Partners take centre stage

SO, A gladiatorial battle between David Cameron and Gordon Brown? Not quite, it seems. As a measure of how politics in Britain is changing profoundly, David Cameron's wife Samantha is set to adopt an increasingly prominent role in the Conservatives' election campaign. In this she follows in the footsteps of Mr Brown's wife Sarah, who has now twice introduced her husband at Labour Party conferences to great effect.

All this makes the tradition of "seen and not heard" consorts the strictures of a bygone age. Who could have imagined Denis Thatcher raising a glass of the amber tincture to his wife Margaret before one of her belting Conservative conference speeches? Tony Blair's wife Cherie was not backward in coming forward on legal opinions, but was never in the "Stand By Your Man" camp of public eulogies. Harold Wilson's wife famously wrote poetry but of other aspects of her personality we knew nothing, other than a wearisome forbearance. For Ted Heath there was no companion, and for Harold Macmillan the very idea of a wifely endorsement would have seemed preposterous. Never in the novels of Trollope was such forward behaviour envisaged.

The rise of the Significant Other is a new and strange development in politics. It is not without its softening charm. In a previous era it would all have been seen as a diversion. Now it seems central to the new politics we have embraced.