‘As I get older, I’m getting more impatient’
‘There’s no point “leaning in” if there’s no one to catch you’
When Cherie Blair and Jude Kelly meet
Claire Cohen, they tell her what it means to be women in business
When I meet Cherie Blair and Jude Kelly in a swish London hotel, there are any number of topics I hope to cover. After all, here are two highly impressive women – Kelly OBE, the recently departed artistic director of the Southbank Centre and founder of the Women of the World (WOW) festival; Blair, a QC, CBE and women’s rights campaigner. Just getting them in the same room for half an hour has involved a delicate juggling of diaries.
What I don’t anticipate is that our interview will begin with baby talk. Just hours earlier, Kelly’s first grandchild has been born; Blair is a grandmother of two, courtesy of her younger son, Nicky. The two compare notes and lament the demise of the old-fashioned family album.
It’s a heart-warming and unguarded chat; the briefest snapshot into their personal lives. And in Blair’s case – whatever your politics – that’s something the public has been undeniably fascinated with for more than two decades, ever since she opened the front door of No 10 in her nightie on the morning after 1997’s election landslide.
The two are old acquaintances, having both been born in 1954 and grown up in tandem in Liverpool – although their paths didn’t cross until much later. They were brought together by their passion for women: Cherie Blair set up her foundation in 2008 to help female entrepreneurs in developing countries, while Kelly founded WOW, a celebration of the achievements of women and girls, in 2010, and has invited Blair to speak on a number of occasions. It has now become a global movement with 49 events in 23 countries.
And tomorrow, the two women will appear on stage together to close the International Business Festival, in their native city, discussing the future of work and many of the issues highlighted by The Telegraph’s
Women Mean Business campaign.
It’s a subject close to their hearts, not least because both admit to having experienced the familial balancing act that professional success so often demands of women. Blair, 63, carried on as a barrister throughout her husband’s time in Downing Street, and was back in court within three months of giving birth in 2000.
Kelly, 64, has two grown-up children with her former husband, the writer Michael Bird. “My husband worked looking after the children much more than I did, in order to give me more freedom,” says Kelly. “And although we’re separated,
I’ve just come from my grandchild and he’s on his way, so we’re still doing that [ juggling act].
“Without that, it would have been really hard for me to have children, or to have the career that I’ve got. And that’s because we haven’t sorted out responsibility of childcare at all in society.”
“I’d like to say, and I can say to some extent, when he was an MP and in opposition, that my husband did play his part,” says Blair. “Obviously, when he became prime minister that was a different set up, but by that time I’d organised a support structure.
“I was lucky, because my mother always worked until she had to be home for her daughters, but then her mother-in-law would be there,” says Blair. “So it was always in my mind that a working mother was not betraying her children.”
Kelly interrupts: “Even in your story, the person who is the fall back is a woman. And we’ve got to get to a stage where men have as great a sense of inevitability about responsibility for children as women have.”
“But I find my son, and probably yours, too, is much more engaged,” adds Blair. “I mean Tony was engaged more than his father, but I think Nicholas is even more engaged.”
I am curious to know what do they make of the current occupant of No 10? Do they find it inspiring to have a female Prime Minister?
“Oh, yes,” says Kelly without hesitating. “Both our female PMS have made a point of saying ‘I’m entitled to be here as a woman and have whatever policies I like, whether you agree with them or not’. But I do genuinely believe that women in power need to know that they wouldn’t be there if other women hadn’t got them an education or the vote, and so I do think women in power need to be feminists.”
“And they need to pay it back,” nods Blair. “Margaret Thatcher never wanted to acknowledge that, really, by the time she was prime minister. Whereas I think Theresa May is absolutely confident in the fact that she is a female PM and that makes her different, and that’s not a bad thing.”
Would Tony call himself a feminist? “Oh, I’m sure he would. Absolutely,” says
Blair. “I know they were declared ‘Blair’s Babes’, but the fact is, when he was Labour leader he introduced all-female shortlists and that made a paradigm change in the number of women in Parliament for the first time.”
However, despite the country having a second female prime minister, neither seems optimistic about the pace of change, particularly the barriers facing entrepreneurs. Currently, female-led start-ups receive just nine per cent of the annual funding pot in Britain, something The Telegraph’s Women Mean Business campaign has highlighted at government level.
“There’s an attitude that’s very hard to dissolve,” says Kelly. “Everybody’s fine with you being a cottage industry and working yourself to bits. But the moment you try to scale up? That’s when the problems start.”
Would either of them go along with the idea that it is women’s own lack of confidence holding them back?
“I think women absolutely need to help themselves,” says Blair, “but there’s no point ‘leaning in’ if there’s no one to catch you. You’re going to end up falling flat on your face. Women’s lack of confidence is a lot to do with the pressures on them that tell them they can’t do these things.”
One thing neither of the women who sit before me today seem to lack is confidence. Are they now at an age of peak confidence?
Blair audibly scoffs. “Well, my husband says that I’m a ‘bolshie Scouser’, so that’s probably it,” she chuckles. “I think there comes a point when you get to a certain age and you think, ‘I’ve made it on my terms and I’m not prepared to accept someone else’s any more. Because I’ve got a track record and that can’t be denied.”
“Ditto!” exclaims Kelly. “But you’re still having to audition. Obviously, your reputation can go before you, but I still have times where people are surprised by how much you know. You go into a room of people at the top level of world affairs and you hold your own, and they hadn’t expected that you would be able to.”
“Or have opinions,” chips in Blair.
“But between us we’re going to change the world,” says Kelly, eyes shining.
“And soon!” Blair replies. “As I’m getting older I’m getting more impatient, I thought it would have happened by now.”