How spin has gone sour for Tony Blair

The Prime Minister's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, has been defending the honour of " professional career civil servants whose loyalty is to the government of the day, whatever their political persuasion". They will be touched by this tribute, given that mutual respect has not been in huge supply between the Government and senior officials of late.

But civil service impartiality was suddenly of vital importance to Mr Campbell because it was the crux of his complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about claims in this and other newspapers that a Downing Street civil servant had tried to secure the Prime Minister a higher profile at the Queen Mother's funeral. Mr Campbell said the matter was now "resolved", a crafty spinword. Whether one believes that Mr Blair's office did or did not seek a more glorious role for him, it is not the case that the matter was resolved. Downing Street has simply said that it isn't pursuing it any more. Dropping a complaint is not the same as a resolution.

It is striking how negative spin has become. It's certainly not what it used to be, as connoisseurs of the early spin days can tell you - an extravagant Mr Toad boast of impossible things achieved or on the horizon. Now it has become a cover-up, an excuse, a place to hide. Jo Moore's 11 September e-mail was the turning point. Ms Moore was rather hard-nosed, but she was not a freak. Her furtive watchfulness is shared by many others who remain in similar positions. Civil servants at the Department of Work and Pensions are instructed to investigate the background of MPs posing questions. "What might be the reason for this question? Are they friendly?" It's the sort of advice the Government used to give in wartime on how to spot an undercover German spy in the works canteen.

Alistair Darling, who was in charge at Work and Pensions when the advice to vet parliamentary questioners was issued, is now committed to ending the spinculture at the Department of Transport. I trust that he will publicly tear up his own former guidelines as a sign of contrition.

This can't go on. The upcoming civil service reform bill must properly address the ambiguities on how far officials are to become entangled in spin-games. It is absurd for Mr Campbell to be praising the impartiality of officials when it suits him, while another Government department is demanding that they behave like political hacks, sussing out the motives of questioners. When, in the run-up to the 1997 election, spin became an identifiable part of the Blairite insurgency, it was a political soft drug, whose use was intended to make Labour reality a little rosier and warmer than it really was. It was not entirely harmless, but neither was it the ravening, destructive monster we see today. New Labour and spin are historically intertwined - which is why they find it so very hard to break free. Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson had fought their bitter, fruitless battles with the media at Neil Kinnock's side. When the more balanced and appealing Mr Blair came along, they decided that their weapon of choice should be the headline. Small achievements duly became major breakthroughs, modest advances were retailed as great triumphs.

At this stage, I confess to having been rather spin-tolerant in a Brian Paddick sort of way - as long as they weren't too blatant about it. The damage really began when the Government began to fail at things and the habit became a dependency. What does Mr Blair make of all of this?

He has, in the past year, seen almost every advance the Government has made undermined by a continuing, debilitating row about distortion. Spin, to adapt Herbert Morrison, is what Labour governments do.

In these fevered circumstances, judgment falters. I take the unfashionable view that the request to find out whether there was any party political motivation behind the Paddington rail survivors was entirely justified. It is not true, as Pam Warren claims, that the Government was "out to get ... little me". The e-mail request was for information on her successors at the head of the group, one of whom did indeed turn out to be a former Conservative party agent with a history as a doughty campaigner.

Remember that Labour was disgraced in the 1992 election campaign by its manipulation of Jennifer's Ear, the election campaign stunt in which a little girl's story of inadequate treatment by the NHS was used to embarrass the Conservatives - until it emerged that Jennifer's family were Labour activists.

That is not to say that the NHS wasn't in a bad state under the Conservatives: it was. It didn't mean that Jennifer didn't suffer unnecessarily: she did. But where some campaigners have party political allegiances it is absolutely fair and right that we should all know about them.

A Governing party that had not hoist itself so painfully and repeatedly on its own manipulations would have been able to say this and get a hearing. But on this subject, Labour feels so bruised that it cannot win a fight.

So even Mr Campbell has discovered that the relevant email was "ill judged and offensive", which is a bit like a predatory jungle beast conceding that it would be nicer to be a herbivore after all. The Prime Minister's most important adviser is now under heavy fire from his own side. When Clare Short blames spin for undermining the Government's real achievements, she is really opening the second front of her campaign against the "people who live in the dark". Back then, she was told to pipe down. This time it's the dark-dwellers who look worried.

The odd, sad thing about New Labour's application of spin is that it has come to mean the exact opposite of what it set out to do. To adapt Baroness Thatcher - and St Francis - where it was intended to persuade, it has sown doubt. Where it supposed to promote harmony it has caused discord and where there was supposed to be faith, there is now a stubborn wall of doubt. No wonder they want it all to stop. If only they knew how.