Anonymous “ministers”, “aides” and “advisers” began branding the veteran welfare-reformer “a joke” and his reforms “embarrassing”. One minister went so far as to say: “Frank has been childish and pathetic. He does not belong in the Government, perhaps not even in politics.” Someone else leaked the “news” that Blair would not “go out on a limb” to save Field if there were moves to deselect him in his Birkenhead constituency. Field responded by writing a detailed memoir of his time in office and letting Blair’s circle know that he did not intend it for publication yet – unless they continued spinning.By this point the range of techniques deployed against those who incurred the displeasure of the people’s Prime Minister was beginning to show a pattern. Those without any official role would find that the invitations to No 10 suddenly stopped.

Civil servants would find themselves excluded from meetings or discover that special advisers were conducting a “review of the department” which left them with no role. Unmalleable journalists began to find themselves abused and shouted at, as well as being starved of the access which was granted to friendly political correspondents.Out-of-favour ministers would find large numbers of tricky projects piled upon their desk – “They dumped everything on me,” one ex-minister told me, “to see whether it exploded.” Access to the Prime Minister became more difficult; the former Cabinet Office minister Peter Kilfoyle, who had once been quite close to Blair, suddenly found that his way to the PM was barred by the powerful gatekeepers at No 10. Then the spin doctors began to whisper that Kilfoyle had been spending too long in the bars.This whispering has now become a routine weapon At the heart of this are the special advisers. Under New Labour the number of such advisers has burgeoned, greatly increasing the number of people with motives to spin to the media. Special advisers attach themselves to a minister; if he or she moves to a new department, so do they; their sole aim in life is to promote the interests of their minister, often at the expense of other ministers Thus they have no notion of collective responsibility. “They know that their job goes down the plughole if their minister goes.

This builds instability into the system,” says the BBC’s Nick Jones, one of the least tractable of political correspondents, who was routinely reviled by New Labour’s spin doctors evenbefore the publication of his book Sultans of Spin. “They know how to trickle out such stuff, just enough, without leaving any fingerprints. And they put the boot in in a way which takes the breath away.”Gossip is the currency of their conversation with political reporters. They prime columnists withself-serving half-truths and analysis over snatched, alcohol-free lunches: “Such-and such a minister won’t be briefed… So-and-so needs to be briefed10 times on times on the simplest of matters.. Another doesn’t have a grasp of detail.. doesn’t have the brains…

is in bad odour with Tony…”Because the process is unattributable the worth of the coinage which is conveyed is always difficult to assay But that too can be turned to advantage. For it means that the sophisticated spin doctors of Downing Street can use this channel to fire warning shots across the bows of ministers who are felt to be, in one favourite phrase, “getting above themselves”. That has happened, among others, to Clare Short, Margaret Beckett, Derry Irvine and, most spectacularly, Mo Mowlam.Talk to Blair loyalists about all this and they shrug their shoulders “It’s politics,” one said to me “It’s a dirty business. It always is.” Yet New Labour’s internal dirty tricks department operates on a scale which is far wider than in other political regimes. William Hague’s ruthless dispatch of Peter Lilley and John Redwood looks restrained by comparison Even Thatcher was not in Blair’s league. There is something more savage, darker and far more extensive about the New Labour culture of bullying than in the Thatcher years.