Since the foundation of the state the relationship between politicians and the media has been characterised by the fraught, sometimes divergent, but ultimately symbiotic relationship between political communicators and journalists. This chapter explores, through interviews with journalists turned spin-doctors, the concept of political communication through the pejorative filter of spin. It considers the origins, connotations, and applications of spin in the context of the complex and interdependent relationship between media and politics and contends that the concept and effects of spin – positive and negative – are exaggerated. Specifically it argues that spin is an exercise shared, expected, and required by both politics and the media and that it is driven by a complex set of rules to which both sides are ultimately and increasingly bound.

The concept of political spin is so pervasive that it is easy to forget the term itself is less than 30 years old. In the course of that time it has become synonymous with mistrust of politicians and ‘a euphemism for deceit and manipulation’ (Andrews, 2006, 32). The term emerged from the sporting world, first from baseball in the USA, and later cricket in the UK. Moloney (2001, 125) notes that spin ‘aligns the popular image of untrustworthy and scheming politicians with that of the wily spin bowler in a cricket match who, with the flick of a wrist, flights a curving ball of uncertain length and line towards the yeoman batsman defending his wicket’.

The term spin, personified later by the spin-doctor, entered the British lexicon during the ‘age of spin’ that characterised the electoral breakthrough and subsequent governments of Tony Blair's New Labour. Moloney (2001, 127) makes the case that ‘spin […] an aggressive, demeaning work of promotion and detraction by one part of the political class for another […] began as a defensive response by Labour to editorial hostility shown by the Murdoch media between 1979 and 1994, when Tony Blair became leader.’ Lloyd (2008, 142) noted that the New Labour leadership is now ‘regarded very widely – indeed world-wide – as something of a locus classicus when it comes to the political management of news.