Post mortem without a body

Before the emergence at last of long-standing rumours about the Prime Minister's health problems, nby was a cult site attracting between 300 and 600 hits a day - depending on the attraction of the main news item. At one point on September 7th that total climbed to 5,038. By the middle of the first week of viral spread, over 30,000 sites were discussing the issue of half-blind depressives and how fit or not they might be for high office. Yesterday we were back at 384 of the nby faithful. Given that getting facts wrong about a public person's state of mind is technically a breach of the peace, it's not hard to understand why the story has died. New press office head Simon Lewis has faced perhaps his first big test, and come out the other end without the necessity of even an on-the-record denial.

Inside Westminster's seedy suburb, the gossip about moods, tantrums, anti-depressants and further sight problems has been around since (as I pointed out on breaking the story) 2006 at least. Lewis must have been aware of them. But given the strength of the law in this area, it seems unlikely he was ever that worried: he had Meghrari, Afghanistan and the TUC on his radar. A story hard to prove, easy to deny and even harder to print was hardly the stuff of which nightmares are made.

All that therefore makes the epilogue to this mini-storm very interesting. For no sooner had the dust settled a tad than Downing Street were back onto me: the senior source couldn't find my coverage of our conversation - why? (Because I'd taken it down as old news). The 'dodgey denial' was rather unnecessary wasn't it? (Given it was ludicrously off the record, flatly contradicted widespread medical opinion, two witnesses to a senior conversation and three corroborations, not really).

To seasoned Westminster addicts, this reflected nothing more than prima facia evidence of the start of a post-mortem inside Number Ten. Being soft wood rather than seasoned, it took advice from a kindly professional to point this out to me. But continuing the wood analogy, those who spend their lives in the dark woods sometimes fail to see the sunlight grabbed by a new sapling. My naif's observation is this: if there's no body, why bother with a post-mortem? Why on Earth waste one's valuable time on a story which - we are told - has been invented by some old nutter scribbling a website regularly attracting 0.00003% of the UK population?

The answers are perhaps twofold. First - if I may adopt management bollocks for a second - 'to ensure best practice next time'. I've no problem with that; I just wouldn't have thought national stories created by nutters were that likely to have a next time. Or second, because a potential armed torpedo heading for a beleaguered ship had been diverted; and - as another sub might fire again - the Number Ten press office should learn how to manoeuvre more successfully in future.

Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice. All I can say is that senior mandarins do occasionally get pissed and say things they shouldn't. But if they don't know the specific medical significance of what they're saying, then I (who do understand it) am in a unique position to allege 'the chances are this is not a plant, or a smear' and publish with a clear conscience.

A senior and experienced international editor told me last Thursday, "I have no doubt you're onto something, no doubt at all. I'm not sure you have the whole picture - but what you do have is a story about an area of Brown's problems where the press office is very nervous indeed". I think that's a wise and fair summary.

In a broader sense, the Brownmadandblind saga has lessons to teach us all. Not least of these is the immediate instinct of the media to make the story just that: Brownmadandblind. For those who don't know already, I should explain that the reason I'm so confident on the proscribed foods central to this story is that I am reactive depressive myself. Twenty years ago I was given MAOIs: not only do I know how dangerous they are, I know that the only reason to use them in 2009 would be (as a prescribing psychiatrist said to me three weeks ago) 'a doctor with a patient he knew to be suicidal'. I know only too well the bigoted response to mental health problems in this country. Brown is not mad and blind: but I think it very possible he is severely depressed - a condition not being helped by his awareness of an accelerating drift towards blindness.

Another thing that surprised me was just how many friends - well-connected or not - who, once the story's profile rose, moved to warn me mysteriously about 'consequences' and 'backing off' and 'not pushing my luck', often accompanied by dire warnings about 'these are desperate people' and so forth. I think they were exaggerating, but what do I know? Surely the point to take from this is the assumption by experienced, erudite and calm people that - if faced with an intransigent foe - the Establishment will stop at nothing. Perhaps twas ever so: but somehow, I doubt this is a case of plus ca change: civil servants did not wind up dead after rubbishing US security dossiers in Macmillan's time. (When I originally posted the story of Brown's alleged SSRI usage in 2006, a senior MP friend rang me to say "Very good John, now shut up and enjoy your golden years")

Finally, the degree of well-informed professionalism and casual cynicism among lobby correspondents was - even for an old owl like me - a genuine jolt to the system. While a great many tabloid hacks are good for little more than yelling through celeb letter-boxes and printing lies, in the Commons lobby room a more serious air pertains. They know the law, they know how a mistake can bugger their careers. But equally, a gratuitous (almost unconscious) acceptance that all is smoke, mirrors, greasy poles, managed plants, hypocrisy and misused power remains ever-present.  

And me? I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to having enjoyed the roller-coaster. But I'm able to remain apart from the kick, bollock and scramble because I'm not out to 'get' Brown or 'get' the exclusive or 'get' rich by selling one big smoking gun. I'm lucky in that while most of the folks I've met or exchanged communications with since September 4th are doing this for a living, I'm doing it to enrich the Autumn of my life - and put one or two additional straws on the back of our rotten constitutional and political system. In hoping for the breakage of that system, the last thing I want is an end to democratic libertarianism. Rather, like many millions of others, I want more creative aspirations from better people in 'the system' - and responsibility for their lives given back to those living under it.

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