Blair's rule full of gaffes, spin and control freakery, says mandarin

• Tony Blair's leadership style gets a pasting from former head of civil service

• Lord Butler damns Labour government in Spectator interview

• Fans of Tony describe Butler and his opinions as 'outdated'

Key quote

"The most devastating testimony I can ever remember from someone in such an eminent position". - Michael Howard, Conservative leader

Story in full TONY Blair’s style of government was condemned yesterday as shallow and incompetent in a scathing assessment from one of the country’s most authoritative figures.

Robin Butler, the former head of the civil service, passed a damning verdict on Labour’s record, describing a government dominated by political advisers and intent only on securing favourable media coverage.

Lord Butler, who carried out this year’s inquiry into pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, also said that Mr Blair did not seem to have learned from his warnings against allowing the Cabinet to be sidelined in favour of a small clique of close aides around the Prime Minister.

"There is too much emphasis on selling, there is too much central control and there is too little of what I would describe as reasoned deliberation which brings in all the arguments," Lord Butler said.

In his report in July, the retired cabinet secretary criticised Mr Blair’s so-called "sofa government", and he kept up that attack yesterday, saying: "The Cabinet, now - and I don’t think there is any secret about this - doesn’t make decisions."

He went on: "It isn’t wise to listen only to special advisers, and not to listen to fuddy-duddy civil servants, who may produce boringly inconvenient arguments. It is clear that politically appointed people carry great weight in the government and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if it’s done to the exclusion of advice from civil servants, you tend to get into error, you make mistakes."

In an interview with the Spectator, Lord Butler said the Labour government had been responsible for "a huge number of extremely bad bills, a huge amount of regulation, and [gets] to do whatever it likes - and whatever it likes is what will get the best headlines tomorrow."

Lord Butler entered the civil service in 1961 and worked in the private offices of Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher when each served as prime minister. In 1988, he became head of the civil service and cabinet secretary, retiring in 1998.

Despite the former mandarin’s unmatched experience of government and his recent investigations of the workings of government, Phil Woolas, the deputy leader of the House of Commons, attacked Lord Butler’s view as outdated.

"This is the old establishment trying to create this image that we’re centralising, we’re riding roughshod over the House of Commons, and my experience is that’s not true," he said. "It’s just a bit of an old-fashioned way of looking at things."

Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, described Lord Butler’s remarks as "the most devastating testimony I can ever remember from someone in such an eminent position".

Mr Blair’s official spokesman refused to discuss the details of Lord Butler’s charges but appealed for the government to be "judged by the results it has achieved across a wide range of subjects".