Cowardly trolls may mock. But Carrie is doing women a great service by speaking with such candour
CARRIE Johnson announces she is pregnant with the couple’s second child, having suff e r e d a miscarri a ge early on in the year – and Twitter springs to life like a putrefying zombie sensing a piece of passing grey matter.
‘Fake baby’; ‘Ooh, look, another dead cat’; endless jokes about nursery wallpaper; and the rest, quite honestly, s o unpleasant even Frankie Boyle might consider them a bit de trop.
Most of them, of course, hiding behind anonymity like the pathetic cowardly creeps they are.
Such is the lot of any political partner, especially one married to a Conservative. The hard-Left is far nastier and more aggressive than the Right, especially when it comes to the abuse of women.
Even those supposedly in the responsible mainstream do i t: Kevin Maguire, of the New Statesman, couldn’t resist having a dig: ‘Will this be 7 or 8 children fathered by Boris Johnson?’ he tweeted.
How original. And what a lovely sentiment to extend to an expectant mother sharing such deeply personal and bittersweet news.
To an extent, it comes with the territory. Every politician or politician’s spouse has to accept a bit of teasing from the other side now and again. But there are times when even the toughest feel vulnerable, and pregnancy and miscarriage ought to be respected.
But no. Some people will always see you purely through the prism of their own political tribalism. You are not a person in your right, indeed you are probably not even human, and neither is your family. Your feelings and state of mind don’t matter. Not even in moments of great anguish.
I’m sure Carrie thought long and hard before telling the world about her miscarriage. She will have been fully aware of how people might seize upon it and twist it out of shape for their own ends.
Which makes her decision to share her experience even more admirable, especially at such a vulnerable stage in her life.
Pregnancy is a special time for most women, but it can also be incredibly stressful, and no more so than when you’ve only just lost a baby. I don’t know the details of her miscarriage earlier this year, but I am certain that the fear of it happening again stalks her, as it would any woman in her position.
Even now she is past the high-risk stage, and has presumably had many scans reassuring her, her hormones will mean she is hypersensitive to every worry. Having one child already – Wilfred – running around the place will no doubt act as a welcome distraction a lot of the time. But still. She could probably do without the trolls. Especially since what she is doing in speaking out is a genuinely good thing.
Miscarriage is one of the last great taboo subjects, even though countless women experience it every day.
More than one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage – around a quarter of a million each year in the UK. Talking about it, being honest about the realities and, crucially, removing the stigma that still surrounds miscarriage, is an important part of helping women recover.
Carrie is not telling the world because she wants our sympathy; she’s doing so because the baby she lost is as much part of the story of her growing family as the one she already has and the one she hopes to welcome at Christmas.
Like many women who have been through what she has, that baby was as real to her as the one in her belly. Of course she wants to talk about it, of course she wants to share her heartbreak.
Like so many women of her generation – including, of course, the Duchess of Sussex – Carrie doesn’t take a stiff-upper-lip approach to these things. And if you ask me,
The hard-Left is far nastier and more aggressive than the Right
The baby she’s lost is as much part of her story as the one she already has
that’s all to the good. Because while I’m not necessarily a fan of oversharing, I also know there are some things that, if suppressed, only make things worse.
That doesn’t mean to say you have to spill every last detail, but letting the world know what you’ve faced can be a very i mportant step towards processing the trauma.
Women need to feel they can be open about their experiences of miscarriage and loss.
For some, Carrie’s admission is an opportunity to gloat, a reason to diminish her and Boris, to revel in their misfortune.
But for the vast majority, I suspect, it will be comforting to know that behind all the formality and pomp of No 10 Downing Street live a couple who, for all their power and privilege, understand firsthand the kind of experiences that many ordinary people endure. That is to be applauded, not mocked.
GEORGE Clooney has been helping locals near his home in Italy after Lake Como was hit by heavy flooding. I guess every cloud…
ONE of those ‘memories’ popped up on my iPhone the other day. It was a picture of my mother, dressed headto-toe in orange, sitting at the cafe in our local square in Turin. The date: October 2019. Normally those things annoy me – I don’t want my mobile dictating my emotions. But this one stopped me in my tracks because it reminded me that the autumn of 2019 was the last time I saw her.
I’ve been trapped in the UK while she – along with my dad – has been stuck in Italy.
I had hoped to go and see them later this month. In fact, I was in the throes of planning a long-overdue family reunion.
After all, we have a lot to catch up on. My daughter has finished school, my son now towers above me – and there have been one or two changes in my life too. For their part, my father hasn’t been all that well and both have lost several very dear friends to Covid. But now, with all the endless uncertainty over the dreaded traffic-light system, I can’t risk it.
The thought of Italy turning red while I’m out there and having to quarantine in some squalid box with the kids at a cost of almost two grand a pop just makes it unfeasible.
Quite apart from anything else, I think that if I found myself being carted off down that dreaded red channel at Heathrow like a criminal, I might become insensible with rage and wake up in a holding cell (although at least then I wouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of being banged up).
Because, quite honestly, the way the Government has handled foreign travel over the past few weeks is enough to make even the most mild-mannered, most law-abiding citizen lose their composure.
Thing is, I don’t mind sticking to the rules if I know what they are. But this constant chopping and changing, this endless back-pedalling every time Chris Whitty so much as sneezes is maddening.
Instead of doing everything possible to make travel viable, not just for people’s wellbeing but for the wellbeing of the travel industry and business in general, the Government seems determined to make it as difficult as possible.
It is not a crime to want to leave the country, either for work or pleasure – and yet that is how we are being made to feel.
Clarity is what’s needed. Clarity and consistency.
Really, how hard can it be? If I had my way (which I rarely do), I would make it very simple: whatever rules you leave under are the same ones you come back with – provided you return within a limited time period, say 21 days.
In other words, if I go to Italy when it’s on the amber list, as long as I return within three weeks I can come back on that basis, even if it turns red in the meantime.
That way I can plan ahead and enjoy my trip instead of spending the whole time in a state of near panic. It would also stop the inevitable stampede for tickets when guidance changes. So many of these cut-off points are arbitrary anyway. For example, why 4am on a Saturday i nst ead of 2.30pm on a Thursday? It’s not as though the virus can tell the difference. And provided you had a clear limit on a person’s window of travel, would it really make that much difference to infection rates? I doubt it. Especially since so many of us have been vaccinated. In any case, the bottom line is this: we have to live with this disease, and that means opening up travel alongside everything else. What we have currently is a messy, frustrating shambles that is driving everyone up the wall. My solution may not be perfect; but then nothing ever is.
THE Education Secretary’s new wheeze is that he wants children in state schools to learn Latin so the subject is not ‘reserved for the privileged few’. Given the level of general illiteracy among children these days, I think he should start by nailing basic English.