Journalists have been criticised by the prime minister's office for having been obsessed over the Christmas and New Year holiday with the fate of Charlie Whelan, the spin doctor alleged to have been the source of the leak that resulted in the downfall of two ministers, Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson.

In the last few days the story did become something of a political whodunnit. Whelan was cast as the villain and there was said to be a lynch mob lined up to greet him at the Treasury on his return to work this morning.

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While Tony Blair's press secretary, Alastair Campbell, might have had point in suggesting that the story had been hyped beyond belief, Whelan's resignation was in fact a recognition of political reality.

Despite his vehement denials of having leaked the news that Mandelson had a secret loan of £373,000 on his house in fasionable Notting Hill, Whelan was finished as a spin doctor. His credibility as spokesman for the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, was in tatters. However much he protested his innocence, he had caused too much trouble in the past to too many other ministers to escape unscathed.

Whelan was considered unreliable because of his friendship with The Mirror journalist Paul Routledge, who planned to reveal that Geoffrey Robinson had lent Mandelson the money, until that is, Routledge was beaten to the story by David Hencke of the Guardian.

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Whelan's fate excited political journalists because they have been witnessing the dramatic and unexpected break up of what in the world of football would have been the equivalent of team that kept winning the FA cup. In terms of political spin, Whelan was a star player and he had scored time and again on behalf of his patron, Gordon Brown.

He was a key member of Labour's hard hitting publicity team which knocked John Major's government for six in the run up to the 1997 general election. As Brown's press spokesman he helped Labour torment the then Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke and expose Tory splits over Europe.

The damage done to the Major government by Labour's spin doctors cannot be under-estimated and once in government Gordon Brown dominated the news with controversial decisions like giving the Bank of England freedom to fix interest rates and his imposition of the windfall tax on the privatised utilities.

Dr Spin became a victim of the internal feuding

But Whelan's unseemly exit in the aftermath of the Mandelson and Robinson resignations underlines the demise of that election winning team. Peter Mandelson, who masterminded Labour's propaganda machine, has left under a cloud of suspicion with his credibility as party frontman all but destroyed; David Hill, Labour's chief spokesperson, departed a few months ago, and now Whelan, who spent five years promoting the chancellor, has effectively been forced out of his job.

Of the original quartet who helped Tony Blair to his landslide victory, the only survivor is the redoubtable Alastair Campbell, who remains the prime minister's constant companion and confidant.