Observations on Cherie Blair

It was all slightly surreal. On my desk lay a letter from the Downing Street office of Cherie Blair; next to it, the latest copy of a women's magazine. Polite but curt, the letter explained that no, the Prime Minister's wife would not see me about my forthcoming biography of her husband. She did not speak to journalists. Then my eye wandered to the open pages of Marie Claire and the lavishly illustra-ted interview with someone bearing an uncanny resemblance to Cherie. Was I hallucinating? But who else could it be, sitting on the prime ministerial bed as Carole Caplin applied lipstick?

I was reminded of this the other day when Cherie appeared in the Telegraph in another of these glossy interview-cum-fashion shoots. This time she was promoting her new book - The Goldfish Bowl - on prime ministerial consorts past. Clearly, she does talk to some journalists.

At the time, I let the slight pass. I had already spoken to Tony Blair. Family friends and No 10 staff were surprisingly forthcoming about Cherie. Many liked her; others were distinctly hostile. Almost all agreed with one description: "fiercely intelligent, unbiddable and curiously insecure". She carries the burden of her contradictions: the well-paid QC splashing out £20,000 on her wardrobe, versus the girl from the back-to-backs of Crosby angling for a free tennis racket for her husband's birthday. She shuns the limelight, yet finds it irresistible.

The couple are a curious political match. Blair, of Durham's Chorister School and Fettes, leads a party he has never really joined. His knowledge of history is sketchy, but sufficient to trace his lineage to William Gladstone rather than Keir Hardie. Cherie is a fully paid-up member of the Labour tribe. On the couple's first trip to meet George W and Laura Bush, she protested when aides debated what present they should take to Camp David. Bush had "stolen" the election from Al Gore, so why not just give him a Downing Street pen? Blair, never one to allow ideology to get in the way of politics, settled on the Epstein bust of Winston Churchill that now adorns the Oval Office.

Then there was the dinner at Chequers when, in front of the Bushes, Cherie decried capital punishment. George W had signed 150 death warrants as governor of Texas. Blair stuttered when I reminded him of the incident. Cherie, I was told, was unrepentant. For all that, marriage is thicker than politics. Cherie's political outlook is closer to Gordon Brown's than to her husband's, yet her relationship with the Chancellor is icy. Some say it dates back to Brown's objections to the Blairs' move into the flat above No 11 after the 1997 election. More likely, Cherie feels protective of her husband.

There are battles, too, with Downing Street staff - and, on occasion, with the cabinet secretary - about the free holidays and gifts. We "catch" most of them, one civil servant told me recently - meaning that Tony Blair eventually gets a bill for the "freebies". Financial insecurity lay behind her damaging entanglement with Carole Caplin's one-time boyfriend, the fraudster Peter Foster, who helped her buy two flats in Bristol. Cherie, in her husband's words, "does not take money for granted". To her credit or otherwise, she never held the flats episode against Caplin. Just weeks after the furore, she toured the local souk during a family holiday in Egypt. "What shall I buy for Carole?" she kept on asking her husband.

Cherie has been treated unfairly by much of the tabloid press. As many people are charmed by her earthy intelligence and unguarded humour as are offended by her imperiousness. But often she is her own worst enemy. She is beguiled by wealth, and you cannot enjoy the glamour and glitz without losing family privacy.

I heard from her office again this year. My biography had just been published, and a call from her press secretary told me Cherie was unamused. She intended to deny some of the stories - particularly the ones about George W. Why had I not checked them with her? I reminded the aide of my requests for an interview, of the abrupt reply and of the Marie Claire spread. I heard nothing more.

Philip Stephens is an associate editor of the Financial Times. His Tony Blair: the price of leadership is published by Politico's (£8.99)

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