Is Justine Thornton really the answer to that bacon buttie?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/27/ed-miliband-not-wife-must-woo-voters

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Isn't it time we took a much closer look at Philip May, the – until now – defiantly low-profile spouse of Theresa May? With the home secretary increasingly tipped as a convincing successor to David Cameron – that is, if she were not so worryingly frowny, unsociable and widely considered electorally deficient, charmwise – attention inevitably turns to her partner's potential. Could her vivacious, loyal, strikingly presentable for his age and – friends say – fearsomely bright husband (typically independent, he has kept his surname) turn out to be Mrs May's "secret weapon"?

But is there a danger that, even if they recognise the appeal of this brilliant, yet unassuming, banker, who is reputed to be fiercely loyal to his wife (at the same time as being entirely his own man), voters will ask why a character reference from Mrs May's husband should have any bearing on her career?

And supposing it should, is Philip May likely to be any more effective, in this respect, than the last notable secret weapon, Sarah Brown? Her efforts for Gordon Brown proved as futile as they were excruciating, her audience having possibly felt that tributes are more impressive when uttered by rivals, enemies even, as opposed to the person who swore to love and honour the candidate until death did them part. Coming from Tony Blair, for instance, "My Gordon, my hero" might actually have carried some weight.

Nonetheless, it appears that Ed Miliband's wife, the successful barrister Justine Thornton, is happy to test, yet again, the extent to which people are likely to support a politician because his – or her, obviously – helpmeet is urging them to do so. In an adulatory profile, Miliband's biographer, the political writer Mehdi Hasan, says that Thornton, zero political previous notwithstanding (though she is an authority on the transportation of hazardous waste between here and Nigeria), is now considered by Miliband's choreographers to be a peerless bacon sandwich-corrective. "Could Mrs Miliband be the Labour leader's secret weapon?" Hasan asks, answering lengthily in the affirmative. Alongside Thornton, he reports, having witnessed the miracle for himself, Miliband looks "normal".

Although she could not, sadly, be deployed to de-wonking effect at President Obama's brush-by, a solo Thornton has already been launched on anti-Scottish independence duties : employees at the Highland Spring factory discovered her emotional commitment to their future.

"I had some fantastic holidays on Mull," she said, "so Scotland is very important to me." More interventions from the Dartmouth Park area are expected imminently, Thornton having announced at a party that: "I am up for a fight, however nasty, however brutal."

In practice, Hasan hears, party strategists have identified Thornton as "the best validator and authenticator" of Miliband and his "One Nation, pro-squeezed middle" message". High praise, then, even when you consider the probability of Thornton being identified by these same strategists as the least promising validator and authenticator of her husband's squeezy middly thing. How tepid or feeble an authenticator would Thornton have to have been for the strategists to have decided that, regrettably, she was not up to the job of secret weapon, maybe being too unsqueezed-looking, to the point that Miliband might want to think about letting her go?

Even Norma Major, widely regarded as the first, as well as the most reluctant, such asset was forced to overcome her shyness in 1996, tasked with sharing hints on cheese storage. Whereupon Cherie Blair instantly out-wifed her by guest-editing Prima , for which she posed in a never to be seen again cable-stitch jumper to illustrate the preposterous claim that she "loved knitting". Philip Gould's focus groups had shown she needed "a softer image". In fact, the gentlemen strategists might want to keep Thornton away from the many passages in Cherie's memoir where she rages against her subjection. "It was the first time I had found myself in this position of appendage," she writes, "and it did not come easily."

Naturally, in the Axelrod era's more feminist iteration, Labour has something more dignified in mind for Justine Thornton. "She will do her own thing," Hasan reports, "she won't be SamCam or Cherie." Leave aside this slur on Mrs Cameron, who is herself advertised by Tories as the patron saint of gay marriage, and Thornton's independent thinking, welcome though it is, may prove hard to reconcile with a full-on husband-validation project.

Supposing Mrs Miliband does occasionally differentiate herself from what one might call, for the sake of argument, her husband's policy specifics, it seems only fair, now she has entered the campaign, to ask for details, so as to compare her allegedly strong views with, say, Mrs Farage's and – should she, too, be recruited – Mrs Cameron's. Otherwise, who authenticates the authenticators? Their children? All we know, for sure, is that Thornton stands for fratricide, for the allocation of land for Travellers and, less controversially, for "decency and principles in public life".

Given that All Star Mr and Mrs has completed filming, televised debates, designed for spouses who themselves require some validation, might be the easiest way to establish, as a prelude to May 2015, where the relevant wives stand on everything from a mansion tax to page three. Is the latter harmless, as Cameron believes – ditto Miliband, having posed happily with the Sun a few weeks back, or does Thornton incline more to Harriet Harman's views? Does she want full implementation of Leveson? Know the price of a weekly shop? Where is she on hubby's energy prize freeze? Or do her professional commitments at a chambers that regularly acts for the "powerful forces", as her husband called the energy companies, make this a tricky area?

In fact, though her profession clearly requires Ms Thornton to take on cases impartially, some voters may already have shrunk, for instance, from her (failed) efforts to defend the installation of four 300-ft wind turbines alongside a grade I listed site, Lyveden New Bield, and note her recent claim (again, courtesy Hasan): "I am trying to change the world through law." There is no denying, had she prevailed at Lyveden, that a victory would have had what English Heritage called "an appalling impact on a very special place", with dismal implications for heritage sites everywhere.

If mastery of environmental law is not, for Labour's strategists, among Mrs Miliband's most significant skills, it might still clarify her position, and be fairer to the public, if she served the party more conventionally, by finding a seat or applying to be an adviser.

Whatever the party stood to lose in terms of immediate leader de-weirdification would surely be gained in the longer term by avoiding offence to women (some of whom still have strong views about female window dressing) and in sparing future spouses from secret weapon conscription.

It is unthinkable, after all, that if Labour strategists now demote this professional woman to the status of doting image-enhancer, the same fate will not, some day, overtake Philip May and Ed Balls.