There are lessons for New Labour in the way Ken Livingstone handles the media

He does not panic in the middle of a media storm. He gets on with his job, commanding high levels of support

The political "doorstep" is back as a source of raging controversy. I had assumed there was less of it about these days, that the media had decided political leaders were ubiquitous enough already without being doorstepped late at night, early in the morning or as they moved between studios from one interview to the next.

I could not have been more wrong. Ken Livingstone fumes that a reporter from the Evening Standard "doorstepped" him at the end of a party in London. Yesterday the BBC's Today programme reported its own courageous attempts to doorstep the editor of the Evening Standard. Predictably their attempts failed. The editor was having none of it. She was not being doorstepped over the doorstepping techniques of her own newspaper. The BBC reporter was ejected from the building.

For those of you who lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this form of journalism, here is a brief explanation. Sometimes a journalist waits for hours in the pouring rain for a senior politician to appear, at which point he or she starts to scream questions. The relevant politician is trapped. If they do not respond to the unexpected interrogation, they appear evasive. If they respond aggressively, as Mr Livingstone did, they are in even more trouble. The heroic reporter is insulted. He has a tape of the exchange. For some reason he becomes the victim rather than the public figure that was harangued in the first place.

I still have nightmares about my doorstepping experiences, and I was never the victim. My task was to scream the question. When I was at the BBC in the 1990s, one of the main roles for its army of political correspondents was to stand in Downing Street and wait for the Prime Minister, John Major, to arrive or depart. The moment he emerged from a car or the front door, our job was to shout: "Are you a liar, Mr Major?" If we were feeling more benevolent, the main question shrieked at the bewildered Prime Minister would be, "Mr Major, are you going to resign?" Normally Mr Major would smile sheepishly, say nothing, and disappear into the relative comfort of Downing Street or his car.

The sequence would then open a report on a TV news bulletin. The script would be along these lines: "The crisis deepened tonight with John Major refusing to deny that he would resign (cue doorstep): 'Mr Major, are you going to resign?' His silence spoke volumes ..."

Quite probably the only reason there was speculation about his resignation was because the doorstepper had raised the prospect. Sometimes I dared to ask my boss: "What are we saying he lied about?" But that was not the point. There was a crisis and we needed to convey this. Even if Mr Major had succumbed to the pressure of the doorstep and responded to the question about his resignation by stating, "No, of course I am not going to resign," the story would still be written in an atmosphere of crisis: "John Major has denied that he is planning to resign."

On Fridays Mr Major tended to leave Westminster to visit other constituencies. For some reason he usually ended up on some rain- drenched sports field blown about by violent gusts of wind. Those were the most dramatic doorsteps of the lot. Already he looked like King Lear in the storm. The question did the trick. Something along the lines of: "Are you going mad, Prime Minister?"

Mr Major, who was neurotically obsessed by the media without understanding how it worked, once reflected that he felt like a mass murderer every time he appeared in public as a result of these doorsteps.

The relationship between doorstepper and politician was very odd. One moment, as political correspondents, we would be having a convivial lunch with a cabinet minister, a glass or two of wine, a bit of gossip, a few jokes over the coffee. The next moment we would be doorstepping the same minister screaming "Are you having an affair?" or some such question. The relationship between politicians and journalists is complicated and sensitive, but this took it to new extremes.

The Major government imploded because it was divided and exhausted, but the media did more than report the crisis. We added to the sense of drama.

To some extent the frenzied reporting of the genuinely dramatic Major years has become addictive. Most of the time politics is an arduously long drawn-out business, complex and multi-layered. Yet metaphorically at least we are still in doorstepping mode. The government lied! Control freaks! Spin! Campbell! The clichés change, but they are shrieked at the same high volume established during the fall of Major.

Mr Livingstone would have been daft to apologise for making a mildly insensitive remark. He was the one being disturbed late at night by a reporter out to cause a bit of trouble to get a newsworthy quote. Quite rightly, he has held his ground, and soon the whole frenzy will subside. The latest polls suggest he has suffered a big drop in his personal ratings. This is hardly surprising, given the absurd amount of publicity relating to this non-story. His ratings will recover when everyone has calmed down.

Indeed there are lessons for New Labour in the way Mr Livingstone deals with the media, in spite of his fleetingly low ratings in the polls at the moment. He does not panic in the middle of a media storm. Facing the persistent hostility of London's only newspaper, he gets on with it, usually commanding extraordinarily high levels of support.

Mr Livingstone has also announced a sensible policy for doorsteppers, a third-way solution of which Tony Blair would be proud. In his non-apology statement this week, he suggested that he was already more than accountable to the media and to the London Assembly. There was no need to bother him further. There is something in this: doorstepping for media recluses only. Presumably Mr Livingstone would support the occasional late-night interrogation of Bob Dylan, but not of senior politicians who spend most of their time being interviewed.

That is why I had assumed that doorsteps were out of fashion. Tony Blair is interviewed most days of the week and most hours of each day. Mr Blair also holds his monthly news conference in Downing Street, in which journalists fail to land a punch. Perhaps they should scream in unison: "Are you a liar, Mr Blair?" But I suspect he would have an answer to that one up his sleeve. Those Downing Street press conferences have had a civilising impact on political exchanges - so civilised that it will not be too long before parts of the media will be calling for their abolition.

As for my doorstepping days, they are over. If I am strictly honest, they never really began. I would do anything to get out of them: feign illness, head for a café opposite Downing Street rather than wait in the rain to scream a question. I can make this confession safely now, as my boss at the time is Mr Livingstone's press secretary. Together we are united against the art of doorstepping.

s.richards@independent.co.uk