David Clark: Try as it might, No 10 can tame the newspaper beast no longer

Relations between the Government and the press have always been fraught, but there was something altogether new about the climate of fear that gripped Westminster last week. The undercurrent of antagonism, which is normally tempered by an awareness of mutual dependency, gave way to a public and very bitter war of words.

Trapped behind enemy lines is Downing Street's communications director, Alastair Campbell, whose withdrawn complaint about coverage of Tony Blair's involvement in the Queen Mother's funeral precipitated calls for his resignation. There is more than an element of spite in these demands. Many journalists sense a chance to settle scores with a man who has dished out some pretty rough treatment. Others want to demoralise and discredit the Government.

What cannot be denied is that Campbell has fallen foul of the cardinal rule that press officers must not become the story. It would not surprise me if he had already made the brave and necessary decision to go. He has been an outstanding servant of his party but must surely calculate that his continued presence would only benefit Labour's enemies. He will not give his detractors the satisfaction of leaving now, nor will he abandon his leader while the media frenzy threatens to engulf him too. The ultimate sacrifice is one he must make at the moment of his own choosing.

There is a sense in which Labour only has itself to blame. After its harsh treatment at the hands of the press in 1980s and early 1990s, New Labour was determined to beat the press at its own game by trumping the cynicism and ruthlessness of their opponents. With a combination of spin, bullying and preferential access, Labour's media managers believed they could tame the beast. For a long time they succeeded.

In the first years of Blair's leadership, the press was enthralled by his every word and deed. New Labour was "the story" and journalists clamoured to be on the inside. Many of them were happy to trade favours in order to get there. The ultimate vindication of this strategy was the decision of The Sun to back Blair in the 1997 general election. The result was an unprecedented run of positive coverage that propelled Labour into office and helped sustain its popularity once there.

Blair's mistake was to believe that he had fixed the problem once and for all. In reality, the papers that used to be known collectively as "the Tory press" were never going to tolerate the existence of a Labour government as anything more than a temporary nuisance. The Mail and the Telegraph have become less coy about their ambition to destroy the Government. The unforced error of Labour's abortive complaint to the PCC is significant because it betrays the nervousness of a leadership that recognises a right-wing press reborn.

Tony Blair likes to compare himself to Baroness Thatcher, but his style of politics couldn't be more different. Whereas the Iron Lady sought to isolate and destroy her enemies, the young pretender prefers to smother them in his cosy embrace. Instead of taking on the forces of conservatism in the British press, Blair tried to appease them with privileged access and exclusive stories. That he has failed is now obvious.

Blair should have moved decisively in his first term to instigate a major restructuring of media ownership that would have broken, or at least weakened, the link between big business and print journalism. Banning the ownership of more than one title would have been a start.

A change of personnel may help Labour to break its association with the culture of spin. But only a fundamental change of strategy will enable Blair to head off the real threat that now looms.

David Clark is former Labour special adviser at the Foreign Office