Blah, blah, blah . . .

Happy sixtieth birthday Alexandra (Sasha) Patrusha Mina Swire, political Tory wife par excellence. She rocketed into the public eye a couple of years ago on publishing her private diary, inadvertently exposing the rather smug lives of her husband, herself, and a ‘chumocracy’ of political friends.

Swire was born on 18 January 1963, the only daughter of Sir John Nott, former Member of Parliament for St Ives and Secretary of State for Defence under Margaret Thatcher, and his wife Miloska Vlahović, daughter of Yugoslav resistance leader Lujo Vlahović. She was educated at Cranborne Chase School, and at St Martin’s School of Art. She trained as a journalist, and worked on local newspapers. She married Hugo Swire in 1996, who became MP for East Devon in 2001, and they have two children. In 2005, she sought to be the Conservative Party candidate for Teignmouth but lost to Stanley Johnson. Otherwise, she has worked as a political researcher for her husband, until 2019 when he retired from parliament.

The following year, Little, Brown published Sasha Swire’s diary under the title Diary of an MP’s Wife: Inside and Outside Power. In her preface, she explains that she has been a ‘secret journal writer’ since childhood but that it was not until her husband entered politics that ‘a consistent narrative seemed to weave itself through my journals’. She continues: ‘They appeared to match an emerging and probably genetic obsession with the activities associated with governance and especially the debate between parties in the fight for power. The entries slowly evolved into a detailed record of what it was like to be a couple at the beating heart of politics during two tumultuous political decades.’

Swire’s diary attracted considerable publicity, not least because, as Wikipedia says, it ‘contains insights into the private lives of Conservative politicians’. Reflecting in the Tatler on response to her diaries, she wrote: ‘I was totally unprepared for the headlines that followed. It felt at times as if my wings were made of wax and feathers, that the sun had melted them and there was no shortage of hands pressing down on my head to keep me from resurfacing from a deep ocean. To be confronted with such a distorted picture of my real self was challenging to say the least.’

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian said of the book: ‘It’s very much a view of politics from inside “the gang” and to read it is to understand the grating rage of those outside, realising that power lies not around the cabinet table but in jolly kitchen suppers with an impenetrable clique of old friends.’ She goes on: ’If the first half of the book is a giddy romp through life under the “chumocracy”, the second is more bittersweet, chronicling the fracturing of old friendships post-Brexit in what has become a court exiled from power. A leaver by temperament, in a circle of Tory remainers, by the end Sasha has come to feel something of an outsider herself. As her old friends argue fruitlessly over the best way to thwart a hard Brexit and plot unsuccessfully to manoeuvre Rudd into Downing Street, she backs the arch Brexiter Dominic Raab’s leadership bid before warming to the “slobbering golden retriever” Boris Johnson.’

Some pages of Diary of an MP’s Wife can be read at Googlebooks. Here are several extracts.

30 March 2015
‘David meets the Queen today, to mark the formal start of the general election campaign. It will be based on the usual fear tactics: families facing a £3000 tax bombshell if Ed Miliband gets into office, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, Miliband is pushing the message that the biggest threat to British business is the prospect of exit from the EU. Blah! Blah! Blah!’

12 July 2016
‘H comes back from a leaving party at No. 10. He is sad and silent, and does not want to talk. He says it feels like a bereavement. Only hardcore Cameroons were there. Speeches all round, including one from Samantha. Dave says to H that he told Theresa she should keep people like Hugo and Philip Dunne because they are solid and reliable. He also tells her not to go near Fox and Davis, that they are trouble and have no following. But I really want Hugo to move on now. It’s unlikely - very unlikely - that H will be offered anything, since T has already said she wants female parity in cabinet, and H won’t move sideways. So, it’s over and out, bar the promised knighthood. There is absolutely no indication where Theresa is going to place anyone. H puts his hand horizontal to his nose and says to George, “The water is here, so how are you going to get out of this one, Houdini?”

Dave says to H, “I have put in a good word with May.”

H replies, “Thanks but I’m thinking of joining you on the back benches.” ’

17 July 2018
‘I’ve never known such a febrile atmosphere since we have been involved in politics. Last night May announced she was accepting the amendments to her own plans, meaning the rebels were suddenly on the side of the government and the loyalists were the rebels. In the end she ‘won’ by just three votes. It’s getting so topsy-turvy, it’s difficult to keep up.

Well, I’m off to Devon tomorrow, where people are sane. Amber [Rudd] is speaking to the Association, so I need to go and make up a bed. At least we won’t have many more days like this one for a while. Mind you, with Old Ma May’s piecemeal approach anything could happen. Last time she went on holiday she got bored and called an election. If she hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Stepping aside from Brexit for a moment, we have a new sex scandal, involving H’s former chief of staff Andrew Griffiths. I should have guessed he was heading for the red tops: he was pretty flirtatious with me at a reception in Downing Street a few years back. I remember thinking, is this flattery and am I enjoying it? Or is this a bit OTT? He has been caught sexting two barmaids he called the ‘Titty Twins’. Two thousand texts in three weeks, apparently, an average of around ninety-five a day, which must have been quite time consuming. The texts mostly concerned his desire to tie them up and whack them using his weapon of choice, the ‘Spank Paddle’. He has subsequently had the whip withdrawn.’

8 August 2019
‘Up in London, our current Rasputin figure (Cummings) is sending rockets up the arses of anyone in range (spads, ministers, civil servants, the Queen, Dominic Grieve, probably Boris).

Thing is, we all know Cummings is stark raving mad (you just need to look at his blog) but we are hoping that his maverick, radical, lunatic streak is what just might, possibly, get us over the line. I discuss him with Dominic Lawson, who is down holidaying in West Penwith and who is an old friend. He tells me he is a genius, but he is so bloody rude to everyone, particularly politicians, that he is absolutely loathed by the establishment. His father, Nigel Lawson, had complained to Dominic about his abruptness and he was a prominent leaver and Sir John, who met him on several occasions during the Brexit campaign, also says he is utterly ‘appalling’.

Down at the other lunatic asylum/snake pit, Mac the Knife (John McDonnell) pops up to say that if Boris doesn’t go when they tell him to, he’ll put Jezza in a taxi and send him off to the Queen to tell her they will form a government instead. (Just shows how out of touch they are - no one takes taxis these days, they take Ubers or public transport.) Trouble is, McDonnell has just told the SNP they can have another referendum, so the Queen is hardly going to agree to assisting in breaking up the union, and would she really want to hand power over to a bunch of Marxists?’