My first sight of Peter Oborne was of a ruddy, tweeded man with a faint air of surprise about him. Arriving after most of those to whom he was to speak, he proceeded, sturdy leather trunk in hand, to the front of the assembled crowd to wait, expectantly. From the impermanence with which he set his case on the desk, handle to the ready, I surmised that my interview would not be lengthy.

I had expected the Daily Mail’s political columnist to be both ruthless and hard hitting; a Piers Morgan figure. But he shows no sign of these terrier qualities, nor my much-feared haste, as we sit following an hour’s thoughtful, well-argued and occasionally irreverent oration. Instead, he’s happy to quote liberally from his “filing system” of snippets collated and religiously compiled; the chief tool of his trade, it’s a “who said what and when” of daily encounters as a lobby journalist in Westminster.

Oborne is best known, other than amongst readers of Private Eye, as a commentator on standards and hypocrisy in political life. For the general election of 2005 he produced a Channel 4 documentary entitled “Why Politicians Can’t Tell the Truth” and has written an at-times cutting biography of Alastair Campbell. It’s a theme that, post Hutton, Kelly and now Levy, has real journalistic capital, and he asserts that Blair really has brought a “methodology of smear and deceit into the heart of Government”. But he rejects the charge that the role of a political commentator is as the effective opposition. “No, I don’t think that’s our job. Being a commentator is not a grand role. The simple task is to report the facts.”

The idea of being a small cog in the greater machine is conveyed in other strands of Oborne’s argument. He has an almost fervent attachment to the ideals of due process and the institutions of state. “The true legacy of the Blair administration will be the destruction of the integrity of the British Civil Service,” he says. Why does this matter? “Representative democracy in Britain is based on a fear of raw emotions. It is in the nature of totalitarianism to seek a direct relationship with the people. The government seeks to bypass the intermediaries that embody the values of tolerance and liberalism.” I suggest that it’s a bit over the top to compare Blair with Stalin: “of course, but [his actions] pave the way for someone very disreputable.”

These direct appeals to the populace have, according to Oborne, become a feature of British politics. From the filing cabinet he draws out the example of a post 7/7 press conference, conducted, he states, with the forewarning of only senior Downing Street mandarins. Staff at the Home Office were “tearing their hair out” as a 12 “ill-considered” points in the fight against terror were hastily fed to waiting TV news crews. The “symbiosis” of the executive and the Murdoch press is a particular bugbear. Implicitly at least, he seems to support former spin doctor Lance Price’s assertion that the Australian media baron can be considered a full member of the Cabinet.

So with Blair’s tenure coming to an end, what does the future hold for the New Labour project? Perhaps longing for a restoration of the political equilibrium, Oborne looks to Jon Cruddas, standing for the deputy leadership on a ticket of reform. “A courageous figure” and one who is “appealing to traditional Labour values,” he is certainly not from the Blairite mould.

This hints at the nature of the man: amidst the politics of spin, the endless cycle of focus groups, reinvention and rebranding, Oborne comes across as the archetypal conservative with a small “c”. Someone who likes their Tories blue, their Labour Party red and their Civil Service, well, civilised.

Rob Haworth

With thanks to the Trinity College Politics Society, the next meeting of which features Lord Goodhart, speaking on "the Fight against Interntional Corruption" on Thursday 1st March, 6.15pm in the Old Combination Room, Trinity College.