Speaking for Myself

by Cherie Blair

  Little did I know as I stood there discussing the finer points of employment law that a bombshell awaited me when I got back to Downing Street.

  At the end of 1996, when the move to Number 10 became a probability rather than a possibility, the accountant had suggested that I undertake an income and expenditure exercise, such as you might do when applying for a mortgage. The results weren’t exactly encouraging. Whereas Tony’s income would go up, mine would go down. I didn’t know exactly how being the Prime Minister’s wife would affect the number of cases I could take, but it would certainly be lower. And with the official duties I’d have to carry out, I knew I’d have less time to devote to my career.

  We’d been told that living in Downing Street would be treated as payment in kind and would, therefore, be taxed. Yet we still had a big mortgage to pay on Richmond Crescent, plus the loan I’d taken out for the refurbishment. I didn’t want to give up our home. I had no idea how long Tony would be Prime Minister, so I needed to make sure that we had a home to return to if Labour lost the next election. On the plus side, I knew that MPs and ministers were about to get a 26 percent salary raise, which Parliament had approved a few months earlier and which was due to take effect following the 1997 election. With that increase, I decided, we could probably manage.

  Then Gordon threw a wrench in the works.

  At the first Cabinet meeting of the new Labour government, the new Chancellor announced that he was not going to take the salary increase, and he put pressure on the others not to accept it either. Tony told me as soon as he got back to the flat. I couldn’t believe it; all my calculations had been based on the increase. This wasn’t an optional perk: Parliament had endorsed it. Ministers had been specifically mentioned: “We believe that additional recognition of the job weight of the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers is long overdue.” As the Leader of the Opposition, William Hague, did take his increase, this meant that Tony was now earning less than Hague.

  I remember sitting at the kitchen table at Number 10, putting my head in my hands, and staring at the now completely redundant financial breakdown, as Tony tried to calm me down. But I wouldn’t be calmed down: How dare Gordon do that? What did he know about financial commitments? He was a bachelor living on his own in a flat with a small mortgage. Tony admitted it was a problem, but every problem, he said, has a solution — I just had to find one. He wanted to get on with the business of governing.

  Despite my reluctance, it seemed like the obvious solution was to rent out the house in Richmond Crescent to cover the mortgage. But it wasn’t that simple. First, the advice was that this should be done through the Foreign Office. As I would later discover when we needed a new nanny, we could no longer go through the Northern Echo or Lady. From now on, we could use Civil Service–vetted agencies only. It was a security issue.

  “Your problem,” the Foreign Office official explained, “is that the people we deal with don’t want to live in Islington. They want to live in Kensington or Knightsbridge.” Surely, I thought, there might be a junior official who wouldn’t mind slumming it in our neighborhood. The Foreign Office came to have a look.

  “If you’re going to rent out this house, it’ll have to be completely redecorated, because it’s not suitable for the sort of families it would be suitable for.” I was entering the world of doublespeak.

  Okay, I decided, we’d rent it privately. “Forget it,” said Alastair. When the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont had rented out his house, the tenant had been revealed as some sort of Miss Whiplash — manna from heaven for the tabloids.

  “So what do we do?” I asked him. “We can’t afford to go on paying the mortgage. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Why don’t you have a word with Michael,” he suggested.

  Michael Levy was the Labour Party’s fund-raiser in chief, and also a friend and a successful businessman. If anyone would know what to do, he would.

  Michael had been very good to us during the run-up to the election, letting the kids use the swimming pool at his house in north London, just to give them a break from Richmond Crescent.

  “Sell,” he said. No other options? “No. Sell.”

  We put it on the market, got an offer in fairly quickly, and accepted it. I didn’t want to leave our home, and I worried about losing our footing on the property ladder. After the sale of the house, we had £200,000 left, so I suggested putting the money into another, smaller property. No. As Prime Minister, Tony was not allowed to have any investments, and if we bought a house without living in it, this would be classed as an investment. We were obliged to put the money into a blind trust, with me as the sole beneficiary.

  The one bright spot on the housing front was Chequers. When Tony first became Leader of the Opposition, I remember Jill Craigie, Michael Foot’s wife, coming up to me at some do and saying, “I don’t envy you much, but I do envy you Chequers.” As the wife of a Cabinet minister in the last Labour government, she had been there. With that kind of recommendation, I couldn’t wait to see it.

  The Friday of our first visit, the auguries did not look good. The curator whom Mrs. Thatcher had chosen to run Chequers had been a career naval officer — bizarrely, Chequers is officially considered a ship and is staffed by naval and air force personnel — and we’d heard that she had no experience with children. Sadly, she had taken over from her predecessor just as Mrs. Thatcher was ousted, and Mrs. Thatcher’s successors, the Majors, hardly ever went there. When they did, they found things rather more regimented than they were used to. Meals had to be at regular times, and the curator believed in staying up until the Majors went to bed, which they found less than relaxing. It didn’t sound to me like the kind of system that would go down too well with our kids, and I wondered how she would cope with having children running round the place, let alone going a bit wild.

  John Holroyd did his best to allay my fears. “We very much want you to use Chequers,” he said. “It hasn’t been used recently as much as one would hope, so staff morale has gone down as a result, and I do assure you, they’re all looking forward enormously to your coming. While it’s true that the curator isn’t used to having children around, there is no reason to think they won’t charm her as they are already charming everyone here. Unfortunately,” he continued, “she won’t be able to welcome you herself this weekend, as she’s injured her back.” (In fact, the injury was serious enough that she never returned.)

  The moment we arrived, driving up through the Victory Gate, with this historic Tudor pile standing right ahead of us, I couldn’t believe it. We left the children outside kicking a soccer ball, relishing the acres and acres of space, while Linda, the housekeeper, showed us around: all ancient paneling, gorgeous oil paintings, ornate carvings, mullioned windows, and rooms big enough to run races in.

  As we went back to the children, Tony began shaking his head. “We can’t possibly bring the kids into this place,” he said. “They’ll wreck it.” From outside we heard the sounds of squabbling and decided they needed to walk off the excess adrenaline. Grass led away from all sides of the house, apart from the front, into woodland — wonderful and unsettling at the same time. By now the kids were really playing up, and Tony began to raise his voice, shouting at them to “just behave!” Suddenly he looked round and saw that we were being followed by the protection officers. And he went stiff with frustration and bewilderment.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can’t even yell at my own kids, because the police will hear.” Never again would Tony be able to walk anywhere without being followed, albeit at a discreet distance.

  By the end of the weekend, it was obvious to us that Chequers was a good place to be. There was an indoor swimming pool. Did we want to use it? Under Mrs. Thatcher it had been drained because she didn’t swim. The Majors had used it, and in fact Norma had learned to swim there, but because they hardly ever went, the heating had been turned off. Our answer was a resounding yes.

  The
pool had been presented to Chequers by Walter Annenberg, the American Ambassador to Britain, in memory of Richard Nixon’s visit in October 1970. It’s built like an orangery, with a glass roof and glass sides that open completely in the summer. But because it’s basically an indoor pool, you can swim there all year round. As far as the kids were concerned, it was complete heaven.

  For ten years Chequers became our refuge. Although it might look like a stately home, inside the atmosphere is far more comfortable and domesticated than the outside view suggests. We would all breathe a huge sigh of relief when, on a Friday evening, the Jaguar turned through the gate into the east courtyard. Linda or Ann, her successor, would come out to greet us, and the children would run in, throw off their coats, and rush off to their bedrooms, or to see the rabbits, or to search the kitchen for treats they could scrounge.

  Chequers was the one place where Tony could be just a dad and kick a ball round with his children like any other father. It was an illusion, of course. As we were quickly learning, police and security people were always round, but at least at Chequers, we didn’t see them. At least there, we had the space to lead a normal life.

  Chapter 21

  Special Relationship

  The first official visitors we hosted at Downing Street were, appropriately enough, the Clintons. It was barely a month after Tony took office, and I remember everyone being very excited, because everyone wanted to meet Bill: the kids, the nanny, my sister, and my mother. For the benefit of the press, we greeted the most powerful political couple in the world outside on the front steps. I had a special outfit made by Ronit Zilkha: “nonthreatening” was the brief from the office. Heaven forbid that I should look like a career woman. The office was terrified that I might turn into Hillary Clinton.

  The Downing Street administration also had concerns about Hillary, albeit on a more pragmatic level. She would need somewhere to “park” herself, they said. The Number 11 downstairs toilet was deemed unsuitable for the wife of the American President. Only the bathroom off Ros’s room met the standard, the former Chancellor’s guest room being the sole part of the flat that had been decorated in the past ten years.

  At least by the time Hillary took a look round, Number 11 had improved noticeably in terms of the jazz-club haze. When I recounted to her my run-ins with Downing Street over the most modest improvements (such as built-in wardrobes for the kids and a new kitchen), she was amazed. In America, she told me, the incoming President’s wife had the choice of keeping the White House the way it was or redecorating. There was a charitable fund entirely devoted to its refurbishment, for which the First Lady would actively seek donations — and get them. When I suggested to the Cabinet secretary that we might do something similar to refurbish the state rooms in Downing Street or Chequers and save the taxpayers money, the answer was no.

  Rather than some overly formal dinner in Downing Street, we decided to take the golden couple out to a restaurant — a far more personal way, Tony felt, of getting to know them. The Pont de la Tour has a fantastic position on the river, overlooking Tower Bridge, part of a refurbished warehouse complex. As we arrived, people were hanging from apartment windows and packing the open walkways to cheer both Tony and Bill, who was a huge international superstar.

  Bill Clinton is an incredibly sociable person who loves ideas and loves talking, but who only really gets going after ten. If the evening takes off, you are guaranteed a fantastically interesting discussion, though you might regret it the next day. That evening did take off, the first of many we would enjoy together, and like so many others, it went on far longer than anyone expected. I found Hillary Clinton to be much warmer than her public persona might suggest. She has tremendous dignity and cares passionately about her and Bill’s joint project, which is to make the United States once again the land of opportunity not just for the advantaged, but for everyone.

  Part of the restaurant had been sectioned off for us, though it had been agreed that we would order from the ordinary menu. What we ate, however, would not be revealed — at least that was the intention. The next morning, however, “Cherie Eats Foie Gras” was front-page news. Apart from the usual eye rolling from Alastair, the result was a torrent of abusive letters from animal lovers. The venom they unleashed shook me to the core. There were so many letters that we decided to set up a standard reply.

  Until this incident I had replied to every letter personally. Indeed, before we moved into Downing Street, Fiona and Roz Preston had shared the job of looking after me, paid for by the Labour Party, and one of the first things we’d done on arrival was to see what Downing Street could offer in terms of secretarial support. After a great struggle, Norma Major had persuaded the government to fund a secretary for her four days a week. Like so much in Downing Street, we were never told what might be available; it was up to us to find out.

  Nor were we told what things cost. Chequers came with a full complement of staff, yet there were charges that would arrive out of the blue, such as the cost of laundering napkins. It all depended on who had used the napkins. If it had been family or official visitors, the laundering was paid for. If the napkins had been used by somebody not on the official list, we were billed. The system was confusing, to say the least.

  We had a nanny for the children — Ros and later Jackie, who succeeded her in 1998 — and a housecleaner for three hours every day. I remember laughing when Hillary told me that the White House had four chefs. At Number 11, just as in Richmond Crescent, the nanny would usually shop, and she and I would share the cooking. On Sunday nights I would get back from Chequers loaded down, like a teenager returning to college after a weekend at home, with dishes that the cook there had prepared (for which we paid) to help me through our busy Monday and Tuesday nights, when we had receptions.

  No previous Prime Minister’s wife had had a full-time career. No previous Prime Minister’s wife had had school-age children living at home. Since Euan was born, I’d had two demanding jobs: mother and barrister. Now I had three, and juggling three balls is not the same as juggling two. My role as the Prime Minister’s wife might have not been official — as I was never allowed to forget — but it was time-consuming and important, and I had no intention of letting Tony down. We were in this together.

  When the animal rights letters arrived, I asked if we might get help answering them from the garden girls, so called because their office on the lower ground floor overlooks the garden. My request was turned down. I was reminded that their role was to service the Prime Minister’s office, not his wife. Then I asked about ordering some Downing Street notepaper. They agreed to a heading reading “from the office of Mrs Cherie Blair, QC” but wouldn’t sanction “from the office of Cherie Booth, QC.” In Downing Street terms, I was Mrs. Blair, the head garden girl explained.

  “Agreed,” I said, “but I am not Cherie Blair, QC. You could search with a magnifying glass, but no such person exists in the annals of the English Bar.” A compromise was eventually reached. I could use the address, but not the crest. If I wanted to use the crest, I would have to be Mrs. Blair.

  Now, more than ten years later, I no longer feel the need to make the point. But in 1997 I felt I was hanging on to my identity by the thinnest of threads. I was entering a system that seemed to proclaim, “You are a nonperson except in as far as you are an appendage to the PM.”

  What is certainly true is that the garden girls were under severe strain. When John Major was in Downing Street, letters to the Prime Minister ran around five thousand year. Once Tony arrived, the trickle became a flood, and the garden girls simply couldn’t cope. Not surprisingly, given the pressure they were under, the occasional mistake crept in. One example was a letter from a school for the deaf asking if Tony could visit the school. Although the letter had been written by the children themselves, they had received only a two-line standard reply. As I was known to have an interest in special-needs schools, the head wrote to me, enclosing copies of the original request and Downing Street’s reply. She ac
cepted that the Prime Minister was busy, she said, but the children had made such an effort that maybe they deserved a better response. I couldn’t have agreed more.

  From then on, it was agreed that any letters from children would be passed on to my office, so that even if Tony couldn’t send them a personal reply, I would. We ended up with a vast correspondence, as I soon discovered that the more you answer people, the more they tend to write back.

  Within a matter of weeks, we attended our first international summit, the G7 (now G8). This annual meeting is hosted by one of the seven (now eight, including Russia) most powerful nations in the world — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — and in 1997 it was America’s turn. Thus Denver, Colorado, was the setting for Tony’s first major appearance on the world stage. For me, flying over on the Concorde was a dream come true. (I still find it incredible that some way hasn’t been found to keep this masterpiece of engineering in the air.) The pilot and his crew were clearly the best of the best, and they invited me to go into the cockpit as it landed — a real privilege and something I will never forget.

  The welcoming event was a country-and-western concert. In the presence of assembled Denver worthies, the ceremony began with the various leaders and their wives being trundled onto the stage in order of protocol and time in office. Tony, being the newest, was last.

  “The Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP, and Mrs. Cherie Blair,” the unseen speaker announced. As the spotlight picked us out, we walked onto the stage to thunderous applause. It was a totally surreal experience, similar to the one we’d had a few hours earlier as we’d walked down the steps from the Concorde, and the welcoming band had struck up “God Save the Queen.”