The private diary of an MP’s wife
In an extract from her bestselling diary, Sasha Swire – the wife of Hugo Swire, the former MP for East Devon and Northern Ireland minister in David Cameron’s coalition government – describes some memorable moments at the Tory top table
21 April 2011
Boy George [Osborne] comes to lunch at Lincombe with his PA, Poppy. He is doing Hugo a favour, opening the Flybe Training Academy at Exeter.
H and George toddle off to Flybe’s £12m training centre where they each have a turn in the flight simulator. George’s efforts are interesting. When asked what airport he would like to fly into, he says Manchester, which is the one he uses to get to his constituency [Tatton, Cheshire]. He commences his descent, with H looking decidedly queasy as the aircraft makes its erratic progress towards the airport. His first attempt is poor, so much so the instructor shouts, “ABORT! ABORT!” Then H turns to George and says, “Oh dear, we better not let that one get out, chancellor”.
Boy George is looking rather cross as H fake vomits out the window. He asks to have another go. Soon enough, the “plane” is put into emergency measures and prepares itself for what is commonly known in the industry as a crash landing. Apparently, it would have caused considerable casualties after the plane, having cleared the perimeter fence, pancakes on to the runway and comes to a halt, having destroyed the entire terminal building, which subsequently explodes in a ball of fire, hell and damnation.
“George, you have just taken out your constituency!” says H.
Boy George turns to H wearing his trademark impish grin and says, “But that terminal building is not in my half of the constituency!”
Let’s hope, for all our sakes, his steering of the economy out of recession is a little bit better.
22 June
Over to Hillsborough [the official UK government residence in Northern Ireland] for the dreaded garden party. The royal this year is Prince Andrew, and as soon as the Patersons [former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson and his wife] find out, they appear to receive an urgent recall to the constituency, leaving H and me the honour of hosting him. A dinner with 20 of Northern Ireland’s most prominent businessmen and, I have to say, Andrew chairing the discussion round the table is excruciatingly painful to watch: a mixture of blokeyness and royal arrogance. I sit there trying to listen to how brilliant he is and what a good job he is doing as trade envoy, when all I am seeing is him in swimming shorts, attending topless pool parties at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion, while on his own personal trade mission to get money for his ex-wife. My eyes switch to one of his flunkies and wonder how testing the job must be.
After dinner we withdraw to the blue room for coffee, and he tells me he received a briefing about me from Laura Hutchings, who works for him, and which he now repeats to me: I am lippy and dominant but fun, according to Laura. He is very friendly towards me and when coffee is over, he comes over, points to me and says, “I’ll see you upstairs in five!” A rather drunken lady from Business Northern Ireland reels back in laughter and says, “Her hospitality doesn’t extend that far, sir!”
30 June 2012
H slams his red box down on the kitchen table and opens it. It feels like I’m being stopped by a traffic light, one that prohibits any traffic from proceeding. RED. STOP. WAIT. GO. I do go... outside. Red, the colour of blood and power. Of kings and cardinals and Roman generals and whores and the devil. The great carrier of government documents.
The Sun goes down in a pale fire between the farm buildings. Then everything falls away. The birds, the noise, me. Light changes everything; all the world obsequious and answering to this ball of power. Flowers draw up their petals in a kind of sleep, but not the jasmine, the cool beauty of the night.
My husband should be sitting here beside me. Tell me about
loneliness, yours, and I will tell you mine. Instead, I walk around the house and see H, through the window, in a glare of artificial brightness, still hunched and working on his box. Our marriage is in a difficult place. I barely see him any more; he’s always in Ireland or the House or working in the constituency, and when he’s home he hardly speaks to me. It is midnight when he finally comes to lie down in the corner of my cage, but it’s not from calm, it’s from exhaustion. I flare up. It has an effect, because the next day he texts Kate [Kate Fall, Prime Minister David Cameron’s deputy chief of staff and his “gatekeeper” at No. 10] saying if he is not brought back from exile at the next reshuffle, his wife is going to divorce him. “Don’t worry,” she replies. “You are being moved.”
16 June 2014
Hugo was appointed Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in September 2012, remaining in office until July 2016. He retired as MP for East Devon at the 2019 general election.
“Dominic Cummings looks like one of those odd amoebas you find in jars in school science labs”
Dominic Cummings, the defenestrated consigliere of Don Michael [Gove], has gone tonto again, and has had a rant with Alice Thomson [The Times journalist]. In it, Ed Llewellyn [then Downing St chief of staff] is described as “a classic third-rate suck-up-kickdown sycophant presiding over a shambolic court”. Craig Oliver, the director of comms, is “just clueless”.
Dave himself is “a sphinx without a riddle – he bumbles from one shambles to another without the slightest sense of purpose”. “Everyone is trying to find the secret of David Cameron,” says Cummings. “But he is what he appears to be. He had a picture of Macmillan on his wall – that’s all you need to know.” The discomfort for Kate et al is that the quotes come from someone who was – and is still – incredibly close to Don Michael. I have met Cummings a few times; he looks like one of those odd amoebas you find in jars in school science labs, but what always struck me was his over-inflated view of his own importance.
3 June 2017
In July 2016, Theresa May had succeeded Cameron as PM. The following April, she called a snap election highlighting her “strong and stable” leadership. It would result in a hung parliament.
The Marchioness [Hugo’s mother, the Dowager Marchioness Townshend] arrives to canvass. I put up a picture of H and “my mum” on Twitter. It gets eighteen hearts, and a comment pings in: “Fucking hell mate! She looks younger than you!”
I don’t canvass because I can’t bear the aggression against H. I feel I could create an incident; H would have to unlock my teeth from my antagonist’s ankle as the blood starts to surge. The Marchioness gets the usual 20% negativity on the doorstep, “We never see him around here”, etc. “Well, he’s been terribly busy, you know, flying around the world for the Foreign Office,” she replies grandly.
In the kitchen after H leaves for the day, she tells me she is very worried. That I must support him if everything goes wrong. Which annoys me, because it’s not as if I haven’t supported him our whole damn marriage and sacrificed quite a lot of my own ambition in the process. I say, “Look, if he loses, [it] settles the whole goddam question of leaving, but at the end of the day all I can do is cook him bacon and eggs. He will have to sort the humiliation out in his own head. It will be like a bereavement and he will, in time, get over it.”
This from Hugo’s whip: “Hello all; hope you are well. Two questions the Chief needs your clarification on: What are your mutual aid plans [whereby MPs in safe seats send parties to nearby marginals] for tomorrow and how many are you taking? Also, what are your mutual aid plans for polling day and how many are you taking?”
Hugo’s reply: “I am immediately dispatching three infantry divisions backed up by an armoured battalion and full air cover. I am only retaining a callow youth armed with a pitchfork (it’s all we now have) to help me persuade my few remaining pensioners who haven’t defected on account of our splendid manifesto to help me hold off the independent candidate from beating me, which some are now predicting her to do not least on account of the same splendid manifesto and excellent campaign with its highly effective precision bombing of my elderly constituents. Please pass on my best wishes and loyalty to all left in the bunker.” It elicits no response.
8 June: Election night, Sidmouth
We see the exit poll at 10pm and audibly gasp. From then on, we feel we are being physically and mentally abused as the results come in. [Hugo eventually held on to his seat, but with a decreased majority.]
20 August 2019
It felt like the Last Supper. Well, the last interesting supper of our political lives. At a select dinner at No. 10, I am in pride of place on the right of the PM [Boris Johnson had succeeded May the previous month]. H is tucked into some room, telling Boris he’s off at the next election, but that he wants to get involved in a specific project after he has left. He puts it to Boris, who is enthusiastic: “Let’s do it, Hugo!”
The First Lady [Carrie Symonds] is a no-show: she has pissed off to Greece, apparently, which disappointed H, who wouldn’t wear his blood-pressure monitor, because he thought he might get to sit next to her, which would send his reading off the scale. Boris is about the best placement you can get. Cheeky. Flippant. Enthusiastic. Bombastic. Ebullient. Energetic. We have a good laugh.
I kick it off: “You can’t serve this food, it’s disgusting. You’ll never convert a Remainer with this slop.”
“Cripes, it’s not that bad, is it?”
“The goat’s cheese is three Dairylea triangles crushed together. It’s inedible.”
“Here, Sasha.” He makes me a sandwich, because he thinks a piece of bread might improve it.
I accept. He stuffs in more mouthfuls and knocks back the cheapo plonk at an alarming rate. I look at his rotund build, thick, creased neck, pale, sweaty face; he looks back, as if he is working out if I’m shaggable. He’d probably do the same if a sheep walked in the room. He has definitely lost that “I’ve lost a lot of weight because I am committing adultery and my children won’t talk to me and my girlfriend is hot” look. I reckon other things are on his mind and he has returned to comfort eating.
Boris later articulates a vision, which is based on building: a sort of Victorian, grand project programme. He calls himself a “Brexiteer Heseltine”. I mumble that I don’t think Heseltine would find that flattering. “No, he absolutely hates me.” There is quite a lot of praise for George Osborne. David Cameron’s name is not mentioned. “I can’t really sleep at night,” Boris says. “It’s all so worrying.” He says he reads poetry every night before going to sleep and he’s going to get a dog, which might help.
At the end of the evening, Boris is having fun and doesn’t want to return to his empty flat where he lies awake all night because of what comes next. David was always one for pushing you out the door, in quite a brusque way. For all his hinterland and hot young vixen and his agile mind, Boris just came across as someone who is desperately lonely and unhappy.
“Boris stuffs in more mouthfuls and knocks back the cheapo plonk at an alarming rate”