Alternatively Electrum could offer a second wallet password for read-only mode.
You messed up your thinking.
Read-only mode or Watch-only wallet means you only can see your trasnaction history and balance. You create such wallet to follow up your wallet transaction, balance without needs to copy and paste your addresses to block explorers and check those details. Because if you use block explorers without Tor connection, you leak your information.
Because it is a Watch -only wallet, it can not send bitcoin. So wallet password is not important.