Yes, of course it’s funny. A rebirthing ceremony, a topless model peddling
magic pendants and nude scrubdowns! A New Age guru with big hair and
indecent leggings, licensed to go through the Downing Street larder throwing
out additives, yet herself accumulating toxic men — one of whom, fresh from
a fraudulent slimming tea business, smarms up to a credulous QC with e-mails
saying “Your pleasure is my purpose”, and involves her with an accountant
charged with money-laundering! Yet all this tatty nonsense is not encrusting
some dopey showbiz couple, but the squeaky-clean, earnest, churchgoing,
ineffably self-righteous Blairs! You would need a heart of stone not to
giggle.
The trouble is that the laughing stops with a choke when you realise just how
much harm has been done, not only to the Prime Minister’s reputation but
also to the useful and decent side of Cherie Blair’s public work. Even if
you discount the violent hostility of the Mail newspapers, the bare
facts turn Mrs Blair into a laughing-stock of almost Fergie proportions. The
lie which she made the Downing Street press office tell us was bad enough —
and it was a lie, frankly, not a “misapprehension”, because if a man
negotiating a half-million-pound purchase, discussing family trusts and
giving warnings on stamp duty is not a “financial adviser”, who the hell is?
But beyond that, the whole affair reveals dreadfully Fergoid characteristics,
upsetting in a lawyer. There is naive credulity, a mistaken conviction that
people simply adore to do her little services without favours in return, and
on top of it all that distressing tendency of many rich people to cheesepare
as if they were broke. For me, as a former natural supporter of Mrs Blair,
the worst bit of those terrible e-mails was where the shyster tells her that
his company will pick up the accountancy bill, and is not immediately sent a
rocket saying “you will do no such thing!”. Even a reputable journalist, for
God’s sake, wouldn’t accept a £4,000 freebie service from a relative
stranger without suspecting that there was no free lunch. But an aspiring
judge? A PM’s wife? God save us!
What on earth did Mrs Blair think the creep Foster was doing it for? Love and
respect of her personal qualities? Her husband is Prime Minister, and this
man is fighting deportation. Today’s revelation about the phone call to his
lawyer makes it clear that she knew his status. Moreover, it turns out that
Foster was planning to set up some scammy “schoolchildren’s health project”
which he boasted to an associate would be supported by the Blairs and their
eldest son, “Ewen”. It is alleged that he raised money on this premise. His
claim to have that much pull is transparent nonsense, but it does make it
additionally clear how useful he found his affair with Carole Caplin, a paid
but extremely cosy hanger-on at court. This woman cannot be portrayed as
being associated merely with the PM’s wife: she shared a family holiday and
another undenied story tells that Tony Blair got her round to massage
ex-President Clinton in a black catsuit. Of course Foster thought the Blairs
would be assets in his dodgy ploys — a small, retarded child could spot
that. How a lifelong lawyer married to a lifelong politician failed to do so
is a mystery. The only credible answer is vanity.
I believe the Blairs to be good people, no more naturally flawed than most.
But what this debacle makes clear is that they have allowed the altitude of
power and fame to addle their brains where human relationships and normal
life are concerned, and have also fatally ignored the need to separate
public office from private life. They have never quite grasped that people
suck up to them not because they are lovely human beings, but because Mr
Blair is the most personally powerful Prime Minister ever. At Downing Street
they live amid quasi-royal trappings and deference; they accept free
holidays, fly on private jets, and in her case have reached the stage of
celebrity lunacy where you think you no longer have to attend personally to
anything unless you want to. In celeb-world you not only have someone else
to choose and maintain your clothes, but a psychic to fax with questions
about life decisions, and a handy little man to organise the future
accommodation plans of your children. Two minutes’ contemplation of this
pathetically dependent lifestyle made me positively glad to have just lost a
working morning wrestling with an insurance company, and an evening
demolishing a polluted wardrobe with a crowbar, following a septic tank
blowback. I am not suggesting that the Blairs descend to my level, but it
does nobody any harm to turn away from his own importance for a moment and
notice that his guttering — literally or figuratively — is hanging by a
thread. Reality centres you.
Moreover, mixing with the rich, they have transparently grown to resent not
being as rich as they feel they deserve to be. Much is made of their bad
luck in losing half a million’s worth of growth on the London property
market by selling their Islington house early in the premiership; but we’ve
all made duff decisions in our time, and many people (notably Maxwell
pensioners, endowment-holders and Equitable Life victims) are staring at a
chilly old age thanks to governmental failure to regulate financial
institutions. The Blairs start from a far higher financial base than most
professional people anyway, and he has an index-linked pension coming. If
they are irritated about losing a theoretical profit, they must live with
it. Like the rest of us.
But no: they get into bed with a snake-oil salesman, accept utterly irregular
“help” with a £500,000 property deal instead of spending a few thousand on a
proper agent, and expose their grimy underbelly. A YouGov poll at the
weekend finds 58 per cent thinking that new Labour is “sleazy and
disreputable”. Only 51 per cent see the PM as “honest”, while a mere 47 per
cent think it of Mrs Blair. I mind this most particularly, because there are
causes which she energetically supports which I care very much about: like
human rights and the Prisoners’ Education Trust. If Cherie is going to
mutate into Fergie, her causes too will suffer. That might do more harm to
the general advance of humanity than if her husband were smartly replaced by
Gordon Brown.
It’s a disaster. It needn’t have happened. One of the ways it could have been
avoided — and must be, by future Prime Ministers — is by junking once and
for all the use of spouses as political figureheads and ever-present
appendages. Just before the 1997 general election I applauded Ms Booth for
trying to distance her work and her family alike from the political arena. I
hoped there might be a new deal, whereby at summits and receptions it was no
longer expected that spouses would trail along, making mock-civilised social
events out of political meetings. I hoped that she would retire into her
chambers, choose work which was above suspicion, support mainstream
charities and save her political views for the rough-and-tumble of kitchen
table debate.
Instead she has chummed up with Hillary Clinton on public matters, chaired
debates with ministers at Downing Street, used a civil servant as her
personal PR adviser, spoken through the No 10 press office, held meetings
with clients in that prestigious residence, and at one stage sent out
notepaper saying “Office of Cherie Blair, 10 Downing Street” when she
actually lives at No 11.
I also hoped that the children would be kept out of it. But they had their
pre-election breakfast photographed by a women’s magazine (with the clock,
mysteriously, set at 3am), posed on the doorstep at Downing Street after the
victory, and were frequently referred to when the PM wanted to show himself
as a caring parent. Baby Leo was trained up to give Jacques Chirac a
birthday present (aaah!) and photo-opportunities on holiday are
choreographed to create a “first family” image unmatched since JFK paraded
Jackie, Caroline and John-John in the Sixties.
So now, when the press office tries to hit us with disdainful snubs about
“private” family matters, they just look silly and shifty and unreliable.
And even though it’s funny, it matters. If you’re going to be a figurehead,
you must keep your paint fresh. Mrs Blair’s friends say she is a lovely
person who has committed no actionable crime: true. But there are times when
stupidity and hubris can do just as much damage.
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