The PM's wife and a tabloid editor's 'vendetta'

Paul Dacre's name did not pass the lips of the Prime Minister's official spokesman yesterday. Tom Kelly could not even bring himself to name the newspaper Mr Dacre edits.

But there was no doubt that the Daily Mail, and its Sunday sister title, were the targets of the invective unleashed by the normally mild-mannered Mr Kelly. He began by complaining that Cherie Blair faced a "deliberate campaign of character assassination" from parts of the media.

He later narrowed his complaint down to "one particular newspaper". Challenged over which he had in mind, he replied: "I think you can join the dots together." Asked whether he meant the Daily Mail stable, he said: "I'm not denying that."

Mr Kelly's comments – in effect, an acknowledgement that Downing Street is at war with one of Britain's biggest newspaper groups – were delivered on orders from the top in Downing Street, either from his direct boss, Alastair Campbell, or the Prime Minister, or both.

Labour has long endured difficult relations with the Mail and The Mail on Sunday, which have been resistant to New Labour's charms. Mr Dacre, the editor of the Mail for 10 years and the editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers since 1998, has been resistant to the circles around Tony Blair and to the Prime Minister's wife in particular. Mrs Blair has endured a series of torrid headlines in her most persistent Fleet Street tormentor, presenting her alternatively as a Lady Macbeth-style figure urging her husband to more left-wing excesses, and as a cranky advocate of New Age remedies. Senior Labour sources have claimed the Mail deliberately tracks down the most unflattering photos of her.

She has been portrayed in the Mail as having a fatal weakness for the limelight, by "threatening to upstage Liz Hurley" at a charity gala and of acquiring a "knack of reproducing many of the most celebrated poses of the late Diana, Princess of Wales".

In recent months, she has been accused by the Mail of showing disrespect by being "hatless and yawning" during this summer's golden jubilee celebrations and of triggering "anger and incredulity ... after appearing to voice sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers".

Last week, Lynda Lee- Potter, the Mail's star columnist, summed up the paper's attitude to the first lady of British politics. She said the Caplin and Foster affair highlighted once again "Cherie's cupidity, her lack of judgement and her erroneous belief that she can do what she likes". Lee-Potter went on: "She has a clever legal brain but she is dangerously lacking in sense and judgement ... The woman who played a backseat role in Tony Blair's early political career now relishes her power over both her husband and the party. Her parents were actors and she has inherited their talents."

Three days later, the Mail's right-wing commentator Simon Heffer suggested the time had come for Mrs Blair to bow out of public life by relinquishing her role as a judge. He said: "It makes a mockery of justice to have it administered by someone who refuses to tell the truth on such an important matter of public probity."

Although Labour has long abandoned efforts to win round its most strident newspaper critic, ministers admit they are puzzled and intrigued by Mr Dacre's role and motivation in marshalling the criticism. One minister said: "When you meet him him, Dacre seems quiet, mild-mannered and reticent. But when he goes back to his office, he turns into a monster."

Mrs Blair, widely seen as to the political left of her husband, makes no secret in private of her abhorrence of the Mail papers, with their robust views on law and order and immigration. There are those who claim she was uncomfortable with her husband's efforts to build bridges with the Mail with his "tough-on-crime, tough on the causes of crime" repositioning of Labour.

A female minister close to Mrs Blair claimed yesterday that the newspaper had a wider social agenda in its portrayal of the Prime Minister's wife and of other senior Labour women such as Baroness Jay of Paddington. She said: "The Mail seems to have a distrust, and dislike of any high-profile women in public life. It is mean-spirited and particularly bizarre, given that much of its content is pitched at women."