No 10: more cuddly, less in control?

Asked to define the new characteristics David Hill has brought to the post of Downing Street's director of communications, political correspondents resort to a simple device. They explain what his predecessor, Alastair Campbell, did wrong. "David does not lie to you as easily as Alastair did," says one.

A veteran of the parliamentary lobby says: "Alastair liked being recognised - it appealed to his vanity." Another source tells a story to illustrate that claim. A few weeks after resigning, Campbell met a female member of the Downing Street team for coffee in a London park. She had recently given birth and had brought her baby with her. After a few moments, she noticed a group of women standing nearby and smiling, nervously, in her direction. Campbell said, "I'm sorry. This happens all the time." The source says: "His assumption was that they recognised him. In fact, they hadn't got a clue who he was. They were admiring the baby."

The consensus is that Campbell had allowed his vanity to overrule his judgment. One correspondent says: "He went mad and became too obsessed. He was distracted. He did not see things clearly." Another adds: "Alastair is an obsessional character. He can start a fight in an empty room. Everything has calmed down a lot. The Government may be having a hard time over tuition fees and Iraq, but the entire genre of spin stories has stopped."

It is flattery by omission. Hill is complimented simply for not being Campbell. One lobby journalist says: "I think of David as the reliable elder brother. Alastair was the brilliant younger brother."

Hill's job was designed in response to the findings of Bob Phillis, chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, who was commissioned to provide objective scrutiny of Downing Street's communication structure. In interim findings published last September, Phillis observed that there had been a "three-way breakdown in trust" between media, politicians and public.

Phillis recommended that Campbell's empire be broken up. A Civil Service permanent secretary would take over the management of government information- service staff. Another civil servant would act as the Prime Minister's official press spokesman. Campbell's replacement would have a remit limited to providing "the political perspective on behalf of the Prime Minister", and assisting "cabinet ministers with the political context for departmental communications".

Sir Bernard Ingham is scathing about the arrangement. "Hill occupies an idiotic position. You can only have one spokesman at No 10, either a civil servant or a party-political spokesman." And Lady Thatcher's former press secretary insists that it is already clear that the new system does not work. "The evidence on tuition fees is that they are utterly incompetent. We still do not know what the details of the policy are."

Others agree that the Prime Minister's response to Phillis, and the simultaneous pressure brought to bear by the Hutton Inquiry, was tactical not strategic. And they concur that it has not been entirely effective. "Blunkett sounding off would not have happened under Alastair," says one lobby veteran. "It is anarchic now. Government departments have become less frightened of Downing Street."

Several sources cite the example of the controversy over Tony Blair's refusal to appoint Gordon Brown to a seat on Labour's national executive committee. They are adamant that Campbell would have seized the chance to brief against his boss's rival. One says: "David just decided not to have a daily lobby. He is much more likely to say that he does not know anything about a subject. Alastair worried about every minimal detail. Now, there is much less strategic vision."

Ingham believes that the problem is deep-seated and potentially fatal. "Blair is in terminal decline. We've seen the best of him. When Campbell went, Blair was on his way down. He is now manifestly on his way down. Whether this is the coup de grâce is up to Lord Hutton. We are going to learn a lot about the independence of the judiciary." With that challenge facing No 10, he says, "I don't think they are in a very robust state. They haven't learnt the lesson that you can't behave in government as you did in opposition".

There is affection for David Hill among lobby correspondents. He is admired for staying polite and cool under pressure, and for eschewing the habit of cultivating favourites. Several Westminster editors have known him since he worked as Roy Hattersley's chief of staff during Labour's wilderness years. But they suspect that Hill's attitude to journalists was forged in that era when Labour had very few media supporters. One asks: "Does he even like journalists? Alastair did to begin with. He had been one. By the end, he hated even the useful fools who had served him well, but he did not start out with that attitude."

When Hill first took over from Campbell, at the time of the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, there was considerable enthusiasm for his more laid-back approach. He did not prowl the press room, forcefully interpreting every single syllable of the Prime Minister's speech. Nor did he leak sections before it was delivered, in a bid to get two days' coverage from a single performance.

One Labour-supporting broadsheet editor confirms that "Hill is good, but so was Alastair, and Hill is an arch-loyalist, too". He claims that "a rather absurd fairy story seems to be emerging that it's all nice and cuddly now, unlike hard tough Alastair". The truth, he says, is that "they are both perfectly good people doing a tough job."

It is going to get tougher. The publication of Lord Hutton's findings is awaited with unprecedented anxiety in Downing Street. Both the BBC and the Conservative Party have engaged in pre-emptive spin of a kind at which Labour used to excel. No 10 has been surprisingly silent on the subject.

Some say that Hill will not be in charge of the case for the defence. A senior correspondent explains: "David was Labour's director of communications when the Ecclestone scandal broke. His handling of that was not great. The whole appointment of David was about weakness. Blair needed to mend fences with the party. He was persuaded that he needed to downplay the role of communications director."

Lord Hutton's findings will test whether that was wise. Those who know David Hill recognise that he is a dedicated and intelligent professional. He is also trusted by the journalists that he briefs. But he is not as close to Blair as his predecessor was. When "shutting down" is not an option, it remains to be seen whether Hill has the influence and access required to convey the "totality" of his boss's case.

A political writer who has known Hill for 20 years warns: "David has been in and around the Labour leadership since Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister. If Blair had really wanted him at Downing Street, he had every opportunity to hire him. They were not particularly close during the Kinnock or Smith leaderships."

The unspoken question is whether the Prime Minister and his director of communications have the instinctive mutual understanding to handle the pressure to come.