Mrs Blair's troubles are not unlike those of Hillary Clinton - it's an image thing

Let's suppose that Cherie Booth had issued the statement she made yesterday late on Saturday night when The Mail on Sunday broke That Story. It's highly unlikely that it would have survived beyond Tuesday, let alone generated the unbridled media excitement it began to do yesterday.

Let's further suppose that in some carefully selected television slot a little later she gave an interview in which she said: "Look, we don't own any property in the south. I wanted to get back into the market and it seemed sensible to provide somewhere the children could live at some point in the meantime. I asked my good friend Carol Caplin to do the legwork in finding a flat in Bristol. And as it seemed like a reasonable deal I thought I'd buy two.

"Unfortunately Carol's boyfriend at the time was Peter Foster, who seemed extremely keen to help. I didn't know at the time about his dreadful record and he seemed so helpful. I suppose con men are a bit like that, really. In retrospect it seems idiotic, very poor judgement, if you like. But there was nothing wrong with the transactions and I suspect quite a lot of your viewers have fallen into the clutches of such people from time to time. And wish they hadn't afterwards."

It's possible she might even accrue some sympathy, at least from some of the sections of the public being most assiduously invited to condemn her now. The problem is that it requires quite a feat of imagination to see her doing the second, and more seriously, she didn't do the first. There is more than one conclusion to be drawn from this. The first, of course, is that the handling of The Mail on Sunday's enquiries was dreadful. In this respect it bears some superficial similarities to that celebrated episode of the second Wilson administration, the Ronald Milhench slag-heap affair, in which Baroness Falkender was an intended beneficiary of some land deals made by her brother Tony Field, and which was worked up remorselessly by newspapers eager to see Harold Wilson ousted.

Wilson was not personally involved. Indeed, a letter to Milhench purporting to bear his signature turned out to have been forged. The similarity lay in the fact that the media handling of it – by Wilson himself – became even more of a problem than the original story. In that case, the Prime Minister decided quite unnecessarily to defend his lieutenant on the grounds that the acquisitions had been land "reclamation" rather than "speculation".

Whether the statement that Mr Foster was not a "financial adviser" to Ms Booth is a "lie" seems to me to be at least open to debate. As Ms Booth pointed out yesterday, she has one of those already. But it was at best a lawyerly formulation – and of course Ms Booth is a lawyer – and certainly didn't reflect the whole truth about Mr Foster's involvement, which Downing Street would have done much better to disclose.

Ms Booth took the whole blame for this in her second statement yesterday. You could argue that this is politically adept; unlike everyone else in Downing Street, Ms Booth can't exactly resign as the Prime Minister's wife. But it seems highly plausible. Nevertheless, the response bore similarities to previous New Labour spin-related screw-ups, including Bernie Ecclestone and Peter Mandelson's first resignation. It followed the tactic of disclosing the minimum you can get away with rather than the maximum which it is reasonable to concede. Even yesterday Ms Booth's directly attributed words contained no mention of the second flat. No doubt she feels this level of detail is no one's business but her own. But it might have been worth erring on the side of over-disclosure.

But the other conclusion to be drawn from the fact that a clean breast might have helped is that none of the evidence so far shows she acted improperly, let alone scandalously. If, say, Ms Booth was found to have used her influence to try to stave off Mr Foster's deportation it would be different. But she hasn't. Even on the imputation that her name was being used to obtain a discount on the purchases or the rental agency fees, we only have the flimsiest of innuendos from Mr Foster's side of the correspondence. It's far from clear that Mr Foster was anything like as much use in securing an apparently widely available discount as he boastfully claimed. And in any case he would hardly be a reliable prosecution witness in some imaginary court of law.

Another superficial similarity lies in the story about Hillary Clinton's cattle futures trading, which broke in 1994. Ms Clinton, also a lawyer, had dealings with some rather questionable traders who made her quite a lot of money – a very much greater sum than Ms Booth was able to secure in discounts on her properties, incidentally. But, again, there was no evidence that Ms Clinton – who, as it happens, appears to have been raising the money for her daughter's college fees – acted improperly.

What hurt Ms Clinton about this was really an image thing. Some of it was a little sexist – it didn't seem very feminine to be dealing in cattle. It also jarred, particularly to the baby boomers who, like her, had grown up on the Sixties left to find that one of their icons had been playing the markets like any old capitalist.

And here we may be coming to the real point. On the one hand, there are many in the Labour Party who will rally behind Downing Street in the face of what they will see as a Tory press attack, particularly those who see Ms Booth as to the left of her husband. And I doubt we would be getting into such a lather if Norma Major had been in the eye of the storm.

But the word "rentier" still has a resonance in some circles on the left. Rather as they did in Wilson's time, the press attacks are skilfully orchestrated to inflame Labour rather than Tory supporters. But knowing that will not necessarily cause them to fail. In sections of the left – and not just the far left --it will jar, as in Ms Clinton's case, that the Blairs seem to be a little more into money than is appropriate, particularly when the Prime Minister is rightly taking a stand against excessive pay demands from public servants.

Watergate this very much isn't.It's a big embarrassment, all right, but public policy is affected not a jot. Ms Booth isn't a politician and she can't necessarily be blamed for not acting with greater political astuteness. And a doubtful choice – in a handful of cases – of friends is hardly unique. It didn't, for example, stop the posthumous sanctification of Princess Diana. But even if, as now seems the case, the Downing Street spokesmen who downspun the story can't be blamed, it shows the culture of spin hasn't yet been expunged from the centre of government to the degree we had hoped.

The whole episode may well be more about image than substance. But then this Government has attached a great deal of importance to image. Unless there are more significant disclosures to emerge, I predict that the so far rather trivial details of the whole episode will quickly fade in the memory. The collateral damage to the Blairs' image – while far from life-threatening – may last rather longer.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk