The cafeteria Catholic with a walk-on part in history
Often portrayed as Lady Macbeth to her husband, Cherie Blair emerges from her autobiography as a loyal, intelligent and courageous woman, says Charlie Hegarty
27 June 2008

Tony Blair called Cherie, above at a book signing, 'my bolshie Scouser'; the press were not so kind

Cherie Blair (Ms Cherie Booth QC) says that she wrote this book both because she had "a walk-on part in history" and to put the record straight.

Actually, it is the other wives at Number 10 like Lady Wilson and Audrey Callaghan who had the walk-on parts. It was never Cherie's nature or intention to do a little light flower-arranging or preside at genteel tea parties. I recall reading (it is not in the book) that when asked if she would give up her legal career on becoming the wife of the prime minister, she countered jauntily: "Give me one reason why I should."

The key to Cherie lies in her background: working-class Catholic tribalism from the wrong side of the park in Liverpool, she grew up in a home dominated by strong women - her book is dedicated to her mother and grandmother.

Her father, philanderer and actor, Tony Booth, abandoned his wife and two daughters early on. Money was tight and hard work and ambition were drilled into her. Brainy, unlike poor old John Prescott, she passed her 11-plus, went to an excellent Catholic girls' grammar school, then to the LSE, where she read law and came top in the bar finals. She had also joined the Labour Party on her own initiative aged 16 and was capable of juggling three boyfriends conjointly (Tony, invincibly self-confident, saw off the other two). Marriage, children, an attempt to win a parliamentary seat and a highly successful career as a barrister followed. Cherie was hardly going to be an invisible political spouse.

I began this book full of prejudice against its subject; now I think the press in its fickle fashion turned against her early on, so that her perceived image very quickly became that of a greedy, gaffe-prone, publicity-seeking careerist. Fiona Millar told her bluntly: "The press all hate you."

In these pages we hear Cherie's side, told with little rancour but some self-justification. What emerges is a woman fiercely loyal to her roots, her friends and to Tony, generous - she has forgiven her dad - opinionated and warm-hearted.

She can laugh at herself, including among the photos the notorious one when she opened her front door early in the morning wearing a skimpy negligee, her hair in a mess, to be confronted by press cameras. Finally, she can admit her mistakes, such as her last fling at the press on leaving Downing Street for good - "We shan't miss you!" - that scuppered Tony's hopes for a dignified exit, and her ill-chosen friend and lifestyle guru, the fateful Carole Caplan.

Alastair Campbell - "a charming thug", she accurately describes him - stormed at her as early as the Labour Party Conference in 1994, "I've got a nose for these things. That woman is trouble. You can't possibly trust her." Later on, there is a moment of pure mirth at Chequers when Carole begins a spontaneous gymnastic routine in front of Bill Clinton, "all white leggings and leotard at full stretch, her long hair sweeping the ground. I could see Bill's eyes widen and I quickly moved her on."

There is also a hilarious episode when the Blairs stayed with Silvio Berlusconi and Cherie tries desperately to keep the cameras from photographing her husband alongside this home-grown clown in a pirate's bandanna.

Naturally, for someone juggling so many balls at once and for so long - her children, her career, her husband and his 10-year premiership - she sometimes drops the ball.

There are inconsistencies: "I never swear" she comments on The Queen film, later remarking about Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky: "I thought he was bloody stupid." She professes to hate the celebrity lifestyle - "it was glamour that led my father astray" - yet is dazzled at the White House when the Clintons introduce her to "America's finest, including Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg".

Sometimes she is "a good Catholic girl"; sometimes she declares she is the opposite. Essentially she is a cafeteria Catholic: she loves singing hymns, recalls May processions with nostalgia, insists her children attend Catholic schools, yet is quite insouciant about using contraception and embarrassingly frank about its famous failure at Balmoral.

Now that Tony Blair has left office to spread goodwill and niceness around the globe it is fascinating to watch here the compelling mixture of boundless charm and self-belief that propelled him to power and gave him his extraordinary run of success.

Doubtless his legacy, his mania for all things new encapsulated by "Cool Britannia" and the Millennium Dome, will exercise historians for some time to come. His spouse is discreet about Gordon Brown, about whom we learn nothing that we could not guess from those saturnine features. Given her frank admission that "I had never been taught that discretion is the better part of valour" it is safe to assume that the censor's scissors have been active. Lord Irvine, her boss in chambers, was a heavy drinker, she admires the Queen, "really a countrywoman", did not get on with Princess Anne; of Prince Philip, "I was actually quite fond of the old boy." He will be reassured to know.

On entering Downing Street in 1997, Cherie states: "My job was to make family life work." On the whole she managed it very successfully, despite the enormous pressures of living in "the goldfish bowl". A miscarriage following Leo's birth was a source of genuine sorrow for her, though she was forced to conceal this by the ever-vigilant Campbell. Behind everything is a genuinely strong and happy marriage. "I fancied him [Blair] rotten and still do" she admits; for Tony, alternately beguiled and dismayed by his wife's antics, she is his "bolshie Scouser".

The Blairs have recently bought a Buckinghamshire mansion; friends in their new parish tell me they hope Cherie will join the flower and cleaning rota - so perhaps she will finally get to do the flower-arranging she somehow missed out on at Number 10.