Picture this. A man bringing his partner to this workplace to give a speech to his colleagues about how hard he’s working at his job. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, that’s exactly what Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, did at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester today.

Before his long-awaited keynote speech, which outlined the axing of the northern leg of HS2, scrapping A-levels as we know them and effectively banning smoking for young people, Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, ‘surprised’ the PM by giving a short speech before introducing him onto the stage.

In her speech, Murty began by talking about how Sunak was her “best friend” and that she “couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but here today with all of you to show my support to him and to the party”. She mentioned his love for romcoms and “fun”, saying that “episodes of Emily In Paris are not informing his outlook on the EU”, which got a few laughs in the room. Murty then went on to talk about how she and Sunak first met in the US, their journey together as a couple and how “being with Rishi was the easiest decision of [her] life”.

She rounded out her speech by saying “how proud you make our girls and me every single day” and thanked the conference for “letting me gatecrash to tell you a little bit more about the Rishi that I know and the Rishi that I hope most people will come to understand”.

But why was Sunak’s wife giving a speech at the conference in the first place? It would be a strange thing to do in any other workplace and would definitely raise a few eyebrows from colleagues in any office. And yet, in public-facing environments like politics or entertainment, it seems to be a normalised thing for public figures – mainly men – to bring their partners into the limelight. Temporarily, of course.

Sunak isn’t the first politician to do this and likely won’t be the last. The most recent Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, had his wife, Sarah Brown, come out on stage at the Labour Party Conference several times in the late 2000s and who could forget Michelle Obama appearing on stage before former US president Barack Obama during the 2008 and 2012 election campaigns.

It’s a common tactic in the entertainment world, too. When images of The Crown actor Dominic West kissing Lily James hit headlines in 2020, West and his wife, Catherine FitzGerald, appeared in a press interview soon after outside their home as an attempt to show ‘unity’ as a couple, with FitzGerald kissing her husband for the cameras.

Their wives or girlfriends are thrust onto the stage in an effort to change public perceptions of them, particularly if that image is a negative one, utilising stereotypical feminine qualities of softness, care and empathy. Something women have been doing since the dawn of time, effectively being pushed into becoming human shields for the men in their lives.

It’s no real surprise that Sunak directly or indirectly used Murty at the Tory conference. His party is currently lagging behind the Labour Party by 16% in the polls, and with him being the richest-ever prime minister, he’s not exactly the most relatable politician this country has seen. In fact, in an interview with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on 1 October, the PM was shown a word cloud of what the public thought of him and the most common words to appear were ‘rich’, ‘money’ and ‘wealth’.

And so, Murty giving a speech where she repeatedly used the term “hard-working” and talked about Sunak as a husband and father makes a lot more sense in an effort to humanise the prime minister and make him more relatable to the general public. Especially during a cost of living crisis and economic uncertainty. This might have appeared as an act of love or solidarity, but it’s just another part of the Sunak game plan to win over voters ahead of an upcoming general election.

Murty herself has not escaped criticism in recent years, but why are women once again having to atone for their husbands? Why has she been reduced to simply Sunak’s wife and mother to his children in an effort to make him seem like he’s one of us? A woman standing on a national stage gushing about her husband (who just so happens to be the leader of the country) feels very 1950s, but here we are in 2023 and this is still happening.

“It’s time to quit relying on women to make men look better”