Jayne Dowle: We must judge our leaders on ability, not the way they load the dishwasher

The General Election is still weeks away. But already I want to throw something at Samantha Cameron.

Tory strategists obviously regard her as something of an asset. Maybe she is in Berkshire. But I can't see her making too many friends around here. She tries too hard; from her chain-store conference dresses to the way she speaks, all "y'know" and "sorta", to hide her privileged background as the daughter of a baronet. It might wash in Notting Hill, but it won't cut much ice in South Yorkshire.

You have to respect her for suffering the awful experience of losing a child. Ivan, who died last year at the age of six, was severely disabled, and trying to make a reasonable life for him and bring up her two other children must have been incredibly difficult. But time moves very quickly in politics. We all know that she is being used now to show her husband in the best possible light.

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And we women have quickly sussed that she isn't the only weapon the party is deploying to attract us. Now they are drafting in Cameron's mother, Mary, a doughty 75-year-old Home Counties matron and magistrate. If SamCam can appeal to the younger voters, goes the thinking, then Mrs Cameron senior will pick up the pensioners.

But just why have wives and mothers become such an important electioneering tool? From where I'm sitting, it doesn't enhance the appeal of the blokes at the front one bit. It makes them look as if they are incapable of fighting the good fight without someone to hold their hand. Surely, this has the opposite effect to the one intended.

The last thing we women want is another man who can't do anything for himself, especially one who is supposed to be running the country.

Look at Sarah Brown, desperately working the global room on behalf of her hapless husband. Like Samantha Cameron, she is intelligent, educated, a businesswoman in her own right. When she got married, I can't imagine that she thought for a moment she was signing up to a life which would feature more PR opportunities than a wannabe Hollywood starlet.

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If either of them want to go into politics, they should find a seat and stand for it themselves. At least the Liberal Democrats pretty much let Nick Clegg get on with it by himself. With Vince Cable to help out on the difficult bits, obviously.

I find it all deeply patronising. It is as if we women can't quite get our heads around challenging any complex political ideas unless they are backed up by another female.

This desperate desire to please really sticks in my throat, so I can't imagine what it does to a single mother, looking in on these perfect political families.

I don't really care whether David Cameron calls his wife "sweets" when he phones her from the train. I want to know if he's going to put up

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the interest rate. I'm not remotely bothered if he remembers to put the cereal away. All I worry about is whether or not he has the mental capacity to do the job of Prime Minister.

Wheeling out the wifey is political spin-doctoring at its most manipulative. Even New Labour, never behind the door when it came to making the most of every PR opportunity, kept Cherie Blair out of the limelight during the 1997 General Election campaign.

The cynical might say that this was because they recognised she was a liability from the off, but let's be kind. She was always there for Tony, and did her bit, from supporting charities to guest-editing women's magazines, but we didn't have to endure an endless stream of banal chatter about life chez Blair.

And what happened to her once he did get into office should serve as a warning. When women turn, they turn nasty. When all the stuff about her New Age gurus and her financial habits came out, Cherie Blair was subjected to that particularly vitriolic bitchiness which only women can dish out against other women.

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If you ask me, I'd say it would be far better for them all to follow the lead of Norma Major, and stay well out of the way. No-one could ever say that Mrs Major didn't support her husband. And given the revelations about his personal life, which came to light after he fell from office, she obviously had a lot to put up with.

But we weren't subjected to icky interviews and spurious fashion pieces and umming and ahhing over whether she really should combine a career with being a Prime Minister's wife. She just got on with enjoying her opera and writing her books and didn't get in our faces.

So let us remember that, actually, politics is about politicians.

What their wives wear or support or say doesn't actually matter in the end.

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We are voting for a Prime Minister, not Husband of the Year. We should judge our leaders on their ability to make a difference to the mess this country is in, not on their ability to load the dishwasher.