Watch Out

Since we are in the realm of symbolic gestures, and since No 10 controls the time and place, I would like the PM a lot more if he had stood beside her instead of letting his spin machine throw her to the wolves alone.

Moreover if the No 10 office really did help with the statement, why no mention of the £4,000 accountancy fee which Foster says he paid? Just one line — “I paid it in full” or “I always planned to pay it and will do so” — would expunge one of the most damaging allegations of the lot. But not a whisper. It almost makes you think that someone in the system isn’t all that bothered about the Blairs and fancies a change.

Jane Shilling

A LINE I’ve always liked of Rose Macaulay’s is her observation that, in matters of propaganda, we “wave the bodies of our women and children like banners as we charge”. Cherie Blair’s modern take on this, in her remarkable speech of mingled contrition and self-justification, was to wave the bodies of her husband and family. When she did what she did, she was acting, she said, on an instinct “which I think any mother would have”. She was trying to do “Tony and the country proud”.

So far, this all sounds not just credible but quite sympathetic. But hang on a minute, who’s this waiting in the wings? Bless me, it’s Kate Reddy, the senior executive mother of Allison Pearson’s best-selling novel, who spends her life in a welter of high-flying self-pity. In Pearson’s novel it’s not enough for her heroine to have a fantastic job, a huge income, lovely children and a supportive husband: we all have to feel sorry for her as well, because they all take up so much time and she is too tired to enjoy life and does bad things sometimes which really aren’t her fault. Here we come to the crux of Cherie Blair’s speech. Not only is she “not superwoman”, but none of it is her fault anyway: “It really didn’t cross my mind that he (Peter Foster) was going to land me in the mess that I am now in.” That is, she didn’t get herself into a mess, someone else did.

She has not made a mistake: a mistake has been done to her.

Why do I find this contemptible? Because it is morally and intellectually dishonest. It plays straight to the stereotype, which still, after all these years of feminism, refuses to go away, that women can’t cope with serious crises — that when it really matters they are weepy, pathetic and refuse to accept responsibility.

When Cherie Blair says she made a mistake and this is why, I’m entirely on her side. When she turns into Kate Reddy and says in the first place that she has got too much to do, and in the second place it wasn’t her, a nasty man did it to her, it really makes me wonder whether those are her own words and, if not, who writes her speeches.

In either case, I’d have admired her a lot better for not playing the victim card.

Dr Thomas Stuttaford

MRS BLAIR is, or was, in deep trouble and every line of her face, flicker of her eyes and intonation of her voice during her statement reflected this. Although she was obviously tired and strained, her performance was masterful.

For a short period in my medical career I had to attend court on behalf of my patients. It was always claimed by the lawyers I met that the barristers’ gestures, demeanour, voice — in general the act — didn’t matter. I was told that what counted in a difficult case was the intellectual merit of the points presented by the defence. However, in my experience the actuality was different. My patients’ flimsy cases were often well received when they had a barrister who dominated the court, played to the jury and knew their whims and what could twist their emotions. If their story and their appearance in the witness box could jerk the heartstrings of the 12 who were judging them, intellectual arguments could be overcome.

Mrs Blair is a brilliant woman with a commendable academic record. Unless the strain of the past week or two has caused her to crack emotionally, her statement and performance, which could not fail to engender sympathy, was by someone quite unlike that: a bewildered, unsophisticated provincial housewife and mother who has strayed into a clever metropolitan world beyond her ken. In her confusion it seemed she had misdirected the Downing Street press office, and had only been working to protect her son’s anonymity — how the other flat in the investment was involved in this wasn’t explained.

By making a statement, rather than answering questions, she was able to give a carefully trimmed response that enhanced the qualities in which she excelled — those of a wife and mother — and which she knew would woo her television audience. By being able, as it were, to select the questions which the mythical prosecution was posing, she was able to rehearse a convincing defence — but omitted to deal with the points which, as a lawyer, she must have known would be troubling people.

The image of a good but unwise woman at bay with the hounds of the press snapping at her throat was a tragic one, but it achieved its object of appealing to the natural sympathy and kindliness of the British public. Women, who can identify all too easily with the problems of trying to serve both career and family, felt immediately drawn to her. With a rather detached and more cynical eye she appeared manipulative, over-rehearsed, avoidant of the damaging points and seemed to display a personality that was alien to her background and her training as a famously aggressive lawyer. Which is the true Mrs Blair? Weak and bewildered or intellectual and politically astute? If she really has two such divergent sides to her character, she will need more than Carole Caplin’s magic to help her to retain her equilibrium.

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