“My Husband, My Hero”: Selling the Political Spouses in the 2010 General Election

Abstract

In spite of a record number of female parliamentary candidates, the 2010 general election campaign became notable for the intensity of coverage given to the female spouses of the three main party leaders. We find that this resulted from a combination of party communication strategy, established media discourses, and the agency and visibility of the wives themselves. First, Labour and the Conservatives were the most prominent in integrating their leaders' wives into their campaigns, often to counter the less marketable qualities of the leaders themselves. Second, while mainstream media outlets—particularly newspapers—sought to cover all three women, they did so drawing upon established gender-based conventions, focussing on the wives' physical appearance and apparent dedication to their husbands. Third, while the wife of the Liberal Democrat leader opted for limited and strategic contact with media, the wives of the Conservative and Labour leaders exploited a range of new media platforms, combining official party websites, personal blogs, and webcasts. We argue that any assessment of the role of the spouses of party leaders has to look at media-driven priorities only alongside the various strategies open to parties and individuals in managing media activities. We also suggest that there is scope to use the coverage of leaders' spouses to explore the development, limits, and gender politics of any shift toward presidentialism.

KEYWORDS:

• political leaders
• David Cameron
• presidentialism
• campaigning
• gender
• media discourse
• masculinity
• new media

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Higgins

Michael Higgins is senior lecturer in Humanities at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom. His publications cover the areas of discourse analysis, political celebrity, mediated populism and governmentality. His recent books include Media and Their Publics (Open University Press 2008) and, with De Blasio, Hibberd and Sorice, La Leadership Politica: Media e Costruzione del Consenso (Carocci 2012).

Angela Smith

Angela Smith is reader in Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland, Sunderland, United Kingdom. She has published in the areas of media discourse, gender and politics, and has recently published The Language of Journalism: A Multi-Genre Perspective (Bloomsbury 2013), co-written with Michael Higgins. She is co-editor of the I.B. Tauris International Library of Gender and Popular Culture.