Don't
Cry for me
Cherie
A New Labour Soap Opera
She
seems to have it all: wealth, influence, career, family, and freebies.
She rubs shoulders with the rich and famous including George Bush and Sir.
Cliff Richard.
Forbes magazine rates her the 12th most powerful woman in the world.
But can she ever find true contentment inside her restlessly aspiring New
Labour soul?
Sixties
Child
Cherie’s
father was Tony Booth, the actor who played a loutish Liverpudlian in the
sitcom, ‘Tell Death do us Part”
Tony
Booth was invited to a Party at Number 10 by the original ‘Cool Britannia’
Labour PM, Harold Wilson. He got drunk, mistook an ambassador for a waiter,
and was thrown out. The incident seems to have had a lasting influence
on his daughter.
Cherie still pines for the decade when Harold Wilson and his wife Mary were
making Number 10 swing to the likes of the Beatles. In her book ‘The
Goldfish Bowl”, about the lives of PM's spouses, she goes into raptures
about the sixties, celebrities and all things 'New':
“ the growing sense of optimism and a willingness
to embrace the ‘new’, to break down old barriers, instill purpose
into politics, be rid of deference in the pursuit of egalitarianism and
— among the young — to march and dance to a different, more
vibrant tune offered by rock and roll, the Beatles, and the singer Bob Dylan,
for whom ‘the times they are a-changing’.”
Her
nostalgia for the Wilsonian Sixties probably influenced the early days of
New Labour when pop louts including the band Oasis were summoned to sip
Champaign at Number 10.
Human
Rights
In New Labour terms, there’s nothing quite so cool (or lucrative)
as Human Rights.
Cherie is, of course, a leading QC with the Matrix Chambers that specialises
the field. In 1998, New Labour enshrined the European Human Rights Convention
into UK law. Ever since it has been boom-time for Human Rights lawyers.
The Influence of Carole Caplin - New Labour’s New Age Guru
Cherie met Carole Caplin in 1992 at the gym where she worked as a fitness
trainer. Caplin was a former topless model who had moved into health, fitness,
and new age therapies. Her various books, some written with her mother,
advise that having plenty of sex is the way forward.
When Cherie entered No 10, she hired Caplin as her lifestyle guru. Some
reports put her retainer as high as £5000, per month (Cherie’s
own earnings as a QC have been estimated at £250,000 a year).
In Caplin’s words, she helps Cherie "across the board".
According to the tabloids, Carol has been known to scrub Cherie down in
the shower to remove toxins from her skin. She also introduced her to new
age crystals. In July 2003 she was photographed for Marie Claire magazine
applying Cherie’s lip gloss while she sat on the end of the bed.
Caplin also helps Cherie choose her clothes (one wonders whether there is
a subversive element to her advice).
In an interview for Hello Magazine Caplin said : "My planning with
Cherie doesn't stop and start. It's an ongoing process and anything she
might be wearing now was planned six months before."
For a while Caplin had an electronic pass to allow her into Number 10 by
the back door. That was removed following tabloid coverage.
It
would seem that Tony has not been immune from Caplin’s New Age Influence.
On holiday in Mexico, he was lured into the sea with Cherie to take part
in a Mayan re-birthing ceremony. Apparently Tony prayed for World
Peace. This was roughly a month before September 11, 2001.
Cullulite,
Bad Skin and Posh
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Both the Blairs have shamelessly sucked up to the tabloids.
The revolting Piers Morgan, ex-editor of The Mirror, gave us an insight
his relationship with Cherie, when he published his diaries of a 'Scandalous
Decade."
"She's not really my type, although when she does get laughing and
flirty and giggly, I see a totally different side to her,’ says Morgan.
In October 1996 Cherie, thanked Morgan over lunch for not publishing pictures
of her sunbathing topless: ‘When the pudding was served she leaned
over and asked: 'Did you see those pictures? Did I look awful or was it
OK?' "
Later she pleaded with him not to use pictures of her cellulite- a striking
parallel with Diana.
In 2003, Morgan discovered that Cherie had secretly been trying to get him
sacked. It wasn’t the Mirror’s opposition to the War that had
got her furious, but an article claiming she had bad skin.
"You did this whole thing about celebrities with
terrible skin, and put me next to Victoria Beckham. Now that girl has got
awful skin. I have always been known for having very good skin for my age.
I mean, look at my skin - it's good, isn't it."
Holidays
with Princes and knights
The Blairs' holiday hosts have included Sir Cliff Richard in Barbados, Prince
Girolamo Guicciardino Strozzi of Tuscany, and Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s
ever controversial businessman president.
Bargain
Hunter
In 2003 she visited a clothes shop in Melbourne. The owners madder her a
a ‘celebrity offer’ - take a few things for free. She took 68-items.
Greg Dyke, the former BBC director general, says Cherie called him one Christmas
- when he was on the board of Manchester United FC - asking for a discount
on a team shirt for her son Euan.
She snapped up a pair of pink sandals for £15 on online auction site
eBay, and later bought a Winnie The Pooh alarm clock for 99p.
Home from Home
The
Blairs' housing problem began as soon as they swept to power in 1997.
The
Blairs sold their Islington house after they moved into Number 10.
It was a big financial mistake. Property prices doubled over the next
few years. This was a cause of lasting rancour to cherie.
When the Mirror was campaigning against a big pay rise for the PM, she told
Piers Morgan:
'It's
all right for you, but we have had to give up our house in Islington.' "
Morgan threw a £20 note on the table to help
out.
Cherie's
book, The Goldfish Bowl, which she wrote with Cate Haste –
wife of New Labour millionaire, Lord (Melvyn) Bragg - is replete with bitter
complaints about life at Number 10 (and by implication No 11 where the Blair's
actually live).
" Officials can and do come in and out of the private accommodation
at all times of day and night. It is not possible to lock the door, take
the phone off the hook and escape"
The
Blairs' wealth, including the proceeds from their Islington home, was put
into a 'blind trust' to be managed without Tony's detailed knowledge while
he remains PM.
The
'blind' financial arrangements did not stop Cherie's bid to get back onto
the property ladder. In late 2002, she was looking for two flats as investments
in Bristol - one for her son Euan who as going to University in the city,
and another for an investment.
Her lifestyle guru, Carole Caplin, recommended her own boyfriend, Peter
Foster to help the busy Cherie complete the property deals. He negotiated
over prices and put her in touch with his mortgage adviser.
Unknown
to Cherie, he was a convicted con man who was fighting his deportation
from the UK back to Australia.
Cherie
unwisely took a conference call with his solicitor about his immigration
problems. When The Daily Mail got hold of the story, this was the
start of Cheriegate.
Cheriegate
As
with so many political soaps, it was the cover-up rather than the rather
trivial original sin that kept it running and running in the press.
After
speaking to Cherie, Tony's spin doctor Alistair Campbell and his girlfriend
Fiona Millar who acted as Cherie's 'gatekeeper' on behalf of the British
taxpayer, put out a statement denying that Foster had acted as her financial
adviser.
The Mail got hold of proof that Foster had been involved in the house
purchase.
The
Blairs were out at the theatre when the Mail called Number 10. On
their return, Campbell and Millar were waiting for them. They took
Cherie into her study and made her go through her emails. They found
the proof that she had fibbed.
Both
Caplin and Millar left their spin posts in 2003 - both have let it be known
that Cherie played a part in their decisions.
In
an interview with the Guardian, Millar later described how she lost the
battle for "Cherie’s heart and mind to the glossy sex-symbol
Carole ‘the Conqueror’ Caplin".
A
Ghastly Balls-up
The
final episode of the Cheriegate came only after our heroine consulted her
old friend, The Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson.
He advised that she 'do a Diana' and appeal straight to the tear glands
of the TV Nation.
She
duly appeared, chewing her lip, shrugging her shoulders, sobbing a
bit, and saying:
"I
am not superwoman. The reality of my daily life is that I am juggling a
lot of balls in the air."
Rebirth
in W2
In
early 2005, the Blairs spent over £3 million to buy a large
property in Connaught Square. Even a wealthy QC like Cherie must struggle
under the weight of a mortgage like that one. Apparently they
have had trouble letting it out, and have had to reduce the rent they hope
to receive.
Cherie
is trying to pull in some cash to feed the Blair's mortgage lender, Cheltenham
and Gloucester, by touring the world giving lectures and plugging her book.
In
New Zealand she greeted the audience as 'Ausies.' Whoops.
In
Australia for real, she was accused of accepting an enormous fee for 'charity'
lectures.
The
Sunday Times man in Sydney sent back an unflattering report
"
A document headed “draft budget” estimates that her series of
speeches will raise about £400,000 but only a quarter of this money
will go to the Children’s Cancer Institute, a research charity.
"
Documents suggested that she could be paid fees of as much as £100,000.
Blair is understood to be receiving free flights, free accommodation and
a free Jaguar courtesy car."
Downing
Street has refused to comment.
She
was met more sympathetically in the United States where she told the audience,
"I
could so easily have fallen victim to the Allerednic syndrome - that's Cinderella
in reverse. You know the story: the prince marries the princess and turns
her into a scullery maid."
Which
sounds to us like a wonderful plot for the next New Labour Soap.
