Why I hope Cherie Blair has seen off her critics

For six years, Cherie Blair has been bumping up and down on the rough sea of public life. Here she is, bobbing along at the start of the race, commanding some respect for the careful way she steers her frail craft. But there she goes, crashing into the waves of style judgement when she is spotted one day in leggings and pixie boots. Still, here she is again, bobbing up on a wave of popularity when little Leo arrives. Then she springs a leak, as she lets slip a negative comment about Israel. And just as she gets back up, in the hope that it's all plain sailing: woman overboard! And now we have watched her struggling in front of the television cameras in a tearful public statement to preserve her own and her husband's reputation.

Just watch the sharks circling now that they have scented blood. It's so easy to be cruel about Cherie Blair right now. The pundits have been queueing up to snap their jaws, although many of them have gone to great efforts to remind us that their cruelty is entirely justified by matters of public interest.

Cherie Blair did show bad judgement over her dealings with Peter Foster, and she did mislead civil servants and the press; so much at least seems clear. But this story is, to be frank, extremely limited in its political interest. After all, the tale involves the Prime Minister's spouse, not the Prime Minister, and it involves personal, not political, affairs. What gives it its staying power is not its force as political scandal, but its suggestiveness as personal shame.

Cherie's private life has long been a source of fascination to commentators who have been deeply frustrated by her desire to keep it private.

It often seems as if journalists just won't let up on certain public figures until they have ferreted out some vulnerability. A few celebrities try to forestall them by putting everything out in the open, but Cherie Blair has an understandable sense of privacy, and has always wanted to be able to close her door at the end of each day.

That has been made all the harder because of the barely disguised hostility that has been directed at her after her first honeymoon with the media. Our society is still terribly suspicious of successful women, especially successful women with families. How can a woman do everything Cherie does: look after her children, keep up a strong relationship with her husband, remain hugely successful in a demanding career, and be a smiling little wife when the occasion demands? Those commentators who believe that women just cannot have it all have been flummoxed by Cherie's ability to keep afloat.

And they would love to see such a woman capsize. That is why this tale is being used not just to expose one error of judgement, but as a springboard for the most damning assessments of Cherie Blair as a mother, a lawyer and a woman. I've never before found myself on the side of Downing Street, but I read more than this one high-minded newspaper every day, and I have to agree that there is something revolting about the way this story is being whipped up. It stinks. After all, let's not forget, Cherie Blair is not a politician; Cherie Blair has not done anything illegal. Even if you don't like her belief in feng shui or you don't like her friends or you don't like her choice of investments, she is hardly, as one poisonous commentator now calls her, the Wicked Witch.

More reasonable commentators have been keen to convince us that her failure of judgement over Peter Foster is not some isolated failure. It is the chaotic nature of her whole life, we are told, a much wider personal mess, that surrounds this slip of integrity. Cherie Booth's biographer, Linda McDougall, has written: "Some of those closest to the Blairs who talked to me privately suggest that Cherie is a bit disorganised in the way she conducts her life. Blair homes and holidays have often been chaotic, the children left to run riot." So Cherie is being judged not just for a couple of bad business decisions, but for trying to be that hubristic being – a woman who does too much.

As any parent knows, nobody can be the perfect mother all of the time, but Linda McDougall makes much of Cherie's more relaxed moments. "Someone who once went on holiday with Tony and Cherie described her as Lady Muck, lying on a deckchair while the children did exactly what they wanted. Her only contribution to restoring peace was to shout at Tony to 'do something' about the kids."

Such judgements are entirely superfluous to any matter of public interest. They simply serve to damn Cherie Blair as a mother, and along the way to remind readers that a woman who tries to do too much will necessarily fail. Such prejudice against successful women is not just being directed at Cherie as a mother, but also against Cherie as a lawyer. Sir Michael Davies QC was wheeled out yesterday morning on BBC Radio 4'sToday programme to discuss her standing as a lawyer. He quickly moved to what he thought was the vital problem. Ms Booth should not become a "top judge", he said; rather, she deserved "fingerwagging" because she is "overdressed". Overdressed! In other words, a smart woman should not attempt to venture where dowdy men hold sway.

Naturally, Cherie has helped to damage her own standing as a first-class brain because of her reliance on New Age quackery. But if you've ever read the Femail pages of the Daily Mail – the very organ that has led the attacks on her superstitions – you'll know that there are a lot of people out there doing the same. Unless we hear that these chants and crystals intruded into her legal work or her husband's political judgements, I think that we should let her consultations with spirits pass in the same way that we let her Catholicism pass; irrational superstition, but mostly harmless.

What I can't understand, however, is how her liking for massages and beauty treatments has been made the springboard for the most prurient coverage. Apparently, it makes for "lurid allegations" for someone to say that they saw her friend Carole Caplin giving Cherie a body scrub in the shower, or that Cherie took off her clothes for a "topless massage", or chatted to Carole while she was in a salt bath. For heaven's sake, such "lurid allegations" could be made about half the women in Britain who visit spas and salons.

There has also been a great fixation on the "sexual exercises" that Caplin is meant to have carried out with Cherie. The sniggering prurience of some of these newspaper reports, here and there accompanied by cartoons of a naked Cherie Blair and Carole Caplin, are as nasty as anything I have ever seen directed at a woman in public life. There is something terribly old-fashioned about the way this suggestiveness is being used against Cherie. Can it really be that women are still not allowed to be sexual as well as successful?

The tale of the Prime Minister's wife, the conman and the discounted apartments; it's not a pretty tale. But the game the media is playing is far, far uglier. These are not the right grounds for damning this – often damnable – government. This is not the way that women in public life should be treated. Whether she finds the support she needs now that she has made her statement in the unforgiving glare of the media, I just hope that Cherie Blair manages to cheat the sharks.

n.walter@btinternet.com