Carrie the can as PM’s rock of ages
WHETHER or not Carrie, who is 24 years younger than the PM, has too much influence over what goes on at Number 10, I have no idea and neither does anybody else, except those who work there but whose accounts differ. However, Carrie alone of recent Downing Street wives was actively employed in politics before becoming the wife of the Prime Minister and the temptation to press strong opinions may have proved too strong.
What I think is incontestable is that it would have been a very different scene were Boris still married to the serious, dignified, restrained, approaching-60 Marina Wheeler.
For a certainty there would have been no wallpapergate and a demanding career as a senior barrister would have left little time for much active interference. Nor would there have been the demands of small babies and nappy-changing.
That brings me to Prince Charles who has been through the reverse process, being first married to a beautiful girl who, barely more than a teenager, was 12 years his junior and then to a middle-aged averagely attractive woman who has given him the serenity and steady support he craved. It was a lifelong love affair thwarted by ludicrous demands that he marry only a “pure” girl of aristocratic lineage.
OF COURSE, many people marry despite large age-gaps and remain happily wed for ever after but there is much to be said for calm and the odd wrinkle rather than glamour and clamour where a man or woman needs, as the Queen described Prince Philip, a “strength and stay”. Camilla has been Prince Charles’ rock and will make a wonderful Queen and because of her he will be a better King.
None of us can know what really goes on in other people’s marriages, even if those in public life are condemned to read “insider accounts” in the public prints.What one can say is what is needed by a spouse under huge public pressure: an oasis of calm, relaxation, wisdom and reassurance. I leave it to Carrie to decide if that describes the flat above Number 10.