Being a politician isn’t at all times simple – and neither is it simple if you’re in a relationship with one.
Jen Wilson joins her associate Baroness Davidson on Beth Rigby‘s Electoral Dysfunction podcast the place she describes how her life turned “quite intense” when Ruth led the Scottish Conservatives.
A caller tells the podcast that her associate is an MP and asks what they will do to “protect the sanctity of our friendships and social life locally?”
“I knew life would be different, but I had no idea quite how different it would become,” the caller provides.
In response, Jen tells the podcast: “It is definitely quite different being the partner of a politician. It’s quite intense because they aren’t 9 to 5.”
She says that when Ruth was the Scottish Tory chief from 2011 to 2019, she was “on call pretty much 24/7”.
“It definitely took lots of adjusting to when we first got together,” she mentioned.
Ruth Davidson and her associate Jen Wilson with their canine, additionally known as Wilson, at a polling station in Edinburgh through the basic election final yr
Jen provides: “The opposite factor that may be fairly tough is getting the cling of avoiding political debates with folks going someplace.
“And I believe your associate’s bought to possibly get used to it, form of politely shutting down politics chatter. Folks come over to try to have large debates with them whenever you’re out and about, we’ve positively had folks not likely understanding that, interrupting a pair, having a pleasant candlelit dinner, to speak about constituency points or potholes or the structure, isn’t precisely the appropriate second.
“So we had to kind of get the hang of that over the years. We’ve joked previously that Ruth was off duty and asked people to get in contact with her office, and it usually gently gives people the message that is not the right second.”
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Ruth additionally remembers it as “very full on” initially.
“I think to be fair to Jen, I mean, we’d known each other for years before we got together. I was already the Tory Party leader in Scotland when we got together, so it was full on from the very beginning and the boundaries of my work were there that I had to take phone calls, there were weekends, I had to work the evenings.”
Responding to the caller, Ruth provides: “And in case you have a household, you’ll have had a rhythm to that and that may have been fully interrupted, not simply by 4 days per week in London after which coming again, however by what you need to do on the bottom as an MP if she’s going to do the job effectively, you can not maintain on to every little thing that you just had earlier than.
“You have to accept that her life is not her own – she is in a life of service for the time that she is in parliament.”
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Baroness Harman, who was a Labour MP for 40 years and whose late husband Jack joined her within the Commons in 2010, says she had specific recommendation for “a man who is married to a woman MP”.
“And I would say to him in answer to this question, I think you should ask a different question, which is, ‘how can I support her in doing what she wants as an MP and being the very best MP she can be because she is a pioneer?’”
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