Cherie sought – unsuccessfully – to stand for the Labour Party in Crosby in succession to
Cherie sought – unsuccessfully – to stand for the Labour Party in Crosby in succession to Shirley Williams in 1982 and contested the safe Tory seat of Thanet North in 1983. Of the two of them it was she who had the political edge in the early days of their marriage. It was her husband’s successful election at Sedgefield, however, that made up their minds. From that point onwards she concentrated on her legal work and, as ever, she worked hard and did well.
She has become one of the most experienced barristers in the field of law as it affects employment and discrimination, and the move to establish a new set of chambers to deal with human rights was a natural progression She is admired and respected as a professional. She is confident and competent.In 1994 the base structure of her world shifted. She had always been her own woman, but now she was the wife of the leader of the Opposition, someone who owed her status to her husband’s job. She was as ambitious for her husband in politics, as she was for herself in the legal profession She wanted him to win. She had wanted him to stand as deputy leader of the Labour Party two years previously. She had a vision of how the political world could be better organised and she had distinctive views – so much so that it has often been suggested that she is the more committed left-wing politician.That is not the case. She is the more instinctive politician, probably because of her childhood, but she has always shared Mr Blair’s view of the need to make the Labour Party electable, to move it forward and make its policies appear more accessible by whatever means was most practical.
She accepted the ideology, such as it is, of “new Labour”, and has always been fiercely defensive of it. She is a political realist.But even a political realist could never be prepared for the exposure to which the wife of the Prime Minister is subjected in this media-conscious milieu. A decision was taken by the spin directorate, some time before the 1997 general election, that Cherie would not give interviews nor adopt a political profile She has stuck to the first. Most people in Britain have never heard her speak, although she is a fluent and effective public speaker whose legal training enables her to address large audiences without notes in a witty and engaging manner. She has found it impossible, however, to avoid the second.Everything about her is cross-examined, as if she herself was an exhibit in one of her court cases: her clothes, her hair, her taste in jewellery. One critical article last week was even posited on the single fact that she chose to wear a silver pendant round her neck, a decision held to be inappropriate for a woman of her age It would be enough to make the strongest woman weep. She was once described as a jumpers-and-slacks sort of person who didn’t care about clothes, who thought there were more important things and who was intelligent enough not to care.
