Gordon Brown's attempt to portray himself as a clean break from the Tony Blair era of spin took a severe blow last night when a poll showed that a clear majority of people believed that the new Prime Minister manipulated the news as much as his predecessor.
An ICM survey for BBC's Newsnight revealed that 61% of respondents thought that Mr Brown was as big a spinner as Mr Blair. Indeed, some 15% thought he was more likely to spin, while 20% thought he was less likely.
Intriguingly, in May last year when ICM carried out a similar survey, only 24% of people thought that Mr Brown was likely to manipulate the headlines, compared with 53% of people who thought Mr Blair was.
ICM's UK-wide telephone snapshot of 1010 people, conducted after this week's controversial pre-Budget report, also showed that a clear majority of people, some 57%, believed Labour had stolen Conservative ideas on tax, against 34% who said it had not.
The poll comes after a Mori survey, which showed that, while the Tories were three points ahead of Labour, when asked who would make the most capable PM, some 45% chose Mr Brown compared with 29% who opted for David Cameron. However, the spin survey ends a bad week for the Prime Minister whose honeymoon bounce is well and truly over.
Mr Brown's promise on entering No 10 in June to "restore trust in government" was widely seen as a vow to herald in an era of spin-free politics - a position seen itself as spin by Westminster-watchers.
However, Mr Brown's visit to Iraq last week led to Tory claims that he was using British soldiers for a "photo opportunity" to drum up support for what was then expected to be an autumn election.
Moreover, he was accused of double-counting troops being withdrawn from Iraq in order to secure better headlines.
This week, Alistair Darling was branded the "magpie Chancellor" after his economic statement included measures to tax air travel, raise the inheritance tax threshold, and impose flat-rate levies on non-domiciled foreign residents, which closely echoed proposals put forward by his shadow, George Osborne, days earlier at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool.
Commenting on the Newsnight poll last night, Chris Grayling, the Shadow Transport Secretary, highlighted reports of how the transcript of Mr Brown's monthly press conference on Monday had been doctored to remove at least seven inaccuracies and fluffed lines.
He said: "After fiddled figures in the Budget, fake troop withdrawals, and doctored photos, we now have a tarted-up transcript.
"No wonder the British people no longer trust Gordon Brown."
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