The press, as much as the Government, has lessons to learn from this sorry saga

They have tried too hard; a government less obsessed by the press may start, paradoxically, to get a rather better press

Let's just suppose for a moment that England get into the World Cup final, an event sadly made just a little less likely by Brazil's 2-0 victory over Belgium yesterday. Does Tony Blair fly to Yokohama for the final? If not, and England win, does he greet the team as they arrive back in the UK? Suddenly it's a question in a way that it wasn't before. If he doesn't, he will be conspicuously missing out on a national moment as no Prime Minister since Harold Macmillan would have dreamt of. If he does, could he be charged with "muscling in" on the England team's victory?

Of course he should mark the England team's participation, let alone a victory in, the World Cup final. But if you think it's absurd even to ask the question, you ignore at your peril much of the media coverage of the past week. Did the Daily Mail not on Saturday accuse Cherie Booth, who wore a rather showy necklace at an impeccably charitable gala event, of "threatening to upstage Liz Hurley" as if that, too, was some dangerous and unthinkable violation of the British constitution?

This little point of detail serves merely to illustrate a larger one: the long-term damage which Mr Blair's critics hope, and some of his friends fear, has been inflicted on him by the strange case of the Queen Mother's lying-in state. Certainly the consequences are all that's left. For now, at least, the story itself is dying on its feet. The new account apparently based on Black Rod's memo, though it contains new facts, goes no further towards establishing that Mr Blair sought to secure himself a more prominent role in the obsequies. Equally the risible status of the issue as a matter of prolonged national debate becomes more obvious every day. Independent readers who have written in about it have mainly been appalled by its triviality whether they are critical of Mr Blair or the press or both. Politics, they ask by implication, is surely about more than this?

Exactly. So let's leave the details behind and focus instead on the consequences of Downing Street's failure to win the clear-cut victory over The Mail on Sunday and The Spectator that it had expected when it, mistakenly but not perhaps irrationally, made the complaint. One presumption in more pessimistic New Labour quarters is that this is a disaster because it will give a hostile press carte blanche to say what they like about the Government and its head. There is something in this reading. But Downing Street has not been left powerless if it takes to heart the lessons from its mistakes during the roller-coaster ride of its relations with the press since 1994.

Last week Robin Cook aptly invoked the memory of John Smith as an unspun and straight-talking Labour leader. Just as the Government has reverted to a rather more Smithite view of taxation and public services, so it needs now to adopt a rather more Smithite style of presentation. On Sunday Margaret Beckett, in her brisk no-nonsense, headmistressly style, gave a BBC radio interview on the lying-in-state saga which was a model of its kind: combative without being rude; loyal without being unctuous. Is it just a coincidence that Ms Beckett is the only member of the Cabinet who was a minister in the Callaghan government when the political going for Labour was a lot rougher than it is now?

Partly this has to do with spin, a concept overworked by both its opponents and its champions, but one for which the late Mr Smith had no time. If spin was necessary in opposition it isn't now. Unfashionable as it is to acknowledge it, it was partly to dramatise his recognition of this that Alastair Campbell contemplated leaving No 10 a year ago. But special advisers throughout the government machine need to learn that clever trails of announcements and speeches, the message skilfully tailored to the politics of the newspaper concerned, will no longer impress. No one is immune to this temptation; including the Treasury, where Gordon Brown is widely depicted as having strengthened his position at Mr Blair's expense because he has stood aloof from lying-in-state-gate, and which indulged in this practice to remarkable effect before the Budget.

Secondly ministers, from Mr Blair down, need, as they are gradually showing signs of doing, to learn the hard lesson that appeasement was never going to work with papers like the Mail. This isn't a license to rubbish individual journalists with sourced stories, however hostile. Nor does it mean treating working journalists other than even-handedly and truthfully across the political spectrum – as in my experience Sir Bernard Ingham treated those on the left of centre when he was Margaret Thatcher's press secretary. But it does mean not constantly looking over the shoulder at the Conservative press's editorial line when developing and presenting policy. And it should surely mean no more cosy dinners a quatre with the Mail's editor Paul Dacre; they understandably upset the party in return for very doubtful gains.

Thirdly, both Mr Blair and Mr Brown need to be more tolerant of debate within the party, and even at times within the Government, of the sort the US political system manages without falling apart. The bargain with his party should, and perhaps is beginning to be: by all means debate policy before it has been decided but adopt military loyalty in the face of enemy gunfire, as one of Mr Blair's harshest parliamentary critics, Alice Mahon, did last week.

Finally – and it is boring to repeat – it needs to do more still to take Parliament seriously. Mr Blair is as right to hold twice-yearly meetings with the Commons select committee chairmen as he is right to begin a series of open press conferences this Thursday. But Mr Cook should be allowed to reintroduce his plans to make select committees more independent. And it's doubtful whether Jack Cunningham, widely touted as the likely chairman of the important cross-party committee on Lords reform, has the radical edge needed to ensure a genuinely democratic upper house. It's an irony, too, that amid the saturation coverage of the royal saga there has been little on the brevity of the parliamentary debate the Government plans today on its infinitely more important plans for sweeping new powers of surveillance.

For this we are all no doubt to blame, which brings us to the final point. For the press too has lessons to learn. As a minor example, journalists should be less defensive about the admission of some outsiders, including resident correspondents of papers abroad, to No 10 briefings. According to a Eurobarometer poll, press credibility in the UK is lower than in any other EU country – with only 20 per cent saying they trust newspapers. The modest changes of style listed above – of which Mr Blair is certainly capable – won't stop personal attacks from newspapers seeking to diminish Mr Blair in advance of a euro referendum. But they may in time restore a little balance. Most of the worst presentational mistakes the Government has made have been when it has tried too hard at presentation. A government less obsessed by the press may start, paradoxically, to get a better press.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk