Why Miriam wouldn’t schmooze for her supper
How brilliantly independent-minded of Miriam González Durántez, when asked whether she liked socialising with the Camerons, to reply: “I never approached them in terms of liking or not liking.”
Any British woman put on the spot like that would have felt the need to be revoltingly deferential. But sassy “Mrs Clegg” – an international lawyer and, rather curiously, cookbook writer – has revealed that she and her husband only dined with the Camerons on three occasions in the whole of the five-year coalition, and that “developing anything closer than a working relationship for the country” was out of the question.
Basically, the woman just refused to schmooze, for which she should be given a medal. Good schmoozers are always to be mistrusted, particularly if they’re British (it’s such a profoundly unnatural thing for us), and anyone who manages to get my child’s name and age right while casually dropping the title of my last book into conversation at a party usually has me bolting for the door.
But although Durántez wouldn’t be corralled into anything as tiresome as weekends at Chequers with the Camerons, she does admit to cooking for (in effect) her husband’s boss – and that’s something I have studiously avoided over the years. If only because he’d surely be frogmarched out of his office first thing the next day – something he’s never needed any help from me to achieve.