A meeting of the most powerful brains in Downing Street was dominated by a heated discussion over whether the prime minister should meet Westlife. “It seems,” wrote a breathless Lance Price, then a key No 10 strategist, “we can get Westlife to say some nice things about Tony Blair and Labour.”

Rather than Price’s controversial factual account of his three years as a Labour spin docotr, has his publisher mistakenly sent me his follow-up satirical novel instead? Surely even the Blair court could not be so shallow as to fret about glad-handing a bunch of teenage pop singers? Oh yes it could, and more; this is not satire, this is tragicomedy.

Page after page of The Spin Doctor’s Diary details whether the prime minister might win the endorsement of a boy band whose contribution to political science includes Queen of My Heart, Bop, Bop Baby and, appropriately, Mandy. Anybody who disputes new Labour’s fundamental vacuousness must read this book.

“It seems ludicrous now,” Price admits. “But there was this obsession about being brushed with celebrity.” Ludicrous indeed. New Labourites like to come over as bloke-ish, burbling on about beer and football. But at heart new Labour has always been a bit camp and that goes for Blair, too. This book is so camp that it should be called Carry On Spinning.

So we learn that Blair sidles up to the openly homosexual Price and asks whether women do anything for him at all. Another time Price goes to see the prime minister about a tiff that Alastair Campbell has had with a television reporter.

Price, Campbell’s deputy, also recounts the time his boss takes the mickey out of him for confusing Michael Owen, the footballer, with Mark Owen, another boy-bander — while Blair “scratches his head” trying desperately to work out who either Owen is.

A picture emerges of a government less concerned with the commanding heights of the economy than in plummeting the depths of banality. As Price says, he worked for a government in “adolescence, with behavioural difficulties. There were a lot of mistakes”.

In London last week (unsurprisingly, he was “persona non grata” at Labour’s conference in Brighton), Price is frank about the “vanity” of Blair, the bullying of Campbell — and how the prime minister “really fears” Ken Clarke, who is currently bidding for the Tory leadership.

Price describes a meeting with Blair to brief him on how the Tories were planning to replace William Hague, their leader: “It suddenly seemed very real to (Blair). He realised he could face Clarke across the dispatch box. Tony recognised Clarke has a bit of what he has — an ability to connect with voters.”

Blair’s game plan, says Price, has always been to “straddle the centre ground and box the Conservatives into a right-wing corner, but he couldn’t do that with Clarke”. It is an obvious tactic, but as Price observes: “Even now the Conservatives don’t seem to get it; long may it last.”

So worried was Blair by the old warhorse that Labour decided to talk up Hague: “If only Hague knew the efforts we went to in shoring up his leadership,” Price laughs. His diaries aside, the former No 10 aide remains loyal to Labour, although he cannot quite manage to sound disappointed about the party’s PR blunders since his departure, such as Cherie Blair blurting out last week that her husband would go on and on: “Spouses are advised to keep their views to themselves. Denis Thatcher was the model. Unfortunately, spontaneity can be dangerous.”

Blair’s major failing, Price believes, was governing in his first term as if he were still in opposition, “being far too interested in headlines” rather than instigating fundamental change. It was obvious to everyone but the prime minister that with such a massive majority Labour would win again, but as Blair now openly regrets, he was far too timid, leaving him with a legacy of half-baked reforms.

To illustrate the obsession with spin, Price chronicles how Blair wanted to buy Calvin Klein spectacles but was persuaded out of it as it would look elitist for him not to wear National Health Service glasses. “It was a big deal,” Price says, “there were lots of discussions between advisers with people bringing in glasses they had bought from Woolworths for £5 and saying ‘These don’t look too bad’.”