'Written with deft and humour': Jo White reviews 'How Not to Be a Political Wife'
Spencer House, London, 2016: Sarah Vine and Michael Gove attend Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall’s wedding | Image by: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
4 min read
There may be no official guides for spouses of newly elected MPs, but Sarah Vine’s witty memoir is a good place to start
There are no guides for spouses of newly elected Members of Parliament, so perhaps Sarah Vine’s new memoir, How Not to Be a Political Wife, is a very good starting point. The constituency party’s expectations and your quiet rebellion; the loneliness and coping with an absentee partner; the impacts on lifestyle choices, careers, childcare and household finances are all covered.
When my husband, John (now Lord) Mann was newly elected as an MP in 2001, the isolation and lack of support was the first thing that hit me. Finding my place took a few years of trial and error – and Vine details her attempts with deftness and humour.
Despite being on opposite sides in politics, we both share experiences that with hindsight we would have avoided at all costs.
The expenses scandal in 2009 arose after computer discs leaked to The Telegraph exposed the systematic abuse by MPs of the expenses system. Nearly every MP was caught in some way, whether it was house flipping or, as in Vine’s case, the furniture that she had purchased for the constituency home.
In those days there was no real guidance from the authorities, and I remember John coming home shocked by the tales of what other MPs were claiming. I never heard about the duck houses but during the scandal I spent every day with my head down, thanking the Lord that we had taken a decision never to house-flip, and we came through unscathed. The scars remain. We lost friends who were caught but, more significantly, this was the precise point at which trust and belief in politicians was broken, leading the way to Brexit and to where we are now.
Despite being on opposite sides in politics, we both share experiences that with hindsight we would have avoided at all costs
Sarah Vine and I also share our own horrors of the 2016 referendum campaign, with Vine detailing the isolating fallout from her Remainer friends, political allies and family, when Michael Gove led the Leave campaign.
Following some deep and long conversations, John also put his weight behind Leave, breaking solid relationships with many of his Labour colleagues, lifelong friends and relatives. The fallout was equally painful; I was the kicking ball in John’s absence and the witness to many arguments both in the family and elsewhere.
I remember one of my daughters announcing that his period of punishment was over and she was going to start talking to him again. Updating my husband of his release from Coventry, he commented that he hadn’t noticed her silence. When a local Labour councillor challenged him on what he’d been doing over Brexit, he promptly responded: “What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been keeping you all in your jobs.”
While embedded with wit and jollity, Vine’s memoir is also a painful read. She describes how she began life as the ugly, fat, unloved child, moving from Italian town to town, always the outsider looking in. Despite later pairing up with an adept politician with an amazing brain, her husband Michael Gove had never been part of the landed gentry, and so they remained outsiders in their new chosen social group, always on the edge, never at the centre. She tells us of her overwhelming desire to be part of the ‘Cameron Notting Hill set’ despite only being able to afford a property on its very northwestern edge.
We hear of her adoration of Samantha Cameron, a woman who can do no wrong. The painful loss of this friendship is covered in detail while surprisingly there is no mention of “love” between Vine and Gove, rather she simply describes their former marriage as a “relationship of equals”.
Speaking with honesty and deftness, Vine’s book delivers the gossipy details surrounding David Cameron and his cronies that would otherwise go untold.
Jo White is Labour MP for Bassetlaw
How Not to Be a Political Wife
By: Sarah Vine
Publisher: HarperElement
