POLITICAL WIVES ARE STILL USED TO WOO VOTERS
With apologies to Jane Austen, it seems to be a universally accepted truth that a man with his eyes on Number 10 must be in want of a wife – and not just any old wife, but a paragon that can be paraded as a PR asset.
It’s partly down to Michelle Obama, who has been the object of adulation as First Lady, and partly down to Sarah Brown, a PR professional in her own right and quite possibly the most astute adviser in her husband’s inner circle. She has harnessed huge numbers of followers on Twitter and humanised Brown’s dour image.
The Tories struck back with tasteful modelling shots of a younger SamCam, the news that she is expecting her fourth child, and by pictures of her serving in a soup-kitchen, Michelle Obama-style.
Nick Clegg’s wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, opted for a lower profile – though somewhat paradoxically, she declared this on a television interview with ITV’s Mary Nightingale. Even the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who doesn’t normally trot out his wife for the cameras, posed with the estimable Maggie on Budget Day.
Serious journalists tend to see the political wives as largely irrelevant, other than to the fashion and gossip pages. The wives are, though, part of the arsenal deployed to woo women voters: you might call it the Mumsnet factor.
“An executive’s wife used to be scrutinised. Thankfully, the business world has moved on”
The odd thing is that while it is the Tories who overtly paint themselves as the champions of marriage, it seems de rigeur for all the leaders wives of all parties to major on their roles as helpmeets, mothers and clothes horses rather than their careers – though all are high-fliers in their own right.
But the image of retro, idealised nuclear families is conspicuously out of step with the experience of many, if not most Britons, who have to contend with realities such as divorce, step kids, civil partnerships and the single life.
And it doesn’t address policy issues affecting voters of both sexes, who I hope are more interested in the management of the economy, civil liberties, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, in a recent article pointed out that: “At this moment women are rescuing girls from brothels in Cambodia, campaigning for public office in Kuwait... running schools for refugees in Burma and rebuilding homes in the aftermath of earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.” That’s got to be more important than the frocks. There are other obvious flaws in writing wives into the public relations strategy. If she is an appealing character, like Sarah Brown, she might become more popular than her husband. If she is not so appealing, or has a tendency to go off message, then she’s a liability – and wives are not necessarily controllable by media handlers.
In corporate life, an executive’s wife used to be scrutinised, and it was expected that she would play a supportive and secondary role to their husband’s career. Thankfully, the business world has moved beyond that. We don’t even expect the Royal Family to embody marital perfection any longer.
There is no evidence that leaders’ wives help sway opinion one way or the other. Professor Joachim Sauer, an eminent quantum chemist, has adopted the best approach. He stays out of the limelight – just don’t call him Herr Merkel.
