When it was announced in 1999 that Cherie Blair was pregnant, the controversy about the proposed hunting ban was at its height. I discussed the pregnancy at a hunt tea with the terrier-man. ‘It won’t be a baby,’ he predicted sullenly, ‘It’ll be a two-headed calf.’ Actually, it was dear little Leo. Now, in the extracts from her forthcoming memoirs, Mrs Blair explains the circumstances of his conception. In the previous year, when she and Tony had stayed at Balmoral, ‘I had been extremely disconcerted to discover that everything of mine had been unpacked. Not only my clothes, but the entire contents of my distinctly ancient toilet bag with its range of unmentionables. This year I had been more circumspect and had not packed my contraceptive equipment, out of sheer embarrassment. As usual up there, it had been bitterly cold and what with one thing and another…’. Several things strike me about this passage.
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