CHERIE BLAIR must be wishing that her courtroom tussles were as straight forward.
She described her husband’s former director of communications Alastair Campbell as the “cuddly, friendly type” on a prime-time television interview and got away with it.
Faced with the soft sofas and gentle questioning of the hosts of Richard and Judy, the Prime Minister’s wife deployed all the skills of a consummate lawyer.
But her appearance was nonetheless her most revealing to date. She made the most effective attempt yet to end the speculation about her husband’s future, saying that there “never was a moment” when he had been going to resign.
And she insisted that Melvyn Bragg, who suggested this week that Mr Blair had considered quitting for family reasons, was “mortified” about the stir his remarks had created.
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“We can’t always explain what goes on in men’s minds — I wish I could,” she said, before adding that Mr Bragg would not be cast aside for his apparent indiscretion.
“I am not the sort of person that goes off and takes a huff, frankly” she told Channel 4.
Talking about the flurry of speculation about her husband’s future, Mrs Blair provided the closest indication yet that he had never wobbled.
“As Tony himself said, there never was a moment when he was going to resign. I can assure you if he had done, I would have known. So I do not know where Melvyn got it from and to be honest I think he is mortified that he said it,” she said.
Asked why she thought Lord Bragg had made the comments, Mrs Blair replied: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him.”
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She added: “We can’t always explain what goes on in men’s minds - I wish I could.”
Mrs Blair, who will be 50 next Thursday, was appearing on the Channel 4 show to promote her book The Goldfish Bowl, which looks at the life of spouses in Downing Street.
In the book, which was co-written with Cate Haste, Lord Bragg’s wife, the pair interview the partners of former Prime Ministers.
Mrs Blair said that all of the partners she had spoken to had thought that the press were a “difficulty”. Asked if she felt she had “had it worse” than the others, she replied: “The truth is today we have far more press, we have far more television, we live in a different world.
“Complaining about the press, I’m afraid, is like complaining about the weather. You can’t change it, you just have to learn to live with it.”
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Mrs Blair also said she would continue standing by Carole Caplin, her lifestyle guru, and that she liked to be “loyal to her friends”.
But she failed to explain why Fiona Millar, her former aide and friend, was pointedly omitted from the guest list for her 50th birthday party at Chequers last weekend, along with Alastair Campbell, her partner.
“They have been very loyal to me and I just like to be loyal to them,” she said.
Asked if Mr Campbell, the Prime Minister’s former communications chief, had ever asked her to “drop” Ms Caplin, Mrs Blair said: “Alastair wouldn’t dream of dictating to me what to do. He is the cuddly, friendly type.”
Mrs Blair played down any suggestions of rows in Number 10 about her friendship with Ms Caplin. She said that the main role as the wife or husband of a Prime Minsiter was to be there to support him, and to be there for them when there was no one else for them to rely on. It was interesting how close the Downing Street couples had been, she said.
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The interview came on the day Ms Millar criticised Mrs Blair’s decision to throw herself into the limelight.
Writing in The Guardian, Ms Millar said: “Giving interviews while still in Downing Street is a rather pointless exercise (and if she wanted to write a book making the case for redefining the first spouse’s role, it would be more effective later on, out of office, when she could tell her own story more frankly)”.
She said that the formal role or administrative assistance given to the Prime Minister’s consort was one of the reasons the for debacle involving Carole Caplin and Peter Foster last year.
“We should have made it clear that Cherie Booth QC was a professional figure . . . with legitimate views on a range of issues. If we had taken this fairly minor step I believe that the public would have accepted it and a lot of the alter image problems which arose as her own financial insecurity collided with attempts to make or save money might have been avoided.
Her performance was, according to social psychologists, as controlled and quiver-free as could be expected from a person with years of experience in the courtroom. Peter Marsh, of the Social Issues Research Centre, said that a supremely composed performance offered few if any pointers to the alleged “colossal strain” felt earlier this year in the Prime Minister’s houshold.
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“She is a barrister and those are the skills that mark you out,” Dr Marsh said. “She was to the point, relaxed, and in control throughout.” Describing Mrs Blair as noticeably careful with her words, he added that she had avoided any tricky subjects and taken the lead in the conversation when Lord Bragg’s comments were brought up. “She did not say Tony Blair had never had a ‘wobble’, but that he had never considered resigning. She then took the subject away by bringing up a different angle to the conversation. There were no signals of great distress,” he said.
IN HER OWN WORDS...
ON BRAGG
“I don’t know where Melvyn got it from and I think he’s mortified that he said it”
ON THE MEDIA
“The only way to deal with it is to ignore it because if you paid attention to it you would go mad”
ON CAMPBELL
“Alastair wouldn’t dream of dictating to me what to do, he is the cuddly, friendly type”
ON E-BAY
“I’m sure the British public doesn’t care (when I buy shoes on e-Bay) but it seems that the Daily Mail does, and I really don’t want to share that with everyone again. It was my first attempt at e-Bay, and it was fun, but never again”