At the end of her blackest week in Downing Street, Cherie Blair must know she misjudged badly the controversy over her best friend and the serial conman. Not only are some serious questions being raised about the prime minister, Tony Blair, but, politics aside, his family is wounded, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Who would be Cherie Blair? New Age nut, wicked witch or queen of Downing Street? Unaccountable cross between Clintonesque first lady and Lady Macbeth? Or more, perhaps, Lady Di?
There have been plentiful references to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, after Cherie Booth Blair's sensational confessional, broadcast live on British television on Tuesday night. But which Diana? The slightly barmy and notoriously unguided missile, manipulative and self-promoting, haunted by dysfunctional family ties, battling the injustice of life in the gilded cage, bound by duty but craving release in another life? Or Diana the Good, icon and role model, friend to the despairing and dispossessed, fighting to preserve her sanity and identity against the demands of her husband's courtiers and a rapacious, intrusive, often malicious press?
In her darkest moments the late princess, estranged and embittered, harboured hopes of blocking the succession of the future king. Cherie Blair is doubtless feeling somewhat bitter this weekend, but her devotion to her husband - and his to her - is plain to see. So the irony will hardly be lost on the eminent QC and part-time judge, loving wife and mother, charity worker and prime ministerial consort.
For the end of her blackest week in Downing Street finds her taunted with the knowledge that - in a manner she could never have conjured up in her worst nightmare - she has brought havoc to her husband's court and raised, perhaps, the first serious questions about the longer-term prospects of King Tony himself.
People have been royally entertained by the unfolding tale of Cherie Blair and the conman, the property purchases and the deportation proceedings against her best friend's boyfriend, Peter Foster. And many will feel little sympathy as she seeks sanctuary this weekend in one or other of her grace-and-favour residences.
Some in "the sisterhood" were certainly offended by her decision to pitch for the women's sympathy vote, casting herself as harassed working mum, struggling to keep all the balls in the air and occasionally letting one of them drop. Some thought of her as a role model, reassuring them that they could have it all. Others observed bitingly that few working mothers enjoy the retinue of staff, family and willing friends available to her, not to mention a combined family income variously estimated upward of £400,000. There was derision, too, at her invitation to sympathise that the family's "blind trust" had lost out on the stock market rollercoaster, its "only remaining capital" used for the purchase of those two flats in Bristol.
Cherie Blair has never quite forgiven the police and Downing Street officials who advised the family to sell their Islington home when her husband became prime minister. Not only has it since increased in value by a reported £1 million, but she remains anxious that if her husband suddenly ceased leading the nation, they would have no home of their own.
The occasion of their eldest son heading off to university would have suggested a timely opportunity to re-invest, and the acquisition of a second flat to rent hardly suggests great avarice. Indeed, some think this proof that the Blairs are not particularly clever with money, since they have probably bought at the top end of a British property market which cannot continue to boom much longer.
In the rough trade of politics, of course, many inevitably found it a bit rich that the Blairs could contemplate a luxury pad for Euan while, as prime minister, Blair was proposing massive top-up fees which would punish the cash-poor middle classes and put the dream of university life beyond the children of Labour's traditional working-class supporters. Yet beyond politics this weekend, whether in their relatively modest Downing Street flat or the secluded grandeur of the prime ministerial retreat at Chequers, we would surely find an all-too-human situation, a family wounded and turned in on itself. Tony Blair hinted at the pain of it all on Thursday night when he insisted people had "had their pound of flesh" and it was time to move on. His wife had been still more eloquent two nights before: "Sometimes I feel I would like to crawl away and hide." Few could doubt her. No need for New Labour "spin" on this occasion.
For both too, though particularly perhaps for her, there is the worry about the children and how it all affects them. It is said she retains painful memories of her own childhood, blighted by occasional newspaper headlines regaling readers with tales of her wayward father, Tony Booth, the "Scouse git" of 'Till Death Us Do Part fame, whose on-camera persona uncomfortably mirrored real life.
The three Blair teenagers might well feel like crawling away this weekend as they contemplate a caricature beyond recognition of the mother they know and love. And, for her, the bitterest irony of all: that she landed herself in this mess through her own self-doubt and her devotion to the friend and "lifestyle guru", Carole Caplin, whom she turned to in the first place in a determined effort to make good her "PR" deficiencies and do her husband and the nation proud.
Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications director, has warned for years that this relationship with the former topless model and her mother, Sylvia - who speaks to people "on the other side" - was a ticking timebomb at the heart of Number 10. Informed journalists have consequently railed against Cherie Blair's dependence on Caplin for everything, from organising her exercise regime and buying her clothes to her insights on mud baths, pyramid jewellery, psychic stones and the release of sexual energy.
For the influential Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun, this voodoo nonsense reached its ultimate when the prime minister reportedly joined his wife last year at a "re-birthing" ceremony on a Mexican beach, smeared in exotic fruits, howling into the night sky: "It seems they had learned nothing from the exposure of disgraced Peter Mandelson and his ritual dance with a sacrificed chicken in Brazil." Put like that and it all sounds pretty wacky, right enough.
One fellow QC - while acquitting Cherie Blair (on the evidence thus far) of any impropriety in seeking to reassure Caplin that the immigration proceedings against Peter Foster were being properly conducted - admits to difficulty in reconciling the proven analytical mind of the senior counsel and would-be High Court judge with enthusiasm for this exotica. At the same time, he acknowledges Blair's right to choose her own friends, and the admirable nature of her assertion that it is not for her to choose theirs.
Some Labour insiders also defend her for her determination to pick her own circle, not least out of a steely determination that the whole of her personal life cannot, and should not, be appropriated by corporate New Labour. She is her own person; she is not an elected representative.
Many women, and men, will find nothing remotely wacky about an interest in the mystical - an interest that, in Blair's case, some friends suggest may be rooted in her deeply religious instincts and beliefs. Across the political spectrum, moreover, there is still admiration for her efforts to protect her young family while living in the full media glare as Downing Street's first working mother. And among some commentators there is the uneasy fear that the events of the past fortnight might portend impossible impositions and constraints onprime ministerial consorts, not dissimilar to those now experienced by members of the extended royal family.
All that said, Cherie Blair cannot hope to separate herself from the public and political world in which she lives. It is more than a little unfortunate that her best friend's boyfriend turns out to be a serial conman who has served time on three continents. It is something more than unfortunate, too, that her first instinct was to mislead the Downing Street press office about Foster's involvement in her affairs, so igniting a controversy over a cover-up infinitely more damaging to her, and her husband's government, than any suggestion of wrongdoing so far produced against her.
But then, this clever woman will hardly need anyone to tell her that she got the judgment badly wrong.
The Cherie
Blair File
Who?
Cherie Blair, née Booth QC.
Why in the news?
Accepted convicted fraudster's offer to help
with her property purchases.
Most appealing characteristic?
Working mum who juggles a lot of balls in the air.
Least appealing characteristic?
Slow to admit when she drops one.
Most likely to say?
I choose my friends carefully.
Least likely to say?
Pass the Daily Mail, darling.