On the positive side, on my initiation and with more than a little joint drafting between myself and one of his assistants, Tony Blair had launched his "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" crusade in the pages of the magazine. Unfortunately, that particular article had appeared in the same week as another, at the time more headline-grabbing piece, which prompted a flurry of libel writs from the then Prime Minister, John Major.

On the negative side, perhaps exploiting our discomfiture in the face of the Conservative legal broadside we were facing, the Labour Party's head of communications, David Hill, also chose that week to fire his own legal threats in our direction. This was after we had become the unwitting victims of some internal Labour black propaganda (involving spin doctors I cannot name for fear of sparking off a whole new round of libel actions) suggesting that he had been responsible for leaking to the press a document he had written for the party called What the voters think of us.

Relations had continued in a similar mixed vein thereafter. Happy to use the magazine as a welcome ally on the left when we were arguing in favour of revising Clause Four of the Labour Party's constitution, for example, the same people in the party put up the shutters on cooperation when they judged our opinions not to be "helpful" -- which was a lot more often. That Gay Hussar lunch, therefore, was never going to be the easiest of occasions.

As it turned out, the highlight of a somewhat strained and unrelaxing gathering consisted of a passionately-expressed missing of minds between my deputy editor, Paul Anderson, and the man who now runs the Downing Street spin machine, Alistair Campbell. Anderson, co-author of one of the first books on the Blair revolution (Safety First: the making of New Labour, Granta 1997), accused Campbell of seeking a "tame poodle of a magazine"; Campbell accused Anderson of "crappy journalism" -- and that was about the closest they got to an understanding with each other.

Campbell's underlings at the lunch, who included another of Tony Blair's current key political appointees, Tim Allen, seemed slightly incredulous at the fact that any journalist should have had the nerve to jeopardise future grace-and-favour offerings by confronting their pressmeister in so reckless a manner. Campbell himself didn't quite know how to react, not least because my limited interventions in the argument made it clear that he could not call upon one of the usual weapons in his armoury by going over the head of a recalcitrant journalist to his editor. Looking back, it was probably inevitable from that lunch on that, to adapt the Labour election campaign song, things could never get better.

Alistair Campbell's outburst against the BBC last week, when he described it as a "downmarket, dumbed-down, over-staffed, over-bureaucratic, ridiculous organisation" because its chief political correspondent had asked an unwelcome question at a Washington press conference, was different only in detail to the sort of intimidatory comment that used to be directed at the New Statesman political staff. As a publication which had remained determinedly sceptical of the Blair project at that time, we had proved ourselves unsusceptible to blandishments and bribes. The carrot of the occasional exclusive interview or inside-track news story had long since given way to a more sinister stick that was deployed to beat us.

Sometimes we faced merely petty obstruction -- press releases that were not sent, invitations that never arrived, telephone enquiries that didn't get answered. On other occasions, the dissatisfaction of the New Labour spin doctors was expressed more aggressively. Individual journalists were called to account for things they had written -- and, quite often, things they had not written as well. One contributor to the magazine would be played off against another. Those who played ball would get the sort of assistance that would be denied to those who didn't. In a magazine that took pride in representing the whole range of left of centre opinion, those who were deemed to be too far to the left found themselves the targets of a whispering campaign -- aimed not so much at their opinions, which would have been entirely acceptable, as at undermining their professional reputations. Columnists of the calibre of John Pilger and the Guardian's former political editor, Ian Aitken, were being rubbished behind the scenes as journalistic incompetents.

The BBC -- given sufficient will at the top -- can ride this kind of withering. The organisation and its senior political staff are bigger than the New Labour spinpersons, even with all their accoutrements of power. Journalists on the Guardian and Daily Telegraph, among others, who have also been the targets of similar obstructionism and abuse, also have the comfort of large, independent, self-confident organisations behind them.

For a small publication such as the New Statesman, however -- particularly one which at that time did not have the benefit of the Paymaster General's millions behind it -- the war of attrition waged against us could be debilitating. An earlier attempt at a takeover bid by a consortium that counted Peter Mandelson among its members had been seen off in 1991, but Mandelson and others behind the Blairite project had never been satisfied with what they saw as our uncertain attitude towards the New Labour revolution.

Some of them never took their eye off the prize of seizing this thorn in the side of New Labour for themselves. Tony Blair himself became embroiled in their scheming towards the end of 1995. This was around the time that his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, informed the magazine's principal shareholder, Philip Jeffrey, "We've found just the right editor for you" -- even though I had given no indication by then of my decision to depart and Philip Jeffrey was not looking for a replacement.

The final strike against what had been caricatured as the "old" New Statesman took place at the beginning of 1996, by which time I had announced my departure after five years at the helm. The magazine had been put into administration prior to an intended financial reconstruction that would have involved the widest possible range of shareholders. The board, shareholders and staff had all backed this plan. All that remained was to obtain the consent of a small group of the "great and good", who possessed what amounted to a veto over the future ownership of the magazine.

This group, led by the New Labour MP and former leader of Islington Council, Margaret Hodge, blocked all options bar one: outright sale to Geoffrey Robinson MP, a safe Blair loyalist and the current Paymaster General. His choice as editor was to be Ian Hargreaves, Jonathan Powell's nominee as suggested the previous year to Philip Jeffrey. The outcome, whatever one's views on Ian Hargreaves' abilities as an editor, is a New Statesman that has been remoulded in the fashion that was sought by New Labour's spin doctors.

Not even Tony Blair could contrive to achieve an outright takeover of the BBC. But no one should underestimate the extent of the New Labour ambition. The political staff and commentators at the BBC need the support of everyone who believes in an independent, forthright spirit of journalism every bit as much as they did when Norman Tebbit and the Tories first turned their guns against them in the 1980s.

This article was first published in Punch and subsequently the Guardian. Although the New Statesman under Ian Hargreaves remained almost slavishly loyal to the Blair 'project', his successor as editor, Peter Wilby, eventually steered it back into more critical waters.