Cherie, you hypocrite: Axed for refusing to go full-time, mum-of-two Louise gives a tantalising insight into what it's like working for Mrs Blair - 'champion' of mothers' rights

• Louise Allain was offered a job by Cherie Blair, after the former Prime Minister's wife discovered she was looking for work to fit around her kids
• The mother-of-two worked from 9.30am to 3pm three days a week
• But in February, after a year of working in Mrs Blair's personal office, was summoned Cherie's home to a meeting
• She had been offered a £27,000 a year full-time position
  
• But Miss Allain turned the offer down in the interests of being a mother
• Days later she received an email to say she had been made redundant
  

By Helen Weathers for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:37 EST, 21 March 2014 | Updated: 20:15 EST, 21 March 2014

Summoned for a meeting at the magnificent multi-million-pound Connaught Square London home of Cherie Blair QC, single mother-of-two Louise Allain felt as nervous as a prep school pupil facing a teacher she’d somehow displeased.

Louise, a part-time worker in Mrs Blair’s private office, felt a distinct and uncomfortable chill in the air as she smoothed her charity shop clothes and calmly prepared to make an impassioned appeal to her boss — as one mother to another.

The former Prime Minister’s wife, a passionate advocate for family-friendly, flexible employment policies, had always been sympathetic to Louise’s needs as a single parent before.

Louise Allain (left) started working for Cherie Blair (centre) in January last year. Miss Allain's son is friends with the Blair's youngest Leo, and she had become friends with the Blair's child carer. It was through the carer that Cherie discovered Miss Allain was struggling to find a part-time job

But, somehow, something had changed. Mrs Blair seemed curt, abrupt and rather severe as she asked why Louise hadn’t jumped at the offer of a new full-time, five-day-a-week position earning £27,000 a year?

Why too, Mrs Blair enquired, was Louise unable to change her hours in her existing role as receptionist to begin half-an-hour earlier?

‘I’d never seen Cherie like this before. She’d always been very genial, equable and accessible,’ says Louise, 41, who worked 9.30am to 3pm three days a week so she could do the school run, until she was made redundant in February.

‘Cherie, having been so sympathetic, suddenly seemed very dogmatic. She was adamant that not being in work by 9am was insubordination — that was her exact word.

'She seemed cross that staff were failing to implement changes made by the new Chief Operating officer she’d brought in who wanted me to start work half an hour earlier at 9am.

'I was shocked and felt like I was back in Form Three, being told off,’ says Louise.

‘After dropping my daughter at school, I was usually in the office by 9.10am and normally the calls didn’t start coming in until after 9.30am, but I was told colleagues should not be expected to cover for me, even though they seemed more than happy to  do so.

'I couldn’t understand Cherie’s change in attitude. She’d offered me a part-time job knowing I need to work around my children’s school hours. She’d been very receptive to that, but it was as if a switch had flicked off.’

Louise, suddenly acutely aware of the gulf between her and high-achieving, designer-label-loving Mrs  Blair, quietly argued her case as best she could.

Her 14-year-old son — who was in the same comprehensive school class as Mrs Blair’s youngest child Leo — and her daughter, nine, needed their mum at home at least part of the week.

As their sole carer, she didn’t want to be gone before they’d brushed their teeth in the morning and home after they’d had dinner every night of the week.

Louise offered a solution and suggested working two full days a week, so she could still be, as she puts it, a proper mum.

Not only did Louise need her job, she loved it. She didn’t want to go back to benefits, wondering how she was going to pay the bills and the rent on her housing association flat in Victoria without asking for hand-outs from her family.

Cherie offered Miss Allain a part-time job, working from 9.30am to 3pm three days a week, to fit around the school run

Louise left the 35-minute meeting tearful, but believing she had won Mrs Blair over. The barrister seemed to have softened as her employee stated her case. She seemed willing to agree to Louise’s alternative part-time plan and told her to discuss it with her Chief Operating Officer.

Which is what you might have expected. After all, just a few months earlier, painting herself as an outspoken champion of working mothers, Mrs Blair had penned an article for the Observer newspaper headlined: All women should have the chance to have a family and a career.

In the piece Mrs Blair wrote: ‘Changing our society so our workplaces are truly open to the talents and life choices of women needs real leadership and effort.’

She went on: ‘Certainly the culture of work needs to change... our working culture is still dominated by the need to be at our desk for long hours of the day.’

Louise’s request to continue working part-time afforded the perfect opportunity for Mrs Blair to practise what she preaches. Not only that, it would give a helping hand to a woman whose own childhood had been filled with the kind of adversity Mrs Blair could identify with — and indeed had herself overcome.

So you can imagine Louise’s sense of hurt and ‘betrayal’ at what she calls Mrs Blair’s ‘sheer hypocrisy’ after she was made redundant in February, when her offer to work two full days was rejected as impracticable.

After Louise sent an email to Mrs Blair and her new Chief Operating Officer Ravinder Shokar explaining that, with her youngest child still in primary school, she had no choice but to work part-time, she received an unexpected and devastating reply from Mrs Blair.

Dated January 15, it read: ‘I am really sorry Louise that it’s not been possible to make it work but we need the role to be full time. If there is anything we can do to help you get another part-time job, please don’t hesitate to ask.’

When Louise replied that she didn’t realise that by turning down the full-time job she’d lose her current one, Mrs Blair responded: ‘Sorry that was not made clear’ and in a second email: ‘You are being made redundant as there is no longer a part-time role.’

It was a brutal conclusion that shocked Louise, so different was it to the persona Cherie had previously adopted in the office.

Miss Allain said she was 'completely stunned' by Mrs Blair's offer of a part-time job in her personal office. She said: 'She told me: "I know you need hours to fit around your children, you could do 10am to 2pm"'

‘The last thing Cherie had said to me in the office was “That’s a nice top you’re wearing,” ’ Louise remembers. ‘It was a second-hand twin-set from Hobbs that my mother had bought me from a charity shop. I think it was her way of being conciliatory, by saying something personal. I just smiled.

‘I’d been diligent, hard-working and loyal to Cherie. I just couldn’t understand what had changed. It felt so personal.

‘How could she go from being a forward-thinking boss to being so dispassionate and cold? I wish now that she’d never offered me the job in the first place.

‘I can’t help but wonder if Cherie is perhaps more comfortable with flexible working in theory than in reality. She may be a mother, but she’s also a lawyer. Towards the end, it felt like the legal side dominated. I feel she’s a very complicated woman and her attitude towards flexible working seems schizophrenic.

‘I just don’t understand, especially as I’d confided in Cherie and admired her so much.’

And so, unfortunately for Louise, her new beginning turned out to be a false dawn. Humiliated to be back  on benefits, her voice trembles as she reveals how she wept the day  she went back to Westminster  Job Centre.

The youngest of five children, Louise was two when her father, an export manager, died from a heart attack aged just 42. Her mother Margaret, now aged 76, had taken a job as housemistress in a private school to support her daughter and four sons.

Likewise, Liverpool-born Cherie Blair’s mother had been forced to work — once in a chip shop — to support her children when her husband, the late actor Tony Booth, deserted the family when Mrs Blair was a child.

‘My mother took a job she loathed because she needed to support her children, but also because she was determined that we wouldn’t be latchkey kids. Working in a school gave her the hours she needed to do that,’ says Louise, who has never married.

‘When I went back to work as an office administrator when my daughter was just three months old, it was my mother who stepped in and helped me with the childcare. But I had to give up work because my daughter was only little and needed me.

‘Cherie was so receptive when I told her. Once she met my mother and said: “Oh, I was brought up by my grandmother, too. I know what it’s like and it’s a great thing to do.”

Working for Cherie, who is mother to (left to right) Euan, Kathryn, Leo and Nicky, Miss Allain earned around £12,500 a year, answering the phones and performing administrative tasks including organising Mrs Blair's diary

Given the nature of the job offer, and Mrs Blair understanding, Miss Allain said she was shocked when she was summoned to a meeting at the Blair's home in Connaught Square (pictured), earlier this year. Miss Allain had been offered a £27,000 a year full-time role but had turned the offer down

‘My mum was really touched by that because it seemed she meant it from the heart,’ says Louise, whose children are the products of two short-lived relationships.

‘Cherie knew how important it was for me, as a single parent, to be there as much as possible for my children. To my mind, letting someone else bring them up was like pseudo-adoption. What’s the point of being a parent?’

Miss Allain said: 'Cherie (pictured), having been so sympathetic, suddenly seemed very dogmatic... I was shocked'

It’s a sorry end to a relationship that started with such promise when Mrs Blair singled her out at a party for school mums and their children at the Blairs’ home.

To Louise’s astonishment, Cherie chatted animatedly to her before taking her to one side and offering her a job. 

Their sons were good friends and Louise had become very friendly with Cherie’s child carer. It’s through this carer that Mrs Blair heard that unemployed Louise was struggling to find a part-time job to fit around her two children’s school hours.

Despite a degree in politics and a good CV, Louise was so desperate to work she’d even applied for a cleaning job in a pizza restaurant only to be told she didn’t have ‘the right experience’.

‘I’d only met Cherie once before through school, but she came over to me at this party for school mums and after a chat about our sons’ homework said: “Look, I know you’re looking for work. Would you like to come and work in my personal office?” ’ says Louise.

‘Then she told me: “I know you need hours to fit around your children, you could do 10am to 2pm.” I was completely stunned by her offer. It was almost too generous.

'I felt very blessed and also privileged to be working for someone of such import. I’d just turned 40 and I felt that at last, after some very difficult years, my life was about to turn around.’

And so, Louise began her employment in Mrs Blair’s private office in January 2013, earning around £12,500 a year. Not a huge pay packet, but with added tax credits, she felt grateful to be able to pay her bills without relying on her family or searching for spare change in pockets.

‘I was by no means wealthy. I was still on the poverty line, shopping at Lidl, buying all our clothes from charity shops and living on macaroni cheese for three nights running, but I was very happy and grateful to be back at work,’ says Louise.

She answered phones, did general administration, responded to correspondence, helped organise Mrs Blair’s diary and latterly wrote articles for her boss’s personal website — a task she often completed at home in her own time.

Miss Allain was made redundant in February, after turning down the offer of a full-time role she was informed by Mrs Blair's Chief Operating Officer that there were no longer any part-time jobs available

She remembers fondly the day in January last year when Mrs Blair, who would call her female staff ‘Sweetheart’, said: ‘Come on Louise, have a picture taken with me,’ and then asked ‘Are you OK? How is it going?’

But Louise claims there was a ‘seismic shift’ last summer when Mrs Blair took on a new Chief Operating Officer with the atmosphere becoming more ‘corporate’.

As part of a re-organisation, Louise was offered a new full-time role as receptionist and office manager with a salary of £27,000 a year working 9am to 6pm five days a week.

Louise accepts that other single parents in her position might have grabbed this offer with both hands, but for her it was unworkable.

‘People have asked me: “Why didn’t you just take it? It’s £27k a year.” But what would I have done in the school holidays? After tax and deductions, there wouldn’t have been enough left over to pay for childcare once all the bills had been paid,’ says Louise.

‘But what really mattered to me was that Cherie had given me the opportunity to work part-time and be there for my daughter. I didn’t want to lose that.’

Louise says she tried to be amenable, but claims all the part-time solutions she put forward were met with rejection on the grounds they were ‘too messy’. She claims she had no idea that in turning down the full-time job, she would lose the one she had, with no severance pay.

This week a spokesman for Mrs Blair told the Mail: ‘Cherie’s office is very small, but she does try where possible to offer part-time jobs to women with young children, indeed there are two other part-timers with children who continue to work there.’

But a shaken Louise says: ‘If other mothers can work part-time in her office, then why can’t I? The one little piece of financial stability I had carved out for myself had suddenly gone. It was devastating.

Louise hasn’t seen Cherie since, although their sons remain friends at school, which must add an extra layer of discomfort.

‘I could never cold-shoulder Cherie if we bumped into each other at a school concert. I haven’t done anything wrong. I think I’d just like to ask her “Why?” ‘She always gave me the impression that she felt my views on the role of a mother were very fine and a good thing.

‘By giving me a job which allowed me to be a mother too, Cherie gave me confidence and hope. Now I just feel washed up, kicked and back to square one.’