Sandra Howard can enjoy a well earned rest this time round after serving as a political spouse during the last six general elections.
She dismisses jibes about being regarded as “window dressing” in this report in The Times:
“Didn’t you feel like just a bit of window dressing? Isn’t it demeaning, being seen and not heard, expected to drop everything and look like Mrs average housewife?†I am still asked those questions. The Times mumsnet focus group are asking them, saying they are offended by the hyping-up of the political wives, that it’s belittling and they feel treated like silly women. They admired a wife who refused to play the role and kept above the fray.
“Well, that’s easy to say from afar. But would they really, faced with the momentous prospect of a husband as Prime Minister, really not want to do all they possibly could? With the greatest respect to Miriam González Durántez, Nick Clegg’s wife, it is hardly a likely scenario in her case.
“I did feel slightly joined at the hip with Michael — rather like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were at the last election, licking ice creams and persuading voters that they got two for the price of one. But I certainly didn’t feel demeaned.
“The public has come to expect a parade of leaders’ spouses; we have been Americanised in that respect. People may be curious (up to a point) about the partner of anyone aspiring to run this wonderful country, or profess disinterest like the focus group. They are not voting for the spouse and I doubt — however many price tags are attached to their high-street clothes — whether a loving partner will swing a single punter in the polling booth, but my every instinct in 2005 was to put private life on hold and give it my all.
“Because I felt so much was at stake the greatest terror was of stepping into a trap, opening my big mouth and saying something that could risk the party’s fortunes. A spouse can’t win votes, but the downside is a different story. It was inhibiting and hard to handle, the business of chatting away happily at parties, then discovering that the flatteringly attentive charmer was a journalist bent on doing his destructive best. I minded every word of criticism of my man. I wrote injured letters to editors, secretly — or I’d have been divorced on the spot. I’d stand at the postbox thinking “any sane person wouldn’t do this†before dropping it in and feeling better for it.”
She is relishing her freedom too:
“After six general elections as a political spouse the heat is off. I’m a free spirit, fit to join the Dead Poet’s Society, released from the strain of daily canvassing, the dread of low turnouts, the panic of getting out the vote. No more “knocking upâ€, exit-poll nerves, the acute embarrassment of standing, blue-rosetted, alongside the other candidate’s spouses in our town hall, making agonised small talk while watching the piles of counted votes grow in columns like a poll-chart graphic. Freedom is great.”
Her duty is done, and selflessly; what better role model could there be for the virtuous candidate’s spouse. Of course, it helps enormously if you are naturally charming and effortlessly glamorous and photogenic like Sandra. Not all spouses enjoy this role or feel comfortable in it, it’s sometimes thrust upon them. I do feel a measure of sympathy for them, but just think, this time next month it will all be over…
I’m with Mumsnet on this one in that I feel Mrs Clegg is very impressive in her honesty – she is not ‘joined at the hip’ and is a woman rather than just a wife. Perhaps if Sandra Howard had such an interesting and demanding job she would have felt differently. Whilst I like Mrs Brown, who is a great support to her husband, I very much like the way Sam Cameron seems to effortlessly cope with all her roles. It can’t be easy.