THOSE fortunate to attend the Darlington Constituency Labour Party dinner on Thursday night had the pleasure of a listening to a most amusing speech by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former head of communications.

As well as telling anecdotes, Mr Campbell has a problem with the media. He believes the Press are to blame for the cynicism and disillusionment which surrounds politics, because newspapers only deal in personalities not policies, in style and not substance.

Mr Campbell may have a point.

But then this week comes a leak that Gordon Brown is going to scupper the Turner report into pensions because it doesn't fit in with his plans.

The pension crisis is one of the biggest long-term issues facing this country. The Turner report was commissioned at great expense to the taxpayer two years ago, and it has yet to be published.

Yesterday, No 11 suggested No 10 had done the leaking. No 10 denied it. No-one said the leaked information was anything other than genuine.

It could be argued that No 10, No 11 and Lord Turner himself all had something to gain by the leaking.

And newspapers gained a good story. But they haven't made it up, and they certainly didn't force the politicians to behave in such a self-centred way that is likely to have prevented full debate on the pensions crisis.

The Press are not whiter than white - but then neither, unfortunately, are our politicians.