David Cameron was once like a large MAN-BABY after the Brexit vote, says SARAH VINE in her new bombshell memoir. Here she finds when the ex-PM mentioned with clenched enamel: ‘For f***’s sake, Sarah…it’s important to get your husband beneath keep watch over’

Back when Michael Gove and I were given engaged, pals expressed marvel that my fiance, arch-Eurosceptic that he was once recognized to be, must have fallen for a girl like me, who grew up in Italy.

The solution then, as now, was once that Michael wasn’t a sceptic in a Little Englander sense, believing that British was once highest. He beloved Europe – particularly its vineyards – however simply didn’t need Britain to be run by means of an unelected cabal in Brussels.

I should confess, I’d at all times concept we Brits had to lean in with Brussels. Get in there, acquire affect, double down – and alter issues from the interior as a substitute of flouncing off in a huff.

On a weekend ruin in Antwerp – probably the most closing glad reminiscences I’ve of my marriage – it had even befell to me that my husband may well be the easiest particular person to show round Britain’s courting with the EU from the interior.

Blissfully tripping across the cobbled streets of this Belgian jewel, I fantasised luckily about shifting the circle of relatives to Europe, in regards to the youngsters studying to talk French, of returning to lifestyles as an expat. Little did I do know that this was once now turning into the furthest factor from my husband’s thoughts…

Michael by no means if truth be told sought after a European referendum, particularly so quickly after the 2014 Scottish referendum, which was once appallingly shut. He’d at all times been very transparent with Dave Cameron that referendums have been dangerously polarising and created extra issues than they resolved – and he steered very specifically by contrast one.

Nevertheless, Dave insisted that the eurosceptics would by no means quieten down except they have been thrown a bone, and then they might all, just like the Scots, close up for a era (cue hole laughter).

Which aspect would Michael enhance? My first stirrings of unease got here in August 2015, on a ruin with pals in Norfolk. During that weekend, Michael was once musing – in that summary method of his – about whether or not the United Kingdom must if truth be told keep in a industry organisation that didn’t appear to wish to concentrate to it. Both our host and I attempted onerous to steer him that he shouldn’t get over excited by means of ideas of resistance to the Cameron/Osborne juggernaut. After all, the Remain verdict was once a shoo-in.

‘Mhu-mmph. Mhu-mmph,’ mentioned Michael. This is what I name his ‘listening-but-not-hearing sound’ – a superbly conciliatory however opaque mix of an affirmative yes-mm, a considerate hmmm and, after all, an ambiguous hmmph finishing. It’s a legitimate this is Michael to a tee. Non-confrontational, now not if truth be told disagreeing, even (to the uninitiated) showing to agree, however in the long run totally non-committal.

Our host and I, then again, have been happy that we’d headed this actual Gove second of highbrow free-ranging off on the go. In the light that day, there was once not anything concrete about his stance, no outright opposition, simply a weighing-up.

There have been without a doubt no nefarious plots, no collecting of darkish forces, regardless of Nadine Dorries’s maximum torrid imaginings. Or no less than if there have been, I by no means had sight of them. Which is why, when Dave Cameron cornered me at teatime on New Year’s Eve 2015, I felt fully at ease.

We have been cosied up – simply the 2 folks – at the sofas in entrance of the huge hearth within the nice corridor at Chequers, idly chatting. ‘Everything’s going to be OK, isn’t it, Sarah?’ Dave mentioned unexpectedly.

‘With Michael, I mean. And the referendum?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ I reassured him. ‘You know what Michael’s like.

‘He likes to noodle things through and he’s at all times believed that we needn’t be intimidated by means of lifestyles out of doors Europe, however in the long run he’s onside.’

I’d forgotten two the most important elements: Michael’s circle of relatives background and his wish to make a distinction – to have a legacy.

He adored his adoptive oldsters, Ernest and Christine, and at all times felt that he owed it to each them and society to make it giant in lifestyles, to turn that theirs wasn’t a deficient selection, that he wasn’t going to waste this opportunity.

This wasn’t (simply) the standard flesh presser’s self-importance however a craving to face tall for his oldsters – his saviours. In the 1980s, his father have been compelled to promote his fish service provider’s trade as a result of the EU and the typical fisheries coverage, and that had left a deep mark at the teenage Michael.

The concept that just right, cast running males like Ernest, who’d by no means carried out anything else however the suitable factor, will have their lives and livelihoods upended by means of flabby fats cats at the Continent rightly riled him.

As his spouse, I must have understood Michael’s intensity of feeling. But, most likely as a result of my very own European slant, I failed to look how deep those explicit waters ran.

In reality, it wasn’t as regardless that he talked in regards to the referendum an terrible lot. Michael has at all times been an individual who lives inside of his personal head: convivial, pleasant, outgoing, sure, but in addition intensely non-public, fearsomely just right at compartmentalising. He’s additionally deeply non-confrontational, so none folks must had been shocked that this obvious compliance with Project Referendum wasn’t rather what it must had been.

He’d at all times had the tendency to keep away from war till the closing imaginable second, presenting opposite plans as a fait accompli, pronouncing ‘Surprise!’ with a large smile.

When I requested him afterwards why he hadn’t no less than mentioned with me the best way his ideas have been going, he flannelled me with communicate of in need of to spare me the drama of all of it. Which is fairly ironic.

I attempted over and over to introduce the topic of Dave and the way, if Michael determined to brazenly enhance Leave, the results for our courting with now not simply the Camerons however many different pals can be disastrous. I again and again advised him to have a decent dialog about all of it with the PM, to actually have it out with him, guy to guy. But the extra I driven, the extra Michael retreated into himself.

If he’d simply been fair with Dave and mentioned, ‘Look mate, I know what you’re seeking to do with this referendum and I utterly get it, however what it’s important to perceive about me is that the EU utterly screwed over my dad, and he by no means rather recovered, and for that I will by no means forgive them so for those who do pass forward, you wish to have to understand I received’t ever vote for the ones f***ers in Brussels’, I believe Dave would have understood.

If Michael had made it non-public, which it was once, and which Dave without a doubt felt later, it would had been OK. Instead he made it political. Which was once now not OK.

But again to the Brexit countdown. In my stupidity, I felt now not a qualm when the PM introduced, in January 2016, that his Ministers may just vote freely within the referendum. Yes, Michael had lengthy had eurosceptic perspectives, however he was once, in any case, one among Cameron’s right-hand males.

Silly me. Part of the difficulty, in fact, was once that each one Michael’s personal right-hand males – Dominic Cummings, everybody round him – have been dedicated Leavers.

So just about the entire reviews he was once getting at paintings have been one-sided. And I’ve regularly questioned if issues wouldn’t have taken a unique flip had Dave now not intentionally humiliated Michael so publicly by means of demoting him to Chief Whip when he was once Education Secretary.

After all, then again unpopular his training reforms, Michael have been doing what Dave sought after him to do at really extensive value to his personal political (and private) capital. He’d agreed in the beginning to the demotion however quickly modified his thoughts.

In truth, we’d realised turning into Chief Whip now not best intended Michael leaving the Cabinet, however – a lot more catastrophic, given the perilous state of our budget – that there’d be an annual pay reduce of greater than £36,000. Dave compelled throughout the demotion anyway. By treating my husband the best way he did, he demonstrated in no unsure phrases that he had no explicit loyalty in opposition to Michael, both as a pal or political best friend.

That was once the purpose, I believe, when the shard of ice entered Michael’s middle. He would by no means have long gone out of his strategy to harm the PM.

But when it got here to one thing that in point of fact mattered to him – on this case, the referendum – he wasn’t going to desert his ideas for somebody who’d now not best deserted him, but in addition very intentionally fed him to the wolves to save lots of his personal pores and skin.

Even so, the PM was once now not best his boss, he was once additionally an previous pal. It doesn’t get extra awkward than that. By mid-February, Michael was once locked in an inner fight of agonising proportions. He talked to his father, spent hours at the telephone with Dominic Cummings and MPs like Douglas Carswell (Ukip) and Owen Paterson (a number one eurosceptic). It was once at this level we had dinner, organized a couple of weeks previous, with Boris Johnson and his then spouse Marina at their area in Islington.

I had no sense in any respect at the evening that momentous choices have been being made. I without a doubt didn’t know that Boris was once having the grand existential disaster that he later claimed – even if I clearly knew that Brexit was once at the menu. Dinner was once a succulent slow-roast lamb, as I recall, plus lashings of fine pink wine.

It was once there, within the slight gloom of the dinner desk lights, that Boris and Michael noodled away, weighing up the professionals and cons of Boris becoming a member of the Leave marketing campaign. All those that’ve framed Boris’s determination as one of those ill-thought-out whim shall be disenchanted to understand that he was once forensic in wondering now not best the political practicalities of Leave, but in addition whether or not it was once, actually, legally imaginable. Timescales, financial penalties, industry choices, rules, Northern Ireland: those have been all within the combine.

I noticed no flibbertigibbetry that evening, none in any way. Boris sought the suggest of more than a few 3rd events – a Cabinet Minister, a attorney – barking loudly into his cellular (on speakerphone) in between mouthfuls, Michael listening in and sometimes contributing. It actually was once an excessively lawyerly and rather technical dialog.

As we tucked into the roast lamb, Marina and I spent the following 20 mins making an attempt to make dinner-party dialog with the opposite visitors in degree whispers, Boris shushing us each time we were given too loud.

Just some other tabletop faucet dance round the entire problems, I believed.

What astounds me as soon as once more, as I glance again at this level, is my naivety. I knew Michael was once suffering between his loyalty to Dave and his ideals.

I may just additionally see that Boris’s predicament was once extra self-centred, excited about what can be highest for him, however I had no concept how in my opinion they have been all taking it.

Meanwhile, Downing Street have been drafting in some soft-skills brokers – within the type of mutual pals – to paintings a Remain persuasion marketing campaign via an onslaught of texts to us, even a call for participation to beverages by means of Dave’s No 10 gatekeeper.

The message was once turning into transparent: don’t get above yourselves, you might be foot infantrymen, now not score officials like us, so simply get out excessive and do what we are saying, there’s a pleasant Gove.

That identical week, a pal of mine took place to be at Frances Osborne’s birthday celebration. When communicate grew to become to Michael’s imaginable defection, my pal overheard George Osborne spluttering: ‘But… but… we made Michael Gove. Who was he before? He owes us his whole bloody career! How can he not support us?’

Not best was once this patently, foully, unfaithful, however by no means have I heard so pithily proved our everlasting suspicion that neither Michael nor I have been ever rather just right sufficient for the general public faculty nabobs who made up the actual interior circle of David Cameron’s ruling elite.

Suddenly the ones comfortable chats at Dorneywood, all the ones years of friendship, of college runs, of shared vacations, of serving to out on each stage, seemed somewhat empty, two-dimensional.

But above all, this after all showed an important and deeply miserable reality, one that I’d up to now felt didn’t observe to us: there’s no such factor as a pal in politics. I felt silly, used and humiliated. On Saturday, February 20, 2016, the Prime Minister introduced that the EU referendum was once going to be hung on June 23.

Later that very same day, the cross-party Vote Leave crew was once published. A pal tells me that Dave it appears turned into very emotional when he noticed the record and – astonishingly – was once diminished to tears when it was once showed each Boris and Michael (who at this level was once again within the Cabinet as Lord Chancellor) have been on it.

A couple of days later, each we and the Camerons have been invited to a mutual pal’s celebration. Michael was once travelling one after the other and I took place to reach similtaneously Sam and Dave, and we stepped into a boost in combination.

As the doorways closed, Dave checked out me with daggers in his eyes and mentioned, via clenched enamel, phrases that grew to become out to be the closing I ever heard from him, face-to-face: ‘You have to get your husband off the airwaves, you have to get him under control. For f***’s sake, Sarah, I’m preventing for my political lifestyles right here.’

For the primary time since I’d recognized him, that appeal and levity of contact that I related to Dave was once nowhere to be noticed. He was once offended, fatal severe, outraged even.

Also, for the primary time, I felt the abyss of sophistication between us. There was once no try to discuss to me as a pal or equivalent, no indication he sought after a right kind dialog. This was once an order, now not a request, grasp to servant. And the quivering fury at the back of his voice, the anger in his eyes, was once down to 1 factor and something by myself: Michael was once defying him. It wasn’t simply that Dave didn’t love it. It was once additionally that it didn’t compute.

He merely couldn’t perceive why Michael, who on many problems was once very a lot a crew participant, had in this instance determined to defy him.

The solution, regardless that he by no means understood it, was once easy: Dave felt he was once preventing for his political lifestyles. Michael, in contrast, was once preventing for his political trust.

The two issues are very other.

The very issues Dave cared maximum about – his energy, his recognition, his legacy – have been the very issues Michael was once prepared to sacrifice in pursuit of his personal long-held trust that the simpler route for Britain was once to go away the EU.

It’s been mentioned there was once no post-Brexit plan, however that’s now not true. Vote Leave did have a plan. It was once the workforce that was once the problem.

The explanation why roles weren’t labored out previously was once partially as a result of Michael actually by no means believed that Leave would win, but in addition as a result of – to his thoughts – that will have appeared disrespectful of the PM.

Dom, Boris and Michael all assumed that Dave would keep on, it doesn’t matter what the end result – and that if, by means of some miracle, Brexit was once the selected consequence, they’d merely serve beneath him and beneath his route.

It can be as much as Dave to nominate whomever to no matter function within the procedure. Never would they have got predicted that they’d be left in price. Even at the day of the vote, when Michael had lunch with our pal Nick Boles, the 2 of them talked much less about Brexit and extra in regards to the want, as Michael noticed it, to drag again in combination as a celebration, regroup and heal.

The following morning, as everyone knows, the end result was once transparent: the United Kingdom had voted to go away Europe.

Avoiding the paparazzi, Michael escaped from the again of the home like a secret agent at the run, rushing off to the Vote Leave HQ. I activate with the kids at the faculty run, my abdomen churning with anxiousness about whether or not I’d stumble upon Sam Cameron.

By 8am, Michael was once in Westminster, being clapped into the Vote Leave workplaces by means of similarly dazed and crushed activists. No time to take inventory: simply earlier than 9am, the switchboard of Downing Street referred to as. ‘The Prime Minister is on the line for the Secretary of State,’ mentioned a disembodied voice. ‘Putting you through now.’ Observers nonetheless keep in mind now how faded Michael went, how formal the decision was once, because the PM coldly conceded that the EU Referendum have been received by means of Vote Leave. There was once no acknowledgement that they have been pals, no point out of long term making plans. Forty mins later, Dave resigned as PM. What a large man-baby. What an inconceivable, irresponsible kid, throwing his toys out of the pram as a result of he hadn’t were given his personal method. It felt slightly like he would faster convey the rustic down than let Leave have its victory. Et tu, Pontius Pilate – don’t omit to wash beneath the nails there as you wash the ones fingers.

In the months and years afterwards, it nearly amused me to look the entire guff revealed within the Cameroon politico memoirs – about how resigning was once the honourable, best choice.

Er, no. Abandoning the send after you’d intentionally suggested it into the iceberg was once under no circumstances your best option. The grown-up, statesmanlike factor to do would had been to move in the market, say one thing alongside the strains of: ‘The British people have spoken and as your Prime Minister I have a duty to make sure your wishes are respected. I will therefore work with the leaders of the Leave campaign to begin the negotiations.’

He knew he had Michael and Boris’s enhance, as a result of a couple of days earlier than the vote, they’d each signed their names to a letter pronouncing as a lot. But he simply wasn’t sufficiently big to park his self-importance, his pleasure and his dogma.

Instead, Dave plunged the rustic into chaos. It was once as a result of him, as a result of his lack of ability to swallow this admittedly sour tablet, that we ended up with the disastrous Theresa May and that Brexit itself was once so badly treated.

That, I’m afraid, was once Dave’s legacy: providing the British other people a decision then, once they made that selection, punishing them for it. But perhaps it wasn’t fully his fault. Every flesh presser is going on a adventure, you notice, with the adventure of a major minister admittedly a specifically tough one.

In a nutshell, you get started out being a reasonably standard human being, filled with plans and concepts – and you find yourself rather bonkers, obsessive about little or no else save your personal survival and, failing that, your legacy.

It’s were given not anything to do with persona – even the most productive succumb. It’s simply the character of the beast.

Adapted from How Not To Be A Political Wife, by means of Sarah Vine (HarperCollins, £20), to be revealed June 19. © Sarah Vine 2025. To order a duplicate for £18 (be offering legitimate to 14/06/25; UK p&p unfastened on orders over £25) pass to mailshop.co.united kingdom/books or name 020 3176 2937.

Flirty aide who had an affair with Sam Cam’s stepfather quickly came upon the tribal nature of Clan Cameron

I at all times preferred Rachel Whetstone – and Michael adored her for her gutsiness and her brains – however I discovered her rather onerous paintings, no less than at first. She was once Michael Howard’s political secretary when he was once Tory chief and certainly a person’s girl, a kind of ladies who would at all times display as much as supper in a couple of killer Gina heels, even supposing it was once only a boring Tuesday evening.

She wasn’t conventionally stunning however she was once very attractive, charismatic and forthright in her reviews – and argumentative in some way that gave the impression to forever stimulate the other intercourse. She would have Dave Cameron, George Osborne and the whole thing of them striking off her each phrase, leaving us better halves to wait to the domestics.

I don’t have any doubt she would have performed a key function in Dave’s tenure as Prime Minister had it now not been for an tournament that knocked the stuffing out of everybody.

She and Sam’s stepfather, William Astor, had an affair. It wasn’t only a few random stumble upon, both: it was once a right kind love affair, made much more atypical by means of the truth that Rachel was once extremely with regards to Sam and Dave.

She was once godmother to their son Ivan, and omnipresent round their dinner desk; however she was once additionally with regards to Sam’s oldsters Annabel and William and a widespread customer to their impressive area in rural Oxfordshire.

Rachel and William had at all times were given on like a area on hearth: as a hereditary peer within the House of Lords, Conservative politics ran in his veins. But someway, someplace, their courting had changed into one thing else – and it was once rather the bombshell.

Their liaison got here to mild within the worst imaginable instances, whilst Rachel was once holidaying with now not best the Astors however the Camerons, on the Astors’ area at the Scottish island of Jura.

Launched upon this unsuspecting area celebration on August 17, 2004, was once a lead merchandise within the inimitable Richard Kay’s diary within the Daily Mail. ‘There is, I can reveal today,’ wrote Kay, ‘an intriguing romantic spring in the step of Rachel Whetstone, Tory leader Michael Howard’s political secretary and queen bee of the so-called Notting Hill set of vibrant younger Conservatives. The Benenden-educated brunette, who’s one among Mr Howard’s two maximum senior particular advisers, has, I perceive, shaped an in depth friendship with a married older guy who’s a well-connected Tory grandee.’

The article went on to explain Rachel’s shut ties with Dave and underlined the relationship along with his spouse’s stepfather William. There was once no explicit point out of the affair, however the web page was once illustrated with {a photograph} of Annabel and William, with a drop-in shot of Rachel. It was once a killer blow. I should confess I used to be totally gobsmacked. I used to be no prude and without a doubt no stranger to the theory of 1’s oldsters having affairs, my very own having pursued a string of extra-marital divertissements over time.

Still, this was once rather one thing, even by means of their requirements. Having fled Jura, Rachel swirled out of the political waters for just right – and, unsurprisingly, out of her friendship with the Camerons. Understandably, Sam considered her movements as an unforgivable betrayal of her and Dave’s consider.

As a lot as I understood the sense of anger and betrayal on Sam’s aspect, I additionally felt for Rachel.

After all, it takes two to tango, and whilst it’s by no means OK to move after a married guy (or girl, for that subject), her punishment appeared harsher than his. William had his circle of relatives and his identify and his many palatial houses, and she or he was once on her personal in a small flat in Ladbroke Grove.

Frozen out of the political circles she have been such an integral a part of, she now discovered herself a social pariah – a state of affairs I used to be to recognise a few years later, after the fallout from Brexit.

But Sam by no means forgave her and, even if Rachel and Steve Hilton (who went onto turn out to be technique adviser to Cameron) after all were given in combination – it gave the look of he have been ready endlessly within the wings – she and Dave have been at highest cordial with each and every different.

This was once a prescient indication of the tribal nature of Clan Cameron: it was once heat across the hearth, however when you have been out of that comfortable circle it was once icy.

Oh, the horror of the Brexit outfit that also follows me across the web

For some explanation why it actually didn’t go my thoughts that any one would possibly take an image folks as Michael and I went to vote at the day of the referendum and I wasn’t ready. I seemed in point of fact dreadful.

Let us simply savour the horror, lets? A catastrophically see-through Marks & Spencer leopard-print best, paired with a jacket that was once no less than 3 sizes too small for me, a couple of three-quarter-length jersey palazzo pants and a few very unflattering boots, which best served to spotlight my ghostly and really most likely bushy white ankles.

Quite why I selected this ensemble for what was once arguably the photocall of my lifestyles, I will be able to by no means know. All I will say in my defence is that I wasn’t actually desirous about it in the ones phrases; actually, I wasn’t actually pondering forward in any respect.

Either method, I gave the look of I had now not best were given dressed at midnight, however out of a skip. It is, in fact, absurdly narcissistic to reside on it. But there’s something about that symbol – together with such a lot of of the paparazzi snaps that have been taken of me all the way through the duration within the run-up to the vote – that simply job my memory of the unease, uncertainty and sadness of the ones weeks.

That image has come again to hang-out me numerous occasions since, on-line and in print, a reminder now not best that I’ve an excellent face for radio but in addition of the craziness of the ones weeks and days.

Google me and it’s the primary to pop up. It actually follows me across the web like a specifically tenacious troll. If I glance somewhat demented, grinning maniacally on the digital camera like a rabbit stuck within the headlights, it’s as a result of I’m.

My tension ranges have been off the dimensions. I used to be consuming and ingesting an excessive amount of simply to stay going and snoozing a ways too little.

I used to be in bits emotionally. None of my pals have been talking to me. My circle of relatives was once livid with me. One of my uncles turned into so abusive on Facebook I if truth be told needed to block him and I’d had a horrible combat with my brother.

Newspapers and social media have been awash with terrible tales about us and the trolls have been out in complete power. I wasn’t actually in keep watch over, both of myself or the location. All I may just do was once take it at some point at a time and I made such a lot of silly errors; my judgment impaired now not best by means of my feelings but in addition, if I’m fair, by means of worry and fear and a nagging sense that most likely – simply most likely – none of this was once rather correct.