http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk:80/dt?ac=005647884551470&rtmo=gGNwbSfu&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/01/10/14/do01.html
Jo Moore was only following orders

By Charlie Whelan

News: Byers sticks to the script while fury mounts

THE Prime Minister may carry a copy of the Bible in one pocket and the Koran in the other, but his conscience doesn't stretch to sacking a spin doctor who has behaved in a way which - even by New Labour's devious standards - is sickening. Twelve days ago in Brighton, Tony Blair was
preaching to the world and promising to save it from the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Centre. But last week he was not even prepared to sack Jo Moore, the special adviser to Stephen Byers, who not only thought it proper to exploit the tragedy in America to "bury" stories which might damage the Government, but was crass enough to commit the suggestion to an e-mail.

The depressing thing is that, as nasty as the hypocrisy is, it is no longer surprising. So ingrained has their cynicism about the New Labour spin machine become that none of the Tory press spokesmen I met at their conference in Blackpool last week seemed remotely shocked that a Cabinet minister's adviser should seek to use such a tragic event to
divert attention from a few little local difficulties. Neither, frankly, was I, as
a former practitioner of the black arts of spin.

This sort of ploy has been used for years. The problem is that New Labour has become too proficient at these black arts for their - and our - own good. Alastair Campbell realises this, which is why he no longer spins so openly. Even before I left the Government in 1999, Mr Campbell told me how worried he was that spinning had got out of control. But the methods he masterminded are still used throughout the
Government, and the manipulativeness involved remains boundless.

To take a mundane example: every departmental Press Office knows that there are good and bad days to release a story potentially damaging to the Government. A favourite time is late on a Friday afternoon. Early deadlines demanded by the printing of extra sections in the Saturday papers leave little time to investigate a story. It also means that the
influential Sunday papers may not cover it in great detail because it is no longer exclusive. Hey presto - the "bad news" story withers and dies.
The other task is to make sure that good news doesn't - to use Jo Moore's toe-curling phrase - get "buried". During the football tournament, Euro '96, we Labour spinners had to ensure that any announcements we were releasing did not clash with the England matches which were dominating the front pages.

To understand how compulsive and amoral this news management has become, you only have to look at what happened when the details of Jo Moore's behaviour leaked last week. Her error, in itself, became a "bad news" story to be "buried" - and there is no doubt in my mind that this is precisely what Mr Campbell and his cohorts set about doing.

True, the Afghan war was already a help in reducing the coverage of what might in other circumstances have been a very serious scandal. But the bombing raids were not quite enough to guarantee that the Jo Moore story would be kicked off the front pages. I know from personal experience that a good row with the BBC is always a safe bet - and so it
proved last week. The Sun's front page headline on Wednesday was not, as you might have expected, "Sack Jo Moore" but, out of the blue, "Sack Kate Adie". Poor Kate didn't know what she had done, and the truth is that she hadn't done very much. In telling BBC Breakfast viewers that the Prime Minister was on his way to Oman, she had revealed something that any one drinking with Westminster hacks would have known - hardly an earth-shattering security breach.

But Number 10 saw its chance and seized it. Political journalists were briefed that there had been an official complaint to the BBC that the Prime Minister's life had been put at risk. Funny that Mr Blair's advisers hadn't complained when another Sun journalist had let slip to his four
million readers the week before that the Prime Minister was going to Pakistan, much riskier than Oman, as it happens.

But the nub of the matter is this: that Jo Moore is still in her job suggests that the Prime Minister does not disapprove of what she did, however politically embarrassing he may have found its disclosure. Mr Blair's preoccupation with image is well known but, as someone who has seen it close at hand, I have to say that the all-consuming intensity of this
pre-occupation has not been fully appreciated. I spent more than three years before the 1997 election working round the clock with Gordon Brown to make the Labour Party electable. I admit that I made mistakes but no one would accuse me of being anything other than 100 per cent loyal to the then Shadow Chancellor. Perhaps because of this, Mr Blair wanted me out. Hence, on the very evening of Labour's first election
victory in 23 years, the new Prime Minister was on the telephone to Mr Brown not praising him, or discussing the new Cabinet, but demanding that I, a mere spin doctor, be sacked. Even at Number 10 the next day, Mr Blair spent more time calling for my head than he did discussing the
imminent granting of independence to the Bank of England.

This tells you what the Prime Minister's real priority is: presentation, presentation, presentation. He was more worried that I would be a liability - or a threat - as a spin doctor than about the economy. And his fixation with presentation hasn't changed. Mr Blair acts like a general - or a padre
- but he thinks like a spin doctor.

Last week, he pushed Iain Duncan Smith's first conference speech as Tory Party leader off the front pages - admittedly it didn't need much of a push - with a cunningly-timed photo-opportunity of himself meeting the troops in Oman.

Given all this, is it any wonder that Jo Moore, a loyal New Labour foot soldier, thought that her job was to get the best possible press for the Government by any means - including the shameless exploitation of an unprecedented terrorist atrocity? Even if the Prime Minister does eventually sack this adviser, the episode has already revealed more
about him than about her.