both sides, Labour prime ministers
have chosen journalists and Conservatives have preferred civil
servants. As a former political journalist, therefore, Alastair
Campbell conforms to type. Attlee chose a journalist-turned-civil-servant
to succeed Francis Williams. Harold Wilson first appointed Trevor
Lloyd-Hughes, Lobby correspondent of his local daily, the Liverpool
Daily Post; and then Joe Haines, who had eleven years' experience
in the lobby, latterly with the pre-tabloid Sun. James
Callaghan, however, took with him to Downing Street the information
officer he was working with as Foreign Secretary.
| TABLE 1
|
| Prime Ministers' Press Secretaries, 1945-1998
| | |
|
Prime Minister
(month/year of taking office)
| Press Secretary
(month/year of taking office)
| Preceding experience |
|
| Clement Attlee (July 1945) | Francis Williams (July 1945)
| Journalist/wartime civil servant |
| Philip Jordan (December 1947)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| Reginald Bacon (June 1951)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| Winston Churchill (October 1951) | Fife Clark (early 1952)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| Anthony Eden (April 1955) | William Clark (October 1955)
| Journalist (diplomatic) |
| Alfred Richardson (November 1956)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| Harold Macmillan (January 1957) | Harold Evans (February 1957)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| Alec Douglas-Home (October 1963) | John Groves (October 1963)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| Harold Wilson (October 1964) | Trevor Lloyd-Hughes (October 1964)
| Journalist (political) |
| Joe Haines (June 1969) |
Journalist (political) |
| | |
| Edward Heath (June 1970) | Donald Maitland (June 1970)
| Civil servant (FCO) |
| Robin Haydon (April 1973)
| Civil servant (FCO) |
| | |
| Harold Wilson (March 1974) | Joe Haines (March 1974)
| Journalist (political) |
| | |
| James Callaghan (April 1976) | Tom McCaffrey (April 1976)
| Civil servant |
| | |
| Margaret Thatcher (May 1979) | Henry James (May 1979)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| Bernard Ingham (November 1979)
| Journalist/civil servant |
| | |
| John Major (November 1990) | Gus O'Donnell (November 1990)
| Civil servant (Treasury) |
| Chris Meyer (October 1993)
| Civil servant (FCO) |
| Jonathan Haslam (February 1996)
| Civil servant |
| | |
| Tony Blair (May 1997) | Alastair Campbell (May 1997)
| Journalist (political) |
|
Like Campbell, Williams and Haines had solid Labour credentials.
But Lloyd-Hughes tended, as Wilson's aide Marcia Williams put
it, "to shrink from any part of the work of the government
which could in any way be regarded as political".[2]
This was so unsatisfactory, as Marcia Williams implies, that Wilson
appointed a separate "parliamentary press liaison officer",
paid for from party funds and not located in the press office,
to do the party political press work. This was Gerald Kaufman,
at that time working for the New Statesman.
On the Conservative side, Winston Churchill disliked the
whole business of press relations. he tried at first to do without
a press secretary altogether. Then he kept the post at arm's length,
without even an office at Number Ten. His appointee, Fife Clark,
was another of the common breed, stretching down to Bernard Ingham,
of journalist-turned-civil-servant. He became a distinguished
head of the Central Office of Information. Eden, uniquely among
Conservatives, appointed a working journalist—William Clark,
diplomatic correspondent of the Observer and, to this day,
the only press secretary with significant experience of political
television, of which he was a pioneer. Clark, whose politics were
Observer pink, resigned at the height of the Suez crisis.
Eden's successors have all chosen civil servants, but not of the
same kind. Five were journalists who became information officers.
At least one of these, John Groves (Alec Douglas-Home), had worked
as a lobby correspondent. Ingham had been a labour correspondent
with the Guardian, and he had moved on from information
work shortly before Mrs Thatcher appointed him press secretary.
Ted Heath's two secretaries both came from the FCO. Donald Maitland
was summoned from his post as ambassador in Tripoli. Heath had
worked with him on the abortive EEC entry negotiations in 1963
and sounded him out before the 1970 General Election. Maitland's
successor Robin Haydon came from the post of High Commissioner
in Malawi.
There was an echo of these appointments in John Major's choice
of Chris Meyer to be press secretary in 1993. Like the other two,
Meyer had been head of the FCO News Department—a post generally
held by a career diplomat not an information officer. From Downing
Street he duly progressed to ambassador. Gus O'Donnell, Meyer's
predecessor, was a policy specialist too, but in the Treasury,
where he was head of the information division when John Major
was Chancellor. He moved across seamlessly to Downing Street with
John Major. With his last appointment Major returned to the information
officer tradition, promoting Chris Meyer's one-time deputy, Jonathan
Haslam.
In those appointments, as will be clear even from a summary,
the neat choices posted at the start were blurred in practice
by considerations such as prior acquaintance and the unexpectedness
with which Prime Ministers found themselves in office. Before
Blair, and ignoring the uninterested Churchill, only Attlee, Wilson,
Heath and Thatcher were in much of a position to "plan"
for a press secretary. (Even then, Mrs Thatcher took six months
to settle on Bernard Ingham.) The other Prime Ministers took office
between elections. Understandably, they tended either to keep
the press secretary who was already working with them or else,
like Douglas-Home, to promote someone already at Downing Street.
What is also unique about Alastair Campbell is that he has worked
very closely with his Prime Minister in opposition, rather
than having to build a relationship in government. Joe Haines
was in the same position in 1974, having worked with Wilson continuously
since the final year of his first premiership.
3. Civil Servants and partisans
The press secretaries appointed from outside have all become
temporary civil servants. How has this been squared with partisanship?
Francis Williams had already become a civil servant during the
war and he similarly continued as such in Downing Street. Besides,
Attlee did not want a party zealot so much as someone "in
broad sympathy" with Labour aims. Williams squared the circle
very effectively. Eden was content that William Clark, the next
such appointee, was not a Conservative. Again, he expected "broad
sympathy"—which he would probably have got, but for
Suez. Some of Eden's colleagues felt differently. Central Office
pressed the case for half Clark's plainly viewed as a lbotomy.
Wilson initially solved the problem by having one square (Lloyd-Hughes)
and one circle (Kaufman). In his second term (1974-76), when this
arrangement had lapsed, Haines' overt partisanship may not have
sat comfortably with traditional Civil Service non-partisanship.
But his appointment was comparatively brief.
4. Partisanship and Tenure
With Bernard Ingham the problem was the other way round:
he was a civil servant sometimes behaving allegedly like a partisan.
Here the difficulty was surely Ingham's exceptional tenure. Only
Harold Evans, who stayed throughout the seven years of Macmillan's
premiership (and was rewarded with a baronetcy, against Ingham's
knighthood) has come anywhere near Ingham's eleven years in office.
Most have served three years or less. None of the civil servants,
apart from Ingham, has had his non-partisanship called in question.
Long tenure seems almost bound to be seen to put it under strain.
The present government has reportedly squared the circle
by giving Alastair Campbell a contract which imposes normal civil
service regulations "except to those aspects which relate
to impartiality and objectivity"[3].
In the light of past experience, this seems eminently realistic.
WHAT SHOULD
BE PRESS
SECRETARY'S
JOB DESCRIPTION?
There is no logical point at which a Prime Minister could
not argue that more resources for media relations might increase
the chances of achieving his or her goals. So how big should
the press secretary's job be? Since Francis Williams' time,
the job has become institutionalised, specialised and diversified.
It now includes four parts: Spokesman (or woman), adviser on
media relations, intermediary (or agent) with the news media,
and manager.
As Spokesman, the secretary briefs journalists in
groups and singly—a role which enables him to block contact
as well as to facilitate it and which makes him, as a corollary,
a key person in the communication of information to the Prime
Minister from the media. As Adviser, secretaries have helped
with everything from writing speeches and grooming the prime minister
for TV performances, to strategy about media use. As Intermediary
the secretary deals with (sometimes in a burly sense of the term)
Journalists and media executives about stories, interviews and
logistics (including foreign travel). As manager the secretary
runs an office with about a dozen staff and liaises with the departmental
information services to ensure the Government speaks with one
voice.
Different secretaries have concentrated on different aspects,
but those tasks define the scope of the job. They make the press
secretary a classic man (never yet a woman, in Britain) in the
middle. Unless he enjoys the confidence of the Prime Minister,
he is useless to his media clientele; and unless he has the confidence
of the media, he is useless to the prime minister. His primary
duty is to the Prime Minister; yet he cannot fulfil it properly
without a commitment also to the different, and potentially clashing,
goals of the media. If he gets the balance wrong, he is doomed.
Thus William Clark's effectiveness rapidly faded during the Suez
crises, as the lobby realised he was becoming distanced from Eden.
In contrast Haines' closeness to Wilson seems to have placed the
traditional system of Lobby briefings under strain in 1974-76,
and they were abandoned until James Callaghan took office.
PROBLEMS AND
ISSUES
Several controversial issues about the press secretary have
recurred over the years.
1. Partisanship
Most of the issues involve partisanship in some way. The
pros and cons are clear. A partisan secretary can openly share
the Prime Minister's values; will be more credible as his or her
surrogate when briefing journalists; will have extra authority
in his intermediary role and in co-ordinating information services.
He need not keep clear of party conferences, party speeches and
other routine party activities. The pretence can be abandoned
that party and non-party work in Downing Street public relations
can be constantly kept apart. So can the spurious belief that
advice on the presentation of a course of action can be kept separate
from advice on its substance. Non-partisan appointees can indeed
become effective surrogates—none more so than Bernard Ingham.
Yet this was precisely one of the grounds on which he was eventually
accused of partisanship.
A partisan secretary, on the other hand, may find it hard
to avoid getting caught up in Cabinet or Parliamentary Party rows.
His very loyalty to his boss may threaten his credibility, if
he parrots a party line, makes knee-jerk reactions to events,
or persists in comments too much at odds with plausible versions
of the truth. Tough partisanship works fine in the good times;
an element of detachment may help when things go badly. Journalists
seem to value such detachment, and Civil Service appointees can
provide it not least because their career base outside the Prime
Minister's entourage gives them some protection.
Another complaint about partisan secretaries is that they
may behave as though they are Ministers—a recent allegation
against Campbell which echoed criticisms of Ingham. Lastly, a
partisan secretary, compared with a civil servant, will lack the
advantage of knowing the Whitehall machine and has been likely,
in the past, to be less effective at co-ordinating the departmental
information services.
Where the balance of advantage lies will depend on other
aspects of the way news operations are run.
2. Relations with the Lobby Journalists
The press secretary's twice-daily briefings of the Lobby
journalists have provided a structure and rhythm to the office's
work ever since Francis Williams' time. In its heyday (until the
early 1970s, say), the Lobby was a uniquely privileged, well paid
discreet group of journalists, many of whom stayed 20 years or
more in the job. There was a small "inner" Lobby of
national and provincial dailies and news agencies, working to
a 24-hour cycle, who were briefed collectively (but not only collectively).
The "outer lobby" consisted in Sunday and weekly papers,
various editors and foreigners and literally one or two broadcasters.
The outer Lobby were denied access to the daily briefings; many
had "one day a week" tickets just for access to the
House of Commons lobby itself. The Lobby membership list was kept
secret. The system had started to crumble long before the 1970s,
with admission to the daily briefings conceded to provincial evening
papers, then to Sundays, then to broadcasters; and with "alternates"
permitted (i.e., substitute attenders, not additional ones).
In the old system a small elite, who knew each other and
the ways of Westminster intimately, virtually monopolised the
reporting of Parliamentary politics and government business. In
return for not revealing their sources, they were given advance
and otherwise sensitive information (including of Dunkirk and
D-Day). The fictions of collective cabinet responsibility and
individual Ministerial responsibility were thus reconciled with
the realities of personality and party differences. Downing Street
dominated government news; the Lobby dominated political journalism.
Since then, the composition of the Lobby and its relation
to other parts of the media's coverage of government have changed
out of recognition. Regardless of whether the quality of coverage
is "dumbing down", it is provided today by a far wider
range of specialists and of media. The Lobby is still central,
composed of political "generalists"; but Downing Street's
media clientele is widely dispersed. It has been increasingly
plain since the start of the Thatcher administration that the
press secretary could no longer realistically regard his briefings
as off the record. The 1997 Cabinet Office Working Group on the
GIS recognises this by recommending that they should henceforth
be held on-the-record (Report, paragraph 25-29). This small move
towards demystification should be welcomed.
Beyond that lies the question of source anonymity. The dilution
of the Lobby membership meant that the press secretary has had
increasingly to regard his anonymity as a sham. Donald Maitland
was ready to abandon it as long ago as the early 1970s, but the
Lobby themselves opposed him. Bernard Ingham did not wish to be
identified even as a "Downing Street source", but he
was content with "a Government source"[4].
Alastair Campbell is evidently happy to be "the Prime Ministers'
official spokesman" (Cab. Office Report, paragraph 27) but
not to be identified by name. The reason given by the Cabinet
Office report is that he might be built up "too much into
a figure in his own right", if he were named. For the same
reason the report rejects the idea that the briefings should be
on camera. Both suggestions are acceptable as points of principle,
but I wonder how long they can be sustained. If the briefings
are sufficiently significant to be on the record and to remain
a core part of press office routine, it is a paradox for the briefer
to remain anonymous.
3. What Future for Lobby Briefings?
Once officially on the record, Lobby briefings will have
lost their original purpose of enabling the press secretary to
say things privately which would have been untimely or impolitic
on the record and attributed to him. But both sides need these
exchanges just as much as in the past. Indeed the journalists
arguably need them even more, insofar as Ministers are spending
less time in the lobbies of the Commons itself. The collective
briefings came into existence only in the early 1930s. Before
that, there was no one to give a briefing.[5]
Lobby journalism was a matter of individual sleuthing and of hunting
in groups of two or three, with much surreptitious "swapping
of blacks" (i.e., carbons).
Downing Street's new openness paradoxically tips the emphasis
back towards an earlier age. The exact patterns of substantial
contact between the press secretary and his colleagues on the
one hand, and journalists on the other, will become a little bit
more opaque, rather than less. Indeed one or another "inner
Lobby" of a few major players, meeting the press secretary
privily and regularly, could presumably develop all over again.
(To some extent this already happens, I believe, with briefings
for Sunday and foreign correspondents.)
4. Prime Ministerial Press Conferences
So long as the press secretary could brief unattributably,
there was no need for a Prime Minister to hold press conferences.
Indeed the lobby has a powerful vested interest in opposing it—and
did so, strongly, when Heath's secretary Donald Maitland experimented
with the idea.[6] The House
of Commons, too, has traditionally disliked Prime Ministerial
performances which distract public (and Prime Ministers') attention
from the forum of the Commons itself. Commonwealth Prime Ministers,
in Canada and Australia for example, have found that giving regular
press conferences means meeting the press when you do not want
to, as well as when you do.
So there are plenty of arguments against press conferences.
Nonetheless, once the Lobby meetings are on-the-record and the
press secretary briefs about what the Prime Minister may be doing
or thinking, it may become more difficult for the Prime Minister
to avoid giving regular, if infrequent, press conferences himself—like
his counterparts in the United States and those Commonwealth systems
derived from Westminster. There will also be a case for him to
meet the Lobby more often than most Prime Ministers did in the
past.
5. How many Masters does the Downing Street Press Secretary
serve?
Ever since Attlee's formal letter appointed Francis Williams
to act "on behalf of the government generally", there
has been no doubt that the press secretary is not simply the Prime
Minister's secretary. Except in Churchill's postwar administration,
the secretary has always had an office in Number 10 and has been
a Prime Ministerial appointment. Just as the Prime Minister is
only "first among equals", so the press secretary works
for the Cabinet as a whole. But just as "first among equals"
is a logical impossibility, so the press secretary's position
is in practice less clear cut. The Cabinet Office Working Group
report refers to him formally as Chief Press Secretary, but then
it slightly confuses the situation by suggestion that, when briefing,
he should be referred to as "the Prime Minister's official
spokesman" (Report, paragraph 27).
How far serving the Government and serving the Prime Minister
amount to the same thing depends on how far the Cabinet does behave
as an entity. To the extent that it does not, it is inescapable
that the secretary may become entangled in the competing leaks
and rivalries. Civil service appointees may distance themselves
from these (as may fairly be said, I believe, of John Major's
Administration); although the rows will not necessarily have derived
from party considerations. A Cabinet may simply take time to reach
a collective view or may be seriously split on a question of policy.
There will occasionally be messy resignations and controversial
reconstructions. The secretary can never aspire to be an executive
news source, but if he turns aside too many leading questions,
he jeopardises his authority and his control of the news agenda.
Alternatively, if he enters the fray with a will, he may be seen
too uncompromisingly as the Prime Minister's man. The longer his
incumbency, too, the more likely will he be identified with the
Prime Minister.
A new factor which will affect the secretary's standing is
the appointment of political press secretaries to senior ministers
such as the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Their loyalty, both to their
boss and to the Downing Street secretary, is quite different from
that of a Civil Service information officer.
6. How big a co-ordinating Role for the Press Secretary?
Bernard Ingham doubled as Chief Press Secretary and head
of the GIS for the last two years of Mrs Thatcher's Government.
Earlier press secretaries had sometimes taken little interest
in the weekly meetings of department heads of information and
had in effect delegated co-ordination to the head of the GIS of
their time. As Ingham plainly saw, this was surely a hazardous
attitude for the 1990s. In an era of electronic glut and of a
diverse, curious and disrespectful press (some of it expert in
any given field), Downing Street must be active in managing the
co-ordination of government information day to day, otherwise
it risks losing the initiative and suffering from interdepartmental
squabbles. The institution of a Strategic Communications Unit
and an improved replacement for Cab-E-Net (outlined in the Cabinet
Office report) are logical developments in the process of institutionalisation
and professionalisation going back to 1945. Within the Government,
moreover, they strengthen the hand of Downing Street, at a time
when the Downing Street Secretary is matched by political press
secretaries in other Departments. The longstanding rule that major
Ministerial interviews and media appearances should be cleared
in advance with Downing Street—a more sensitive instance
of co-ordination—sounds odd in an electronic age. Although
it has not always been easy to enforce, it remains in fact as
logical as ever, so long as we have a Cabinet system.
7. Ministerial Back-up for the Press Secretary?
The rule about clearing interviews sounds odd partly because
Ministerial knuckles are rapped, when it is broken, by a bureaucrat
not by a fellow minister. The stronger the case for central co-ordination
of information work by Downing Street, both day to day and strategically,
the weaker the case for leaving this in the hands of an appointed
official. Yet this has almost been the British practice.
Broadly speaking, British Prime Ministers have chosen between
two extremes. One, exemplified by Francis Williams, Bernard Ingham,
and perhaps Joe Haines, is to have a strong secretary capable
of behaving somewhat Ministerially, in the sense that his closeness
to the Prime Minister gives him exceptional authority. At the
other extreme, there has been a Civil Service appointee to do
nuts and bolts, with a Minister taking responsibility for the
political side. Harold Macmillan was the pioneer of the latter
arrangement. Harold Evans survived as press secretary so long
yet so uncontroversially, precisely because Dr Charles Hill (who
was responsible for appointing him) briefed journalists independently
and took control of media strategy and departmental co-ordination.
When Macmillan sacked one third of his Cabinet, including Hill,
in July 1962, Bill Deedes was given the same job, sitting in the
Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. Michael Heseltine had comparable
responsibilities as Deputy Prime Minister in John Major's Administration.
In addition he chaired a daily cabinet committee (EDCP), bringing
together officials from Downing Street, key departments, the party
and the whips' office, to review communication issues.
Prime Ministers who followed neither model were either in
office a comparatively short time (Eden, Douglas-Home, Callaghan)
or else they took the role of Minister of Media Relations themselves—the
most savvy example (in his own view, anyway) being Harold Wilson.
There is a good argument for adopting this strategy. Media relations,
political marketing, public communication—however you choose
to call it—is so central to the process of governing that
a prime minister who does not keep it under fairly close supervision
takes two risks. Either he pays it insufficient attention and
loses the initiative; or else he delegates it to a colleague who
thereby becomes a potential rival or the ally of a rival.
The distinctive feature of the Blair arrangement is the co-existence
of both a strong press secretary, very close to the Prime Minister,
and a co-ordinating minister, Peter Mandelson. This is unprecedented.
Mandelson chairs a similar daily meeting to the one chaired by
Heseltine. The work of all the participants has implications for
government communication. By bringing those people together daily
as a group, the Blair Administration brings those implications
into focus and gives them higher priority. It is difficult to
see any future government working without some similar arrangement.
THE DOWNING
STREET PRESS
OFFICE: THE
BLAIR MODEL
In comparison with its predecessors, and so far as one can
judge from outside, the Blair press office might be characterised
as follows. More than almost any secretary of a first-term Prime
Minister, the press secretary hit the ground running, having established
a close relationship with Mr Blair in opposition. As an ex-Lobby
journalist, Alastair Campbell is unusually well equipped to understand
the needs, strengths and weaknesses of his media clientele; less
so, to appreciate the susceptibilities of civil servants. His
changes to Lobby briefings seem likely further to destabilise
the Lobby system, perhaps with paradoxically regressive consequences.
For a party resuming office after eighteen years, an openly
partisan press secretary makes good sense. It enables him to be
at the heart of the Prime Minister's entourage, to reflect the
fact that the press secretary's job description has always been
a bit fuzzy at the edges, and to contribute to almost any aspect
of the prime minister's work without risk of offending constitutional
niceties. His partisanship helps link Downing Street to the party
organisation more effectively, perhaps, than either party has
been linked before (though I wonder if that will last?). His partisanship
recognises, implicitly, that in a TV age the press secretary cannot
avoid becoming a familiar figure.
Ministerial oversight of media relations is provided by the
Minister without Portfolio and a daily co-ordinating committee.
Structures and procedures are being developed to make communications
work as active as possible throughout Whitehall, under Downing
Street control.
Overall, these arrangements amount to a further stage in
the professionalisation of Downing Street news operations. they
are the logical result of the ever greater intrusion of electronic
media, in particular, into all aspects of the political process.
Everywhere nowadays is potentially a place in or from which the
Prime Minister may communicate publicly. His news operations must
respond to that fact.
Prime Ministers and media do not have identical interests.
Hence relations between them tend not to be in equilibrium for
long. These relations are a product of the periodic reactions
of each side to changes in the other (new parliaments and Prime
Ministers; new media technologies and moguls). The balance of
advantage and satisfaction tips from side to side. Over a period
of time, Prime Ministers come to see themselves as the victims
of irresponsible, ill-intentioned or incompetent media; while
media see themselves bludgeoned and manipulated by cynical news
managers (spin doctors, in current parlance). Memoirs on either
side are full of hand-wringing and carpet-biting.[7]
We are currently in a phase when the balance has tipped strongly
in the Prime Minister's favour. There is no reason to suppose
it will stay there indefinitely. The question, rather, is how
long before it tips back.
April 1998
1
Francis Williams, Nothing So Strange, London: Cassell,
1970, p.215. Back
2
Marcia Williams, Inside Number Ten, London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1972, p. 48. Back
3
Quoted in The Guardian, April 4 1998. Back
4
Bernard Ingham, Kill the Messenger, London: HarperCollins,
1991, pp. 203-4. Back
5
The new briefer was the rudimentary Downing Street press secretary,
George Steward, who went to Number 10 from the Treasury during
the 1931 financial crisis, to help Ramsay MacDonald, and stayed
on for about ten years. Back
6
Heath held three stagey conferences in 1973, in the grand surroundings
of Lancaster House. The lobby disliked being props for the TV
cameras and having their penetrating questions answered on camera. Back
7
A journalistic survey of prime ministers' relations with newspapers
up to the late 1970s was subtitled "The War between Fleet
Street and Downing Street". James Margach, The Abuse of
Power, London: W H Allen, 1978. For prime ministers and television,
see, for example, Michael Cockerell, Live from Number Ten,
London: Faber and Faber 1988. Back
|
