Times Books -May 17th 2008

SPEAKING FOR MYSELF – the autobiography
by Cherie Blair
Little, Brown
ISBN 978-1-4087-0098-3

There was trouble with the priest because Gale Howard and Tony Booth had picked a godless name like Cherie to register the birth of their newborn. Formidable grandma, Vera Booth, had charge of the baby and knew that a Catholic child could only be baptised with the name of a saint. So an un-Booth like compromise had to be reached – and the future Prime Minister’s wife was christened Theresa, after the 16th century Spanish Abbess. It was an unconsciously prophetic choice. For the energetic, ambitious nun met much trouble and opposition from authority. One papal nuncio described her as ‘a restless woman rambling about the country, indocile and contumacious, the inventor of false doctrines with the appearance of piety... and a despiser of the apostolic precept which forbids a woman to teach.’
I wonder if his surname was Campbell.

It has always puzzled me why Cherie Blair has attracted such levels of dislike, to a level of vitriol scarcely believable. Never having met her, I remained neutral, occasionally dropping head in hands at some reported gaffe or colossal error of judgement (like allowing herself to have any involvement with con-man Peter Foster) and wondering how she could so let the side down. I should explain that ‘side.’ I’m 8 years older but we have much in common: both born into the aspirational Liverpool working class (although since her grandparents owned their own house we’d have thought them ‘posh’), both clever, rebellious grammar school girls, both with grandmothers who cleaned, both anxious about being ‘good enough’ in class terms, both the first in the family to go away to university, both made to feel ‘wrong side of the tracks’ by a middle class boyfriend’s family, both marrying someone next rung up on the class ladder (whom she beats in the academic stakes), both bemused by the arcane customs of Balmoral – and both driven by this everlasting nervy compulsion to prove.

Prove what? There’s the rub. For having not read the extracts or interview, determined to read the autobiography at one sitting to be scrupulously fair and with a predisposition in Cherie’s favour because of all the above, I am as puzzled as ever by my Scouse sister. Wanting her to prove she could write a really good book reflecting intelligently on what has, after all, been an admirable and fascinating life, it’s hard not to be disappointed by her sloppily-written ‘blurt.’ For example, if the lawyer is not bothered to check that the Editor of the Times in 1986 (the time of ‘Fortress Wapping’) was Charlie Wilson not (as she states) Peter Stothard – when ‘as loyal Party members on the side of the unions,’ the Blairs felt involved with the dispute and were renting a house from Stothard - how many other careless slips are there?

‘Speaking For Myself’ is a riveting read and cracks along, the total lack of literary style and thoughtfulness not quite compensated for by its energy. Did she have to write exactly as she speaks: ‘ruddy’ this and that? The wooden ‘chippieness’ of John Prescott’s memoir runs like a coal seam through Cherie’s too and, for me, mining that answers many questions. The most interesting aspects of her narrative lie in the story of her ‘disjointed’ early life – and not with the now familiar political gossip. Did she or did she not mouth ‘That’s a lie’ when Gordon praised Tony at Conference? It hardly matters now – although by the time you’ve reached that point, given the character she reveals, you decide she probably did. As someone who’s long brushed off the bolshie chip on the shoulder (not a good look) I wonder at the 30-odd references to class in this cheerily-painful book. With all your brains and talent and your undeniably good heart, Cherie, could you not deal with this?

Not with such terrible fear stalking every step. The little girl was left with her grandparents until 2, her actor parents conspicuous by absence; she didn’t see her new sister until the baby was 3 months and was then shocked to be left again, this time with her mother, when to her grandmother was ‘Mama.’ A ‘sense of abandonment’ and perennial ‘twinges of anxiety’ would remain with her always - with the feeling that she was ‘non-existent’ to her father, the teasing at school because of his shenanigans, the horrible realisation that he had gone forever, the living in a straightened, female-only household marred by bitterness. Is it any wonder Cherie’s life was to be marked by her desperate – and lonely - compulsion to wave a hand in the air and cry out, ‘Please, look at me!’ No level of achievement is ever quite enough, especially when you must play second fiddle to the husband whom you love, but resent too. Caught between worlds, never quite feeling you ‘fit,’ you’re always waiting to be found out. One solution is to get there first. Knowing they’re out to hurt you, stick out your jaw. Prove you know you’re hopeless, but don’t care. Wave a bolshie fist instead of a hand. Drown in the waves you make.

So, at the very end, Cherie cannot resist tossing her notorious jibe to the waiting press and Tony is furious. Like much of this book, her account of her own failing is quite touching. ‘We had discussed it so often; leaving was...to be done with dignity and grace, and what I had just done was neither gracious nor dignified.’ Still you ask – why? Here’s a woman with an excellent brain who has still not mastered simple speech. But, like her delight in free holidays and her needy clinging to Carole Caplin (as if some oddball glamour might rub off), I do not find it this ‘wicked,’ as some would have it – just painfully fallible and human. Our Cherie’s done well for herself and can be proud of that. She’s now free to use her attractive energy on the good she genuinely believes in. But let her do it quietly, with some Carmelite contemplation.