The Wages of Spin by Bernard Ingham (John Murray, £18.99)

THERE can be no argument about the two most powerful Prime Ministers in recent UK history.

Unoquivocally: Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and behind each has been an equally powerful maestro conducting - if not manipulating - the Press machine at 10 Downing Street... Bernard Ingham and Alastair Campbell.

On paper the two men are very much part of the same mould. Both started out as journalists, though neither reached the dizzy heights of the profession. Both were supporters of the old fly-the-red-flag and Up The Workers brand of Socialism.

Their roots are within a few Yorkshire miles of each other, both are were newspaper reviewrs for BBC breakfast TV and oddly, both cheered from the terraces of Turf Moor for Lancastrian side Burnley FC.

Ingham, one could argue, is the father of modern political spin and therefore by association, the role model for Cambell.

But in the sub-head of this book's title "A clear case of communications gone wrong" Ingham sets out to distance himself from the man who sees as the person responsible for demolishing, brick-by-brick, the body that he held dear, the Government Information Service.

Ingham, bulldog and as bluff as befits his Hebden Bridge upbringing, despatches as bunkem and balderdash any suggestion that he was the founding father of any Machiavellian machinations. There has never been anything of the subtle sophisticate about him.

That is not to say that in his day, he wasn't above the thuggishness that he now believes has come to characterise the Government's relationship with the media.

He makes a powerful case for the chaos that now eschews the Blair tenet of blurring what is the explanation of Government and the advancement of party.

Ingham clearly loathes and despises the new breed of ministerial political assistants and he lays into them lustily.

Ingham was the first - and last - Downing Street Press officer to also head the Government Information Services and as one would expect, he writes in this readable and entertaining book, in spirited defence of his old department in its balmy days before it started being "corrupted" by New Labour.

The Blair Government, he observes, is "obsessed with media manipulation, to uphold its reputation and that of politics generally. Spin-doctoring as practised in the past five years has proved lethal to political reputations.

"The wages of spin are disrepute and decay."

David Chapman