While Mr Blair will survive his grilling, the damage is done

This is quite a week for the Prime Minister to be holding the first of his new-style press conferences. The session was supposed to be part of Downing Street's attempt to break open what it saw as the closed, introverted club of the Westminster press pack. Instead, the pack will be in full cry, pursuing a story of obsessive interest within the politico-media village.

Yesterday's further and better particulars of who said what to whom, mostly from the point of view of Sir Michael Willcocks, the official known as Black Rod, inevitably paints Tony Blair and his officials in a less flattering light than Downing Street's pre-emptive strike on Friday.

A fair-minded jury, after first expressing amazement that it has been asked to decide such a trivial matter, would conclude on the balance of probabilities that the Prime Minister's minions tried to ensure more prominence for him in television coverage of the Queen Mother's lying-in-state, without his knowledge but judging what would please him. They failed.

It was, incidentally, right that they should fail. Although Mr Blair spoke well for a nation in shock at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it was not right for party political leaders – as opposed to the Speaker of the House of Commons – to be to the fore on this occasion.

Mr Blair will no doubt acquit himself adequately under interrogation this week, and the likelihood is that the issue will die away after that. If England wins the World Cup at the end of this month, to take a hypothetical example, the vast majority of people in this country will forget the details. But the damage has been done.

The episode reinforces what many people already think they know about Mr Blair, which is that he is overly concerned with presentation. He only has himself to blame for that.

The affair will have another effect. Mr Blair's press secretary, Alastair Campbell, who tried to adopt a lower profile during the first term, will remain the subject of intense media scrutiny. This does not mean either that journalists have lost all sense of proportion or that he will have to resign. He is a powerful unelected member of the Government and should be treated as such.