It’s amazing how readily the Lady Macbeth comparisons have sprung up around Carrie Johnson.
Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote his masterpiece, you’d think we’d have another template for politicians’ wives. Sure, this modern retelling has not witches but interior designers; not bloody daggers, but birthday cake. And instead of panicked handwashing, we have — well, maybe some metaphors don’t change.
First Lady: Intrigue at the Court of Carrie and Boris Johnson, an account written by billionaire Tory donor Lord Ashcroft, has been stirring up Westminster with its account of Carrie’s rise and the influence she wields over her husband. Among the allegations that have been picked up include reports that she interfered in major political decisions and worked to hire allies and fire those out of favour, as well as messaging some from the Prime Minister’s phone, as though she were him.
Carrie and her people have rejected the allegations; many commentators have dismissed them as sexist. And yet the photograph circulating last week of a 24-year-old Carrie side-eyeing Johnson was met with knowing nods. Indeed, accusations of this sort have long been levelled at Carrie, like stories that in the weeks leading up to the first lockdown she was more concerned about reports that the couple was planning to rehome their dog Dilyn.
It’s a tough job, being a world leader’s wife. Your life is consumed by your husband’s job and you don’t really have a choice in the matter. You don’t even get paid. I began writing my novel The Dictator’s Wife — about a beautiful, compelling wife of a dictator who stands trial for her late husband’s crimes against the people — after reporting on the 2016 US election, and observing Melania Trump. At the time she was refusing to move to the White House, preferring to stay in golden Trump Tower. #FreeMelania indeed.
But is that the right reading? Melania’s biographer says that she was generally the first to demand her husband pay attention to political articles. I think there is more ambiguity to these women’s approaches than we give them credit for, something between Lady Macbeth and damsel in distress.
Key to this is the fact that there is no real way to ascertain a First Lady’s power. To a certain kind of woman, that is precisely what is so appealing about the role. Politicians’ influence is measured in elections and polls and policies. But their wives? Tricky. I write of my own fictional dictator’s wife, Marija Popa, that “you could not measure her influence on any known scale, but it was there, like dark matter”.
Did Carrie persuade her husband to rescue those Afghanistan dogs, at the expense of human beings? There are sources quoted saying that she had “something to do” with it. Note the vagueness. This is precisely the problem of assessing a relationship that is intrinsically both public and private. How do you pin down a policy conversation if it happens in the dining room, or the bedroom? How far does any man know how much he is influenced by his spouse, and vice versa?
Marriage is when two people come together, and it’s naïve for both us and them to believe that an election will somehow reverse them into separate entities again. Carrie’s spokeswoman has dismissed the Ashcroft allegations — “she is a private individual who plays no role in government”. Mmmm. The point is that she does play a role, due to the very fact of her existence, whether she intends to or not.
It’s not just Carrie or Melania, either. Look at Brigitte Macron, long whispered to be the real power in the Élysée Palace. Behind every successful man is a strong woman, so the saying goes, but in 2018, Brigitte said she would stand beside, not behind, her husband at official ceremonies – and was accused of acting like “the Queen of France” as a result. And we all know what happened to Marie Antoinette.
This is the tightrope these women walk: always in the wings, but heaven help them if they edge too far into the spotlight. Hillary Clinton seemed like a decent bet for first female president of the United States, and look how that turned out. #MeToo brought us a long way but it still seems a depressing truth that we’ll tolerate these women so long as they’re just looking pretty (and so many of them are, which I don’t think is a coincidence). We like them so long as they don’t actually do anything.
And why should they? They’re not elected, after all. But I don’t recall anyone making Macbeth-style comparisons when Theresa May came back from a walking weekend with Philip with the bright idea of calling a snap election. Honestly, I don’t even know what Philip May looks like. But I could spot Carrie in any garden party-that-totally-isn’t-a-party line-up.
When I see these women I am reminded of birds in cages. A cage has two roles: to incarcerate, and to display
When I see these women I am reminded of birds in cages. A cage has two roles: to incarcerate, and to display. This is the dual situation of leaders’ wives: highly constrained and highly observed. They are damned if they’re active, and damned if they’re complicit, in a role that literally exists to sustain complicity. If your wife won’t stand by you, who will?
I think I know why we don’t like politicians’ wives getting in too deep. Recall Carrie and Jill Biden frolicking barefoot on the beach at the G7. (Weeks later, Jill would cover Vogue, another classic in the limited arsenal available to these women.) It was so adorable. So natural, with their shoeless feet. Have you ever seen Boris Johnson’s toes? Or indeed those of any male world leader? These women bring softness and charm. Sure, that view might be misogynistic but the whole role is inherently, intentionally so. Because men are by a thumping majority the ones in power, women are made their ornaments, wheeled out to burnish their husbands’ images.
But we know all this is a sideshow. We can get engrossed in the glamour that these women cast but no fabulous outfit can atone for a bad policy. A distraction should not become the main attraction, and that is why their involvement leaves a bad taste. Like actor and understudy, the two should never be on stage at the same time. And when these wives do get their hands dirty, well, our reaction is just like Lady Macbeth: “out, damned spot!”
