This is war between Press and the PM

To many people, the Black Rod affair is both arcane and possibly trivial. The details are baffling. But it should be seen as a defining moment in the relationship between Press and Government. When the allegation first surfaced that the Prime Minister had sought to "muscle in" on the Queen Mother's lying-in-state ceremony, I made enquiries which persuaded me that Tony Blair did no such thing. Nor did anyone do so on his behalf. They made calls, but making enquiries does not constitute an attempt to influence events.

Nothing has happened since to convince me otherwise. The fact that Blair withdrew his complaints to the Press Complaints Commission against The Spectator, the Mail on Sunday and this newspaper for running the story has not changed my mind.

Hyperbolic claims that Number 10 was "foiled" by a "killer memorandum" written by Black Rod, Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Willcocks, do not disturb my sleep. It will still amount to his interpretation of the caller's motives rather than a verbatim account of what was said.

But we are already running deep into the quagmire of claim and counter-claim, delving into those devilish details that obscure rather than enlighten. I have no doubt I could trade punches with the writers who made the original allegations - The Spectator's Peter Oborne and the Mail on Sunday's Simon Walters - for longer than it took Lennox Lewis to dispose of Mike Tyson.

I fear, even from the earliest rounds, it would be very hard on readers to follow the fight, even in a slow-motion replay. I would introduce them to Clare Sumner, the Prime Minister's private secretary who made calls to Black Rod's office to check on the protocol for her boss at the ceremony.

I would point out that she is a career civil servant with those qualities which command respect, such as impartiality, honesty and diligence. Having served the previous Tory government, she is not a Labour Party apparatchik.

She was merely doing her job and is certain that nothing she said to Black Rod implied that Blair wanted to enhance his role. Do the two journalists really believe that this public servant acted as the supine creature of Number 10? Oborne and Walters would counter by asserting that General Willcocks himself has an impeccable track record as a fine, upstanding soldier. He is as certain that Blair's officials were up to no good as they are that they weren't.

They would follow up by claiming that my criticisms of their work stem from the fact that I am a willing mouthpiece for Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell.

I would hit back by conceding that, though I am a friend of Campbell's, I don't act on his behalf. He is a source, like many others, and I would be foolish not to take advantage of that.

I don't talk to him as regularly as some people think but, when I do, I believe he tells me the truth. I often disagree with him and with the Government. I haven't had one kind word to say about its policy in Ireland. I lambasted the Labour Party a couple of weeks ago for accepting money from Daily Express owner Richard Desmond and singled out Campbell for rebuke. I lampooned the party's daft attempt to set up a Daily Mail media monitor.

So it would proceed, blow by blow, round by round, with none of us prepared to give quarter. Therefore, I spare you from yet another deconstructionof the saga. Instead, I want you to consider a central matter of substance on which Oborne, Walters, their various editors and I can agree: the Black Rod affair, regardless of the minutiae of who said what to whom, does matter.

They would like us to believe that it confirms, according to Oborne's radio broadcast yesterday, that Blair is leading a totalitarian Government which bends the truth with impunity. Most importantly, they have also seized on it as a way of casting aspersions on both Campbell's character and on his methods in order to dislodge him from his post.

I see the whole business from a very different perspective. It confirms that certain newspapers are willing to do anything they can, including the use of half-truth and distortion, to bring the Prime Minister into disrepute.

Though they attack the Government with increasing intensity for its attempt to manage the news, the socalled use of spin, it is papers that are this country's greatest spin machines.

This is the great paradox: by accusing the Government of spin day after day, the true purveyors of spin conceal the reality of their own spinning from their readers. The Black Rod story is a classic example of how the process works.

Oborne and Walters received information from a source - or, just possibly, sources - who suggested that Blair was trying to promote himself at the lying-in-state.

They are experienced correspondents who immediately seized on the opportunity to embarrass the Prime Minister. They had a story but, instead of choosing to write it straightforwardly - as a misunderstanding, perhaps, or as one person's interpretation of a conversation - they chose to angle it sharply against Blair.

There is a big difference between a story and the truth, the crucial factor which has been badly obscured throughout this dispute. They realised they could spin the allegations so convincingly that their stories could be confidently headlined to imply that Blair had definitely tried to win a larger role.

Now we should note the journals these men work for. Oborne is political editor of The Spectator, which is edited by a Tory MP, Boris Johnson, who wishes, quite naturally, to bring down the Labour Government.

Walters is political editor at the Mail on Sunday (a sister paper to the Evening Standard) which has long campaigned against New Labour and all its works. The PCC had previously found against the paper in a story relating to Blair's daughter, a ruling which upset editor Peter Wright.

In other words, these papers have an agenda, against the Government and against Blair. They are not neutral. They wish to destabilise Blair, and this affair is but one battle in a war between Press and Prime Minister which has reached a new intensity of late.

The unexpected Black Rod bonus for these papers is the harsh spotlight it has thrown on Campbell. Even former Labour luminaries such as Roy Hattersley and Tam Dalyell - accepting, as so often, and so sadly, the Press's spin - are calling on Campbell to go.

The sharks smell blood and now believe they have Campbell at their mercy.

That would drastically undermine Blair and be a travesty. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

?Roy Greenslade is media commentator for The Guardian.