I didn’t have powerful 1997 vibes last week, and not because I was too busy grumbling; I also hit the ground complaining about Tony Blair. But one thing did remind me of that era. A set of urgent questions were raised, which we could group loosely as, “Who the hell is that woman, and what does she think she’s wearing?

Back in the day, all eyes were on “Blair’s Babes”, a deeply considered epithet for an influx of Labour women, many of whom were actually older than the prime minister, but that didn’t matter. All it took was a babe or two, for “Babe” to be used to describe the collective. It wouldn’t happen today, so I guess we could call that progress.

Things have remained unchanged, however, for the new prime minister’s wife, variously referred to as “the power behind the throne”, the “secret weapon” and the “chatelaine”. All of these propositions are fundamentally untestable: the first could mean anything. It could mean that........

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