I was naive about fallout from my memoir, claims ex-MP’s wife
As she faces up to life in social Siberia...
HER acerbic pen and astonishingly indiscreet memoirs have caused outrage among the political establishment.
But former minister’s wife Sasha Swire has admitted she was naive and insists she was surprised by the furore her book has caused, especially her claims about David Cameron.
‘Maybe I was naive,’ she said in an interview to promote Diary of an MP’s Wife: Inside and Outside Power. ‘But I’m terrified of causing trouble. People are going to make this all about David; they won’t see the integrity of the diary as a whole.’
The controversial book, packed with personal anecdotes and private conversations often involving sexual or lewd behaviour, has upset past and present senior Tory politicians – and led to suggestions that she is doomed to ‘social Siberia’.
However, Lady Swire, 57, has no intention of holding back and could not stop herself taking aim at ‘amateur’ politicians. In the interview with The Observer, she said: ‘Outsiders think politics should be very professional. It’s not. It’s totally amateur.
‘That’s why it’s so sexy and so toxic, and I’m so happy I’m not in it anymore.’
Her husband Hugo Swire, MP for East Devon until last year, is a former Foreign Office minister. Among the embarrassing memoir claims are how Mr Cameron thought it was ‘hilarious’ to joke with Mr Swire about the size of Michael Gove’s manhood.
There was also the time on a country walk when Mr Cameron allegedly told Lady Swire her scent made him want ‘to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one!’
Despite the lurid headlines about the book, Lady Swire revealed in the interview how she and her husband stayed at David and Samantha Cameron’s house in Cornwall last weekend.
Lady Swire said she joked then about the book with Mrs Cameron, who she regards as a ‘Lefty’. She added: ‘Sam said to me: “I suppose you’re going to call me a communist [in your book]”, and I said “yeah”, and she laughed.’
The ex-prime minister is c ontent with his new life in the shadows, added Lady Swire, saying: ‘He’s close to Samantha. He’s devoted to his children.’
She also commented on Sir Hugo’s career, saying: ‘When your husband becomes a minister, everyone thinks it’s glamorous. At the Foreign Office, he was away all the time, flying to Rio for a one-hour meeting.
‘You arrive, and there are some sirens going: that’s the glamorous thing. But then you come back, and your wife asks why you’re never at home. It’s exhausting.
‘You’re not in the job because you’re the best at it. There are all these other things in play.’
In the book, Dominic Cummings is labelled ‘stark raving mad’ – and Lady Swire clearly has not changed her opinion of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser.
‘It will all go tits up with him, it always does. He’ll explode,’ she claimed in the interview.
Her opinion of Theresa May is equally unflattering: ‘She didn’t have an original idea in her head. And no friends either.’
Mr Cameron also advised the Swires on how to convert a barn at their home in Devon but was ignored. He suggested simply putting a pool table inside but the couple turned it into a fully functional Victorian-style pub.
They also have a disco room complete with lights which Lady Swire called ‘rather good exercise’ when they are on.
She even has a dedicated writing room to pen her diaries while her home’s bathrooms are described as ‘luxuriantly boho’. Her book is out on Thursday.
‘I’m terrified of causing trouble’