Tory MP's wife Sasha Swire says she would fight for Scottish independence

Sasha Swire, who wrote a diary noting the behaviour of senior figures including Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Michael Gove, made the revelation as she defended publishing a book based on her observations.

"Ultimately, politics is what I know; it’s what moves me. I suspect if I came from Scotland I would probably fight for independence," she wrote in an article reflecting on the response to her book.

Swire, who is married to former foreign office minister Hugo Swire, published her expose of the Tory clique earlier this year and received a hostile reception from some Tories.

She has digs at former PMs David Cameron and Theresa May as well as the current Prime Minister.

She also mocks Cabinet Office minister Gove and his wife the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, repeatedly referring to her as "Sarah not so Di Vine" throughout the book.

Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine and husband Michael Gove are among the figures made fun of in Swire's diary.

In an article in the Times she said she had no regrets over writing the diary and described her own background.

"What I do come from is a long line of politicians, vicars, doctors, soldiers and governors of faraway lands and foreign partisan fighters who have died in concentration camps for helping others escape tyranny," she wrote on Friday.

"My mother, Miloska, is Slovenian and my grandfather died in Dachau along with other partisans. Miloska clambered over mountains to save other foreign women from genocide and rape during the Bosnian war, and she has built homes and schools for returning refugees in Srebrenica. 

"I come from the sort of people who have obituaries in papers for services to others. Politics matters to my family, not as a means to lord it over anyone but as a means of making people equal, as a means of challenging human rights abuses.

"Ultimately, politics is what I know; it’s what moves me. I suspect if I came from Scotland I would probably fight for independence. If I were Irish, I would have burnt out the Brits. If I were young, I would have glued myself to an underground train as a member of Extinction Rebellion. Instead I have beehives and a flower meadow."

She added: "I was not the traditional, old-fashioned and frustrated Tory wife as depicted. I was a modern woman who made the choice to make her home her office so she could watch her children grow; a lockdown-lover before her time if you like.

"I never had any desire to be in the limelight, which is why I have found this attention at times more than trying. I flirted briefly with the idea of becoming a politician but quickly realised it was not for me. This is who I am and who I always was, and who I always will be, merely a minor observer of people and their habits, a writer."