Next week's other departure from Number 10

[Gilps]

Goodbye to all this

 

Can self-effacing Sarah Brown reverse Cherie Blair's cult of the first lady? So far, the signs are good

 

Catherine Bennett

Thursday June 21, 2007

The Guardian

 

Blair's brilliant "feral" number only emphasised how much some of us will, as threatened, miss him when he's gone. It is too much to hope that Brown will ever lose it in the same way. Who will we have, next week, to call us names? To act out made-up anecdotes, in funny voices? Brown will never appear in a sketch with Catherine Tate, play the ukelele in his swimsuit, use the expression "five times a night" or telephone someone like Carole Caplin while she is being filmed in her bedroom with her lover, a convicted fraudster who is also his wife's financial adviser. Happy days.

 

Will we, for the same reason, miss that turn of turns, Mrs Blair? Naturally, it is her hope that we never get the chance to find out. The BBC has been filming a valedictory tribute (a sequel to her 2005 documentary, Married to the Prime Minister) about her final days in office, after which we will experience, for the first time, the glory that is Cherie Unbound. What a spectacle it promises to be - speeches and tours, all resplendent with recriminations; Question Time, sponsorship, a UN role, more BBC documentaries (Married to a Civilian) and the first, post-Downing Street book, as soon as she can get it written, in which Cherie Booth-Blair smites her enemies and tackles the Gordon issue head on. Was it her fault if the press deliberately misrepresented her exclamation, "that's a nice tie!" as "that's a lie"?

 

Meanwhile, Sarah Brown will demonstrate, single-handedly, whether it is possible to reverse the culture of celebrity. To begin with, this exercise may look a little forbidding. We will have to get used to seeing her sitting in her seat at conference, for example, instead of leaping on stage, to cover her sweating husband in kisses. It is unlikely that she will sing for us. Or hug - in public, anyway - the next chancellor of the exchequer. Or attempt to sack him, in private. She may go further: in the next year or so, we could be offered a glimpse of what political life was like, long ago, before the Blairs introduced us to the Clintonesque, two-for-the-price-of-one package, and Cherie began her never-ending lecture tour (billed, in the US, as the "trailblazing first lady of Downing Street").

 

Even before that, the unhappy Ffion had been dressed up in shorts and a baseball cap that matched William's, Norma Major had been relaunched as the Tories' "secret weapon" and a more enthusiastic Glenys Kinnock had embraced her own role: stopping Neil from tumbling backwards into the sea.

 

So far, Sarah Brown's self-effacement has rivalled Mary Wilson's, and even Mrs Wilson discovered that, for a poetical fish, the celebrated bowl offered certain, modest advantages. Would her poems, otherwise, have seen the light of day? She was, however, instructed by Downing Street officials that she should not accept £33 when one of them appeared in a magazine, in case it looked like cashing in on her husband's position.

 

Mrs Blair's determination to do exactly that - on the basis that a first lady must pay, somehow, for the grooming, clothes, time, massage, dowsing, financial advice, rebirthing and secretarial support staff that are notoriously absent in Downing Street - has at least concentrated minds on what should, ideally, be expected of a prime minister's partner, or as she used to put it, "consort". Recent reports that Mrs Blair took "mortal offence" at Gordon Brown's behaviour, and sought revenge, confirm the suspicion that she actually considered the premiership a shared career opportunity. But there is little evidence that anyone, other than Hillary Clinton and Mr Blair, actually shared her interpretation. And only Norma Major, interviewed for Mrs Blair's television programme, seems to have agreed that someone else - the state - ought to pay for it.

 

With the arrival of Sarah Brown, we may finally discover if the public would accept something closer to a French arrangement. Not that she is expected to emulate the sensationally scowling Mme Sarkozy (in any case, Gordon makes her look like an amateur), but she shows a similar disinclination to perform, in public, for her husband's party. If she continues, there is a chance that, one day, a person whose private life does not exemplify the ideals of Good Housekeeping - a magazine once guest-edited by Cherie - could make it in British politics.

 

At the same time that Blair appointed gay cabinet ministers and established civil partnerships, his relentless advertisement of his wife, kids and uxorious commitment confirmed that, where prime ministers are concerned, Britain is certainly not an equal opportunities employer. Without a wife, Gordon Brown was an object of suspicion; now his damp-eyed whiffling about the unique lessons he has learned from fatherhood is itself a warning to any ambitious, single politician, that neither a puppy, nor even a cooperative, but childless, partner can compete.

 

Happily, Sarah Brown refuses to behave like an accessory. At the time of writing, she has still not been made over. Every year since her marriage, she has proved that it is possible for a chancellor to pose for budget pictures without a wife. It has been suggested that this admirable reticence is the result of an early, much resented story about a cat. Just possibly, on the other hand, she has a sense of dignity. And understands, as someone who has spent more time as a successful PR than as a wife and mother, that times have changed. Interfering political wives have come to look rather strange in a world where most women are too busy with their own lives to factor into their work-life balance the downfall of their husbands' enemies.

[Des]

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[Stevie H]

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