Sarah Vine’s How Not to Be a Political Wife is the talk of Westminster – and beyond. This week, four hundred Spectator subscribers and readers heard from Vine and Spectator editor Michael Gove at an exclusive event. Rachel Johnson – brother of Boris and son of Stanley – and Hugo Swire – whose wife Sasha wrote the bestselling Diary of an MP’s Wife – joined the panel at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre to discuss the losses and laughter involved in being married to politics.
Politics is like childbirth, said Vine: ‘You think you’re going to be fine? You’re never fine.’
One of the difficulties, Vine told Spectator readers, is that politics catapults people who are ill-prepared for it into the public eye: ‘You can’t pick your nose, you can’t fart. You can’t be crossed with people in train stations. You can’t send back a coffee because then that suddenly becomes a thing. So you have to become this very careful, cautious person, who is always walking on eggshells.’
Despite the difficulties of being a politician – or indeed being married to one – the public are far from sympathetic. ‘The politician becomes just less of a human. And so they and their family are just another bit of cannon fodder,’ Vine said.
Still, it wasn’t enough to put off Rachel Johnson, whose father was an MEP, and two brothers – Jo and Boris – were Tory MPs. But she insisted that she didn’t enter politics willingly: ‘When Brexit came along, largely thanks to you (Michael Gove) and the older brother, I was so incensed that I was actually forced to enter politics for the first time in a brief and completely catastrophic foray into it’.
Perhaps it was a lucky escape. Hugo Swire, who served as an MP for 18 years, said that he thinks things have ‘changed hugely – and not for the better’. Swire’s father-in-law, Sir John Nott, was a cabinet minister in the 1980s. But, he said, ‘things were slower then – and you weren’t expected to have an answer to absolutely everything immediately, as you are in this tick tock world we now live in.’
Is it possible to keep your family together and be a politician? The panellists agreed that David Cameron offered an example of how to do so. ‘He kept seeing his friends. He understood the balance between work and play,’ says Johnson.
‘I think Dave was really good at compartmentalising work. He absolutely understood that the only way it worked was if Samantha Cameron was on side and if she was properly looked after. He didn’t allow politics to bleed into the marriage,’ said Vine.
One of the difficulties in having a politician in the family is seeing the person you love being given unfair treatment in the newspapers. Vine said it was something she struggled with:
‘I became so angry when (Michael’s) persona began to be twisted out of shape in this awful way by the machine of politics, because I could see what was happening. It upset me so deeply because I knew that he was really very sincere in his intentions. And I became a bit sort of tiger wifey for a while.’
The event at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre ended with the chance for Spectator readers to ask the panellists questions – including on Dominic Cummings and same-sex relationships in politics. You can watch the full recording here.
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