SIMON WALTERS: Sasha Swire left out claims her Tory minister husband had an affair in her new book

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The wife of ex-minister Hugo Swire fled to David Cameron in ‘distress’ after claiming her ‘pig’ of a husband had an affair. 

Sasha Swire, who has lifted the lid on sex and political shenanigans in the Tory party, reveals in her new book that she dashed to Chequers, the prime minister’s official country residence, when her marriage was in crisis. 

Her ‘world was falling apart’ because of her husband but Mr Cameron and wife Samantha ‘slowly brought me back to life’, she writes. Mr Cameron even allegedly gave Sir Hugo a ‘ticking off’. 

Lady Swire, 57, does not state in her explosive book, Diary of an MP’s Wife, that this incident related to an alleged affair involving her husband, 60. However, the Mail has been told by multiple reliable sources that she has said Sir Hugo had an extramarital relationship when he was a minister in Mr Cameron’s government. 

Invited to respond, Lady Swire told the Mail cryptically last night: ‘Three sauces [sic]? Is that Bearnaise? Peppercorn? Or Marie Rose?’ Asked for a more detailed response, she did not reply. 

In her book, Lady Swire lavishes praise on ‘family man’ Mr Cameron for saving her marriage. She salutes his ‘integrity’, arguing he will be judged well by history, before adding pointedly, ‘But he has been a good friend to me as well.’ 

This is the preface to her moving account of the day she fled to Chequers as a result of her ‘pig’ of a husband. 

She writes: ‘When in 2013 I felt my carefully constructed world was falling apart around me – ‘H’ [her name for Sir Hugo] being a pig and always away – I remember ringing him up in a distressed state and he told me to just get in a car and come down to Chequers, where Sam and he slowly brought me back to life. I can hear him now, ringing up ‘H’ to give him a severe ticking off, with me smiling on in gratitude.’ 

Lady Swire’s book describes a series of blazing marital rows between the couple – and flirtatious behaviour by both. A year before she turned to the Camerons in despair, the couple’s marriage was ‘in a difficult place’ and she ‘barely saw’ her husband, Lady Swire writes. 

Sir Hugo told Mr Cameron he feared his wife would to divorce him. Lady Swire says her husband joked he had ‘fallen in love’ with a ‘gorgeous’ 30-year-old female South American diplomat. 

Mr Cameron yesterday admitted that Lady Swire’s diaries, recounting his political rivalries and alleged sexualised comments, were ‘kind of embarrassing’. 

The new book recounts a series of marital disputes beween Lady Swire and her husband. She says that in July 2012: ‘I barely see him any more; he’s always in Ireland or the House or working in the constituency, and when he’s home he hardly speaks to me. It is midnight when he finally comes to hide in the corner of my cage, but it’s not from calm, it’s from exhaustion. 

‘I flare up. It has an effect, because the next day he texts Kate [Baroness Kate Fall, Mr Cameron’s Number 10 ‘gatekeeper’] saying if he is not brought back from exile [a reference to his job as Northern Ireland minister] at the next reshuffle his wife is going to divorce him.’ Number 10 promised Sir Hugo he will get a new job. 

When the Camerons and Swires holidayed together in Cornwall in 2012, Mr Cameron asked Sir Hugo over dinner, ‘How do you cope? With her? Your wife I mean?’ 

Sir Hugo was duly promoted to Foreign Office minister in the same month. 

Lady Swire also recounted how in October 2012 her husband ‘looked guilty’ and declared to her: ‘I’ve fallen in love.’ 

‘Oh yes, who is it this time?’ she asked. ‘The Panamanian ambassador – she’s gorgeous, and just 30,’ he replied. ‘Thirty! Am I getting old?’ exclaimed Lady Swire, who was then aged 51. ‘Yes, Hasta la vista, baby!’ he said. 

Lady Swire says she was ‘due to meet’ the Panamanian ambassador but her husband told his wife her attendance was ‘cancelled’ on the grounds that it was ‘inappropriate’ because they would be ‘conducting bilateral talks’. 

‘Fine, I say, carry on flirting,’ she writes. 

Later, Sir Hugo was invited to Buckingham Palace by Prince Andrew, where ‘somehow conversation comes around to the Panamanian ambassador’. 

‘Have you met her?’ asked the Prince. ‘Have I!’ replied Sir Hugo. On another occasion, Lady Swire flirted at a Palace banquet during a Mexican state visit in March 2015, the diaries recount. 

She tells an unnamed ‘smoothie’ that she is ‘a very fed up MP’s wife’ because her husband is too busy to take her on holiday. 

She talks of ‘getting a lover to take me’, and they exchange banter about him taking her to Corsica. The ‘smoothie’ offers to take her there in his private plane. When she says she hates flying he says she can go in his ‘super yacht’. 

When Sir Hugo asked her what she was saying ‘to that man,’ she replied: ‘He’s taking me to Corsica.’ She jokes she doesn’t care if he ‘bangs her up in his harem,’ she is going. 

Meanwhile, at a dinner hosted by the Camerons in November 2015 Lady Swire tells shocked guests: ‘I enjoy sex much more in my 50s than in my 40s.’ 

In 2015, during the ‘Sexminster scandal’, she notes: ‘Looking back on my own younger days the only person who patted me on the bum on greeting me was one David Cameron.’ 

At the time when a number of MPs were being accused of sexual misdemeanours, Lady Swire says she was ‘assured’ by Sir Hugo ‘he has not partaken in any groping himself’. 

‘Time will tell,’ she reflects, adding lightheartedly: ‘He is that age where he needs more of it and is getting less.’ 

But despite all their sniping, Lady Swire says her husband is the hero of her book for ‘riding the political tiger’. 

Elsewhere in the book, Lady Swire claims she was propositioned by Mr Cameron in 2011 when their families were on holiday in Cornwall. ‘At one point, on the coastal path, he (Cameron) asks me not to walk ahead of him. 

‘Why?’ I ask, and he says: ‘Because that scent you are wearing is affecting my pheromones. It makes me want to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one!’ 

When the Mail went to her home in Devon last night, she declined to comment. 

When asked for a comment on the claims that Lady Swire had included a coded reference to an alleged affair involving her husband in her book, her literary agent Caroline Dawnay replied, ‘Have fun’, and put the phone down. 

Sir Hugo did not reply to requests for a response. 

 

• Diary of an MP’s Wife by Sasha Swire is published by Little, Brown, on September 24.