If only New Labour would behave in a more grown-up way with the press

Apply the crucial "what would Labour have done in opposition" to the timing and circumstances of the Desmond donation

The turbulent history of New Labour's engagement with the press, as Charles Clarke knows better than most, was born principally of fear, nurtured in the Kinnock years.There is a famous story of Tony Blair being shown, in the run-up to the 1997 election, a dossier of clippings from the 1992 election coverage amassed by one of his young Turks, Peter Hyman. Blair is supposed to have been deeply shocked by the tabloid coverage, culminating in the famous pre-election front-page headline in The Sun: "Will the last person in Britain turn out the lights?" So much so that he is said to have joked that he wouldn't have voted Labour himself if had been fully exposed to it at the time. But even before that, Tony Blair had made assiduous efforts to court the more powerful newspapers that had so tormented his predecessor but one.

His courtship of Rupert Murdoch was, on the face of it, highly successful. The Sun may have become a less sharp, less instinctive newspaper than it had been in its Thatcherite heyday. And there were doubts whether in backing Labour in the run-up to the 1997 election it was really as influential in swinging the election as it – and Mr Blair himself in a thank-you letter to the then editor Stuart Higgins – claimed at the time. There is every sign that the paper was following its readers at least as much as it was leading them. But beyond its limited real-world influence on voters, it said something defining about the party Tony Blair was in the process of transforming.

The courtship of the Mail – and to a lesser extent The Daily Telegraph – was more complicated and, as their pages now reveal day after day, much less permanent. But it was also initially highly effective. Blair's brilliance was to engage with editors and commentators nostalgic for Margaret Thatcher and deeply disillusioned with John Major. He appealed to a kind of Führerprinzip among such people, reinforced by the leaking of allegedly favourable private comments by Thatcher about Blair. Having disciplined a seemingly untameable party, Blair emerged as a strong leader. John Major – despite arguably running an unrunnable party – looked like a weak one.

The only point of rehearsing all this history is to underline the obsession with media coverage with which the Blair government took office. Blair once told a meeting of Labour parliamentarians that they were engaged in a guerilla battle with their political opponents for each day's headlines. And indeed, an opposition has little else to fight with. Much – though of course not all – of the great skills deployed in this task were directed at fostering the Major government's reputation for sleaze. And this obsession, underpinned by an almost doctrinal belief that presentation was central to policy, survived much too long into government, as Alastair Campbell has himself recently admitted. Nor has it yet disappeared.

Roll the clock forward to 2002 and Charles Clarke's fairly unbridled attack on the press yesterday. Some of the obloquy it has attracted is joy at seeing the biter bit. The manipulators seem to have lost their touch and are now complaining about the results. Where the Mail, for example, was once assiduously courted, it is now known by some in Downing Street as the "Daily Demoraliser". (Wouldn't the "Daily Depress" be a catchier nickname?)

Schadenfreude shouldn't disguise the uncomfortable truth that he has a point. It's galling for the Government to be attacked for a culture it is trying – with limited success – to shake off. There is a media obsession with process at the expense of policy; in particular the government interface with the press itself. There has been a tendency for journalists and broadcasters to assume that the "perception" of sleaze is enough of a story in itself, whether the perception is right or not. Some of the coverage that followed The Independent's scoop obscured the details of the disastrous e-mail sent by Dan Corry, ironically one of the Government's more fastidious advisers. And so on.

But there are also problems in what he said. Take Richard Desmond, a proprietor whom, ironically, the Labour high command is unable to attack as he is a Labour donor, and sometimes a supporter. Clarke is angry about the coverage. But apply the crucial "what would Labour have done in opposition" test to the timing and circumstances of the Desmond donation, and you realise how unstoppable the row would have been.

Nor, sensibly, did Clarke comment on another Independent story this week, which exposed the Department of Work and Pensions for its highly partial attitude to parliamentary questions. He hardly could have done, when Andrew Smith had stepped in smartly to eradicate the practice of examining the motives of those putting the questions. The Government is genuine in trying to treat Parliament more respectfully, But the wheels of this process grind exceeding slow. And, finally, Mr Clarke must know deep down that it was a crass mistake for No 10 to elevate some interesting gossip about Mr Blair's place in the Queen Mother's funeral into a huge story by taking its authors to the Press Complaints Commission.

Mr Clarke has been one of those groping towards a "new settlement" with the press. It's understandable. Much of the present flood of stories damages the Prime Minister, even if he is not involved, as it doesn't damage – for example – the Chancellor. Nor is it a fatuous idea. But the Government will have to do better than this. More press conferences by the most senior ministers, among them the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary as well as the Prime Minister, would help to raise everyone's game. Maybe televised briefings by the No 10 spokesmen would help too. A more mature approach to freedom of information would certainly make for better government. And less control freakery in Parliament, as Robin Cook at least has seen, would probably help most of all.

But beyond all this is needed an even bigger change of style, one which buries more decisively the day-to-day obsession with presentation. Just as Clarke and Cook appeared to recognise yesterday that state funding was looking increasingly like the answer to its donor problems, so ministers have to start being more grown up about the press. Oddly, what more than anything would exorcise the once too incestuous and now too dysfunctional relationship with the press would be the very issue which may still dominate Blair's second term: a euro-referendum.

That isn't of course a reason in itself for having one. But it would be a wonderfully cathartic by-product. Murdoch has served notice that he will oppose the euro. The Mail and the Telegraph stables will too. By taking them on, as Blair sometimes now seems more willing to do, he would restore the proper balance between elected and unelected. It would be as healthy as Stanley Baldwin's famous onslaught on the Beaverbrook and Northcliffe press. And for Mr Clarke, as enthusiastic a European as he is cross about journalists, it would be a chance to get not mad but even.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk