‘A class act’: Tim Allan, the former Blair ‘smoother’ recalled to Downing Street

The publicist Tim Allan (right) with Peter Mandelson at the 2009 Labour conference in Brighton. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian

Tim Allan once acknowledged that under Tony Blair’s No 10 press operation it was a mistake that “spin doctors became the story”.

Now he is returning to Downing Street more than 25 years later at the request of Keir Starmer, and will be hoping to avoid that destiny that so many political press chiefs – from Alastair Campbell and Steve Hilton to Fiona Hill and Dominic Cummings – have faced.