Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds’ wedding reminds us of the importance of No10’s other halves
BORIS JOHNSON’S marriage to Carrie Symonds reminds us how Prime Ministers’ spouses have historically divided between those who love the political life and those who simply cannot stand it.
The spouses have tended to be generally far nicer people than their partners, but only on a few occasions can it really be said that any of them changed the course of history.
From personal knowledge, I can attest that Carrie — the first woman to marry a Prime Minister in office since Mary Chester tied the knot with Robert Jenkinson in 1822 — is a charming, intelligent and highly altruistic woman who is likely to be an enormous help to Boris for decades.
As she prepares to take her first engagement as a First Wife, hosting other spouses during the G7 summit at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, she has been attacked for advising Boris on political issues despite being unelected.
But that is also a strength as well as being a constitutional weakness — it means she can’t be voted out of office. Boris, moreover, knows that — unlike other colleagues and civil servants who might harbour their own ambitions — all she wants is what is best for Boris and the country.
It takes a special person to fulfil the role of a No 10 spouse, and Boris has found one.
Carrie will be interested in the words of Stanley Baldwin’s wife Lucy, who once wrote: “I feel that I am Stan’s trainer for the arena, and I have to see that he husbands his strength for the fighting times.”
PERSONALLY ROBOTIE
Although the feisty Downing Street spouses such as Margot Asquith tended to attract controversy, most have seen their role as making sure their spouse was able to serve the country to the best of their abilities.
Denis Thatcher, Cherie Blair and Philip May all gave their spouses good advice behind the scenes, but never sought to draw away the limelight.
Cherie, we can now see, was among the most misunderstood and underappreciated of Prime Ministers’ wives. She was a barrister, intelligent and driven, who attempted to have her own career.
Of course, this led to accusations of scheming and self interest, but without any real evidence. She is a good example of how opponents can seek to blacken the name of a spouse to attack the PM.
Samantha Cameron, Sarah Brown and Norma Major had little interest in politics and did not attempt to affect public policy in any way. But even so, they all proved an electoral boon.
Sam because she was glamorous, Sarah because she proved even someone as bolshy as Gordon Brown was not so personally robotic as he seemed in public, and Norma because she stood by her husband despite his affair with Edwina Currie.
If a Prime Minister’s public image is everything, these women all had their part to play.
One occasion when a spouse has played a significant role in public events came when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s wife Sarah, then dying, persuaded her husband not to become a peer in 1905.
That helped to establish the position whereby the PM must always be in the Commons, which had not been the case as recently as 1902 but has ever since been recognised as an established part of our unwritten constitution.
Similarly, it was Denis Thatcher who told Margaret Thatcher there was no point in going on in November 1990 when she failed to get the requisite votes to go through to the final round of the Tory leadership contest against Michael Heseltine.
‘GLAMOROUS’ SAMANTHA CAMERON
Denis had to be the one to tell her the game was up and it was better for her to stop and retain her dignity. Coming from anyone but a spouse this would have looked like betrayal.
Another significant moment came when David Lloyd George’s wife Margaret sat beside her husband in the High Court during his 1909 libel action against The People newspaper over adultery allegations, helping him to win the case even though she rightly suspected he was perjuring himself, and had indeed been serially unfaithful to her.
“You must stand by me, Maggie,” he begged her. “Otherwise it’s all over with me.”
When Anthony Eden’s redoubtable wife Clarissa (who this month celebrates her 101st birthday) advised him to put his health first in January 1957 and resign only two months after the Suez Crisis, it saved a potentially damaging split in the Tory party and allowed Harold Macmillan to heal the damage with President Eisenhower that had been caused by the Anglo-French seizure of the canal in the face of American opposition.
Spouses such as the great political hostess Emily Palmerston, and the splendidly straight-talking Clementine Churchill, knew there are times when criticism and candour are the best service a spouse can render.
In June 1940, Clementine warned Winston Churchill in a letter that he ran “a real danger of your being disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough, sarcastic and overbearing manner”. The rebuke worked.
Perhaps, since no one elected them, it is good that Downing Street spouses have never wielded true political power in the way French politicians’ mistresses have over the years.
Many, like Audrey Callaghan and Elizabeth Douglas-Home, have been determined to avoid the political tussle.
Spouses with little or no interest in politics — Mary Wilson, Margaret Lloyd George, Lucy Baldwin and Violet Attlee among them — were invaluable to their husbands in providing them with a home and hinterland where they could escape the pressures of the political world.
Few Premiers’ spouses have ever done their husbands any real or lasting harm, although Violet Attlee’s erratic driving could have killed Clement on a number of occasions.
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The sad truth is that all too often Prime Ministers have simply not been interested in anyone besides themselves, and many at least subliminally echoed Lloyd George’s chilling remark when he got engaged: “I am prepared to thrust even love itself under the wheels of my juggernaut if it obstructs the way.”
In becoming the first Prime Minister in nearly two centuries to get married, Boris has clearly not gone down the heartless Lloyd George route.
- Churchill: Walking With Destiny by Andrew Roberts is published by Penguin, £14.99.