Stormont confidential
What our politicians are like away from the cameras, by an NIO minister’s wife
THE fall-out from Sasha Swire’s headline-grabbing tell-all political diaries has been described by one reviewer as “social Hiroshima” — and now it can be revealed that some of Northern Ireland’s leading politicians don’t escape the blast either.
DUP leader Arlene Foster, party colleague Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, former Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and the late Rev Ian Paisley and Martin Mcguinness all feature in the pages of the astonishingly indiscreet and frequently acerbic tome by the wife of former NI Minister of State Hugo — and some fare much better than others.
Reviews of Diary of an MP’S Wife already have revealed some sensational insights into life behind the scenes in the corridors of power at Westminster, as well as royal visits to Hillsborough Castle.
But there are many more disclosures in the book, which is published today, and Swire’s disclosures, often accompanied by candid and cruel observations, are sure to leave NI politicos reeling — and possibly cringing.
Swire lifts the lid on how the DUP got on with former Prime Minister Theresa May, and claims that Foster let her husband Brian dominate conversations.
She also says her husband Hugo concluded that Gerry Adams was “one of the most sinister and unpleasant people” he had ever met.
Former journalist Swire (57) writes that she likes “Arlene heaps, always have” yet whether the First Minister will feel as warmly towards the author after perusing her namechecks in the 527-page blockbuster is debateable.
Swire describes an encounter with Foster and her husband Brian, a PSNI officer, when they come to stay at their home Chaffcombe Manor, near Devon, on April 5, 2018.
Prior to the pair’s arrival, the Swires “discuss whether we should show them our own pub, them being DUP and anti ‘the devil’s buttermilk’, etc”.
But she continues: “As it turns out they more than match us glass for glass, Brian getting more preachy and Presbyterian as the evening progresses: lots of talk about creationism and original sin and how love conquers all.
“I whisper to Arlene, ‘Gosh, he should have been a preacher, not a policeman.’ She sighs and says, ‘I know’.”
Swire notes: “The dynamic was interesting, though.
“Brian completely dominated, and she was very respectful towards his views.”
She also offers an insight into Foster’s relationship with then PM Theresa May, for whom Swire has a particularly unkind nickname, she writes: “She told me Old Ma May never asks to see her when she is in London, she only deals with the Chief Whip, which is staggering when her MPS are propping up the government.
“Not even a courtesy cup of tea, apparently.”
The property tycoon and Tory party donor Christopher Moran had a front row seat at the DUP party conference in 2018.
Swire records how more than a year earlier, in July 2017, he had hosted a “DUP night” at his Crosby Hall mansion in Chelsea.
“They were all out in force: the old UUP drinking, Donaldson and Foster, the Robinsons and the hard-line DUP not,” she writes.
Then with the sort of comment that has seen the diaries described as “poison pen”, she observes: “Peter Robinson was a curious orange colour, as was Iris, fresh from a cruise. He is very deaf in one ear — H thinks he always has been — but he is on good form.”
They discuss the confidence-and-supply deal of June 2017, when the DUP netted an extra £1bn for Northern Ireland in return supporting the Tory government, and Hugo Swire wonders if the UUP will be subsumed by the DUP now.
Peter Robinson, she writes, reckons “probably not, but says they are finished”.
The former First Minister is also “wryly amusing about the deal, saying he can’t see what all the fuss is about”.
Swire notes that supporting Labour’s legislation on 28day detention later cost Gordon Brown £1.5bn to give Stormont and the economy a boost.
“So, Peter smiles, ‘ A billion to prop up a government for two years is cheap at the price.”
Conversation turns to whether Robinson will go to the Lords and Swire writes that “he thinks he will, but says he may have trouble with the Lords Appointments Commission, which seems to operate on rules of its own”.
That same evening Swire has another long conversation with Arlene Foster who she says “always bounces H and me for intelligence on new ministers”.
When Foster asks about then NI Secretary of State James Brokenshire, Swire retorts: “Loyal to May, but boring. Hugo calls him the Human Hedgehog”.
She claims that Foster calls both Brokenshire and another minister, Chloe Smith, “robots”.
Further disclosures claim that Foster and Donaldson said “it was impossible dealing with May on the deal, how indecisive she was on all the issues put before her… it was not until Donaldson, Gavin and Arlene were locked in a room together that the whole thing was sorted out.
“They are both very grateful about the blog post I wrote calling out the borderline racism, which is being thrown at them”.
If the Swires, who have two daughters, Saffron and Siena, had a convivial relationship with DUP politicians, perhaps unsurprisingly they were less impressed by an encounter Hugo had with Gerry Adams.
Afterwards, Swire jots down: “H says he now thinks Adams is one of the most sinister and unpleasant people he has ever had the misfortune to come across.
“He much prefers Martin Mcguinness, on a personal level, although he is not blind to what Mcguinness has done in the past.”
The meeting with Adams took place on October 7, 2010, when Hugo Swire and then Secretary of State Owen Paterson had talks at Stormont House with Adams and representatives of those killed at the Ballymurphy Massacre in 1971.
The discussion “starts well enough until Adams spots that Owen is wearing a green wristband supporting the Royal Irish Regiment”.
He “glares at him from across the table and in those deep growling vowels banished for so long from the airwaves Adams says it is ‘ unbelievable’ and the ‘ height of discourtesy’, an insult ‘to those that lost their lives to the British state’, that the Secretary of State is wearing a wristband glorifying the British Army that murdered so many.
“H was rather taken aback, as up until then he had been grinning in a friendly manner at Adams and he thought that, behind
‘H thinks Adams is one of the most sinister and unpleasant people he has ever come across. He much prefers Mcguinness’
his heavy spectacles and greying beard, Adams had been smiling back at him.”
Paterson said that he had a connection with the Royal Irish, whose base was in his Shropshire constituency, and was entitled to show his support.
Of her husband’s verdict, Swire writes: “It was only on closer inspection that he realised that Adams’s stony cold eyes were devoid of any emotion and that his gleaming outsized teeth had been something of a distraction, and that he was not smiling at all.”
Asked how to describe what a job in Northern Ireland politics entails, our diarist describes it as “like carrying a huge Ming vase that can break at any moment”.
But, as we discover, it’s not without its moments of levity such as when an email arrives from NI special adviser Jonathan Caine, declaring: “Wanted: XL Flak Jacket for Lord Maginnis”.
Apparently a visit by the peer and DUP MP David Simpson to troops in Afghanistan was called off when the Army couldn’t find flak jackets large enough to fit them. In the ensuing merriment, Hugo Swire suggests they try squeezing Lord Maginnis into a Hercules or “underslung him under a Chinook”.
Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK in September 2010 saw Hugo Swire and Owen Paterson fly to Edinburgh to meet him.
On the way back, at Edinburgh airport, they spy Rev Ian Paisley’s armoured vehicle.
He has travelled to Scotland with fellow Free Presbyterians to protest, writes Swire, “in his always-helpful ecumenical way”.
She continues: “Suddenly the door swings open and the Big Man emerges wearing a large black fedora and a massive billowing black cape, looking the spitting image of Hilaire Belloc…
“H asks him mischievously if he’d managed to get a glimpse of the Holy Father.
“Paisley, in faux outrage, heaves his shoulders and bellows, “SEE HIM? SEE HIM? DIDN’T EVEN SMELL HIM!”
Virtually every page of this unputdownable memoir sees household names quite literally brought to book.
One of the few flattering assessments is bestowed on Hillsborough Castle itself, which Swire visits for the first time in May 2010 when her husband takes up his post, which he is in for just over two years.
Swire admits “is far more stunning than I had anticipated” though their apartment is “small, rather like a suite in a five-star hotel”.
And on a tour to get to know Belfast, she sees t he Short Strand, where she is struck by the “tidiness and cleanliness of these areas, much more so than their equivalents on the ‘ mainland’”.
Owen Paterson’s late wife Rose, whose inquest this week recorded a verdict of suicide, impresses as “the more clever of the pair”.
During a visit by the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Swire shivers in a silk LK Bennett dress and glances “green with envy” at “Rose in her neat little tweed suit, laughing with the guests”.
Swire warms to Prince Edward — “friendly, over-excitable like a puppy” — who like his wife holds strong political opinions. Sophie tells her she “gets frozen out” on engagements with Edward and had been slighted that day by a woman who refused to acknowledge her.
Swire feels sorry for Sophie, believes she is “tired and it feels to me, and I could be wrong, most definitely sad”.
Admittedly, it’s a rare moment of self-doubt for Swire.
Shire’s tale about her daughter Siena causing a security alert when she mislaid a book containing details of a visit later that day by the Queen and Prince Philip has already made the news.
But what can also now be revealed is that at a dinner that evening for business people, the Duke of Edinburgh “savages the businessman two away from him for pulling out his Blackberry at the table”.
As the hapless guest went puce, the Duke ranted about how guests at another dinner got out their laptops, leaving him and Her Majesty appalled.
Quite what Prince Philip would say if he saw Sasha Swire reach for her diary and ballpoint pen remains to be seen…
Diary of an MP’S Wife: Inside and Outside Power by Sasha Swire is published today by Little, Brown, price £20