Ah, but did they? Sure, The Sun screamed world exclusive on its front page last Friday. So how come its great rival, The Mirror, that same day had a scoop of the year banner on its front page (a claim that, within hours, had been turned into scoop of the millennium on the Mirrror’s Web site)? Because it really was the Mirror’s story. The 11 pages it had ready for Friday proved that, to say nothing of the bouquet of flowers that it delivered, on behalf of its readers, to 10 Downing Street.
Curiously enough, until the happy news Blair had gone through one of the worst few days of his prime ministership. The week started with the papers dumping on the Blairs for allegedly moaning that the demands of office–lots of fancy frocks and expensive dos–were eating into their private income. The Daily Mail, ever helpful, offered Mrs. Blair five simple steps to save [Pound sterling]3,000, like blow-drying her own hair and wearing High Street knockoffs of designer clothes. Then Blair got into an ugly mess by trying and failing to stop Ken Livingstone, a political enemy of his, from standing for the Labour Party nomination as mayor of London. The London mayoral election–the first in the capital’s history–will take place next year, and is a centerpiece of Blair’s program of constitutional reform. Livingstone is a throwback to the days before Blair modernized the Labour Party. He ran London in the 1980s, when he was known as Red Ken, kept pet salamanders, hired boilersuited French saxophonists to rappel from the top of London’s municipal offices and otherwise contributed to the gaiety of nations. Blair can’t stand him. (The London race is nothing but fun; on Saturday, Jeffrey Archer, best-selling author of political bodice rippers and the official Conservative candidate for the mayor’s job, withdrew his nomination in advance of another tabloid exclusive, this time a story in the News of the World that alleged Archer had asked a friend to lie about precisely whom Archer ate dinner with on a certain night 13 years ago. Don’t ask.)
The fact that Mrs. Blair’s pregnancy was announced at the end of her husband’s bad week had his opponents smelling rats. Steve Norris, a Conservative politician, told the BBC, “My instant reaction was, I must say, ‘hey, this is brilliant timing, that is really Alastair Campbell [Blair’s press secretary] at his best’.”
So, was this an immaculately spun conception? Not so, swears everyone involved. Meanwhile, stay tuned. Archer beat Norris, a jovial ex-used car dealer, for the Tory nomination for the London job; and Norris himself was memorably outed as a serial Lothario by the tabs a few years ago. Britain? Dull?
