Cherie should tell Tony: enough is enough

If you look at Blair's fall into the media mire, it was only a matter of time before Cherie joined him

When Cherie Booth opened her mouth on Tuesday and uttered those 23 words that got her into so much trouble, the worst that you could say about her was that she was being naive. And not naive about the Middle East, since what she said was a fair assessment of one aspect of the disastrous situation that exists there. No, she was being naive about the media.

She knows as well as anyone that some political journalists have recently departed from their rightful business, which is to gnaw over government policy. Instead, they have gone wild over little scraps of trivia, fighting and guzzling over the most unappetising morsels.

As a journalist, I am meant to be on the side of the media, and meant to scorn all establishment figures' attempts to ingratiate themselves with the press, but it's hard to say who is coming out worst from these latest spats. The petulant politicians are not behaving very well, but who can admire the task that the hacks have set themselves, of trying to bring down a government not by serious dissent but by gossip?

I know that I tend to be a bit po-faced whenever I look too intently at the Westminster scene, and I've often wondered, perhaps a little primly, why it is that the media must always concentrate on personalities rather than issues. But even I can see that the usual knockabout of political personalities still has roots in, and effects on, the policies of the parties.

These recent excuses for political debate, on the other hand, especially this current furore over Cherie Booth, have vanishingly little to do with policy. No one has seriously suggested that even if she did feel any sympathy with the suicide bombers, that could have any influence on the British government's behaviour in the Middle East.

For many newspaper readers, the greatest offence caused by the event will have come from the way that her words were construed by commentators bent on making mischief. One editorial suggested that if Cherie Booth thought that the suicide bombers felt they had no hope but to blow themselves up, then she must subscribe to the idea that the Israelis have got it coming to them, and she must be excusing anti-Semitism, and the deaths of civilians, and the ideology of martyrdom, and she must be placing the armed struggle above political solutions. This is clearly far from anything that Cherie Booth believes. But suggesting that a prominent British lawyer might hold such views can only serve to offend just about everyone.

Still, I guess none of us can be too surprised at the way the media have rushed to guzzle over this latest bone. If you look at the way that Tony Blair's character and policies have been slowly falling into the media mire, it was clearly only time before Cherie joined him down there. There was the hunger, there only lacked an opportunity – until yesterday.

For Cherie Booth herself, the shock must be greater. Those journalists who say that she has never had an easy time of being the Prime Minister's wife are not entirely correct – for most of these five years, it hasn't been too bad for her. She has never – until now – come under the barrage of criticism that made Glenys Kinnock such a miserable target even outside Downing Street

Sure, Ms Booth has had her ups and down with the press. There has been the occasional cruel photograph: one of her dancing about in tartan and one of her standing about in pixie boots are constantly brought out. There has been the occasional off-the-wall comment from the right; Tory MP John Bercow described her as "an unaccountable cross between First Lady and Lady Macbeth".

And there has been the occasional cackle of mockery. Some columnists have found themselves in stitches at her taste for holistic earstuds and sitting about with celebrities. Certainly, it can seem absurd that Cherie Booth, QC, might also be a devotee of new age mumbo jumbo and might have anything to say to Liz Hurley – but really, can no clever woman have a silly side?

Indeed, most of the time Cherie has managed to tread a careful line between those people who think that politicians' wives, however bright, should be seen and not heard, and those people who think that bright women, whoever they are married to, should be heard as well as seen. The Daily Mail has been delighted by her alternative therapies and her interest in fashion, and encouraged her to glam up even more. The Independent – myself included – has generally credited her with more intelligence and independence than she is able to show publicly, and exhorted her to speak out rather more. And when she has pushed her causes – the odd speech on violence against women or child protection – they have seemed well chosen and close to her heart.

In fact, it was only two years ago that Cherie was everyone's heroine. That was when she gave birth to Leo, and bathed politics in a rosy glow. The fact that she went on working and loving her family, without grandstanding about being a superwoman or a domestic goddess, seemed in tune with the experiences of a lot of women who never feel that they are doing anything wildly extraordinary by combining the two roles. Her obvious desire not just to float from function to function, but to get on with the daily stuff of being both mother and lawyer, allowed her to command sympathy from women on all sides of the political spectrum.

But it has recently become very clear that the tide was turning. A few weeks ago Cherie Booth chaired some policy discussions at Downing Street, and though to some this seemed like an unexceptional activity, the mud began to fly – was she trying to be Hillary Clinton, did she see herself as a tsarina, asked some commentators? Now, at last, the mud has stuck. Newspapers yesterday were trotting out the fiercest criticisms yet of Cherie Booth as a wannabe First Lady, who should learn again to be seen and not heard. She is a "liability", "presumptuous", "controversial", a "politician manqué" who "loves the limelight", but is "bad for the country".

No doubt some people will be feeling rather self-congratulatory today about the way that they have managed to get at her husband through her. But it all feels rather sad to me. If a woman like this must be so excoriated in our media, then what does that say about us? She has never seriously tried to muscle in on her husband's work, but has tried to do a little good for some of the causes she clearly cares about, indulged in a few more frivolous activities, and then just got on meeting the demands of her work and her children.

If our disgust with our politicians is so great that we hate everything to do with their households, then why don't we look at the causes of that disgust – the continuing inequality and inefficiency in our own country, or the oversights and injustices of our foreign policy? Why are we turning our loathing of their policies and their behaviour not into real dissent, but into mere mudslinging?

If I were Cherie Booth, I know what I would be doing now. I'd be checking out some nice quiet properties far from Downing Street, and letting Tony know that enough is enough, that duty and family now call him away from the leadership of his party. Nobody can win in this game. Why stick around for more?

n.walter@btinternet.com