Bernard Ingham: Welcome signs of a return to spin-free common sense

If spin is defined as unprincipled presentation for perceived short-term advantage, regardless of long-term credibility, how on earth can it be essential? That is exactly what we had for 13 years until May 6 and why our democracy is at such a low ebb.

I would have thought that much was obvious. Apparently not.

The more important question is whether we are still governed by spin – as I have defined it. After a month of coalition government, the jury is still out and likely to be for some time. All we can say is that there are signs that common sense is returning to Whitehall and Westminster, though it may be having quite a battle.

The least that can be said for the coalition is that it feels, looks and sounds different. No longer is the Government impelled by headline chasing. It feels more relaxed, even if the situation it faces is nothing to be relaxed about. At times it even sounds mature.

The West Cumbrian shooting disaster underlined all this. Ministers were not dispatched to the scene before the dead were cold. The Prime Minister and Home Secretary did not linger after showing their support for the area. And David Cameron made a stand against instant action – legislation for purely public relations purposes – by making the sensible point that you cannot legislate for the deranged, as Derrick Bird must have been. The Government was suitably restrained in the face of tragedy.

It was also to the coalition's credit that it did not squander its credibility in defending the ex-Chief Secretary David Laws to the death over his Parliamentary expenses problem, though it would have helped if his chosen Liberal Democrat successor had been squeakily cleaner.

It is opening up Whitehall and local government pay and spending for public inspection (which is not what spin demands) and has been unspinningly casual about disclosing Labour's scorched earth spending in its terminal year. Imagine what a meal Labour would have made of a similar legacy.

By all accounts, Cameron has also given the hard word to special

advisers against indulging in the competitively poisonous briefing in which Labour specialised. If his embargo sticks, it will be a real triumph, given the tensions inevitable between two parties in coalition but still looking for advantage.

Against all that are two other bits of evidence. Spin – or at least presentation – won over propriety when George Osborne and the tragic Laws announced the 6bn spending cuts alfresco instead of in the Commons. You cannot elevate the status of Parliament if you by-pass it, as Labour routinely did.

I exclude Cameron and Nick Clegg from that criticism when they first paraded themselves for inspection in honeymoon mode in the No 10 garden. This was a mere photo-opportunity. They did not have much to say for themselves then, other than to tell us how different it was all going to be – as it is so far.

The other bit of evidence was the kneejerk refusal to put Laws up against Alastair Campbell on BBC TV Question Time on the insubstantial ground that Campbell is unelected. This is true, but the decision was scarcely to the advantage of the coalition. Indeed, you might say it was so nave as to be anti-spin.

The coalition should profoundly hope that the BBC parades Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Lord Mandelson, Campbell and Charlie Whelan, the spinmeisters extraordinaire, at every opportunity as symbols of what spin can do to a Government and the body politic.

Nonetheless, the decision was instant reaction to events reminiscent of the worst of Labour's paranoia.

Having said all that, we seem to be seeing things as they are: two parties trying to put on a united front while their activists seethe over taxes, tax rates and constitutional reform.

It sometimes looks untidy – as, for example, when Defence and Overseas Development Secretaries (both Tories) got their wires crossed in Afghanistan and when Cameron and Clegg sounded somewhat different notes at the weekend over spending cuts.

It is also true that the prevailing speculation is invariably about softening, back-pedalling and retreat as the coalition strives for consensus.

As Margaret Thatcher reminded us, consensus is what you get when you cannot agree. Welcome to coalition government. But let us give thanks that it is wisely at least trying to relegate the stupidity of spin to the political dustbin.