Much heat, but where is the fire in this sorry affair?

The Government has a great deal more to do if the press is not to fill the vacuum of dissent and scrutiny

Could lying-in-state-gate be in danger of collapsing under its own weight? This is, of course, the rashest of all possible questions. After all, before the weekend is a whole lot older, many more thousands of words will have been written for the Sunday papers, trawling through every entrail of the affair of Tony Blair and the Queen Mother's coffin.

At least one of those papers is expected to publish the "killer memorandum" from Black Rod showing how he differed from No 10 in his interpretation of the conversations he had with the Downing Street official responsible. And for ample sections of the (mainly) Conservative press, this is too good a story to be allowed to escape.

And yet stand back for a moment and consider what we've got so far. Downing Street is armed with a memorandum bequeathed by John Major's administration stating clearly that, beside the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor, the Prime Minister was supposed to be on hand to meet the coffin when it arrived. During the discussions with Black Rod, the memorandum is raised. Black Rod says no, his guidance is that it's just the two others. Both sides end up by agreeing that the Prime Minister won't in fact meet the coffin. The difference appears to be that Black Rod interpreted No 10 as subtly seeking an enhanced role, while the No 10 official concerned is adamant that she did nothing of the sort.

But, for now at least, there is something human and persuasive about the account published yesterday by Clare Sumner, the civil servant involved. Yes, she expressed "surprise" that there was differing guidance. But, "I said, and I remember this very clearly, you are Black Rod, you are arranging it, just let me know what you want the Prime Minister to do so I can arrange it. I thought no more about it."

Now maybe Black Rod's account really is a smoking gun. We don't yet know. But on the face of it there is rather less to this than meets the eye. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that two interlocutors had slightly different attitudes to the subtext of a telephone conversation. But is this really the stuff of high-profile resignations and national crises?

Leave aside two points that have been rather overlooked in the whole saga. The first is that the 1994 memo said that the Prime Minister would appear with other party leaders including, as Ms Sumner told Black Rod, the Leader of the Opposition. Which hardly makes for Tony Blair stealing all the limelight for himself. Secondly – and this isn't a point that has been made by anybody, at any time, in Downing Street, as far as I know – it is a little odd that there should be no directly elected politicians on hand for such an occasions, particularly when one of them holds the three-century-old office of Prime Minister. The fact is that the Black Rod scenario was nevertheless pretty swiftly agreed by Mr Blair.

Forgive the mind-numbing detail. But there are two larger points to bear in mind as the saga continues, as it will, to unfold. It's true that Downing Street is paying a heavy price for some past (and present) sins: treating politics on occasions as a branch of showbusiness, and, in the case of Mr Campbell, the current pantomime villain of choice, for spin.

That doesn't mean that everything it now does is irrefutable evidence of either. Nor does it wholly obliterate the sense that parts of the British establishment still find it difficult to accept a Labour Prime Minister. They are, after all rather unfamiliar creatures – Tony Blair is only the fifth in a hundred years, and the first who hasn't looked like a temporary tenant of the office.

Maybe that's a slur. But take the issue of spin, the most used word in the political currency. The compromise deal hammered out by the Government with hospital consultants a few days ago was reported by the BBC largely in terms of the form of the announcement – that Alan Milburn hadn't held a press conference to announce it. This obscures the real and pressing issue of debate – whether the Government has caved in to pressure from medicos to modify a key part of its NHS plan. It just a minor example of how one of the least introspective medias in the Western world has fallen in love with process and stories about ourselves.

This doesn't alter two uncomfortable facts for the Government. One is that it was a mistake to go to the Press Complaints Commission. It elevated a mildly interesting story into a cause célèbre. And it resulted in, at the very best, a messy draw. But it wasn't necessarily a venal or first-order one. There had after all been a bald public statement by Black Rod to the effect that he had never been asked to change the arrangements for the lying-in-state.

Secondly, the Government has a great deal more to do – including strengthening Parliament and recreating a much more conventional relationship with it – if the press, some of which it used to suck up to in opposition, is not to continue filling the gaping vacuum of dissent and scrutiny.

But it does speak for a sense of proportion. It is genuinely possible that Black Rod will send a torpedo through what yesterday seemed, on the face of it, a coherent government case. But before we assume that the wheels should or will fall of the government wagon, we should at least take a deep breath. And evaluate the evidence a little more dispassionately.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk