Michael Gove and Sarah Vine: the political Prince Andrew and Fergie?

The audience was of a certain vintage (Swire at one point started proffering advice to wannabe MPs before noting how “most of you here are better equipped for the House of Lords than the House of Commons”) and, even on a sweltering summer’s day, very pale. If Matthew Goodwin was wondering where London’s “white Britons” had got to, here they were.

Vine talked about the difficulties of being the children of a politician – one of her own, she said, had been turned down for two jobs on account of who his father was. “Sometimes I think if you’re the child of a politician, everyone thinks they know everything about you, assumptions are made about you,” she said. “We’ve had this with our kids, haven’t we? Everyone thinks they’re Tories. Everyone thinks that they’re incredibly rich and they’re Tories and they like to go around whipping horses or whatever Tories are supposed to do…”

“Not just horses,” added Gove.

Swire talked about having to deal with the media, noting how “a rather esteemed journalist, who shan’t be mentioned, said the other day that I was the worst ever in history, probably, minister for Europe”. “That was Nadine Dorries,” interjected Johnson. “I was never minister for Europe. I was minister for almost everywhere else, but never Europe,” pointed out Swire (“esteemed journalist” Dorries last month used her Daily Mail column to claim Swire, who she loathes, “never reached a role higher than that of junior minister for Europe”).

It was Swire who won the loudest round of applause all night after defending the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. Removing them was “an act of constitutional vandalism… it does seem to me profoundly un-British to turn around to the 90 or so still there, some of whom are doing an extraordinarily good job, and say, ‘actually, we’re getting rid of you’.” The Spectator readers, many of whom still think the 1832 Reform Act was a step too far, liked that.

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Gove talked about the particular obstacles female politicians faced. “Whatever one thinks of her politically, I think the whole ‘Rachel from Accounts’ thing wouldn’t be deployed if she were a man,” he said of chancellor Rachel Reeves. He then did a straw poll with hands of whether the audience thought she deserved the soubriquet or not and they responded overwhelmingly that yes, yes she did.

The floor thrown open, one member of the audience bravely shared her story of a challenging marriage to a Labour MP, diplomatically not naming him, only for Swire, apparently forgetting he was wearing a microphone, to work it out and whisper to his fellow panellists “Austin Mitchell”. And an actual journalist in the audience, Charlotte Eagar, was on hand to ask the big question – er, what advice Gove would give her ahead of an interview with the Scottish Conservatives next week as she seeks a parliamentary seat.

Another man, perhaps harking back to fruitier times at the Spectator, began his question “I want to talk about sex” before asking Swire about an anecdote in his wife Sasha’s book Diary of an MP’s Wife in which, taken by the scent of her perfume, David Cameron said he wanted to push her “into the bushes and give you one”. 

“I would just point out that, actually, in terms of logistics, I was walking with them, Samantha [Cameron] was walking with them, and about five security men were walking around them, so it wouldn’t be the most discreet pounce that anyone had ever made,” harrumphed Swire. “Most men I’ve ever met would love to push my wife into the bushes, some in the hope there was a cliff on the other side.”

And others were taken by the good relationship between the one-time Goves. It was “unbelievable to think you’re a divorced couple”, said one woman, suggesting they co-write a book on how to divorce amicably

“We’ve had a very good divorce. Better than our marriage,” conceded Vine. “Why don’t you get remarried?” asked Johnson. “No,” responded Vine firmly, before remembering to add: “Michael has a very lovely partner.”

Another man, a head of a Church of England school, told them: “You are the model divorced couple… you remind me of the Duke and Duchess of York.” Just the comparison they were looking for, surely!

And another questioner, finally, had an accent so thick it was unclear what he was talking about, save for the fact it appeared to refer to someone putting his finger up the Spectator editor’s bottom. Gove did, to be fair, begin to ask the gentleman to repeat it, only for Johnson to interject: “Michael… don’t.”