There will no doubt be many weighty obituaries of the former US President Jimmy Carter who has died aged 100.
However in an age when political image is often key, Carter deserves also to be recognised as someone who promoted a casual style of dress for a political leader.
This did not mean that he appeared anything less than smartly dressed or that on occasions he could be found wearing a formal suit and tie. However he also pioneered an open necked shirt, casual style of political dress
Attending a Speakers dinner for Ted Heath on 2nd March 2000 Tony Benn discussed the matter with Tony Blair. Blair told Benn that ‘he couldn’t wait to get out of his business clothes and into jeans and an open necked shirt’. Benn said that he was just the same and records in his diary ‘we had a discussion about whether we could wear open necked shirts in the House’. Blair said he ‘couldn’t do it’ but Benn pointed out to him that Jimmy Carter had pioneered an informal political look.
When John Bercow was speaker from 2017 MPs did not have to wear ties in the Commons. Under the current speaker Hoyle the requirement has returned. Perhaps a good tribute to Jimmy Carter’s role in pioneering a modern image for male politicians would be to scrap it again
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