Focus: The lying game

'Who will have the courage to give her the political equivalent of a good slap?'

You knew the Blairs had lost the plot when they enlisted the help of Peter Mandelson. Brilliant though the disgraced former minister may be, let us not forget that he twice lost his job for not telling the truth, and on one of those occasions for getting mixed up in a questionable immigration application. Sound familiar? And it was Mandelson's brand of media manipulation that created the mess in the first place, the belief that he shared with Alastair Campbell that you can spin and lie and bully your way out of any situation. Whatever the truth, the perceived good is keeping the Tories out of power. According to their creed, the end can always justify the means.

It is no wonder, in this atmosphere of deceit that has lingered in Downing Street for the past five years, that the convicted fraudster Peter Foster should find a place to spin his own brand of charm. And while New Labour did not introduce sleaze to No 10 – it has a long tradition there under the Tories – New Labour has perfected the lying game. Take Cherie Blair's very personal speech, delivered last week with a hint of tears and an admission that she wasn't Superwoman. We were told she had written it herself. Yet the kitchen cabinet which met in Downing Street last week – the likes of Mandelson, Campbell, and the other trusted Blair aides, Baroness Morgan, Lord Falconer, and Fiona Millar – was there to craft those words. No lie, it seems, is ever too small to tell.

It is this inner circle that has deliberately kept the No 10 official spokesmen away from the truth during the past fortnight. It is an open secret that these highly respected civil servants – Godric Smith and Tom Kelly – are close to resignation. And who can blame them? They have told lies because they were given lies to tell. Their integrity and that of their posts has been compromised by a government that has a promiscuous relationship with the truth.

The bond of trust between civil servant and politician has been repeatedly broken. Does Tony Blair care? After all, there's plenty more where Smith and Kelly came from. But Blair should care because, as a poll published last week shows, only one in three people believes Cherie; two-thirds do not trust the Government and believe it has been damaged. When you lie to the British media, you lie to the British people.

That means a second bond of trust, between government and governed, has been damaged. A third damaged bond, even more worrying for the Prime Minister, is that between him and the political journalists. They have been made to look fools. The Blairs chose to deal in half-truths, to hide behind misleading technicalities. In the end, it's the weasel words that always get them, and that the journalists will not forgive.

For behind closed doors, journalists from pro-Labour newspapers speak angrily of an irrevocable breakdown between them and the Prime Minister. Even the favoured ones can no longer trust his word, or Alastair Campbell's. But with no sign of a resurgent opposition, the journalists know bridges will have to be rebuilt with the one party capable of being in power.

Losing the trust of the media, the public service and the people leads to a siege mentality. The question for the Blairs is: who to take into their bunker? Cherie Blair did what she was told and read what she was given. The speech was a mistake for two reasons: its lack of candour and its mistaken belief that weeping was the way to connect with Britain's millions of hard-working mums. It didn't work and Cherie will be looking for someone to blame. However fine a Christian you are, it is only human to strike out at the person who caused such public humiliation. Will Peter Mandelson be sent into exile again? Or will Fiona Millar take the blame? The only person Cherie won't be able to blame is her husband, as he's never around when the fibs hit the fan.

The deeper you wade into power, the more isolated you become. Maybe Anji Hunter, with her acute understanding of middle England, would have prevented this week's debacle if she had still been working at No 10. The Blairs and those that surround them are now so far removed from normality that it is not surprising they have lost touch with other people's lives.

But the key reason the situation deteriorated so badly and so quickly, and that it has dragged on for so long, is that the crisis surrounds not the Prime Minister, nor any elected member of government, but the Prime Minister's wife. Beneath all the Blairs' actions has been a breathtaking arrogance that Cherie was above and beyond the legitimate enquiries of a free press.

To cry privacy one day, then hand out official Christmas cards with all the children on the next reaches new heights of hypocrisy. Privacy is not a cloak that can be worn at will, hugged tightly around you one moment, thrown provocatively open the next. This has always been one of the problems for the Blairs. They sold themselves to a cynical nation as being an ordinary family, and they sold themselves hard. Before the 1997 election, the Blairs, and the Campbells on their behalf, relentlessly wooed the newspapers and popular television shows.When there is political gain, the Blairs are happy to open the door on their family life wide. When it comes to covering up Cherie's involvement with a convicted fraudster, it slams shut.

It was remarked often last week that if Cherie were a minister, she would have had to resign. The observation highlights the real problem. How do you deal with the Prime Minister's wife? Is she a public figure or a private one? And who will have the courage to give her the political equivalent of a good slap? Who tells Cherie Booth QC the hard truths both Campbell and Mandelson are able to tell her husband? It is an impossible position for any adviser. A political spouse can legitimately do what they want and is not subject to the same censures as an elected politician. And we all know, once you've fallen out with the spouse, that life can be very difficult for any adviser. Even more so when the person in question is undoubtedly intelligent, but also places blind trust in a former topless model with a dodgy taste in boyfriends and a mother who speaks to spooks.

The problem for Tony Blair is that this episode has isolated him – from his friends in the press, from the civil service and from the people. He is damaged, not fatally, but wounded. He will have to begin the long and painful process of rebuilding trust with the British people, his civil servants and the media. It is inconceivable for reasons of credibility that this process can begin under Alastair Campbell, even if he should wish to carry on working for Blair, which is becoming increasingly unlikely. How ironic that all this damage to New Labour should come about at the hands of the one person on earth who would do anything to protect it and its leader.

Amanda Platell was head of communications for the Conservative Party from 1999-2001