DAVID Hill, Labour's self-proclaimed ''grandfather of spin'', said farewell to front-line politics last night with an unflattering comparison between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's obsession of the media, and John Smith's self-effacement, writes Benedict Brogan.
The party's chief press officer, who is leaving to join a public relations firm set up by one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite advertising gurus, said the late Labour leader ''wasn't in the business of dissembling''.
In an interview published in today's New Statesman magazine, to mark his departure after 25 years, Mr Hill points out that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are fascinated with the media in a way Mr Smith never was.
Recalling his work for the Labour leader before his sudden death in 1994, he said: ''John didn't find it (the media) a fascinating entity as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown do and, to a lesser extent, Neil Kinnock did.''
Mr Smith had ''not understood the process'' of spin doctoring: ''He wasn't interested in the art of presentation, but he was happy for me to do it.
''He was fantastically clever, single-minded, and tough. On occasions he could be terrifying like no other politician. But he wasn't an artful man. He wasn't in the business of dissembling.''
He credits Mr Smith with starting the practice of Labour leaders writing for Tory newspapers, and says he had hoped to become the official spokesman if Mr Smith had made it to Number 10.
''I still miss him. But in politics you have to be realistic. People have their own people. Tony Blair has his people to carry out his project. I've been very lucky in that for one reason or another I have stayed on when many others haven't,'' he said.
Mr Hill, 50, won admiration in Scotland last autumn when he was sent North to mastermind the Government's devolution referendum campaign. Speaking to journalists last night to mark his departure, he paid tribute to The Herald's late political editor, Geoffrey Parkhouse, as one of the ''three great Westminster journalists'' he had worked with.
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