Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

I was so annoyed by all this media interest in Samantha Cameron (or ‘SamCam’ as she is being annoyingly termed) today, that it has motivated me to write a blog. Samantha Cameron is set to do an interview with Trevor Mcdonald tomorrow night about life with her husband, David Cameron. ( I’m sure some of you are keen to stop reading now at this very thought, but try and carry on)

Now, to start with, I’ve never seen Trevor Mcdonald do a type of interview to get any gossipy information out of people a la Piers Morgan, so that got the alarm bells ringing. I.e what’s it all about then?

But reading Zoe Williams’s comments in the Guardian today sparked another level of cynicism- what will this interview actually say about anything at all to do with their real lives, and does anyone really care? Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama have hinted at a few small failings of their husbands in previous interivews- making annoying remarks, disrupting Sunday dinner with blackberry’s flashing and what not, but Zoe Williams hits the nail on the head, saying-

‘ The formula became: don’t say he’s perfect. That sounds a bit Stepford Wife and will damage your credibility..But likewise, don’t say anything that might be meaningfully true..I think SamCam fell on this particular knife…(She doesn’t even call her husband straightforwardly messy! He’s messy while he’s cooking. Even when bad, ladies and gentlemen, he good)’

So yes, friends, it’s all a media parade. Let’s line up the wives and see if they will make our men look better and more electable. You can just see now, in party HQ’s The Thick of it Style, party strategists talking about how wives speaking ‘frankly’ about life at the top, or life with a future PM will do wonders for the public image.

And this during the week that marked International Women’s Day.  A day when all I did was talk about empowering women in their own right, or giving confidence to women to have their own aspirations, or encouraging women to stand for election themselves, so that they can make a difference.

Fast forward four days, and International Women’s Day might as well have not happened as far as the media is concerned. It’s a fight between Sarah Brown and SamCam, we are duly told. Who will big up their husband best?  We must know what they think, what they are wearing, what they do to cope, how they stand by their men so gracefully and supportive, and the rest.

No no no!  If we want to inspire women, then these are not the images or the discussions we need. Yes, talk about the wives because they are campaigning on a certain issue, or they are making their own mark in the World, but not because they  happen to be married to some high powered men. What happened to independent women making it for themselves? What happened to women walking in to a room, and being quizzed on their presence because they are there, not because they are attached to someone else?

As you can imagine, this agenda angers me somewhat. But let’s turn the argument on its head for a minute, shall we? If Gordon Brown or David Cameron can’t be bothered to tell people themselves that they are messy, or if they have an unnatural relationship with their Blackberry’s, then why do the women in their lives feel it necessary to share that with the World? I don’t want to know. If Brown and Cameron or anyone else thought this information was so important to them actually getting elected, why not mention it themselves?

Or, more crucially, if the wives are THAT much of an electoral asset, shouldn’t they just stand themselves, and talk about the issues that matter most to them?

Who knows? I’m just off to scour the latest edition of Vogue to find out what Carla Bruni is wearing this month;-)