Cherie Blair has hit the headlines across the UK after the latest release in her serialised autobiography ‘Speaking For Myself’ published in The Times and The Sun.
She has revealed details about her miscarriage which, she says, was treated by her husband and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair as a PR crisis as well as claiming that the current PM’s wife, Sarah Brown, has enjoyed greater popularity because of a PR campaign organised by Downing Street. These claims have been vehemently denied and Cherie has, once more, been turned on as more vindictive than victim in the press.
Daily Mirror columnist Sue Carroll is leading the charge today describing Cherie as “money-grubbing, back-stabbing and self-obsessed”. Libby Purves of Times Online continues the onslaught by describing her as “self-serving, smug, and opportunistic” amongst other things.
Such criticism was always likely to be meted out to a woman who had seeked to protect the privacy of her family while in the public eye but who now conveniently feels it is the right time to reveal all, while happily pocketing a cool million pounds as a result.
One of the biggest gripes in the press has been her revelation that Leo did in fact have the MMR vaccine – something eluded to in an article in the Daily Mail. At the time, amid press speculation, she had refused to confirm or deny it citing family privacy as her main motivation. Now, for Cherie, there seems to be no problem. Why…we wonder.
Guardian columnist Mark Seddon explains that this current trend of sniping former colleagues from the relative safety of an autobiography is damaging an already crumbling Labour party. John Prescott has had his say among others. It seems that party politics are becoming more and more of a soap opera.
So Cherie is not the only one who is sticking the knife in but she will probably carry the greatest burden for the back-biting and this she can be given little sympathy for. She never sought to maintain a positive relationship with the press while she was at No. 10 and the way she has reacted to criticism down the years has made her a prime target for the papers.
