‘I don’t need to talk about where my clothes are from’
A working mother with a General Election to swing, Jo Swinson talks to Judith Woods about the reality of being in the running
Faced with a stark choice between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on election day, bossy head girl Jo Swinson ought to be having a better campaign. Yet the more the public sees of her, the lower her popularity drops in the polls. She’s the Liberal Democrats’ first female leader and, still in her 30s, also its youngest – but even fellow millennials reportedly find her a turn-off. Oh, and those quirky earrings…
As the party’s ratings fall, her overtly presidential campaign is looking more hubristic by the day. So will the real Jo Swinson please stand up?
We meet on her battle bus en route to Cardiff, her face emblazoned across its sides. Inside, her youthful team are drinking coffee from reusable cups bearing the slogan “I am a Beveridge”, a witty reference to the early 20thcentury Liberal reformer who laid the foundations of the welfare state.
“I was going to vote Lib Dem,” I tell her. “But I’m not now.”
Swinson looks gratifyingly concerned. “Why have you changed your mind?” she asks.
“Oh, I haven’t changed my mind,” I reply. “It’s just the Lib Dem candidate in my Hackney constituency has been suspended for making references online to ‘b------’ and ‘retards’…”
Swinson gives a sharp intake of breath before murmuring something stern about standards. But who would she recommend I vote for instead? She gravely suggests I examine the merits of the other candidates, even though we both know that my sitting MP, Diane Abbott, will win. She always does. But back to business.
Today, Swinson, a 39-year-old mother of two boys, who last year made British political history by taking 11-week old Gabriel into the Commons, is wearing a tailored cerise dress, black boots and, of course, statement earrings (although nobody’s entirely sure what they’re saying…).
To be quite honest, I was prepared for a blizzard of policy statements, evasion and a dreary insistence on ring-fencing her private life. But in person, Swinson is the polar opposite of the relentlessly serious character we’ve been witnessing.
She is warm, funny and personable as she talks about her husband, Duncan Hames, a former MP who now runs Transparency International UK, an anti-corruption NGO, and how much fun her boys, Andrew, aged five, and Gabriel, aged 17 months, can be. “That’s not to say they don’t have their moments,” she adds. “Gabriel has discovered how to open his milk bottle…”
Then, at the mention of Christmas, she does the single most relatable thing any politician has done so far in this election: she melodramatically drops her forehead on to the table and curls her arms around her head to shield herself from the blast.
“Christmas,” she groans. “Have I started shopping? Only just. Are my preparations in hand? Absolutely not.
“Andrew turns six on December 22, so that has to be organised as well. And it will be. It has to be. These are the magical moments in life that we treasure and remember…”
She trails off and I nod in empathy at her working mother anguish: we’ve all been there, although I’ve never been so busy that I needed a personal assistant to book in time to see my offspring.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but everything has to be scheduled,” she says. “We work out when I’m able to take them to school and nursery and put them to bed. Then, once I’ve read
That’s Not My Dragon to Gabriel, and
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets
to Andrew, I can make conference calls. All that goes in the diary.
“My husband, Duncan, is amazing at running things at home, but he works full time. I’m better at shopping for presents, but he’s a great cook. I’m more on the fish fingers end of the spectrum, so that’s our division of domestic labour – except, in my case, it’s not getting done.”
What woman could fail to recognise the juggling act of striving to be present by taking the kids to the park and then furtively catching up on emails as you push them on the swing?
It requires a degree of compromise not all front-line politicians are willing to endure. Earlier this year, Ruth Davidson stepped down as leader of the Scottish Conservative Party in order to achieve a better work-life balance.
“Ruth wrote a very moving [resignation] letter, and it contained a paragraph talking very frankly about how she felt the impact her position had on her as a daughter, a friend, a wife and a mother – and I absolutely recognise that,” says Swinson quietly,
“My Dad died last year, and when it was my Mum’s first wedding anniversary without him, the whole wider family planned a get-together at an old farmhouse. But Parliament was unexpectedly sitting, so I couldn’t be there for all of it. The pressures of work mean you do struggle hard to manage all your responsibilities.”
But women in power are judged harshly, which is possibly why Swinson has been millstoned with the “head girl” label. “The irony is that I never was head girl at school,” she smiles. “I’m passionate about things I believe in, and if that makes me appear like a girly swot, then I’m going to own it.”
At the start of the election campaign, she wore a top bearing that slogan for a photocall in a boxing ring, yellow gloves combatively raised for the cameras. According to recent polls, she really does need to come out fighting. “That’s not something I recognise,” she says, smoothly reaching for a politician’s response.
I try to offer grassroots feedback, as in “lose the overcomplicated accessories” and maybe change into a less stuffy outfit. “I like earrings. I like shoes,” she gently chides me. “I don’t need to talk about where my clothes are from. It’s not a big part of my political identity.”
Swinson insists she’s enjoying the election campaign, even if she’s pulled back from talk of revoking the referendum result, and those wildly overambitious claims to be the next prime minister. “I’m a marathon runner,” she says. “I’ve done three of them. It’s about resilience and the determination to keep going through the last difficult miles.”
But whatever happens on this, the home straight, Sunday evenings will see Swinson settling down with her family to watch Seven Worlds, One
Planet. That hour is sacrosanct. “Programmes like this make you so aware of how important it is to be honourable custodians,” she says. “Andrew loves it, although he finds the brutality of mother nature shocking,” she says. Lord only knows what he’d make of the bloodbath in the Mother of all Parliaments, then. Swinson has the grace to laugh.
I wish her well; democracy needs moderates. I just hope we don’t have to wait until she’s dancing to
Gangnam Style on Strictly à la Ed Balls, or amiably catching trains across Europe à la Michael Portillo, before the public get to know Jo Swinson properly.
‘Gabriel has his moments. He’s just learned how to open his milk bottle…’