Wallace: Toxic politics wrecked 20-year marriage
FORMER defence secretary Ben Wallace has spoken of a ‘toxic’ addiction to politics, which he said can destroy marriages and families.
The Tory MP opened up about the ‘personal toll’ of the job and how he struggled to switch off – both because he loved the work and because of ‘the problem in front of us’.
Mr Wallace, 53, who is standing down at the next election, told of the strain of constantly having to be ready for a crisis and sleeping with three phones by his bed.
The Wyre and Preston North MP is now separated from Liza Cooke — they married in 2001 — and told former Downing Street communications director Andy Coulson’s Crisis What Crisis podcast he had become addicted to his job. He described the Westminster bubble as ‘an addiction but it’s also toxic’, adding: ‘It can destroy marriages, lives, families. And I watch young MPs and researchers and civil servants come into it and I see that addiction grow.’
Reflecting on his time in office, he said: ‘ I didn’t really cope with switching off and that’s the personal toll. I couldn’t switch off for a number of reasons. One is the problem in front of us, but secondly I loved it. There was an addiction.’
‘Constantly on alert’
Mr Wallace served as Secretary of State for Defence from July 2019 to August last year. Before that, he was a security minister at the Home Office from July 2016.
He said he wished his wife, two sons and daughter had moved to be with him in London instead of staying in Lancashire. His job meant he had to constantly be on alert to authorise operations, issue warrants or take calls from international counterparts.
He said that when he stands down as an MP at the next election he would ‘try and fix some of my things in my private, personal life’ – as well as lose weight. Mr Wallace added: ‘If we’d lived in London I would have come home in the evening at least and spent the night in my own bed and seen my children and maybe been better at it,’ he said.
He also recalled he considered running in Tory leadership contests, but decided not to because ‘I didn’t want the cost that came with it’.