Sarah Vine on Michael Gove, the Camerons, and why she's done with "toxic" politics

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2:15This is Political Cone Scene with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

2:29Ed Balls: so we're back with one of our special summer editions of political currency um george osborne told me he was on holiday he's lying it turns out that he's in the cotswolds i'm here with sarah vine daily mail um columnist she's just written a fabulous book how not to be a political wife which we're going to talk about today george osborne supposed to be on his holidays he's actually organising meetings for his mate jd vance in and he's so naughty george isn't he he's just naughty he always was naughty and he still is naughty and he's um you know robert jenrick yes one month he's having he's having lunch with david cameron and now he's meeting jd vance i know getting a lift in one of the cars in the motorcade yes george is doing what he just does best which is stirring stirring yes and and and it is a sport for him a private dinner he had last night as well Yes, yes.

3:18So I think, well, you know, Kemi's made the mistake of going on holiday.

3:21Ed Balls: Right, well, but it is categorically untrue that this was a political decision by J.D. Vance. Categorically. Categorically. So, you know, by saying that, you sort of think... But George has always been like this. He's always had so many fingers and so many pies. He is quite Machiavellian, but in a nice way. I have to thank you because you've just hobbled into our studio with a broken ankle in a big boot. In a big boot. You were, I don't know what you were doing, kicking something at the weekend? I was walking a dog. I was literally just walking along and I fell over. You know, you turn your ankle and it just went pop.

3:55And it was very painful. It is quite painful, but it's only a small fracture.

4:00Ed Balls: It is fabulous of you to make the effort to come in and talk to us today. And we're going to talk about your book. I mean, it is, you know, I should just explain to people. This is a book about what was not supposed to be a life in politics. Yes. You could start it by saying, you know, dear reader, I married a journalist who promised not to be an MP. But of course, Michael Gobe goes on to be a member of parliament, a cabinet minister on the other side from the prime minister on Brexit. And in the end, the book tells that story. And in the end, you know, the breakdown of your marriage as a consequence.

4:32Ed Balls: And it is a I mean, it's a it's a it's a time startling read. I mean, it's very open. It's very honest. You know, you you talk very freely. freely there's moments you know george and i've often talked about um whether we would talk about our children in politics you talk a lot about your kids and their views in the book but the thing about it is it's so vivid yeah a description of um that period in politics everybody i speak to says um what an amazing read it is it's so compelling and i would think for you i mean you do this for a living well it must be nice to be told it's a really good no it is really nice to be told and when I when I said when I sent it into the publishers um they did say because you know I think a lot of people who write um books in this area are not really writers you know that that's not what they do they're politicians and so and she said oh it's just really nice to read something like this that's written by a writer so just being a writer gives me that advantage it could definitely be a film you know yeah no I could I mean my the best line on I rang various friends and said would they give me lines for it and and Plum Sykes came up with Sarah Vine as the Bridget Jones of Politics, which I think is pretty, it's very, I mean, she's so clever, but it is absolutely the right description because it's just a sort of, well, it really is a comedy of errors or a series of unfortunate events, depending on whether you like Lemony Snicket or, but you know, it's, it's just, it's, it, I decided that it, when I wrote it, I thought, well, to begin with, I didn't want to write it because everyone said I shouldn't write it.

5:58And very grumpy people like Simon Heffer don't think that we want to write things, books like this. In fact, he was very rude about it in his review.

6:05Ed Balls: Good for sales. Good for sales. anyone who doesn't agree with Simon Heffert can buy my book. But I did think long and hard. I mean, it's extraordinary to think that Brexit is almost 10 years ago now. So let's not forget, it's a long time. So I've mulled this over for a while. And also I was going through a lot. You know, Michael and I was getting divorced and all that kind of stuff. And I decided if I was going to write it, it just had to be completely honest and from the gut. It's definitely honest. Otherwise there was no point in doing it. Because everyone writes political books. and they're also boring and I didn't want to write a boring political book.

6:40Ed Balls: You passed that test. Have you thought who will play you if it's made into a film? I have no idea, but I think if it's made into a film, I think David Mitchell should play Michael, don't you think? I think he's the one person who has that sort of bookish quality that Michael has. Bookish and mischievous. And mischievous, exactly. There was one bit, it's packed full of gem moments where you laugh. My favourite one, actually, one of my favourites is this moment, 2015, Michael's gone back into the cabinet from Chief Whip as Lord Chancellor. Yeah. State opening of Parliament. And you say, I spent a small fortune I didn't have on commissioning a full length portrait of Michael in his velvet and ermine full regalia from the very talented artist daughter of a friend.

7:24Ed Balls: I love that portrait, loved everything in it, loved everything it represented. And I'm almost sad I didn't get to keep it in the divorce. And I thought, so Michael kept it. Yes, he's got it somewhere. I think it's in storage. Can't be. I mean, if you would put it on your wall… No, it doesn't go on the wall. It's too big to go on the wall. It's almost life-size. Do you remember the conversation where you argued about why he was going to take it? We didn't argue about it. No, I think the thing about Michael and I is we never argued about anything. That was one of the reasons why we got divorced, because we didn't argue about anything.

7:56I think it's very important when people are married to other people that they have rows about stuff. We just got to that stage where communication broke down to the point where we just did didn't have any conversations. You know, you became very kind of averse to any tricky conversation. And I think I just, I think he just, I think he just went to his storage container, not mine. I think it was as simple as that.

8:17Ed Balls: I'm going to get there in a second. But I mean, we start with a bond, which is both of us were for years the spouse of a member of parliament. I was a spouse for eight years before I got elected. And it's quite a particular experience and will have been different for you than for me. When I was selected as the MP in Normanton in 2004, I'd been a spouse for eight years. I went to the management meeting on a Friday night in Normanton and said to the meeting, all these Labour Party people, that I just wanted to thank Bill O 'Brien, who'd been the MP for 10, 15, 20 years, and also his wife, Jean. And afterwards, because Jean was there in the room, Jean came up to me afterwards and said that she'd been to every monthly meeting in the constituency for the whole time he was the MP.

9:06Ed Balls: And that was the first time anybody had ever used her name in the room. That's so interesting. That she always felt invisible. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think that's always been the role, hasn't it? You're just invisible. You're just there as a sort of support system, really. And it is the one area of society which remains firmly rooted, sort of stuck in the 1950s. There was this moment in Michael's selection where they said, you can't go in the room because you're pregnant. And that would bias the audience in his favour. I know. And you think, what? I know. And also hilarious, ironic, because one of the other people who he was up against was Jacob Priest-Mock, who, of course, has now had all the children in the world.

9:45Was he what, seven or six? I can never remember. Anyway, but yes, I was very pregnant with Will. And they said, could I go and sit in the hotel bar? Because they didn't want that to influence the vote. And you lived down there. And I sat there and Jim Davidson was there.

10:02Ed Balls: The comedian? Yes. Was he also standing? No, he was just in the bar. It's very bizarre exchange with Jim Davidson, which is also in the book. But yeah, it was Michael's. The thing is, it all happened so fast because everyone always said, oh, it takes ages to get a seat. And, you know, it'll take, anyway, he got the first seat that he applied for, which was Surrey Heath. And you lived there for a period. Yeah. But then you then went back to London. And interestingly, the constituency doesn't really ever arise in the book after that. No. I mean, I just, I didn't. That was your solution to being invisible.

10:38Yes. I just, well, I didn't, I didn't like being unplugged from my, I mean, I'm a Londoner really. And for me, it was really difficult living in Surrey. And having to commute to Wapping from Surrey is a really difficult three-hour commute. And it was just exhausting. And we had two small children. And Michael got into the House of Commons. And, you know, he would leave at sort of half past five in the morning and come back at half past midnight. And I was just, you know, running the show and trying to do a full-time job, which was impossible, really. I had a nervous breakdown.

11:11Ed Balls: One of the things, though, which then happens, and you referred to this a moment ago, as things go on as you get closer to brexit um distance starts to grow and um there's that moment where you say to david cameron before christmas end of 2015 i think sitting on a sofa in checkers you say to him ultimately he'll be on side michael will be on side yeah and then of course he wasn't he wasn't there and you explain that but what you say is he didn't really talk to about that and it's like in the latter part of the relationship that that he became you know I think he just you became a bit invisible to him well I think he just I think he slightly shut down because I think he knew what he was going to do and he knew that I would argue against it and so and so he decided to just sort of fudge it if you know what I mean but I think also let's not forget the influence of the third person in my marriage Dominic Cubbings you know and I think I think um Dave once said, it was Dave or Sam, I can't remember which one, said, oh, you know, Michael's chosen the wrong DC, David Cummings versus David Cameron.

12:15And I think, you know, that was true. I think Michael and Dom had this very kind of close political bond. And, you know, close political bonds are fascinating. You must know about this because they are really like a marriage in their own way, aren't they? And sometimes they can be more intense. They're more like an affair, in fact, I would say. And I once wrote a piece saying that politics is the ultimate mistress. You're married to the politician, but the politics is the mistress. She gets the best of him. She gets all the fun stuff, all the jokes, all the good speeches, all the kind of sexy stuff.

12:48And then you just get the guy who's knackered at the end of the day, who just wants to read a book and go to sleep. And I think that those political alliances that are forged in the sort of fire of a shared passion for one policy or whatever you know just a vision political vision are really really powerful and michael and dom did definitely have that i thought reading it that um see there's a

13:13Ed Balls: really interesting of course part of the story is um your relationship with sam cameron and then how kind of brexit shatters that that's my very personal little bit but that is a story about friendship and then friendship corroded by politics. And at one point, somebody says to you that in politics, they're political friends, that they're not real friends. And in the end... That was my category error. I thought they were real friends. Do you know what I mean? But I guess in the end, I mean, I've thought a lot about this. And I had people who were friends before and friends afterwards. But in the period when you're in politics and you're the prime minister i mean it's actually very hard to have friends completely agree yeah but the one person who was supposed to be your friend was michael and it felt as though that was in the end when you say you know politics and friendship couldn't be put together it's almost like there comes a point where in your relationship you stop being friends and talking about the most important things actually it's almost after the divorce you sort of become friends yes i mean we a really good divorce.

14:18I mean, I have to say, I talk to Michael more now than I did in the last few years of our marriage. I think that Michael just, like I said, I think Michael was very captured by that world. I think he was, I think it was what really interested him. And I think I was probably quite dull because, you know, I was at home and I was doing, well, I was doing my own job, obviously. But I was sort of, you know, running the house, doing the kids, all that kind of stuff. And I think that compared to the sort of glittering prizes of politics, maybe that domestic sphere felt, you know, less interesting. And I sort of get that.

14:58I mean, it is, you know.

14:59Ed Balls: Although in that high politics period of Brexit, you are talking to David Cameron. Yeah. You are writing a column for the Mail about what is making Michael tick. Yeah. I mean, you are. Well, I was just trying to say. You're sending an email to Michael after the election in 2016. Yeah. You sent an email to Michael in 2016. I didn't send it to Michael. I sent it to the wrong person. That was the joy. But was that you trying to say, I'm not just the person at home. I should be part of the political organisation. Yes. Yes. And I always felt that. But I think that perhaps not everybody around Michael felt that, that I was sort of annoying and interfering, which I probably was.

15:35Ed Balls: Dominic Cummings. Exactly. You know, let's not forget Dominic Cummings felt that very strongly about Carrie. Simmons, now Carrie Johnson. He called her Carrie Antoinette. Although on that one, he loses. Yeah. So that's the thing. And the thing about Carrie is that everyone always said, oh, she's interfering in... It's that absolute trope, which is that these are affairs of men and women must not interfere in them, which is ridiculous. But the thing is, if you're married to somebody who's very high up in politics, you can't stay out of it. It dominates everything in your world as you know I mean I mean you must know this from from being married to Yvette you know it's not you can't just leave it at the door it doesn't it's not like that it's not a nine to five job it's 24 seven you know seven days a week 24 hours a day and that's that's the way it is and so you can't exclude it there's no that you can't carve out the space it's not possible to do at that level it just isn't because the job is the job and so the idea that the person who is because you know that you're sharing a bed with is somehow supposed to not and not know anything about any of this is just absurd.

16:41And I remember at the time when Boris was Prime Minister and Carrie was getting all this flack, feeling really aggrieved on her behalf. Because, you know, Carrie was always very political before she married, you know, Boris. She was an activist and all of this kind of stuff. She's got a brain. She's got a point of view. You know, why shouldn't she be involved? Why shouldn't she say what? And the idea that the sort of spads, you know, or political advisors, however sort of grand or clever or whatever or celebrated somehow would exclude her in that way just really annoyed me and just the idea that she annoyed you yeah yeah and annoyed me back then because the thing is is that the person who knows the politician best is the person that the politician is married to and the thing is one of the things i tried to do with this book is to show that politicians are people and that a lot of the things that go wrong in politics are not really down to politics they're down to people and the decisions that people make because people are human and they are fallible and they have feelings and emotions and sometimes those get in the way of doing the thing that they should do or they just do it differently for whatever reason and if you exclude the person who is effectively the sort of you know uh support system of the politician then you're you know you're cutting them off but your marriage broke down partly

18:02Ed Balls: because you felt Michael was doing that. Yeah, I think the real reason I think our marriage broke down was I think we both reacted very differently to the trauma of Brexit and to the kind of sort of seismic events that came from it. You know, the collapse of, effectively the collapse of the Conservative Party and the collapse of that sort of, you know, George and Dave, whatever you think of them, they ran a very tight ship and they ran a very efficient ship. And I think, you know, if David stayed as Prime Minister, with George as Chancellor, I think the country would be in a very different position now.

18:36Really genuinely do think that.

18:38Ed Balls: And we both agreed on his rapid departure. Exactly. For me, that was the big mistake. Because if he'd stayed and just, and I know it would have been difficult, but if he had just steadied the ship, I think we would be in a very different place. But you can't prove a thing that hasn't happened. The interesting thing in the book is that David Cameron comes in for Kualov, co-skating criticism, so does Dominic Cummings, so does Georgie Gregg, male and Sunday editor, big time. Michael doesn't. I mean, it's very pointed, the commentary on him. It's very revealing, but it's kind. You're never unkind to Michael all the way through.

19:17Well, that's because I did love him very dearly, and I do still love him very dearly. And also, we have children, And I don't think it's a good idea for me to start bitching about their father in print. Those are very private things. And there are boundaries in this book. And everyone needs to have boundaries in their life. But I don't hate Michael. I just couldn't live with it anymore. And the two are very different things. It's not a sort of, you know, I'm not a kind of, it's like I don't hate. I always say to my children I love you if you do something stupid I will tell you that you have done something stupid and I will be cross with you about it and I may criticise you but it doesn't mean I stop loving you so in the same with Dave I was always very fond of Dave I think he's a fantastic man in many ways and I do talk about that in the book but I think he made some mistakes and it's okay to say you made those mistakes it doesn't mean I hate you

20:14Ed Balls: Give us an insight into Michael Gove I think I know him much more now than I did when I shattered him when he was a distant figure. I think one aspect of him which is interesting is he is a champion of the next generation. If you think of Kemmy Badenock, actually what he said recently about Shobana Mahmood, what he's saying about Katie Lamb, what is that in him, do you think? I think that it's a fundamental, I mean, I think that's why his passion was education and also prisons, which he sort of, I think he saw as an extension of education. Education was genuinely his absolute thing. I remember once saying to him, and we were having an argument about the children and what schools they were going to go to.

20:49And I remember saying to him, you care more about other people's children than you do about our own. And he said, yes, I actually do. Yes, no, that's completely right. I do care more about other people's children because our children are going to be fine because they've got us as parents and we will take care of them. And we are not, you know, useless, hopeless, drug addicts or whatever. But other children don't have that privilege. And that's my job to make sure that, you know, the education system gives them what they should be getting. So he was genuinely very passionate about that.

21:17Ed Balls: and so the nurturing of the next generation is part of that yes and that was because he himself but was adopted by two very lovely people who were very very different from him i mean talk about a cuckoo in the nest i mean michael really was a cuckoo in that nest but they understood they saw very early on that he needed certain things and they made sure that he got the right education that he needed to make sure that his brain was properly used and utilized and so he i think so So for Michael, he always thinks, you know, there but for the great. When he looks at some poor kid who's had a terrible upbringing and his parents' uses and who's not had any.

21:52I think in his back of his mind, it was always, you know, there but for the grace of God. You know, I was lucky. I lucked out. I got good parents.

21:58Ed Balls: So Katie Lam is a young him. Yeah. So I think that's the thing. So he loves, he loves. So in that kind of way, I mean, you know, a lot of people have always said about Michael that fundamentally he's actually more of a Labour politician than a Tory politician. And I think in some aspects of that are not completely untrue because I think he believes in the redemptive power of the state when it comes to education and also to prisons. I think he thinks that school is a second chance for a lot of kids and that it gives them what they can't get at home. And that is a fundamentally… And the justice system needs to be a third chance in some ways.

22:34Exactly, yeah. So I think politically that's one strand. But the thing about Michael is he's got the brain. He really is so unbelievably clever. He's capable of thinking 27 different things at once. He really can. And so he can have that view and then he can have a sort of mad right wing view on Israel or whatever.

22:56Ed Balls: Let's go back to the book. I'll put to you the left and the right critique. The left critique is there you are complaining about your family income being cut when Michael moves from being a cabinet minister to chief whip but it was still huge salaries at the time of austerity you know don't you understand it's about more than just you um the right critique is you make a big thing about class um you know the class abyss that in the end you and michael felt outsiders compared to david cameron and sam cameron because they were sort of you know they were the masters and you were the servants and the right critique is like david cameron he wasn't actually that posh.

23:33Ed Balls: His dad was a stockbroker. He wasn't landed gentry. But he went to eating. Yeah. But is it really about class? Isn't it more that there was a clique and that in the end, you became excluded from the clique because of Brexit. And actually, it was the exclusion being made an outsider by him rather than class is the real thing. So those are the two critiques I pick up from the reviews. Yes. I think what you're illustrating there is my ability to annoy everybody equally. Well, I mean, which is exactly what you want to do if you're going to be a good male columnist. The thing is, is that I mean, I completely agree with you.

24:03Both of those, both of those things are character flaws in me and people are right to criticize me for them. But this is just who I am. So I'm sorry. Yes, fine. Come for me. But it's I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not trying to paint myself in any particular way. I'm just being honest about my own failings and my own mistakes and my own misunderstandings. And, you know, that people have quite rightly spotted them, that none of this is logical. But isn't that how life is? I mean, no one's perfect.

24:30Ed Balls: It's why it's such a rocking read and it's why it's so enjoyable and so provoking. And as you say, it's honest. There are moments where you sort of feel, you know, if Sarah was reviewing her own book, she'd be calling out her double standards. Of course, yeah. I mean, you know, you complain about the way you were treated in the expenses scandal. But then you write the article about Ed Miliband having two kitchens. And you say that family life should be respected. But then you call Gordon Brown monastic in his living in Downing Street when he actually lived there with his family and his kids. And you say it's not right for children to be criticised or called out to get their parents.

25:09Ed Balls: But then you write columns about Beatrice and Eugenie as a way of getting at Prince Andrew. I mean, your defence is just what it is. It's messy. I mean, it is messy and it is not always attractive. But that's what you have when you have politics and journalism together. Those are two very difficult worlds. And they're also two very vicious, aggressive, challenging places to live. You know, you've got to sort of, and you have to take each day as it comes. You say in 2014, the media was teaching people to hate Michael Gove. Yeah. But then you also call out regularly the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday for teaching people to hate you.

25:48Ed Balls: And that's the paper you work for. I mean, that must be quite painful. Yeah. I mean, a lot of... Do you think that was all being Geordie Gregg rather than the male? That was, yeah, that was not the male. No, that was Geordie. That was, Geordie had a particular agenda. He was a very staunch Remainer. And like a lot of very staunch Remainers, you know, there was a narrative and that was a, you know, that narrative is still pursued to this day. I mean, I suppose perhaps... Do you sometimes feel if you were writing a column about you and Michael, you would write things which you would then say were totally unfair and how can the mail write this about me?

26:26I don't know. I mean everything is unfair in politics and journalism so that's the thing and you have to understand that there is no fairness and there is no sort of logic to a lot of it and one of the problems that I had and I think one of the difficulties that Michael and I faced was that I am a journalist and I was always a journalist right from the very start and I think perhaps if I had switched careers and I don't know opened a nice interior design shop or something things would have been a lot easier because when you go and work for the Daily Mail you're working for a newspaper that is absolutely you know it's like the SAS of journalism.

27:01Ed Balls: But you also wrote a column about Michael's innermost thoughts at the time when Brexit was at its I mean yeah that was kind of running into the fire wasn't it? Well that's what I do I run into fires yes yeah I know a lot of people a lot of people were furious with me about that but i don't know why i don't i think is i don't understand why i think people sam cam was very cross me about that column yeah were they wrong to be cross with no she's very right to be cross with me but you know this is who i am this is what i do i mean it's not you know i'm not embarrassed about it it's like i don't know it's just it's just you know i i tell the truth and shame the devil and and people get upset about it you know and that's and that's fine but it's It doesn't mean to say that you shouldn't.

27:44If people had more honest conversations about these things, then perhaps we wouldn't find ourselves in the situation that we currently find ourselves in.

27:52Ed Balls: There's one point in the book, you're so open in the book, and you talk about lots of your family, your dad, health issues, thyroid, your brain scan, all those kind of things. But there's one point where you say, I was busy looking after children, dogs, a house, and my own job, all while battling ill health and periodic bouts of depression. Oh, yes. You make one reference to that and you don't come back to that at all. And I just wondered whether that was a little bit of an untold story in the book. Was it harder for you in your life in that period than you fully revealed? Yes, I do. I mean, I do talk about my postnatal depression, which is when it started.

28:25Oh, I see. So really until then, I don't think I'd really had what you would term sort of proper depression. I think I'd always been, I think I was always just, I think I was always quite a sort of, I've always been a person who lives in their head a lot. and I think growing up I probably struggled a bit but probably didn't really understand that I was struggling do you know what I mean uh because my dad was a difficult person and and quite sort of uh tricky and you know for example I started losing my hair when I was 16 and all of that uh and I think that was all sort of stress coming out perhaps I just didn't kind of I think when you're that young you don't really understand anything do you to be honest well I didn't anyway um and then i think that and also i think um mental health is is a result your sort of your kind of capacity to absorb blows in life is a sort of diminishing resource isn't it you sort of start off with a nice big fat cup full of it and then as things go on and things happen to you it gets depleted and i think that it got depleted in me uh probably you know i think that's i think the kind of politics really took it out of me in that in that respect and I think a lot of my you know you talk about my sort of attempts to you know my sort of slightly perhaps irrational attempts to justify actions or explain people's train of thoughts I think a lot of that was me trying to fight back against that against that sort of ego depletion which happens when you're in politics and tangential to politics as I was.

30:06And so, you know, if you are the politician, you are surrounded by people whose job it is to shield you from all of this. But if you're tangential and you're the spouse, as you probably know, you don't get any of that necessarily. So you have to be your own shield.

30:18Ed Balls: You have to be your own shield. Which is partly what you actually explained. Which was partly what I was trying to do. The interesting thing though is at the point... And probably ineptly, but you know, I was trying to do it in my own way. And I think that a lot of a lot of that does attract, as you say, running into the fire, running into the fire. And I think that was my way of trying to explain to people what was going on. And I probably didn't do it very effectively, or I probably did it in a way that, as you say, opened me up to even more criticism. And I think that was difficult for me mentally.

30:53Ed Balls: There is a point, we talked about this on Good Morning Britain when you came on, about where you move house and Michael goes to bed and reads books and doesn't help. And he says afterwards he was depressed. This is at a point when his career is at a low, he's out of the cabinet. In retrospect, reading the book, I thought to myself, that was probably the point where both of you are so struggling to look after yourselves. You don't really have time for each other. And that is such a hard thing. Yeah, but it also illustrates very effectively our different approaches. Because Michael, when he became depressed like that, he would just try and stay very still.

31:26and sort of be in one place with it whereas my attitude to anything is always to push forward you know I'm just one of those people who just like I'm like okay I need to I need to get out of this situation I need to change this I need to move I need to move I need to move and I think that you know we both reacted very differently you know his his was I just need to be very calm and still and quiet and in a book and escape in that way which is how he always did and I was very much a doer he was very much a thinker i'm a doer so and i do when i i and i do things when i shouldn't do them um and this is why this book is so sort of in a way it's such a sort of crazy read because that's the inside of my head you know and i wanted i don't know there's no way i

32:09Ed Balls: couldn't conceal it you know you definitely see inside your head and there's one other thing i want to ask you about which i think is in a way the most important thing in the book we'll just take a quick break and then we'll come back.

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33:49Ed Balls: Welcome, Mac. So I'm here with Sarah Vine. We're talking about her fabulous and so engaging book, How Not To Be A Political Wife memoir. I just want to talk to you about the conclusion. I think it's the one place where, you know, I think I'm not sure if it's what you really believe. You conclude throughout this whole period that, you know, it's not really in the end, David Cameron or Klaas or Dominic Cummings, that politics is the problem. And you say, you know, the real villain of the piece is not Michael or me or Dave or Geordie or Dom. It's politics and the toxic culture that surrounds it. And I think to myself, all that I've talked to loads of spouses of MP over the years.

34:28And I think that generally spouses think that what their partner is doing is really important.

34:35Ed Balls: And therefore, the purpose of politics just means we have to put up with all of this stuff because that's public service. But in the end, you conclude in the book, no, politics is toxic and you don't have anything to do with it. And that was quite a negative conclusion. Yeah, I think. But I mean, again, I think that I probably I think, again, with me, I feel I do feel that. But I also see your point of view. But I think that you have to be the right sort of person to endure it. And I don't think I was. That's that's I suppose what I would say is that. So it wasn't politics fault. Well, I mean, everything is my fault.

35:12Obviously, that's why the book is called How Not to Be a Political Wife. I mean, everything is my fault. And I am the person. I'm the worst person, really, in this book.

35:19Ed Balls: The bit which jumps out at me most, I'm going to read it to you. This is at the height of the Brexit referendum. Joe Cox has been murdered. And you say, for me, almost as strong as the feeling of shock and grief that this lovely woman had been killed was the realisation that this was the final nail in the coffin of my respect for politics. And Joe Cox, young MP, I mean, she would think that the thing which was trying to put the nail in the coffin was the person who killed her. And actually what she was trying to do was be a good politician. She urges us all to carry on, you know, working together.

35:57Ed Balls: Michael Gove and I did the Gangnam Dance and Lift together for that Joe Cox big weekend. She wouldn't want you to conclude that her murder was the nail in the coffin of politics. she would want you to conclude politics is so important. It can't be thrown off course by people who do terrible things. Yeah, no, she's, I mean, and, you know, I wouldn't know what she would think, and you're probably right, but I felt, just feel that, for me personally, it just defeated me. Okay, that's the thing I would say, is it just defeated me. And maybe I was just, maybe I was just too weak, you know, maybe I just wasn't cut out for it.

36:36Maybe I'm a bad person, I don't know. But the point is that for me personally, it was just too much to deal with.

36:44Ed Balls: But your kid, Bea and Will, who did a great question for us on a few weeks ago, they're robust. They figure a lot in the book. Would you be appalled if they became politicians because it's so toxic and you don't want to have anything to do with it? Or would you think actually that's purpose? I think, you know, in a funny kind of way, they're very well equipped for it because they understand the world really well and they've grown up with it. and they are unbelievably resilient in that respect. And I think that they would cope. And I think my daughter is very interested in politics, genuinely. And I think she's seen it from so many different angles.

37:23I think that I was probably just very ill-equipped for it and just probably too naive, too trusting, too stupid, whatever. But for me, it just destroyed me on so many different levels.

37:41Ed Balls: I worry so much about the state of our politics and are we going to inspire the next generation to go into politics. And if the good guys don't go into politics, the bad guys take over. And, you know, I want you to say, you know, however hard it was, it was a really important calling and you should go into it. And you say it's toxic. I just think it is. And you say, you're welcome to it. I'm stopping Sarah. Sarah, don't say that. It's a democracy. You have to understand this is my heart in this book. It's not my head necessarily and it's a mixture of both. But that's how my heart feels. Partly because it was broken.

38:18I feel that, you know, possibly, but I feel that this was a, you know, for me at that stage, towards the end, being a politician was just an act of self-heart. it was just like banging your head against a wall and just you know carrying on going despite the fact that you're turning your head into pulp so just that that was how I felt at that stage and I think I see I think I still feel like that a little bit but I think that one of the difficulties with politics in today's world is the sort of framework within which it exists which is this sort of absolutely relentless 24-hour social media, total scrutiny, etc., etc., you know, you can't do anything, you're supposed to be.

39:03And that is very difficult. And I think it's giving us different types of people as politicians, because you have to be a certain type of person to survive that level of brutality, really, genuinely. You know, you've got to be very thick-skinned. And that's why I think we're seeing the emergence of people like, you know, Trump and blah, blah, and all these people, Faraj. These people are, you know, they have many talents, I suppose, depending on your point of view, but they are also Teflon. They're not people who feel things particularly deeply, or maybe they do, but they're not soft. And I think sometimes it's nice to have a bit of softness.

39:46Because, you know, sorry, just let me finish, because the world is full of people who are a bit like me you know not perfect a bit useless a bit sort of vulnerable and if all you have in politicians is the sort of people who can who can who can cope with a level of brutality you're not you know they're not gonna they're not gonna have any

40:10Ed Balls: sympathy for those people the thing i was gonna say is that's your strength your strength in the book and as a columnist is your humanness and how could you not be a good politician if you're human but i wouldn't can you really be a good politician if you're not i look at this book and i think you know you've written it's always dangerous in a hardback to have the final chapter called the epilogue yes because when the paperback comes out there's more write another epilogue i need you to write a second epilogue where you think about in the end okay how important is politics and do we need the young generation to be in it and is it really politics fault maybe it's not the fault of politics but it is someone you know we need to change the way we do our politics so that we can allow different types of people to exist within it.

40:54Because it can't just be a lot of very angry men shouting at each other all the time, which is what it feels to me that it is like at the moment. That's right. And I just, you know, it's fine. But that's one type of person. And most people are not like that. Not everyone is like that. And you need to represent everyone in politics.

41:18Ed Balls: The Sarah Vine Manifesto being written for the future of politics, for the epilogue to the epilogue. How Not to Be a Political Wife, a memoir by Sarah Vine. It's orange. It's such a great summer read. And once you start, you don't stop. And thank you for talking to me today. Thank you. That was such an interesting conversation about what is a compelling book to read. In a moment, George is going to be back for a conversation we recorded recently about the Whip's Office. That's after this break.

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43:35Ed Balls: Welcome back to this summer edition of Political Currency. And we're both here with you while you're enjoying your summer musing on a political topic which we hope you'll find fun and enjoyable yes that's right and what we're going to talk about this week is the whips office or the whips in parliament uh which of course i think anyone listening to this uh because they probably have an interest in politics would have heard of but they won't necessarily know exactly you know who are the whips how do they operate uh what's the purpose and do they actually fulfill that purpose because i have my doubts which we're going to come on to so just like so by way of background what are whip whips are members of parliament either on the opposition side or the government side because both of the parties and indeed the the smaller parties have whips and they are people who are responsible for managing the parliamentary party particularly in parliament and they are responsible for managing the business in the chamber of the House of Commons itself.

44:38Ed Balls: So the government whips who are paid for that by you, the taxpayer, they are holding official positions in the government, often kind of obscure court titles that still exist to this day. And they are responsible for making sure that at certain moments votes are called and motions are put and that the business happens and the votes are counted accurately because they also count the votes and announce the result of the votes. And the opposition whips are responsible for, to some extent, engaging in that, but sometimes also throwing the government off course by doing unexpected tricks and using the kind of tactics of the chamber to advance the opposition's case.

45:21Ed Balls: so that's what the whips are they also serve as a kind of personnel department they advise the leadership of the parties on who's doing well who's doing not so well particularly in the junior ranks where perhaps the party leader hasn't seen them in action so much as they might have done for their senior cabinet or shadow cabinet posts and i guess the final thing i'd say is you know the whips have been around for a very long time since at least the 18th century the whips themselves the term comes from like fox hunting from whippers in who keep the hounds together these are people on horses who keep the hounds together in a fox hunt and enot powell uh you know obviously a kind of leading parliamentarian not everyone's cup of tea but uh he said the whip's office were the sewers of parliament but of course where would cities be without their sewers i think the point he made was that they you don't particularly want to inspect them but they're important that they're there so that that's my attempt to summarize the whips office and whips what do you do you agree disagree what have i left out probably i've left out some things i agree but i'm going to um see i think there was a bit of a stereotypical myth about um whips and the the chief whip partly um that enoch powell quote stands up um but if you think of you know francis urquhart in the michael Dobbs novel.

46:42Ed Balls: House of Cards. In House of Cards, which Gavin Williamson played to a bit. The idea of the scheming, blackmailing, controlling, coercing, you know, that it's like an aggressive enforcement role. And I think that misses the subtlety of what the Whips and the Chief Whip does. Because on the one hand, you know, in a parliamentary system you have to get your team to vote together there is collective responsibility and you have to have discipline and to get your backbenchers to vote with you and i'm sure sometimes a pressure is applied but on the other hand in our system our parliamentary parties are your coalitions of interests the prime minister is only the prime minister appointing the chief whip because they have the support of the backbenchers and therefore if the prime minister decides to act in a simply arrogant coercing heavy way through the persona of their chief whip the danger is that they lose control that the people rebel they say we're not going to be part of this and therefore actually what the chief whip is also is um an arm around the shoulder not somebody who is fully signed up to every detail of the government's agenda but instead saying to backbenchers what are your concerns what are you worried about let me find a way through this let me find a compromise they're listeners they are they are a way of sending back information to the prime minister and the center about what is going right and what is going wrong and they have to have a little bit of kind of independence they have to be sponge-like in their ability to absorb what is really going on and not to be you know to have an element of them which sort of stands slightly outside the executive they're not fully a member of the cabinet and that's for a reason because they're partly also a bit of a shop steward for the backbenchers and if you don't have a chief whip who plays both those roles, then the government doesn't function as well.

48:54Ed Balls: Yeah, I agree with that. Although, of course, it's very hard to find someone who does all those things. You know, that's your ideal chief whip. And I think you often have to make compromises to you, don't you, between someone who's kind of, I don't mean this in a particular kind of, you know, it's going to come across as a bit sexist, but I'll use the phrase, one of the boys, one of the boys and girls, you know, one of the, like the sort of shop steward of the parliamentary party. But, you know, quite often you don't want to be told as prime minister, oh, well, they won't wear it or whatever. You want to hear it's going to be difficult, but then you want a chief whip who says, but I can, I think we can get it through and this is the way we're going to get it through.

49:33Ed Balls: So I think you don't want just of the voice of the parliamentary party because you do get, you know, often the party itself will appoint, you know, in the case of the conservatives, the chair of the 1922 committee or the chair of the parliamentary labor party you know the chief whip needs to be also a kind of tactician for the government and utterly loyal to the prime minister i think when you have any kind of cigarette paper between the leader and the chief whip then that's like spell a lot of trouble for the for the leader um and quite often i think prime ministers don't pay enough attention to who's going to be their chief whip.

50:14Ed Balls: It's sometimes a bit of an afterthought. And I think the other thing, you certainly, I'm speaking for the kind of conservative experience, there's, you know, quite often the deputy chief whip can be the bruiser and the enforcer. The chief whip themselves probably shouldn't be that person. They've got to be a more intelligent engager in the cabinet discussion and say, look, it's all very well we're having this discussion. We're not, you know, this is going to be extremely hard to get through parliament. And then you want the bruisers, you know to to go out i mean someone who actually played both roles when i was in parliament i was a junior whip maybe i'll come on and talk about that in a moment but you know patrick mclaughlin was the bruiser deputy chief whip when i was a junior whip so he was the guy who would get these kind of you know young tory mps and almost metaphorically kind of hoist them up against the wall and say you vote the way you're supposed to vote but then when he became the chief whip You know, he changed into a much more subtle and kind of interesting contributor, which is why he then later was promoted into various cabinet roles.

51:21But I don't know in the Labour, I call the impression watching the kind of Labour whips, there was always a kind of bruiser person who was like the deputy or number three, wasn't there?

51:32Ed Balls: definitely and um alan campbell who's now labour's chief whip was deputy chief whip for a long time very much um a tough guy tommy mcavoy now in the lords was kind of brilliant at playing that role many others as well i'm not saying that there should be a cigarette paper between the prime minister and the chief whip you're right that's a disaster but that doesn't mean that the chief whip needs to be seen in parliament as simply you know a factional enforcing mouthpiece of the prime minister although there are different times when you need different types of chief whip so when i think back to the labor times in government and opposition there were times when um there was clarity of purpose that you the government is kind of is moving forward there's a working majority and you need a chief whip who can kind of reach across the the party in a you know a not partisan way people like um jeff hoon or jackie smith when they were chief whip later in opposition rosie winterton they they um they wouldn't be people you would pigeonhole into one faction they were quite broad in their reach but then there's other times where the government the prime minister is under pressure think of gordon brown 2008 to 2010 and think of tony blair after 2001 with the rebellions around tuition fees and foundation hospitals when actually you need your chief whip to be a bit more of a enforcer and in those periods for um tony blair it was hillary armstrong very much seen as a tony blair person after 2008 his second time as chief whip nick brown he'd been chief whip 97 98 also very much a kind of a gordon brown person kind of snuffing out plots kind of delivering discipline but okay but let me ask you a question about that you see i think as i understand it but tell me if i'm wrong there was some upset in the gordon brown camp that nick brown was removed by tony blair as chief whip after in like the 97 98 period after a year or whatever it was in government but you can totally understand if you're tony blair and this is not to disparage nick brown nick brown was a very effective person but he was clearly gordon brown's person and even though the kind of brown blair thing was working really well still in 97 98 nevertheless if you're the prime if you're the prime minister blair wouldn't you want a chief whip whose first loyalty is to you not to the Chancellor?

54:09Ed Balls: Yes, but I think that describes the trajectory of the government in the first year. Because I think if you go back to 10 years before, the end of the 80s into the early 90s, when the Blair-Brown modernising partnership was very strong, in that period, Nick Brown was, you know, a person for the both of them. I mean, he was close to both of them. I don't think he would have been seen as Brown more than Blair. Once you get to the leadership election, then he is seen as more Brown than Blair in 1994. But Tony chooses him as his chief whip in order to signal that the Brown-Blair partnership is continuing.

54:53Ed Balls: This is somebody Tony had been close to as well. And then in the 1998 reshuffle, July 1998, one year into government, the sacking of Nick Brown is seen as Tony distancing himself from Gordon Brown, there being a different operation. And so I think his objective in 97 and his objective in 1998 were different. And he put Anne Taylor in to be the chief whip to begin with. Anne Taylor was not seen as a factional figure at all, I would say. I mean, she was kind of old right, but she reached across the party. He didn't choose a Tony Blair person. but by that point it was done in a way which was seen to be a removal of a gordon brown person one by the time you get to 2001 hillary armstrong becomes chief whip by that point it's evolved to a clearly tony blair person so that is how it changes through through time but and that that is reflecting the underlying nature of the politics and so at different times prime ministers choose chief whips for different purposes so i was the junior whip and so that that's the most recently appointed whip in the conservative.

56:00Ed Balls: I don't know if they have the same in the Labour Whip's office, but the junior whip is the most junior whip, as the name suggests. And I was absolutely thrilled. This was my first appointment. And it put me in great stead later in my kind of political career that I'd been in the whip's office. And there was a special tie you could wear forever after if you'd been an ex-member of either the Conservative or the Labour Whip's office. They commissioned jointly the same time. That's the other thing we should say, shouldn't there? There's quite a lot of chat between the two whips' offices, even if the parties are going hammer and tongs at each other and the leaders, you know, the leader of the Conservative Party doesn't speak at all to the leader of the Labour Party.

56:40Ed Balls: But the whips are often collaborating, just making sure things are going to have working in Parliament. And to explain that a little bit more, there's a phrase, I think this still applies in 2025, absolutely did when we were in government, called the usual channels and the usual channels is a person who is a civil servant working in the office of the government chief whip who is the um the the official means of communication between the government whips and the opposition whips so there'll be a political conversation happening between the chief whip and the labor chief whip both of whom are salaried jobs i think in opposition the only people who get a salary are the leader of the opposition and the shadow chief whip because they play such a vital role in making the government business work but in terms of negotiating how in fact the government business would work and how parliament would function in a way which um which is coherent that's all done through the usual channels and it's this this phrase and i remember too many years to work out what was going on i remember saying to gordon what does this mean and he explained it to me.

57:50Ed Balls: It was Mona McLean. And people would say, what will we do about this? And somebody would say, well, look, I think we should just leave that to the usual channels. And you'd think, well, okay, I've no idea what that means, but they must know what they're talking about. But that actually meant the chief whip speaking to this key pivotal figure in the government whip's office to make things happen. Yeah, it would happen every week. There would be a conversation between the opposition chief whip and the government chief whip, or as you say, this very unusual civil service position, which often the person did for like 20 years or something.

58:23Ed Balls: I mean, they were the people who do that job as a civil servant are very sort of special part of the British state. So as the junior whip, you know, my responsibility is that there's always a whip in the chamber from both sides, both the opposition and the government, you know, whatever's happening, whatever time of night. So quite often if you turn on, you know, Parliament Channel at like 11 o 'clock at night when you have what's called the German debate, There'll be like one MP speaking, one minister responding, and then two whips sitting there. So there's always a whip. So the junior whip, like the other whips, does their time in the chamber.

59:01Ed Balls: You make sure that, you know, in the case of it being an opposition whip as I was, you object to government business. Because if someone doesn't shout object, it all goes through on the nod. And then, like, the opposition's agreed with the government. So the opposition whip has to say object to force a vote to show that the opposition doesn't agree. And then the voting happens and you tell MPs, you know, this will shock our listeners, but, you know, there's a vote on. These MPs have been somewhere in Parliament on the parliamentary estate doing something else. They haven't paid any attention to what's being voted on or what the debate is.

59:37Ed Balls: They rush in to vote and all they need to be told is which way are we voting, right? and they literally have no idea what they're voting on and and the whips point them in the right direction and then when they're all corralled in the either the eye lobby or the no lobby and the doors are locked which they are to stop the voting then the MPs file out they pass by a commons clerk who will tick off their name and alphabet you sort of split into three streams don't you based on where your surname comes in the alphabet and then you get count through the door and and as you go through the door there's an opposition whip a government whip who count one two three and as junior whip i did tons of this and the other thing the conservative junior whip has to do is you we would have a a weekly whips meeting and we'd have these the conservative whips have said these silver goblets that uh had been handed down from history like the because there's lots of different names there's like the pairing whip the assistant chief whip the you know the and the junior whip and the chief whip and deputy chief and they all had their own silver goblet and all the names of people who had done that job before for previous decades are engraved on the silver cups and when i was junior whip i used to look at it go look john major was junior whip and he became prime minister and the junior whip often and they do go on to have a good parliamentary career and but you also had to do the washing up review of the junior whip So I was given all the silver goblets at the end, which had champagne in them.

1:01:07Ed Balls: We all drank champagne at this meeting. My job was to wash them up. There's one other thing we should explain, which is every week when you're an MP, a piece of paper comes around on a Thursday, and that is called the whip, or at least on the Labour side, it was called the whip. And that would be the government business for the next week, all the different votes which would happen. and then the ones which you didn't have to be there for there'd be one line under it so that's a one-line whip and that's kind of like optional anytime the government required you to turn up to vote for the government line there would be three thick lines under that vote on this single sheet of paper and that was called a three-line whip i think there is a two-line whip but it's almost never used it sort of means kind of optional but you really should be there but a three-line whip So when people say it's a three-line whip, that refers to the three lines on the piece of paper saying, next Thursday at seven o 'clock, you have got to vote.

1:02:04Ed Balls: And to miss a three-line whip would be absolutely terrible. Yeah, I think the other, we should, while we're doing these terms, shouldn't we? So if you lose the whip, that's when it's either withdrawn from you or you can resign the whip. That means you're no longer a Labour MP or you're no longer a Conservative MP and you no longer receive those instructions on how to vote. And I think this originated in the 18th century. There weren't parties in the way we would understand the day. There were factions. And in order to organize the faction, you'd say, look, we're all going to agree to vote in the same way when this thing comes up.

1:02:35Ed Balls: And that's how the whipping started, isn't it? It's an interesting thing, though, isn't it? If you have the whip withdrawn, you are still a member of the Labour or Conservative Party, unless you are thrown out of the party. You mean you're like a regular member? Yeah. But you've also still been elected as a Labour or Conservative MP. I mean, that was on the ballot. But what happens is that you no longer have membership of the parliamentary party. Does that mean that you're no longer a Labour MP? I mean, I guess that's sort of true. Yeah, definitely. Yes. You're an independent MP and whether you like or not, and of course, some people choose this route.

1:03:12Ed Balls: And I think crucially, you don't receive, you're no longer in receipt of the whip, which means you no longer receive these instructions every week on how the party is voting which as i say i think originated from how these factions were formed they should also say there's something called the payroll which is these are the in the government the ministers and the minister's assistants the parliamentary private secretaries who are also mps not paid and they are expected to be around the whole time that's a payroll whereas if you're a backbench mp you know you've got more freedom to be kind of you know you might be there instructed to be there might instructed not to be there so i'm going to end with like consequential chief whips because often they're behind the scenes and you know they don't really make a massive impact on day-to-day politics but i've got i've got two good examples for you and i was thinking of so the first was before my time but it's often said it maybe is unfair that tim renton who was margaret thatcher's chief whip in 1990 you know he was sort of reluctant chief where he didn't, you know, he was much more suited to be a minister than a chief whip, because he was a smart guy, but wasn't that interested in the kind of machinery of parliament.

1:04:27Ed Balls: And, you know, that was fatal to Margaret Thatcher, that she didn't have at the time when she faced a challenge, a chief whip who told her what was actually going on. And she had no idea that her position was in such mortal threat. And so, you know, I thought he's a pretty consequential chief whip and then we can't in this summer when maybe people are sitting at the beach reading sarah vine's book go without commenting on michael gove's appointment as chief whip by david cameron which david cameron saw as removing him from the front line on education where his reforms were important but had become you know very controversial with teachers and now we had to win an election but he was very close david thought very close to michael i'll make michael the chief whip and there's a bit of michael that loves the kind of dark arts of politics but michael took as a demotion because as you said earlier in this uh in this conversation the chief whip's not a member of the cabinet and members of the cabinet are paid more than other ministers and so that was a a cut in the gov family income and seen as which probably contributed to to our departure from the the European Union, right, a few years later?

1:05:43Ed Balls: So if you want a kind of butterfly wing in the Amazon theory of like, you know, if the butterfly flaps its wing, it causes a storm in the North Atlantic. You know, so Michael Gove being appointed chief whip means that he's less attached to Cameron, which means when Brexit comes along, he decides to support in a prominent way the Brexit campaign. that gives intellectual credibility to it because until that point it didn't have that and then boris johnson says i can't be left out uh if goes going i've got to go with him and britain leaves the european union as a result of that chief whip appointment that is why this conversation about chief whips and whips has been so important because they can you know they can change the course of history thank you for listening to this special summer edition of political currency yeah uh we're going to be back with emqs on monday of course if you're a gold or kitchen cabinet member you get to listen to that early and ad free tomorrow and you can find the link to subscribe in our show notes we hope you keep listening to political currency throughout the summer and don't forget you can watch us on youtube and we're always available wherever you get your podcasts yes and don't forget to review our shows it helps us reach more listeners and And remember, you can reach us with your voice notes and questions at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk.

1:07:06Ed Balls: Enjoy the summer. See you soon. Yep. See you soon.

1:07:18Ed Balls: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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