How cheap and shallow can this woman get?

I'm sure Tony Blair must be deeply in love with his wife. Anything less and surely by now he would have arranged for a very nasty accident. The publication of Cherie's memoirs of her husband's time in office only serves to confirm the view that here is a woman with no taste and no judgment.

It only goes to prove that there are only some things in life which come with education. Others are simply ingrained. Mrs Blair is an intelligent woman from a poor background, apparently constantly frightened that she will one day again be impoverished. She is a High Court judge and the wife of a former Prime Minister of the UK. Yet in almost everything she touches this woman behaves like a 'scally' of her native Liverpool, without class, without grace and totally without taste.



She seems incapable of recognising the contempt which her behaviour has attracted across the spectrum, from her acquisitive shopping trips on foreign soil, through the furtive attempts to purchase accommodation, the crude manner in which she clearly harbours grudges against anyone she sees opposing the interests of her husband, and now to these seedy, squalid memoirs - a kiss and tell of her husband's days in office.

The interesting thing about the publication of Cherie's memoirs is the reaction of many women journalists who have ripped them to shreds. One female journalist in 'The Times' said that a constant assertion by men down the ages is that a woman's temperament makes her unfit for high office because she is driven by heart not head, is irrational, illogical and angrily nurses slights in a way a man does not. Cherie, said the journalist, is the very epitome of such a stereotype.

I'm not suggesting - heaven forbid - that we return to the days when a woman was a man's chattel and Cherie Booth is clearly a woman of strong and independent opinions. I wonder, in fact, if his dependence on her is greater than the other way round because surely, if Tony has any cojones at all, it is about time he asserted himself and said 'You are cheapening me - and yourself - with this mindless rubbish. If you can't develop some class at least shut up and don't embarrass us in front of the whole country!"