Blair used wife's 'pain' for political ends: book

ALL FOR MILEAGE: Cherie Blair wrote in her memoirs she was shocked by her husband's treatment of her miscarriage.

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London: Cherie Blair was shocked by the ruthless manner in which the tragic news of her miscarriage was used by her husband and former British prime minister Tony Blair and his media managers for political reasons.

In the latest extracts from her memoirs Speaking for Myself, published in The Times, she said that even as she lay in pain and bleeding back in 2002, her husband and his communications chief, Alastair Campbell, insisted on informing the media immediately about the news of her miscarriage so that a delay in their planned family holiday did not trigger speculation of an early invasion of Iraq.

"I couldn't believe it. There I was, bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line to the press. I put down the receiver and lay there staring at the ceiling as pain began to grip," Cherie wrote in an emotional

account of losing her baby at the age of 47.

In an astonishing disclosure, the high-profile lawyer also reveals that her fourth child, Leo, was conceived as she had failed to pack her usual contraceptive equipment while they were guests of the Queen at Balmoral.

"As usual up there it has been bitterly cold, and what with one thing and another... But then, I thought, oh I can't be. I'm too old. It must be the menopause."

Cherie also writes that Gordon Brown was one of the handful of people her husband insisted on telling about her pregnancy.

"You have to understand, Cherie. It's a very sensitive topic for him. The whole issue of my being a family man is very sensitive to him," the former premier reasoned when she asked what possible business it could be of Brown, who was the Chancellor of Exchequer in his cabinet.

Leo, the fourth child was born on May 20, 2000.

In 2002 Cherie became pregnant again. She wrote: "Needless to say, I was astonished. Leo's birth has seemed like a miracle and here I was nearly three years older.