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The first sentence looks a bit odd, starting by saying what the PM's spouse isn't, and doing so by reference to the U.S. first lady. This is not really a useful comparison because the PM doesn't fulfil the same role as the U.S. president. Also, by the current wording, there might be an inference that they are always women. Trouble is, I can't really suggest how to improve it. The title pretty much describes the role! Bluewave 17:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Lady Rosebery was never a prime-minister's spouse, she died four years before he attained that office. Giano 08:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
This is actually a list of all prime ministers and their spouses. It is pedantry to exclude spouses who never set foot in downing street, or some other arbitrary rule. In order to get a rounded view of the prime ministers we need this simple list of all spouses (and life partners if any emerge). It is arguably much more informative to know that walpole's wives died 'in office', whilst rosebury and macdonald were grieving widowers, rosebury beneficiently wealthy beyond measure and macdonald in penury trying to also raise and employ his family. Ergo - Hannah de R should be included in this list and the succession boxes, annotated to clarify the detail.
Autodidactyl 19:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
There's quite a lot that makes this article a mess:
1). UK ministers are never numbered in any official sense, and to use one is POV and unnecessary.
2). Most people would associate "Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom" with a person married to the PM whilst in office. Previously deceased wives, divorced wives, later remarriages etc... are worth a sidenote mention, but shouldn't be included in a list of incumbents.
3). Very few of these women are ever referred to by their maiden names (Cherie Blair's professional career is very much the exception) and some have had several names in their lives (e.g. Norma Major). It does feel like an American convention being applied to a list of Britons. And this application is currently very inconsistent. Plus the nav boxes that I can see are using generally their names as people knew them at the time (although not always grasping how the peerage works).
4). By the same measure, I think listing peerage titles that the women didn't hold at the time their husbands were in office (off the top of my head Joan Canning and Clementine Churchill - Mary Disraeli is a more convoluted case as from recollection she was conferred the title after her husband left office the first time but died before he returned to power) is a recipe for confusion. Maybe mention it in a notes section, but I think only those who had titles in Downing Street should be mentioned (I think Hester Pitt, 1st Baroness Chatham is the only one).
5). I'm also not sure alternative "hostesses" is at all workable. It again feels like an attempt to translate the US position of First Lady into a country where it doesn't exist at all formally. (And some Prime Ministers didn't reside at the formal residence - e.g. Harold Wilson in his second term - or just treated it as a workplace.)
I can make a start on this over the next few days but don't want to tamper with the table syntax - anyone bold enough to? Timrollpickering 21:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Both this page and Category:Spouses of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom will need to be in accord as to which women (and one man) do and don't fit the definition of "spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom".
Because the post is in no way official, there are various different criteria that can be applied which produce different lists.
As a starting point, and following a similar practice at Talk:First Lady of the United States, here's a list of all the possible candidates since 1902 (to keep the list managable, but I'll come back to the 18th and the 19th centuries later):
a) Living spouses of sitting PMs
The easiest ones to define:
The PM's spouse by any definition.
b) Deceased spouses
The following died before their husbands first took office:
Both are categorised but not listed here. I don't think either would normally be listed.
c) Divorced spouses
Anthony Eden was the only Prime Minister to have divorced. Listing Beatrice Beckett as a PM's spouse would feel strange.
d) Later remarriages
David Lloyd George married again in 1943, long after leaving office. Including Frances Stevenson as a PM's spouse again feels strange.
There are more examples of many of these with the earlier period but what are people's thoughts? I'd be inclined to regard only the ones listed under a) as "spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom" and not include the rest in the category or list them here. Timrollpickering 15:04, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Naming conventions for wives of peers and knights for discussion that could lead to some of the individual articles being renamed. Timrollpickering 19:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Can we please ditch the opening paragraph? It's misleading, it's factually wrong, and it serves only to confuse the reader.
The spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has no formal or constitutional role in the British political system.
This is partly a reflection of the fact that the British Prime Minister is not the head of state (see British Monarchy).
The role of the British Prime Minister is sometimes compared with that of the President of the United States but, whilst the American First Lady has a number of responsibilities and usually their own staff, the same is not true of the spouse of the Prime Minister.
I see my edit has been reverted. A few words of explanation...I described the comparison with the wife of a US preesident as a "false comparison" because (as the article itself makes clear) the US president is a head of state whereas the British PM is not. I therefore believe that the article is misleading to say that the "equivalent in the United States of America, [is] the President's spouse". The equivalence is between the monarch and the president, not the PM and the president. I further think that the statement that "it is sometimes suggested that the term 'Second Lady' be used" is plain nonsense. Who has ever made that suggestion? Any other views? Bluewave ( talk) 18:33, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
There have been various attempts to improve the intro section, some of which I've contributed to in the past, but it still does not look very good. There is a proposal above to delete the first paragraph, and my problems noted above regarding the last paragraph. I think the problem lies in the fact that much of the intro is either explicitly or implicitly making some kind of comparison with American "First ladies" which is not really very helpful. One problem is that, as far as I'm aware, the term "first lady" isn't really used in the UK (except to refer to the wife of a US president). One could certainly argue that the Queen is the first lady, but she's never referred to as that. On looking at this whole intro again, I would propose the radical option of deleting the whole lot, with the exception of the third paragraph. Any other views on this one? Bluewave ( talk) 12:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, no-one seems interested in this except me, so I'll make the edit. To reiterate, the concerns with the current intro are:
Bluewave ( talk) 09:16, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
There is no such category known to the UK Constitution and I can't think what this article is for. If it's meant as a useful list for the curious (in search, maybe, of material for a pub quiz) then I suggest you re-title it as something like "UK Prime Ministers' Husbands and Wives" - which sounds considerably less formal. I should say that I got here from the entry on Clem Attlee, which described Violet, his wife, as having the title of "Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom" - which I thought extremely odd. Kranf ( talk) 22:11, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Various Prime Ministers' spouses received honours that gave them postnominal abbreviations (eg DBE). Is there a consensus as to how the awards are mentioned (in the last column of the table)? Of those whose honours are mentioned, some had received them during their spouse's tenure (eg Margaret Lloyd George), others had been awarded them when their husbands had ceased to hold office, while others had been awarded them before their husbands began office. Of spouses whose awards are currently not mentioned on this table, I have found the Marchioness of Salisbury was a CI and VA, Lucy Baldwin was a DBE and Dorothy Macmillan a GBE, while the only husband, Denis Thatcher, gained the MBE and TD in wartime military service. Cloptonson ( talk) 20:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
At present this section presents:
Prime Minister | Term | Spouse | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Sir Robert Walpole The Earl of Orford (1742) |
4 April 1721 – 20 August 1737 |
Lady Walpole (Catherine Shorter) |
Walpole's first wife, she died in 1737. |
20 August 1737 – c. 3 March 1738 | None | Widower | |
c. 3 March – 4 June 1738 |
Lady Walpole (Maria Skerrett) |
Walpole's second wife, she died in childbirth in 1738. | |
4 June 1738 – 11 February 1742 | None | Widower | |
... | ... | ... | ... |
Margaret Thatcher later The Baroness Thatcher |
4 May 1979 – 28 November 1990 |
Mr. Thatcher (Denis Thatcher) later Sir Denis Thatcher, Bt. |
First male spouse. Mr. Thatcher's second marriage. The Baronetcy of Thatcher of Scotney was awarded to him in 1992. |
John Major later Sir John Major |
28 November 1990 – 2 May 1997 |
Mrs. Major (Norma Johnson) later Dame Norma Major, Lady Major |
Created Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1999 |
Tony Blair | 2 May 1997 – 27 June 2007 |
Mrs. Blair (Cherie Booth) |
|
Gordon Brown | 27 June 2007 – 11 May 2010 |
Mrs. Brown (Sarah Jane Macaulay) |
|
David Cameron | 11 May 2010 – |
Mrs. Cameron (Samantha Sheffield) |
I would suggest, by some means, moving the third column to first position perhaps while also merging the third and fourth columns together. The article is about spouses of Prime Ministers and not the Prime Ministers' spouses. I am also wondering about all the Mrs. and Mr. references. My gut reaction is that names should be used in relation to identity but was surprised by results:
Greg Kaye 15:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
I cannot understand the appearance of a 'Formation date' of 1789 in the infobox - there was no organisation of Prime Ministerial spouses, and there were married Prime Ministers before 1789, beginning with Robert Walpole the first PM. Cloptonson ( talk) 11:52, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved to Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. However, I will create List of spouses of prime ministers of the United Kingdom as a redirect since it seems helpful as a redirect. ( non-admin closure) Steel1943 ( talk) 03:38, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
List of spouses of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom → List of spouses of prime ministers of the United Kingdom – See also prior informal discussion of 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017. This is not a formal title. Also, "spouses of the Prime Minister" appears to refer to plural spouses of a single prime minister, which is probably not the intended interpretation. In the plural form, lowercase seems appropriate, although I'm more focused on the pluralization than the capitalization at the moment. — BarrelProof ( talk) 15:59, 6 August 2017 (UTC)--Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 08:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
For consensus, the page with images which has since been reverted is a favourable choice because it is not only aesthetically better, but also mirrors that of other pages for the 'Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia/New Zealand/Canada'. Personally I feel this is a better design. Please give your views. TomPumpkin69 16:25, March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback, If I recreated the page correcting these inaccuracies, do you reckon it would make for a better format? TomPumpkin69 16:36, March 2018 (UTC)
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As of June 2018 [update], there are five living former Spouse of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, as identified below.
Above is a proposal for this section on the page. Personally I feel this is a decent layout as it matches the formats of the same pages of the spouses of the Prime Minister of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Opinions: TP69 14:40, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Would it not be worth including some kind of footnote or sub-entry to say that, whilst in England, Lloyd George lived more or less openly with his secretary Frances Stevenson? More than one biographer has, I think, observed that Lloyd George was a bigamist in all but law.
It used to be not uncommon until very recently for MPs to live with their secretaries in London during the week whilst the wife minded the constituency. Lloyd George put people's backs up by being so blatant about it.
I appreciate we don't want to be listing every known affair of every Prime Minister, but Frances was a notable person in her own right (and an important eyewitness to her times as a diarist and recipient of letters from Lloyd George) and he eventually married her over 20 years later, c1943, after Dame Margaret had died.
(I think it was AJP Taylor who observed that Lloyd George was the first Prime Minister since the eighteenth century either to blatantly enrich himself in office or to live openly with his mistress). Paulturtle ( talk) 00:37, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
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Boris Johnson has officially divorced Marina Wheeler according to several articles published at the start of May - why is Wheeler still the incumbent? Ciaran.london ( talk) 10:01, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus for this move ( non-admin closure) ( t · c) buidhe 21:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
– All article titles that talk about this topic are capitalized this way. See search suggestions when typing Spouse of the. Interstellarity ( talk) 22:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Does anyone have a view on the style to be used in infoboxes when there are gaps between spouses (i.e. where the role is not filled because the PM is a widower or unmarried)? This article makes a note of when there was no spouse, but there is not a completely consistent style with the infoboxes. I ask because there have been several changes to the style used in
Marina Wheeler and
Carrie Johnson's articles recently. Of the others, most say "Vacant" without further detail (
Mary Grey, Countess Grey;
Catherine Gladstone;
Margot Asquith;
Margaret Lloyd George;
Lucy Baldwin), one says vacant with a note (
Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx, with the note stating the next/previous PM was unmarried), one lists the next/previous spouses without mention of the gaps (
Emily Temple, Viscountess Palmerston*), and one uses multiple styles (
Charlotte Campbell-Bannerman's predecessor field says vacant without a note, while her successor field is filled but with mention of the year the succession occurred). Should I assume that means the consensus is to just use "vacant" with no further details? I don't think that is satisfactory and think the year should be mentioned (like Campbell-Bannerman's successor field, or the U.S. Second Ladies
Lady Bird Johnson,
Muriel Humphrey,
Grace Coolidge,
Caro Dawes,
Mariette Rheiner Garner) or at least have a note after "vacant".
*The Countess of Aberdeen was listed as her first predecessor, however both the countesses died before their husband even became PM and thus were never spouses of the PM – so for now I have changed that to say vacant with a note stating his wives were deceased.
Abbyjjjj96 (
talk) 01:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
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Why do the living spouses of former prime ministers need to be singled out and listed twice, both in the List of spouses section and the (terribly named) Living former spouses section? Why should all that information (names, spouses' names, "tenure", dates of birth, and age) be duplicated in this article? Surtsicna ( talk) 22:42, 5 November 2022 (UTC)