Big day for bad news

Last Thursday we had six or more stories — most of them government announcements — that would all have made front-page leads for the national press.

You might have thought editors all over the country would be in clover. They were not. In fact, steam was rising from most news desks by the end of Thursday afternoon, as yet another blockbuster had to be stuck out of sight on page six.

It doesn’t take much to figure out what was the biggest of the big stories. Tony Blair being interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives over the cash for honours affair made him the first British prime minister to be questioned over a criminal matter while in office.

How many newspapers and news bulletins ran this as their lead? Fewer than half.

The rest were split between the Stevens report on the death of Diana; the ending of the investigation into arms sales to Saudi Arabia; the closure of thousands of post offices; the announcement of a massive expansion of Britain’s airports; and the serial killer in East Anglia.

All in all, a pretty good result for Downing Street, who must have been fearing the worst. But how exactly did the No 10 spinners pull it off? Based on inside knowledge, it probably went like this.

Scotland Yard told Blair they wanted a word with him weeks ago, but the PM said he was a busy man and handed the matter over to the spin doctors. The first thing they rely on is their world-class expertise in forward planning.

I have little doubt that Dave Hill and his pals in the press office had noticed that the Diana report was due on Thursday. Call me a cynic, but I think they might have figured that made it a good day to have the police in.

Having fixed the date, there would then have been a round-robin to all departments asking for big announcements that could be made on the same day.

Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, was the first to respond with the airports white paper, closely followed by Lord Goldsmith’s offer to exculpate British arms dealers and Saudi princes “in the public interestâ€. And then came Alistair Darling’s offer to announce post office closures. The serial killer was a bonus.

Then, just after Inspector Slipper had been and gone, and with the media inundated by all the other stories, Downing Street sidled up to the press corps with a little cough and a “By the way, did you know . . .â€

I couldn’t help admiring the audacity of it all. No wonder Blair was smiling when he emerged from having his collar felt.

New Labour have been trying to reform their spinning ways since Alastair Campbell left. But it’s hard to give up a 40-fibs-a-day habit, and all the old tricks have crept back in.

There was one other story: revelations by a senior British government negotiator that Downing Street knew all along that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction, but decided to invade anyway.

Two-nil and a big round of applause to the spin doctors.