Redefining the role of a political spouse

Somewhere along the line, Mrs Blair clearly decided she might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb

Cherie Blair has come a long way in six months. At the beginning of the year, controversy raged around her over outfits, hair-dos, homework, acupuncture, babies and pendants. Today, the controversy is about the Middle East peace process, prison reform, the hosting of seminars at No 10, and the degree to which a political wife can be a public figure, with political views, in her own right.

Somewhere along the line, Mrs Blair clearly decided that she might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. She was clearly going to be carped at by the media anyway. Now at least she's being carped at over something useful, worth discussing and defining – the role of political spouses in the 21st century – rather than something pointless, useless and over-defined – the role of female figureheads in the media.

You can see why she's thrown caution to the wind. Why not be splattered over the papers for speaking your mind about prison overcrowding, when you're going to be splattered over them anyway for your crimes against hats? Why not have your say about Palestinian suicide bombers, when your presence at a charity event – Medical Aid for Palestinians – would trigger endless speculation about your beliefs in this arena anyway? And why not? If every little move you make is going to end up in the press, why not harness the attention to make points about the things you believe in, rather than be scrutinised over stuff that you consider either trivial, or nobody else's business. Mrs Blair has always made it known that she wants to keep her private life private. Finally she may have cracked it. What better way of protecting the family, than hiding it behind a blizzard of public pronouncements?

Those commentators who huff and puff over Mrs Blair's shameless exploitation of her husband's position seem to miss this point. If the media really wanted a clear separation between prime ministers and their wives, then that should have been signalled from the start with minimal coverage of Mrs Blair.

Instead, quite a different thing happened. The media (or sections of it), far from believing in the separation now being called for so passionately (by the same sections), were more than keen to be the body defining the role. The role was to look good, be around, smile winningly, stay away from all but the most innocuous of activities (inside and outside work), and still provide plenty of friendly column inches. It's a familiar demand, which has been made of the wives of powerful men for centuries. The narrow band of duties doled out to the political wife to be parceled as soft news hardly comprises an insight into a soul. Nevertheless, the obliging fool playing this game must expect them to be presented to the world as an accurate representation of the woman in full. Any complaint that perhaps this isn't the case must be rectified by application to the same media with the offer of an exclusive interview or two, with the reward for compliance being kid-glove treatment.

Mrs Blair has never quite fallen in with this. Famously, she has never given an interview, although she was for a time most assiduous with the soft news provision. At this stage there would be such a hullabaloo round a recantation of her decision to dodge all questions, that the prospect of a grilling is more freighted with pitfalls now than ever. For there is no doubt that Mrs Blair is less than consistent in her attitudes to the roles she has achieved for herself, and the roles she has had thrust upon her.

How would Mrs Blair, in an interview, explain why she used letterheads saying "Cherie Booth QC, 10 Downing Street", for example, when it is clear that her only link with 10 Downing Street, an address at which she does not live, is as Mrs Blair? Her only possible explanation, surely, would be to admit that while she actually doesn't know herself where Cherie Booth QC, stops, and Cherie Blair, prime minister's wife, begins, she is certain that the most attractive option for her is to create a hybrid public face which includes the most powerful aspects of each persona.

This is an uneasy, almost contradictory, compromise, as it willfully advertises Mrs Blair's personal achievements, but within the glamorous setting of the influence she has gained by association with her husband. If Mrs Blair was as independent as she sometimes likes to infer, then she would not wish to grasp at such trappings of her husband's success for herself. It does have to be concluded that Mrs Blair is indeed keen on using her husband's influence to add a grand patina to her own career.

But is such a mindset entirely her own fault? The truth is that it is within this setting that Mrs Blair's own accomplishments have been presented by others, ever since her husband became leader of the Labour Party. No wonder Mrs Blair is confused. Only she is expected to be rigorous in dividing her professional life from her husband's professional life. Everyone else is free to mix and match like crazy.

And mix and match they do. Why was Mrs Blair invited to give the inaugural Longford Lecture last night? It wasn't because she is a human rights lawyer, or because she is the prime minister's wife. Instead she was invited to give the speech because she is both things. Should she have turned the opportunity down, scrupulously self-censoring, because she was not sure such a platform would have come her way if she wasn't the PM's wife? Or should she accept the reality of her life and go for it?

I tend towards believing the latter, because I think that all of this demand for separation seriously misunderstands the way in which the partnership of modern marriage can work. I feel pretty certain that without Mrs Blair behind him, Mr Blair would not have achieved the high office that he has. But no one suggests that he therefore should not have accepted the job.

The problem with sorting out who is riding on the coat-tails in a marriage is that the wife's traditional role of good woman behind great man is still not questioned, and any expansion of this role, whereby the good woman accrues some of the benefits won in the partnership, is still a moot point.

Whatever new accommodations end up being made in the debate that Mrs Blair's political activism is triggering, it is surely at least a positive thing that she is finally pushing the envelope rather than conforming to the modern celebrity version of an age-old two-steps-behind model. Mrs Blair has political beliefs and opinions, and people have made it plain that they are willing to offer her a platform to express them. Comparisons are often made with Hillary Clinton, who actually took a far more hands-on role in the machinations of government than Mrs Blair has shown any signs of being willing to do. But one of the more reassuring things about many of Cherie's pronouncements is that they are not even on-message, never mind part of the governmental machine.

I think, for example, that it is simplistic, sentimental and patronising to say that young Palestinians become suicide bombers simply because they have "no hope". But I still think it's worth something that a woman scheduled to play political wives with the US President a few days later had enough courage to give voice to her own opinion. The days when a woman's political beliefs were the ones her husband told her to have are gone. It's time that the wives of prime ministers were released from the tiresome task of ducking this happy fact.

d.orr@independent.co.uk