How not to be a politician's wife, from someone who knows

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

'Tell your dad that if he doesn't do (an unspecified act) he won't live to see you turn 19.'
Ms Vine was married at this point to the former Conservative Cabinet Minister and top Brexiter Michael Gove.
Towards the end of her new book How Not to be a Political Wife, she recounts another incident. This was when police told her that both she and Mr Gove had been primary targets for Ali Harbi Ali, the Islamist extremist who had murdered the Conservative MP, David Amess in 2021. Analysis of his phone revealed he'd been stalking both of them on their daily routines for a week before targeting Mr Amess.
I wouldn't previously have considered interviewing Sarah Vine. For starters, she's the star columnist on another newspaper, the Daily Mail. She also belonged to the fabled Notting Hill set, whose gilded existence in the orbit of David and Samantha Cameron in the early 2000s was from a distant galaxy, not far enough away.
I'd been irked though, by a piously dismissive account of her book in a left-wing magazine which lacked professional respect. Ms Vine is routinely voted Columnist of the Year in the UK press awards. And besides, when all of next year's books are published to mark the 10th anniversary of Brexit, hers can be regarded as an essential part of its first draft. Few will convey the human drama of this one. She was married to Brexit; she lived in it; she fed and watered it and – in the end – it mangled her and spat her out.
We meet in Kensington, a beautiful part of my second favourite city where the houses fetch prices that would choke the economies of small states. The hidden drama of Brexit and the toll it exacted of Sarah Vine's life and marriage unravelled in these avenues and alleyways. I suggest that some of this is rooted in how women are treated in the political world and especially those who are considered to be right-wing.
'One of the points I try to make is about the process of dehumanisation and about not being seen as a real person. I write for the Mail and was married to a Tory. In some people's eyes, that means my opinion doesn't count.'
Ms Vine has worked in every cranny and crevice of the old print media production churn: fetching and carrying; sub-editing and commissioning. She's time-served.
'The people who hate you the most are often those who haven't read anything you've written,' she says. 'I wanted to reclaim my own narrative a little. Women who identify to the right in politics do seem to experience an extra layer of sexism. Women are much less confrontational than men. Most of my female friends are either Labour or Lib-Dem.
'Many aren't as interested in politics as men. And so, the path of least resistance is to be a kind leftie because they're the ones who want to help people and to build an equal society.
'If you're to the right, people say: 'What's wrong with you? You're meant to be nice and kind and nurturing. It goes back to Margaret Thatcher, I think. For all that she was talented and a memorable politician, she had a reputation for being cruel. People couldn't understand how she seemed able to set aside the human collateral of her policies.'
(Image: PAUL STUART)
As one of the Notting Hill set, she describes a gilded world of dinner parties spent with a privileged cast of boulevardiers who were either running the country or awaiting their turn. From up here, it looked exhausting, like having to run up a down elevator.
'It really was,' she says. 'These were fabulously intelligent and charismatic people who were at the centre of influence and making a difference. It was very full-on. The constant of round of dinner parties, though I like cooking, which helped. Plus, I was a social person. It was at a time when you have small children and you're accustomed to running around and when you have the energy and the ambition to do so.
'There was a sense too of being in it together. Life is about finding your tribe, isn't it? And I felt I had my tribe. And then I lost my tribe and became isolated.'
It was on Brexit's threshing floor where her existence at the Tories' high table began to fade. This was when her husband, Michael Gove enraged the Camerons and their acolytes by signalling he'd be joining the Brexit camp. It was only then that they both learned what happens when those who are considered low-born refuse to yield to the aristocrats who pull the levers of Toryism.
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Though she and Mr Gove are now divorced, she speaks about him fondly and you sense that she'll always love him. Whenever events call for criticism of him, she leavens it with fond mitigations. Nor does she spare herself. Like other elegant and handsome women, she talks about her perceived physical flaws: hair loss; weight issues. Men, even in our moth-eaten decrepitude, just sally forth regardless.
There's very little bitterness in her book, nor in our conversation. What little there is though, is reserved for the Tory aristocracy.
'I don't have any natural class instincts,' she says. 'I grew up in Italy, which has no class system. I didn't understand the British class system. I don't understand how someone can be considered better if they have a large house and not a smaller one. I'm a journalist and journalism is the ultimate outsider's profession. You can't be obsessed with status and deference.
'I consider myself to be Eurotrash, basically I grew up round Europe. (Her parents had moved to Italy when she was a child). Michael though, comes from a Presbyterian, Aberdonian fishing community and with all the rectitude that comes with this. He had transcended that by going to Oxford.
'That's why he felt education was so important. His way to a different place was via education. It's not that he was living in squalor: he had a lovely upbringing. At Oxford though, he experienced a melting-pot where you had the children of baronets and the children of fishermen.
'When Michael became Lord Chancellor and in charge of prisons, he saw this as an extension of his mission to improve the lives of those less fortunate. That, if you've missed people the first time round and they'd fallen through the cracks in education and end up in jail,society can still offer them second chances. 'If he'd stayed there, he'd have done great work.'
Then came the Brexit referendum in 2016 when David Cameron, pumped up with adrenalin on securing victory in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, made the biggest political misjudgment in modern British history since the Suez crisis. In calling for a referendum on Europe, he staked his career and the future of the Tories. And, having set the stakes so high, he had a patrician expectation of absolute loyalty from his friends. There was no room for sincerely-held beliefs.
Within the close-knit Notting Hill set, her friendship with Sam Cameron was tighter still: a scared thing as close friendships are. Brexit took its toll on that too and she mourns its passing as intensely as the end of her marriage. She is godmother to one of the Camerons' children. She recalls a moment in a lift with David Cameron not long after Michael Gove, a career-long Euro-sceptic, has become a lead Brexiteer.
'You have to get your husband off the airwaves,' Mr Cameron hissed at her. 'You have to get him under control. For f**k sake, Sarah, I'm fighting for my political life here. This was followed by an emotional public outburst to the same effect by Sam Cameron'.
It signalled the end of a friendship Ms Vine mistakenly believed had proceeded on an equal basis. It was a moment of truth for her.
'It was the realisation that they genuinely believed that they were much more important than us. I don't think it's intentional by their tribe. It's just how they're raised. If you're from a working-class background, or a middle class one, everyone tells you that you need to prove yourself; to justify your existence; to sink or swim. To work hard if you want to make your way in the world. If you come from their background, all you experience is deference.'
This may be so, but Ms Vine also reveals in her book that in this world there exist aftershaves called Penhaligon's English Fern and Blenheim Bouquet. I want them, just so that I can say their names out loud if anyone asks me.
How Not to be a Political Wife by Sarah Vine (HarperElement £20)