All wrong. After interminable speculation, McCartan announced that he was going to work for Robin Cook, Leader of the House, as his personal spin-doctor. His salary – a reputed £70,000. But why would he want to go and work for the Government? Why should any red-blooded hack want to work for any Government, when journalism is so much fun? Moreover, why should New Labour, whose ambassadors (many of them ex-newspapers and ex-BBC) are so scathing about journalists, particularly political journalists, be in such an expensive hurry to hire them?

Tony Blair’s two administrations have signed up more Fleet Street and electronic media journalists than any previous Governments. There have always been journalists in Government, particularly Labour Governments. Joe Haines of the Daily Mirror was Harold Wilson’s press secretary, and Gerald Kaufman also worked in Number 10. Geoffrey Goodman, the Mirror’s industrial editor (and editor of the BJR), did a two-year stint as head of the Counter Inflation Unit in Downing Street. Keith McDowall of the Daily Mail was media minder for Willie Whitelaw, Michael Foot and a range of other Labour Ministers and Sir Bernard Ingham of the Guardian became a living legend as Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary.

They were nonetheless very much the exception. By contrast, Blair’s government is stuffed with journalists. In Downing Street there are Alastair Campbell (Mirror), Phil Bassett (Times and Financial Times), David Bradshaw (Mirror), Andrew Adonis (The Observer) and Fiona Millar (Express). Lance Price (BBC) has just left, to open a bar, a more traditional route out of the trade. At the Foreign Office, John Williams (Mirror) rules the media roost, aided by David Shaw (Evening Standard). Sheree Dodd of the Mirror is senior spinner at the Department for Work and Pensions, having previously been Mo Mowlam’s spin doctor at the Northern Ireland Office. Peter Hooley (Express) is senior press officer at Defra, the food and animals department, and Sian Jarvis (GMTV) is director of communications at the Department of Health. Peter McMahon (Mirror, Scotsman) holds First Minister Henry McLeish’s hand at the Scottish Office. It is only to be expected that the Mirror Group, with its strong Labour bias, would be well-represented. But no newspaper is safe. Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, has just hired Chris Boffey, news editor at the Sunday Telegraph but also ex-Daily Star, as her special adviser. This list is long, but not exclusive. Others, like Phil Murphy of the Yorkshire Post, have moved on after sampling life on the inside track.

Emerging

It seems that New Labour politicians cannot get by without the expertise of journalists, or think they cannot, which amounts to the same thing. And at a time when salaries at Westminster are in many cases static, or falling, except for “stars” able to command the big money, ministers are prepared to pay serious beer tokens. Seventy thousand is the going rate for a number one media manager, but the range goes up to £100,000. Very few lobby correspondents earn that kind of money. Some are on less than £30,000. So the offer can be very tempting, especially to experienced journalists who know that the present regime of newspaper accountants dislike older employees because they cost more.

In the beginning, of course, it was about believing. Alastair Campbell gave up the trade because he believes in the New Labour mission. That was also true for Phil Bassett, Phil Murphy and John Williams. They went to work for the Government because they were personally committed to its objectives. In that sense it could be argued that they were following their true vocation, and both readers and public life gained, for very different reasons. But increasingly this process is a straight buy-up, as if ministers were football club managers with a bottomless pit of money to hire the best players. It would be interesting to discover exactly how much the taxpayer has been mulcted for this expertise. Perhaps a curious MP will table a question.

Career civil servants watch this predatory raid on the private sector with a mixture of amusement and alarm. They are schooled in a different environment, even though they have essentially the same objectives as the new brigade: to inform the public via the media and to protect their ministers. However, the arrival of so many poachers turned gamekeeper has upset the traditional balance in Whitehall. It also coincides with the New Labour trend. Ministers are more interested in promotion than protection. They are obsessed with headlines, convinced that political careers are made or unmade by media profile. So perhaps it is worth paying talented Chris Boffey a news editor’s £90,000 salary, or more, to maintain Cabinet ranking.

The appeal for journalists is more elusive. By and large, we are knockers and negativists, not least because good news doesn’t sell newspapers. It requires an inordinate effort of will to change sides, and here I should declare an interest, or lack of one. I would be incapable of jumping over the counter, though that is superfluous because they would never ask. Those now on the inside do not like to talk about their work. For one thing, they have to sign the Official Secrets Act. They also dislike the taunts of “collaborator” or “politicians-manqués” that recidivists like me throw at them from time to time. But occasionally, some snippets emerge from behind the Chinese walls. Phil Bassett has privately said he sees more secrets cross his desk in one day in Number 10 than he ever saw in a long newspaper career. Fair enough, if that’s your bag. However, isn’t the gut desire to communicate secrets what makes a good journalist, not the miser’s pleasure in hoarding them? That primal urge is surely inconsistent with the image-driven nature of New Labour’s media strategy.

Like the bigger project of which it is a part, the experiment of wholesale hiring of journalists to sell the Government has yet to prove its worth. Some of the big hitters in Government do not need an ex-Fleet Street mouthpiece, Gordon Brown being the most obvious. Famously, he did have Charlie Whelan, but he went into the media rather than coming from it. Brown also has Ed Balls (ex-Financial Times) as his economics adviser, but Balls plays very much a backroom role, only rarely placing stories. At Defence, Geoff Hoon is restricted by the tradition of serving officers working in the media department, yet he finds no difficulty in getting a hearing. Whereas Alistair Darling, at Work and Pensions, gets poor coverage despite his bevy of journalistic talent. In Scotland, Henry McLeish is regularly under the hammer because of, rather than despite, his choice of a Mirror journalist as personal spin-doctor. The notoriously-awkward Scottish press (Blair dismissed them as “unreconstructed wankers”) took agin Peter McMahon, and made him the story, not his boss – a recipe for political disaster.

Overrated

What, also, of the “re-entry problem?” Editors are rightly sceptical of journalists who go off to work for politicians, of whatever stripe, and are reluctant to offer a safe berth if the venture goes wrong. So those who leave the mainstream of the trade for the well-paid delights of Whitehall usually find there is no way back. Martin Sixsmith of the BBC, who was among the first to go into government, did not last long and disappeared into corporate public relations. Others find a niche in the burgeoning lobby industry. It may pay, but journalism it ain’t.

By the next election, the picture will be clearer. Some of those who now flock to take the New Labour shilling will have moved on. Some will be mandarins, with a different cast of mind. Not many will be writing or broadcasting. This slightly tawdry chapter in the development of journalism could be coming to an end, as journalists rediscover that direct entry – being elected an MP – is the only honest route to political influence.

Four fine examples grace the new Parliament : Paul Farrelly, who gave up the City editorship of the Observer and Sion Simon (News of the World and Telegraph (both Labour) and Paul Goodman, ex-Telegraph and Boris Johnson, still editing the Spectator and scribbling for the Telegraph (both Conservative). That tradition is immensely older than New Labour’s self-serving love affair with journalism. It also has a better track record of working.