To avoid that, Blair and his advisers are determined to go over the heads of the media that insist on focusing on gossip and personalities. That’s what Clinton did; and the president’s relative success, at least so far, enthralls British politicians. With that in mind, the Blair government bundled together policy initiatives on health care, crime and education, and unveiled them with great fanfare last week, rather than over the course of the year as planned. Similarly, Blair’s press secretary, Alastair Campbell, an ex-journalist, took some time to rethink strategy with ““old friends in the media,’’ according to one person who spent a couple of hours with him. In a rare on-the-record interview, he told NEWSWEEK that ““the [British] media can act like a barrier. We often are communicating to the people through the media and not via the media.''

There’s only so much Campbell or the government can do to change that. He is, in fact, a very adept spin doctor himself. ““A White House press secretary would die to be calling the tune the way Alastair does,’’ says a prominent TV journalist in London. The real frustrations for Campbell and Blair are systemic: except during election campaigns, which last only a few weeks, political power in Britain does not lie with ““the people.’’ It is concentrated in the British equivalent of Washington inside the Beltway–in the government offices, clubs and pubs of Westminster, a small area of London that you can walk across in 20 minutes. Roy Greenslade, a media commentator at The Guardian and a former editor of The Mirror, figures that the true power brokers number just a few hundred people–a clutch of senior politicians, bureaucrats and journalists. Outside London, says TV anchor Jon Snow, ““all power evaporates.''

The result is a tiny, very noisy echo chamber. But the Blair government, more than any of its predecessors, is designed–like Clinton’s–around the notion of a permanent election campaign. ““The campaign to re-elect our “president’ is unprecedented and is underway,’’ says Snow. For it to succeed, Blair needs clear lines of communication to the electorate–not a lot of static from the Westminster establishment. This means that the competition between the government and the national media is fiercer than ever.

The British media, however, are a rare species. With the exception of the Financial Times, the 10 powerful national newspapers are aggressive and agenda-driven in ways that would baffle an American spin doctor even more than they do Blair’s control freaks. And they love dominating the Westminster echo chamber, as they did twice recently. First came Blair’s so-called Black Christmas, the embarrassing resignation of his most trusted cabinet minister, Peter Mandelson, over a questionable loan. Then last week the ex-wife of Foreign Secretary Robin Cook published an angry autobiography in which she portrayed Cook as a serial philanderer, a drunk and a political sellout. The press had a field day. On its front page, The Sun, which often supports the government, ran an unflattering photo of Cook and asked WOULD YOU SLEEP WITH THIS MAN? (The ““answer’’ on the front page the next day–the results of a Sun phone-in survey–was 966 yeses, 7,303 nos.)

In reply, the government has gone to great lengths to end-run the national media. Campbell has a special nine-person Strategic Communications Unit to market information to specialist publications, the Internet and regional media. His daily briefings are now open to international wire services for the first time. And when the national media are on the attack, Campbell tries to pretend it doesn’t matter much–another page out of the Clinton playbook. ““If Tony’s ratings are still as high as [the pollsters] say they are–and I’m not a great believer in polls myself,’’ Campbell told NEWSWEEK, ““then it does suggest that the people are tuning out much of what’s in the media.''

Campbell’s actions suggest otherwise. Still, if he wants some really useful American lessons, he should know that a Harris poll shows that most Americans (52 percent) don’t ordinarily trust journalists anyway. In Britain, come to think of it, MORI polling shows that a whopping 85 percent of people don’t trust the newspapers; but as Blair knows, they still read them.