Cherie and the meaning of Blair

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Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I have avoided reading the Cherie Blair selections. But I have just read Mary Riddell in the Telegraph wrestling with the implications of the "bad example" Cherie has set. The stench of double standards was one of the things that made me avert my eyes. 

In the course of the Blair premiership there were to my knowledge at least two occasions when in one case most and in another all the press kept stum about the Blair children to protect their feelings and the family life of the Prime Minister. Now we are told that Leo was a right-royal mistake. For once the term "disgraceful" finds a true home.

But something else is going on that Riddell, who is exceptionally alert to larger implications, has sensed if not solved. What does it mean for the wife of a nation's leader to trade on her poverty so shamelessly? Her answer is that Labour's defining figure capitulated to celebrity. And that this in turn loops back into the disintegration of morality the public feels is taking place (whether it is, or not, is another matter).

I think this is bound up with the larger issue of "representation" in modern politics. Labour, being the people's party, is supposed to be seen by the regular working folk as "on our side" in part because it is the party of "people like us". But who wants to be poor and exploited? The key reason why Blair was acclaimed as Labour leader was because he so wanted to be a winner not a loser. While the party was desperate to get power 'to help the poor' it never resolved the 'aspirational' approach of true Blairites with the more 'solidaristic' loyalty of traditionalists. Neither really thought through what kind of modern society it wanted - or the part played by democracy, dignity and self-government within it.

One outcome is that way the Blairs have embraced celebrity success and loads of money as being the measure of progressive desire. They have come to represent Murdoch capitalism with its large working-class base (symbolised by the PM stripping topless for the Sun as the couple boasting about how often they bonked every night to help them win the 2005 election). Alas, Gordon Brown has failed to rescue his party from the legacy of such Berlusconi antics. This has opened the way for the Conservatives to pitch for the quality of life and to how we should be as a society.

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