Truth about No 10, Black Rod and me

Tony Blair has always claimed that he wants to "modernise" Britain. It would be more accurate to say that he wants to postmodernise it. The central insight of Blair's New Labour is the central insight of postmodernism: perception and reality are identical.

For postmodern philosophers, this insight leads them to challenge the existence of a verifiable, objective world. This has taken them down the route of boring but on the whole harmless discussions about the nature of language. For New Labour there has been a parallel consequence: the rise of the spin doctor, a phrase that became common currency in the early 1990s, just as New Labour was being invented.

A spin doctor can be distinguished from the old-fashioned press officer, in the same way that postmodernism can be distinguished from the now neglected Anglo-Saxon empirical tradition. Press officers believed in giving accurate answers to questions. They admittedly tended to be rather idle, unimportant, useless and drunken. But they did not make things up.

A spin doctor is another kettle of fish. His or her job is to manipulate, lie, cheat, smear and "create the truth", to use the interesting phrase once applied by Peter Mandelson to news management. The ultimate objective is to create an overriding political "narrative" - the New Labour vogue word meaning " fiction" that has been accepted without demur by the media/political class. The most striking of New Labour's numerous constitutional innovations has been the promotion of the press officer from a peripheral part to utterly central status, with a privileged role in policy-making. It is symptomatic that from the very start Tony Blair's key confidant and aide in government has been Alastair Campbell: commander-in-chief of the Labour spin doctors.

To outward appearances, postmodern philosophers and spin doctors have little in common: one resides on university campuses while the other scuttles round Westminster seeking damaging material about political opponents. But they share the fundamental belief that truth and falsehood are at best malleable commodities, fit to be traded or converted by a mysterious alchemy from one to the other. A central perception shared by New Labour and the dead but still fashionable French post-structuralist historian Michel Foucault is that truth is a function of power, and that obtaining a monopoly of the truth is an important first step to victory in political debate.

Almost every day comes fresh evidence of this novel and corrosive doctrine. Last week the environmental group Friends of the Earth noted that New Labour had broken the firm promise it made exactly five years ago to reduce the number of cars on the road. Government spin doctors responded by denying that the promise had ever been made. Then The Independent newspaper revealed how civil servants have been told to compile dossiers on MPs in order to assess their motives before answering parliamentary questions.

But the most gripping study in New Labour deceit was beyond doubt the curious case of Tony Blair, the Queen Mother's lying-instate, and General Sir Michael Willcocks, KCB, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. It is a story of how Downing Street attempted to rewrite history and create a generally accepted version of events which, while false, was convenient. It was a ploy that came perilously close to success.

Two months ago The Spectator reported that Downing Street had sought a greater role than originally envisaged at the lying-in-state. I was then asked by the Evening Standard to write a second piece in response to Downing Street's denials of the story. The report was true. But, in the words used by Alastair Campbell in his submission to the Press Complaints Commission, it was "very damaging". It therefore had to be written out of history.

The pattern of events that followed was only to be expected. Threats and intimidation were used. The Spectator was denounced by Downing Street for peddling "a lie and malicious gossip that was being written as fact". This smear can still be inspected on the Downing Street website. The papers involved, became the victim of what has every appearance of being a Downing Street-inspired smear campaign.

The instrument used was Roy Greenslade of the Guardian, who gets his marching songs from Alastair Campbell. In a vicious article which can still be read on the Guardian Unlimited website, he accused me of a "gross distortion of journalistic ethics" and damningly announced that I was finished as a journalist.

Downing Street was utterly confident of victory - something that always puzzled us because we knew our story to be true. In one of those dramatic coincidences which a novelist might be chary of inventing, two days after the complaint formally arrived all of those involved - the PCC directors, the journalists and editors, and a group from Downing Street - assembled at Windsor Castle for the Queen's media reception. "We'll win - you'll see," spat Campbell. New Labour has always had as a medium-term objective the creation of a tame Press, schooled to report events within parameters set by No 10, very much along the lines of the White House West Wing. Downing Street saw victory over The Spectator, The Mail on Sunday and the Evening Standard as an important stepping-stone towards the creation of a "new settlement" with the Press. And Campbell would indeed have won, truth would have been written up as falsehood, and we would for ever have been branded as liars, but for one extraordinary and unforeseen development.

This was the intervention of Black Rod. I should say at this point that I have never met or talked to Black Rod or, so far as I am aware, any members of his office.

There are signs that Greenslade is beginning to sniff round Black Rod. Greenslade is already hinting that he was the source of our story; he wasn't.

But once the PCC complaint landed, Black Rod behaved in a way that many might be excused for thinking had gone out of fashion in public life: he insisted on telling the truth.

It can only be assumed that Downing Street was banking on being able to suppress or nobble Black Rod, as so many other men and women have been nobbled in the past five years. For him it would have been the easier route: to have stood behind the Downing Street account of events and to have allowed truth to be damned as lies. But Black Rod declined to adopt this course of action. Instead he produced a long, detailed and scrupulously documented memorandum that revealed the full details of how Downing Street tried to establish a bigger role for the Prime Minister. I am told that he showed it to members of his office to make sure they felt his account was fair. He then submitted it in draft form to the PCC, though making it quite clear that he would not change it in any way.

The document did not merely prove that our story was true; it went very much further. It contained a number of highly embarrassing revelations. It showed that, if anything, The Spectator and The Mail on Sunday had understated the amount of pressure applied by Downing Street. One person aware of the contents of this killer memo describes it as "dynamite".

The memo was certainly seen by the PCC - though the commission persisted in denying to the editors involved that any evidence had been received. Its contents were, at the very least, communicated to Downing Street, for, from the moment of Black Rod's submission, everything changed. Downing Street suddenly knew that it faced a choice between the story coming out, though in a far more Technicolor and dramatic way than anyone had, up to that stage, realised, or beating a hasty retreat.

What followed was perhaps the most squalid period of this discreditable episode, as Downing Street manoeuvred to get out of trouble. It was aided by the PCC, which found itself in a difficult situation. It now knew that the only adjudication possible was against No 10. But it also knew that this was impossible. After all, its reason for existence is to sort out rows between Fleet Street and No 10, and over its head has always stood the implicit threat of statutory regulation. The PCC went to extraordinary lengths to get a deal. There was talk of making Black Rod's evidence inadmissible. But all the publications stood firm. In the end, Downing Street had no choice but to withdraw.

Downing Street and the PCC, for their different reasons, were eager to make sure that this was not how the outcome was presented. They seem to have resolved on an exchange of letters which gave almost as tendentious an account of events as Downing Street's original complaint.

First, the PCC asserted that "it seems that none of the three publications concerned has produced evidence in their defence that the Prime Minister himself was in any way involved ..." This was not surprising because none of the papers had claimed that he was. All agreed that officials acting on behalf of Tony Blair had exerted the pressure. Second, the PCC wrote that "the PCC will never be in a position to ascertain the facts and this issue will remain a matter largely of interpretation".

This was disingenuous because it passed over the fact that Black Rod's very powerful testimony would have been produced had Downing Street pressed its case. Third, the PCC said that the matter had been "resolved". So it had been: but only between the PCC and No 10. None of the three papers was consulted about the settlement.

This account of events was enough for Downing Street to claim victory, or at the very least a score draw. That was how matters were presented when the settlement was leaked on Tuesday. And it might have held up but for the fact that, late that evening, a rare statement was issued from the House of Lords: "Black Rod discussed the request with the PCC, but in the event No 10 withdrew the complaint and therefore, as far as Black Rod is concerned, the matter is now closed."

According to the BBC, private briefing that accompanied this statement suggested that Black Rod's testimony, had it seen the light of day, would have been "unfavourable". By close of play on Tuesday night, Downing Street's second attempt to suppress the truth was in tatters. Meanwhile, that killer memo lurks in a safe somewhere: Downing Street must be praying that it never sees the light of day.

It is not known what, if anything, General Sir Michael Willcocks, KCB, thinks of postmodernism. But his behaviour recalls that of Doctor Johnson's, who, when confronted by Bishop Berkeley's argument for the non-existence of matter, strode over to a large stone and, so Boswell tells us, "kicked it till he rebounded from it", declaring: "I refute it thus."