Emma Cowing: Poor show as political WAGs shun spotlight

Published on Monday 21 March 2011 14:25

I DON'T know about you, but I wouldn't recognise Moira Salmond if she stood up in my soup. Not that she's likely to, of course. The shy and retiring wife of Alex and de facto first lady of Scotland is unlikely to stand anywhere in public without being shielded from prying eyes by a phalanx of SNP minders, and, goodness knows, you wouldn't want them in your soup.

No, in the four-year reign of Salmond, Moira has remained a ghostly, intangible presence. There was a brief attempt to nudge her into the limelight in 2008, when she appeared at Tartan Week in New York and named a ship in Fraserburgh (enough to put anyone off), but it wasn't long before she had left the business of politicking to her husband and scuttled back to the family mill in Strichen where, it is oft reported, she keeps a flock of Muscovy ducks.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. History is littered with the partially obscured faces of first wives and husbands who loathed the limelight (the grim phizog of Denis Thatcher springs inevitably to mind) and did everything possible to avoid it, as they are perfectly entitled to do. We do not vote for the WAGs or the HABs, so who they are, what they look like and how deep their voices are should, in theory, be no business of ours.

But in this day and age, when, rightly or wrongly, politics is as much about personality as policy and voters often look for what is nauseatingly described by PR types as "the whole package", I can't help but wonder why Scottish politicians are so reluctant to put their partners in play.

After all, David Cameron famously described his wife Samantha as his secret weapon during last year's general election, while Sarah Brown became so popular with the female vote, not least for her prolific tweeting, that, had she stood for election, one suspects she'd have got more votes than her husband.

While not, admittedly, an entirely staggering feat, it does demonstrate the power of the partner. Indeed, the allure of the leaders' wives is not, in an election where every last vote will count, to be sniffed at: an election, such as, say, the one about to kick off in Scotland.

Full coverage of the Holyrood election

• Alex Salmond aims to be Mr 40% with voters

• Alex Salmond splashes out bn 'to boost poll hope'

• Holyrood big guns bow out - with parting shots at the calibre of MSPs

• Richard Harris, John McLaren and Jo Armstrong: Trickiest decisions must not be avoided

• Emma Cowing: Poor show as political WAGs shun spotlight

• Tom Peterkin: As usual, more questions than answers as peace breaks out in the bear pit

For all that, however, it is probably safe to say that Mrs Salmond will stay tucked away in the duck house for the duration of the forthcoming campaign. Over at Labour HQ, tentative toes appear to be being poked into the water. Iain Gray and his wife Gil did a cosy "at home" interview with a tabloid recently, in which he revealed their first date was at Easter Road and she coyly admitted that, when she met him, she thought "there was a spark about him and people found him inspirational". Ah.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott's wife, meanwhile, is BBC journalist Kirsten Campbell.She has a profile in her own right, but is rarely seen in public with her husband - a deliberate decision that is unlikely to change for the duration of the campaign, lest it cause rumples at the BBC.

And then, of course, there is Annabel Goldie and her handbag. While the handbag is, admittedly, unlikely to go off-message, even Mr Cameron would be forced to concede it is not the most dynamic of duos.

To me, it all seems a bit of a pity. The job of the first wife or husband - and it can be a job if you choose to make it one, as SamCam, Michelle Obama and Carla Sarkozy have all demonstrated - is not just to round out your partner in public, but to act as the country's host or hostess.

It offers a unique chance to pursue and promote charitable initiatives and help shape the soft centre at the heart of government that often gets lost in the hurly-burly of day-to-day politics. It is also an enormous privilege, affording as it does the trappings of official residences and cars, not to mention the regular company - and ears - of the country's most influential people. Like it or not, these are all things that go along with being the spouse of the country's first minister - and it does not seem too much to ask that the beneficiary of such privileges might want to give something back.

What a shame, then, that no-one seems willing to stand up and give it a go.