Bernard Ingham: The downfall of a spin master and the lessons for democracy

Tit-bits from my weekly meetings with departmental heads of information were systematically leaked to The Guardian. I twice got into trouble for defending Francis Pym by saying that "it's being so cheerful as keeps 'im going" and John Biffen by describing him as "that well-known semi-detached member of the Cabinet".

It was the accurate portrayal of their personalities, as an explanation for their curious behaviour, that hurt, even though my remarks transferred the heat from them to me.

I once sent the pound plummeting towards 1:1 parity with the US dollar with some very accurate but unwise briefing. Then there was the ridiculous Westland affair. And Geoffrey Howe, who had been trying to get rid of me for years, accused me of sabotaging his new role as Deputy Prime Minister by contradicting his entirely self-servingly ambitious account of what that job entailed by explaining, when asked, what Willie Whitelaw had done.

I rest my case. In any event, it is impossible in these televisual days for anyone in the front line with the Prime Minister to remain anonymous, even if they never make waves.

Nonetheless, Andy Coulson, David Cameron's ex-communications director, is right in saying that "when the spokesman needs a spokesman, it is time to move on".

They can survive flashes of exposure and even crises like Westland. But if the story does not go away and dogs the Government, losses have sooner or later to be cut.

Most people find it difficult to believe Coulson's continuing assertions that he knew nothing about telephone hacking, over which he resigned as editor of the News of the World. By extension they wonder whether a commander who was ignorant of the goings on in the NoW yacht was qualified to take the helm of the government battleship.

Cameron went into this with his eyes wide open. Consequently, he faces more questions about his judgment than Ed Miliband for appointing Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor, the author of our indebtedness. Cameron had plenty of options; Miliband none.

Coulson's resignation is a symptom of the real concerns we ought to have about Britain's governance.

What is it coming to when the PM's media boss is brought down like this? When the Labour leader's new press man tries to get TV to stop calling the coalition what it is – a coalition – and instead a "Tory-led Government". This proves conclusively Labour have learned nothing from Alastair Campbell's obsessive and aggressive tenure under Tony Blair.

When Mr Speaker and his wife are far too garrulous for their own and Parliament's good. When a former Prime Minister is hauled back before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war because, like the rest of the country, they don't believe what the slippery eel said first time round. And when the Shadow Chancellor has to resign on account of marital difficulty apparently caused by his wife having an affair with his former bodyguard.

All this with a Tory peer on trial over expenses after a former Labour MP has been jailed for fraud and another from Barnsley is up for sentence.

This is not the sort of background best calculated to carry a nation through the dire year that Balls' economic "expertise" has landed us in. At best, it reveals a system careless of its reputation. At worst, it suggests our politicians are infected with a terminal virus.

Cameron demonstrated he knew the formidable nature of the task confronting him in rescuing our democracy from the corruption of the Blair/Brown government. Yet he chose as his press secretary a man who had felt obliged to resign as top man on a Rupert Murdoch scandal sheet.

The argument that Cameron needed a conduit to Murdoch is pure drivel. A Prime Minister who wants to talk to the "Dirty Digger" has only to pick up the 'phone. And if he needs an Essex man to tell him what gives with ordinary people, he isn't much of a politician.

After Campbell and Coulson, my best advice to governments is to forget about importing journalists from the more sensational end of Fleet Street and go for Civil Service information officers who know their job – and place. With a bit of luck, they will serve them well – and more anonymously than I managed as one of them.