Just who are the most powerful women in Britain today? Imogen O' Rorke profiles the women who are leading the way.

The Spectator recently called her ‘the new iron lady of Number 10’. The right wing magazine was referring to Cherie Blair’s – or rather, Cherie Booth QC’s – decision to speak out in defence of the New Human Rights act last summer. The Tories immediately rounded, calling her ‘an unaccountable cross between a first lady and a Lady Macbeth figure’, echoing the Republican hue and cry against Hillary Clinton.

Their main concern was that Cherie’s new law firm, Matrix, which specialises in human rights, stood to profit enormously from the cases the act provokes, possibly doubling her £250,000 salary. Both women, Hillary and Cherie in turn, have found out what happens to first ladies whenever they try to push their own political or private agendas – they come up against the weight of the establishment.

Cherie Booth has never concealed her ambitions. She jokes that she suffers from the Allerednic syndrome (Cinderella in reverse) – when a capable woman is condemned to a life of drudgery through marriage – and yet she does not appear to have sacrificed much in her successful 23 year legal career. When Cherie married Tony (they were both young lawyers and prominent members of the local labour branch) she made a decision to concentrate on law, and a family.

Educated at a convent grammar school, Cherie took the top first in her year in Law at LSE and also came top in her bar finals. She was Derry Irvine’s (now Lord Chancellor) first choice pupil and went on to specialise in employment law and judicial review, becoming one of the youngest QCs of her generation. Clearly, the prize of first female Lord Chancellor is within her grasp now.

Cherie’s burden, perhaps, is that she is believed by many to be more intellectually capable than her hubby, and would possibly even make a better PM. After all, her socialist pedigree is better than Tony’s: her grandfather was a miner and her father, who played Alf Garnett’s layabout son-in-law in Till Death Do Us Part, is seen as something of a class warrior, and her mother worked in a chip shop to support her daughters, after Tony Booth left her. Tony Blair’s dad was a would-be Tory MP, and he had a public school education.

What ever happened to Cherie’s political ambitions? After joining the party at 18, she stood as Labour candidate for the Tory stronghold Thanet North in 1983 and lost. It is almost as if when she married Tony, she made a decision to become a back-seat driver, keeping a low profile and trying not to get involved with her husband’s politics.

She has developed pet causes of her own, however, and is quick (too quick, perhaps?) to jump on to modish bandwagons such as GM foods, equality in the workplace, maternity/paternity and gay rights. She styles herself as the champion of those oppressed by discrimination, disease and debt and, lately, as a kind of patron saint of the juggling working mum. Lecturing at Parent’s Week, recently, she stressed that being a mum ‘was the most important job of all’. It all seems a bit sanctimonious coming from a woman enjoying a family income in excess of £500,000 a year, who returned to her job after just three months with the new baby.

Nevertheless, Cherie is the Lloyds TSB ‘most popular mum in UK’ – having a child has boosted her ratings more than ever before. Unlike Hillary, Cherie is very popular with female voters. Somehow, we can relate more to a woman who has been snapped on her doorstep looking haggard in a nightie, and admits to being ‘at the end of her tether’ on occasion.

When Blair came to power, a top-level decision was taken to ‘bubble wrap’ Cherie so she wouldn’t upstage him. Only now is she emerging as a political mover and shaker in her own right. Well may the Tories and outdated judges quake in their buckled shoes.