Personality Politics

"As Tony Blair prepares to step out of the limelight it is worth remembering how he brought his personal life into play in the early stages of his rise to power. Blair the family man, with a working wife and three young children, pictured at his kitchen table in Islington where he famously cooked the children’s supper; Blair the father who got up in the night to attend to a crying child, because wife Cherie had to be in court next day. As Prime Minister, we saw him pose with his family outside Number 10, or talking to the press clutching a mug with pictures of his children stamped across it."

Writing in the June issue of The Difference, Jill Kirby asks "If we are to judge politicians by what happens in their personal lives, rather than by the quality of their policies, they may find themselves rejected on account of personal and family failings, rather than the failure of their policies. Is this the path we really want to tread?"

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