It’s probably not coming up on the doorstep, but with limited material and time the opponents of Keir Starmer were bound, eventually, to alight on the question of his wife, Victoria.
That she appears to live a happy and productive life, works for the NHS, refuses to exhibit their children, turns up for formal and Labour party occasions, has not said anything silly and has yet, to add to these frustrations, to be convicted of overspending on clothes – are not, in the hands of ingenious analysts, insurmountable deterrents.
For just as a politician’s wife can be criticised for getting above herself, she can, it turns out, be goaded for its suspected opposite: reverse-Lady Macbeth syndrome. In fact, you gather from recent objections to Mrs Starmer’s pre-election reserve, it’s worse than unsporting for a politician’s wife not to perform publicly as his helpmeet: it’s kind of weird. In its obduracy, it could even be called Cordelia syndrome. What – assuming a half-decent political wife can always get the time off work – can conceivably explain it?
Starmer detractors at Guido Fawkes, calling her “the Cut Out Woman”, refer to a Telegraph piece, its headline hinting almost at a Camden attic, “Why Keir Starmer’s wife is being kept off the campaign trail”, illustrated with a photograph with a black cutout where she should be. For now, we learn, “the public is still largely in the dark”.
A huge photograph of Akshata Murty reminded readers, by way of contrast, that, inasmuch as a woman can be understood from her outfits and enormous wealth, they know her intimately. In reality, thanks to Tom Baldwin’s illuminating new biography the public probably has access to more insights about Starmer’s wife, “Vic”, and their relationship than it does about Murty and Sunak: it’s her withdrawal from the expected campaigning role that seems to rankle, at least in Labour-averse news sources. In more sympathetic providers, Mrs Starmer’s unwillingness to re-enact rituals honoured ever since Cherie Blair went into domestic combat with Norma Major, the then QC’s love of knitting being pitted against the Tory’s cheese storage hints, is less deeply felt.
Mrs Starmer, the Telegraph noted, has kept a “remarkably low profile throughout the general election campaign”. Is Hugh O’Leary’s pioneering absence from his wife Liz Truss’s leadership campaign so quickly forgotten? The Mail is similarly disinclined to recall that O’Leary, like the barely more visible Philip May and Denis Thatcher, was never urged, like Victoria Starmer, to satisfy curiosity or “humanise” his partner. It could be, I suppose, that far from perpetuating gendered expectations about the public sphere, they recognise that, for a woman leader, her spouse’s domestic tales about laundry and homework may not be regarded as sweetly humanising so much as essential female services. What else would readers expect?
“She has been nicknamed Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘reluctant First Lady’,” the Mail claims. What would change her mind? Possibly not fantasy nicknames, nor the piece in which star columnist Boris Johnson reached, for some reason, for a Yiddish insult: “Sir Keir Schnorrer plans to slink into No 10 as silently as Larry the cat – then lock us back in the dungeon of Brussels, like a ball-chewing gimp.”
Since the show-us-yer-wife contingent can hardly admit their hope that Mrs Starmer will blunder, although any new utterance would constitute, in the right hands, precious ammunition to be used in perpetuity against her husband, their pretence is, with comical faux-concern, that it would be to his benefit. The dream interview would unfold in the Starmer kitchen, ideally allow Sarah Vine to reprise her celebrated attack on Justine Miliband’s “mean, sterile, little box”. Her own, Vine confided, was “the hub of our house”, and often at that time featured Michael Gove, “in search of crackers to go with his cheese”.
But even if Victoria Starmer were willing to recite the familiar script, featuring the couple’s teamwork, contrasting cooking styles, hubby’s prodigious goodness and – humanising confession – dreadful messiness around the home, there is only the sparsest evidence to justify the ordeal. Solely in the case of David Cameron do doting tributes from a more appealing spouse seem to have been a distraction from his widely recognised woman problem. In practice her successes arguably replicated it. In the 2015 election, Samantha Cameron was the only female face from the two main parties to feature in the top 20 media appearances: more than Yvette Cooper and Theresa May.
For some wives, the heightened profile possibly compensated for the horror of becoming a secret weapon (as the Tories persist in calling them). Samantha Cameron, while her husband re-deflates, has a successful fashion label. Carrie Johnson, now she’s moved on from the days of his ’n’ hers fixed penalty notices, has an impressive following for her snapshots of sunkissed tots.
Cherie Blair, who embraced her duties as “consort” only to be told, after various embarrassments, “everyone in the press office hates you”, got two books out of it. In The Goldfish Bowl and the yet more pointedly titled Speaking for Myself, she effectively aligns herself with the Mail and Telegraph’s view of female consorting as a worthwhile and dignified occupation. One deserving, in her case, of enhanced influence: “I was starting to see how I could create a role that would be of real benefit.”
Any spouse could, of course, knowing them inside out, shed important light on a leader’s character. They just never do. Samantha Cameron could usefully have hinted, for instance, that her “amazing, strong and steady” husband was also the kind of person who would go on to make a fortune working for Lex Greensill and be criticised by MPs for “significant lack of judgment” for his lobbying on the disgraced financier’s behalf.
Even if they don’t actively mislead, wifely encomia are, as well as being a gendered affront, second only in evident worthlessness to a mother’s. So whatever Victoria Starmer is or is not like, she’s off to a brilliant start.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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