POLITICS

What a week! When Downing Street told reporters on the Monday morning that it was going to be the 'Week of Health' neither the prime minister, nor his spokesfolk, can have imagined just how true that would prove to be.

The machinations of 'spin doctoring and soundbites' were the much applauded targets of the BMA's new chair, Ian Bogle, at that noisy annual conference in Belfast. Yet the week's dramas showed that their efforts are like paper boats in a storm when things get really rough.

Let's look again at how events unfolded. On Monday when Dr Bogle was gearing up for his highly personalised attack on Tony Blair for 'alienating the entire profession', the PM was turning up as the surprise guest at Frank Dobson's Nye Bevan awards in London - the 'Oscars of the NHS', as Dobbo calls them.

The mood was cheery, with Mr Blair giving his boosterish speech under the watchful gaze of Nye, the public sector's hero.

On re-reading his Bevan text, one can detect a touch of impatience towards the medics. 'I hear there are objections in some quarters to NHS Direct. But I have to say that I don't hear them from patients, ' Mr Blair said. He then went home and saw the TV news dominated by Bogle-ism, doctors at war etc.

Rightly or wrongly, ministers feel they're trying hard to recruit and train more doctors - even sort out juniors' pay. Blair wants to be loved. No wonder his irritation at such ingratitude hardened into the 'scars on my back' attack on stick-in-the-mud public sector attitudes when he addressed venture capitalists 24 hours later.

That was Tuesday, and some conspiracy theorists claim it was all deliberate, designed to 'flush out Prescott' for reshuffle purposes or to grab headlines by picking a BMA battle. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For one thing, the target was too wide. Downing Street was cross with Bogle, and Dobsonites predict that it will prove a serious tactical error to go after Blair himself. The boy bears grudges. But Blair was also at fault. It sounded as if he was abusing all 5 million public sector workers - this in a week when he was about to offer 'supernurses' up to£40,000 a year ('that's£2,000 more than a senior registrar') and trumpet Nye-style prizes for superteachers.

The speech also ran the risk of upstaging the Dobson Jowell public health white paper - all those worthy if elusive targets, mainly aimed at the poorest. Dobbo sounded in a foul mood announcing it in the Commons, and later told the Telegraph that printed copies of the white paper almost didn't arrive. 'I hate incompetence.'

There were also two other problems to niggle Dobson.

One was renewed 'Mr Mayor' speculation about his own future, the other was the 'White-only organ donor storm' as the Mail put it all over page one.

That unnecessary shambles was also later dressed up as a deliberate spin doctor's diversion. It certainly earned the health secretary stick from staff at Sheffield's Northern General, who felt that they had unfairly been dubbed racist.

The authorised version is that Dobson learned he was going to be ambushed with this story on BBC's Newsnight on Thursday, and that among those involved would be a BMA member called Evan Harris MP, Lib Dem health spokesman. He took pre-emptive steps late on Tuesday to announce an inquiry. Reactive spin, not conspiracy.

As you know, Blair's remarks had, meanwhile , provoked John Prescott to use his own local government speech in Harrogate to praise a century of 'civilising' achievements by the public sector - ie local authorities - on health, education and urban reform. Quite right, too. Lawyer Blair is pig-ignorant of history in general and Labour history in particular.

I hope your head is reeling by now. Mine is, so we won't even touch on the final sub-plot, Mr Blair's pro PFI speech at the Woolwich Hospital site, which provoked more BMA wrath, and the Observer 's.

On this one I suspect Blair and Dobson are more right than wrong. But we shall see, as we will over the Mayor Dobson plot. Dobbo wants to stay right where he is. But I begin to sense he is shifting his ground and telling himself that running a devolved London would be preferable to finding himself shifted sideways in a Cabinet reshuffle.