Former judge calls for Cherie’s dismissal

Cherie Blair has insisted today that the controversy over her tawdry memoirs, Speaking for Myself, will not spell the end of her legal career after a former senior judge called for her dismissal from the judiciary. After a week of extracts containing intimate revelations about Mrs Blair’s private life (she said her son Leo was conceived at Balmoral because she was too embarrassed to pack her ‘contraceptive equipment’), and swiping criticisms of public figures, Gerald Butler QC said that Mrs Blair should be sacked from her position as a recorder.

“If she wants to tread this path of making money by outrageous comments, that is up to her; but I don’t think this is a job for a judge,” said Butler, 77, who served as a senior justice at Southwark Crown Court for 13 years until 1997. “It shows a complete lack of any kind of decency. It is the kind of conduct which demeans the legal profession. It is altogether disgraceful but nothing less than I would expect from her.”

John Cooper, a senior criminal barrister, told the Evening Standard: “One of the important factors in being a judge is being able to exercise judgment, and part of that judgment is being trusted with confidential material... Put it this way, I know of no High Court judge who has written their memoirs before they have retired.”

Cherie Blair countered on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that she certainly wouldn’t quit, as law was “really important to my life”.

Meanwhile, the latest extract from Speaking for Myself details yet more information the public could happily do without. This time, it’s an account of how she began a love affair with the future prime minister on the top deck of a No 74 London bus, at a time when she was seeing two other men. “It was a double-decker and we went upstairs. It was completely empty and by the time we got off we knew each other better than when we’d got on. And even better the next morning. So that left me with three men in my life.”

Despite such revelations, Mrs Blair’s publisher rejected Gerald Butler’s criticism, declaring it “a remarkable book from a remarkable woman”. A spokesman for Little, Brown said: “There is much more to Cherie Blair’s autobiography than is apparent from the headlines of the past week.” Yes, but would they have paid £1 million for her Downing Street memories without those headline-grabbing details?