Tory MP’s wife’s tell-all diary reveals the day David Cameron wanted to take her into the bushes

The wife of former Tory MP Sir Hugo Swire’s explosive new diary reveals the day that David Cameron wanted to take her into the bushes because he was enamoured by her perfume and how Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi had a two-way mirror installed in his official residency.

Extracts from Sasha Swire’s amazing tell-all diary reveal how the Conservative Prime Minister asked Mr Swire’s wife not to walk ahead of him on a coastal path in Polzeath because her scent was ‘affecting my pheromones’. 

Writing about the alleged incident, which Mrs Swire claims occurred in August 2011 on a three-day break to Cornwall, she claims: ‘At one point, on the coastal path, he (David 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!” 

‘This is not flirting by the prime minister. This is probably lewdness. But hell, I’m so starved of masculine interest at my age it made me smile.’ 

Mrs Swire’s book Diary of an MP’s Wife: Inside and Outside Power, which is being serialised in The Times, also recounts a dinner in Dorneywood, the Chancellor’s country house, where Mr Cameron shares anecdotes about foreign leaders including ‘the Sarkozys’ fake marital displays’ and Italian premier Berlusconi’s two-way mirror.

‘I sit next to Dave at dinner. He gives us wonderful vignettes of the Sarkozys’ fake marital displays and of being given a tour around Rome’s equivalent of No 10 by Berlusconi,’ she writes. 

‘When they come to his bedroom he points at a Renaissance two-way mirror above the bed and with his characteristic grin says, “Well, they didn’t have porn channels in those days, did they?”‘

Mrs Swire, who worked as a journalist before taking on the role of political researcher for her husband’s office from 2001 to 2009, also reveals George Osborne’s motivations for never playing croquet – not wanting to be seen lounging on the job as Chancellor during a time of austerity.

Describing Dorneywood when it was taken over by John Prescott, she writes:  It seems half of his family moved in here at some point, and why not? Then there was the outcry over photographs of him playing croquet here when Tony Blair was out of the country and the deputy PM was supposed to be in charge. George says he doesn’t dare take out the croquet set, which now sits rather famously in the loggia.’

Mrs Swires, 57, offers a candid account of life as an MP’s wife and lifts the lid on the inner Tory circles thanks to the secret diary she kept for 20 years.

During one entry early in the book, which is set to hit the bookshelves later this month, the former MP’s wife describes how she is scared that others do not see how the now Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a ‘calculating machine’. 

She writes: ‘It scares the s*** out of me that people don’t see [Johnson] as the calculating machine he really is.’

However after she and her husband are invited to a dinner at No 10. by the Prime Minister, Mrs Swire comes round to him and goes on to describe how Mr Johnson didn’t want them to go. She adds: ‘Boris just came across as someone who is desperately lonely and unhappy on the inside.’ 

Mrs Swire, the daughter of former Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, also reveals how only ‘ten per cent’ of politics was ‘above the surface’ and there were many others, including the wives of MPs and civil servants, who were all a part of the equation.

Speaking to The Sunday Times she later explained: ‘So you have these show ponies – the MPs – at the top, but there are certain wives – Samantha [Cameron], me – we were all part of the equation.’ 

In her tell-all book, Mrs Swire narrates the tale of her husband bunking off parliament to go shooting and addresses his joke about people on benefits during a Tory fundraising event in 2015.

During the event at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair, London, covert filming showed Mr Swire – a former director of Sotheby’s – trying to persuade a guest, who is sitting on the same table as Iain Duncan Smith, to increase his bid.

In her book, Mrs Swire goes on to question the condemnation former Prime Minister David Cameron received for his resignation honours list, asking why the politician was called out for listing his cronies if he wanted to.  

Her comments come years after Mr Cameron came under fire from senior Conservatives for his resignation honours list of gongs for his friends and allies in 2016. The list of of 48 recommendations included a gong for Isabel Spearman, a personal aide to Samantha Cameron.

Mrs Swire first decided to email the extracts of her diary to a literary agent after her husband stood down in 2019. Within three weeks she found herself signing a non-fiction book deal and becoming a debut author. 

Old Etonion Sir Hugo was MP for East Devon from 2001-2009 and also served as minister for the foreign office. He left the Commons on November 6, 2019.