They were bound to turn on him in the end

Most Prime Ministers fall out with the press sooner or later. It is only a question of time. Harold Macmillan took on the newspapers over the Vassall spy case in 1962 and saw two journalists go to jail. He was never forgiven in Fleet Street and departed in 1963. Harold Wilson used to say, with a touch of boastfulness, that he had been more vilified than any Prime Minister since Lloyd George. What he omitted to add was that both as Leader of the Opposition and then as Prime Minister he had received more and better publicity than any party leader since the war.

It all came to an end with the 1967 devaluation and the "pound in your pocket" broadcast, which I thought (and still think) was a wholly legitimate observation on the consequences of a cut in the exchange rate. Most people and all the newspapers, however, took a different view. For ever afterwards, poor old Harold could do no right. But as Wilson went down, Edward Heath did not go up: he found himself in much the same position as Mr Iain Duncan Smith occupies today in relation to Mr Tony Blair. This did not prevent him from winning the 1970 election, but afterwards, in politics as in life, he did not enjoy a honeymoon.

James Callaghan, by contrast, did have a lengthy trip to the seaside with the press, chiefly because he was not Harold Wilson. It concluded with his putting off the 1978 election, when the papers thought they had been bamboozled as much as the brothers from the branches did. It was all over with his "Crisis? What crisis?" remark in January 1979 at London airport. This was what The Sun put on top of its account: Jim had not actually uttered the words. It made not the slightest difference. This was reminiscent of the episode in December 1955, also at London airport, when R A Butler was asked by a Press Association journalist whether Anthony Eden was "the best Prime Minister we have". Butler was reported to have "laughingly assented" to this proposition and afterwards had the words hung permanently round his neck with a ribbon as an example of his feline wit.

Exceptionally, Lady Thatcher retained her admirers in the press till the very end. She was brought down by her backbenchers and by her Cabinet. When she fell, the Daily Express (then a stronger force in Toryland than it is today, though nothing like as powerful as it had been) headlined its report: "What Have They Done?" Nor were The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail far behind in denunciation of matricide.

Even so, Mr John Major was welcomed by the Tory papers because he was, after all, a Tory Prime Minister and, by the rest, because he was not Margaret Thatcher. This happy period lasted through the Gulf War and the election of 1992. It came to an end with our expulsion from the exchange-rate mechanism; with the dismissal of ministers after Mr Major had expressed his fullest confidence in them; with the backbench revolt over the Maastricht Treaty; most damagingly of all, perhaps, with the allegations of corruption against assorted Tories made by Mr Alastair Campbell and Mr Blair.

It was the fate of Mr Neil Kinnock that both of them had foremost in their minds. The debasement of Mr Major had necessarily to be accompanied by the exaltation of Mr Blair. It was essential to have the Tory press, in the phrase of the day, "on-side". So Mr Blair and Mr Gordon Brown journeyed inconveniently to the furthest flung parts of the globe to address conferences convened under the auspices of Mr Rupert Murdoch, who was himself entertained at Downing Street. Mr Blair attended the various obsequies of Sir David English and Lord Rothermere of the Mail as if he had been a lifelong friend of both of them rather than a very new acquaintance. Even the Telegraph papers, most obdurate of foes, were not entirely neglected, their editors being given the occasional confidence and their reporters tossed the odd morsel; while The Sun was actually told the date of the last general election.

But see what has happened. The papers have behaved like the Austrian Prime Minister of 1849 who said: "We shall astonish them with our ingratitude." But why on earth should they be grateful for anything, except a few trinkets and a ticket for the peepshow? Mr Murdoch, for instance, has caused great offence by saying that his papers will oppose our entry to the euro. To be fair to him, he has never pretended to believe anything else. And to be fairer still, the columnists on his one paper which I read regularly, The Times, seem to have complete freedom to express their own opinions and to arrive at their own conclusions. For instance, a majority of them support Europe's peace party rather than the United States' war party, which is so lauded in that paper's leader columns.

It was The Times which last week carried an article attacking the press by Mr Charles Clarke, the "party chairman". It was mainly what the libel lawyers call "vulgar abuse". I put his title in inverted commas, by the way, because when he was appointed the People's Party already had a perfectly good chairman in the person of the blameless trade unionist Ms Maggie Jones. It continues to have one in the equally impeccable Ms Margaret Wall. Mr Clarke's bogus office is itself an illustration of Labour spin, gullibly accepted by the newspapers.

What he and others like him say is that they wish the papers would write about "policy" or "the issues" rather than "personalities". What they really mean is that the papers should accept government claims on hospitals, schools, crimes or what-have-you more or less uncritically. Most politicians are uninterested in and largely ignorant of policy. Their private conversation is almost entirely about personalities. And what else was Mr Campbell's submission to the Press Complaints Commission about if not personalities? As I predicted, it has now fallen flat – as, indeed, has Mr Campbell.

It is an illustration of what William Blake called fearful symmetry. Most of what Mr Campbell and Mr Blair are now going through is the consequence of techniques developed by the first, and applied with equal enthusiasm by both of them, before 1997, when Mr Major was at No 10. The techniques – "grids", instant rebuttal, personal attack, allegations of corruption – were borrowed, with partial acknowledgement, from Mr Bill Clinton's Democrats.

As the Good Book says somewhere, he who lives by the press shall surely perish by the press. Or, as it is put in Hosea viii.7: "They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." The same source in x.13 proceeds to leave no misunderstanding in the reader's mind: "Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies."