A Comparative Analysis of Media Representations of the Consorts of the British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which the British media represented the British prime ministerial consorts Denis Thatcher and Cherie Blair: more specifically it looks at how the media changed their practices towards the presentation of consorts, and how consorts themselves had changed in their presentations between 1979 and 2006. A true scholarly study of British political consorts has never been undertaken before, and so compared to studies of American first ladies, scholarship on Britain is lacking and in need of expansion.

The aim of this thesis was to discover why Thatcher and Blair received such radically different presentations by the media when they were consorts, and whether this was due to the consorts own volition or as part of a more intrusive media. The time period follows the advent of the 24 hour media cycle making it a particularly prosperous period for the amount of research available on this topic. I used the research strategy of case studies, and after anaylsing the consorts separately I compared their treatments to discover why their presentations were different. The main theoretical components of this thesis are the gender theory of Judith Butler and Foucauldian discourse analysis. I collected data primarily from newspaper articles but also from personal interviews, films, scholarly articles and books.

I came to the conclusion that the treatment each consort received was due primarily to the way that the consort themselves acted. Denis Thatcher kept out of the limelight and was rewarded for his silence, whereas Cherie Blair was much more vocal and critical during her time as consort, particularly in and with regard to the media, and she suffered as a result of this.

This dissertation makes a contribution to the scholarship on British consorts and how they fit in to the media and political landscapes. By focusing on the two longest serving consorts of the twentieth century it makes sure that any other study will already have a large background of information and research available. It’s an important result as it places the result with the consort and the decisions that they make, rather than just attacking the media.