CRAIG

Hello and welcome to Desperately Seeking Wisdom with me, Craig Oliver. Our guest today is Jacqui Smith, who made history as the first woman to hold the position of Home Secretary. Her fall from grace, however, was epic. It emerged she claimed that a room in her sister's house was her main home, and that her husband had also claimed parliamentary expenses for a couple of pornographic films.

JACQUI

I was driving back to my constituency, my special advisor rang me up and said, the newspapers have got a story about your expenses that you claimed for pornography. It was just gut-wrenching. Did I think I could tough it out? I'm not, I don't know if I did.

CRAIG

I wanted to hear what it was like to be humiliated in the full glare of the media, what she learned - not least about herself - and how she rebuilt her life. She was open, thoughtful, and wise.

Jackie, it's great to see you. How are you? And what are you up to?

JACQUI

Well, Craig, it's lovely to see you too. I'm very well, thank you. I've just done my weekly Good Morning Britain appearance with Iain Dale. And I'm now sitting here in the Royal London Hospital, which is part of my day job, chairing the NHS Trust Barts Health, and I'm going to be chairing a board meeting later on this morning. So it sort of sums up the range of activities that I now get to do in my life.

CRAIG

Yeah, I mean, it's really clear, you've got an incredibly full life. And I want to come to that later, about how your life has changed and what you're doing. But I want to start first by getting a sense of your background. What was your childhood like?

JACQUI

I had an enormously happy childhood, I grew up, first of all in Hertfordshire, but then for most of my childhood in Worcestershire, where my dad was a head teacher, and my mum was a part-time teacher, they were both Labour councillors. And I had two sisters, and just a very stable, happy family, a great time at school in Malvern at the Dyson Perrins High School, the comprehensive school that I went to as my secondary school. So a sort of, lot of talking about politics, a lot of family security, and I just consider myself to be really enormously grateful for that. I still have my mum, but my dad sadly died in 2018, and is a big sort of loss to the family actually.

CRAIG

It's quite unusual, both of them being councillors. Was politics really, must have been in your blood from the off?

JACQUI

It sort of was, you know, my idea of a good fun day was when elections came around, and I got to ride my bike backwards and forwards to the polling station to pick up, you know, the numbers that were being taken by the political parties outside the polling station. And I got, and I still have, a complete thrill from the process of politics. So around the dinner table, we argued, discussed; in my spare time, I did politics either in school, or when I went to university through student politics, and I saw what it was like to be an elected representative. In fact, my mum would have made a brilliant MP. But what I also learnt at that point was the fact that she was bringing up three daughters. And the Labour Party as it was, probably all politics as it was then, meant that she never got that opportunity. So I suppose in some ways, I felt I was sort of fulfilling a family destiny when I eventually ended up as a member of parliament.

CRAIG

Presumably when you were growing up, a lot of this was when Labour were kind of in the wilderness years, they weren't in power a lot. Was that - that must have been a big factor too.

JACQUI

Well, I'm quite old. Remember, I experienced the Labour government between 1974 and 1979. Not always successful, although you know, obviously some incredibly important things in terms of my Labour politics that we did then. But you're right that I suppose, you know, I was 16 in 1979. And that was, winter of discontent, Lib-Lab, the eventual fall of the Labour government, you know, so I sort of partly thought in 1979, oh, well, you know, we've lost, but I'm sure we'll be back in government again quite soon. And of course, how wrong I was, because it took a considerable period of time until we were.

CRAIG

And those arguments around the kitchen table, were they all about different kinds of Labour politics, or was it broader than that? Were you naturally Labour from the start?

JACQUI

Uhm, I had a moment in a sort of rebellion against my family background, when I suddenly decided that I thought I wanted to be a Lib Dem. I think it lasted for about a day. The irony being that I sort of announced it when my mum was the agent for Shirley Williams, back in Hartfordshire, when Shirley Williams, of course, was still in the Labour Party. So I don't know if I was sort of foreseeing what was to come. But that didn't last long. I mean, you know, essentially, I haven't had a very exciting or varied set of political affiliations. I started in the Labour Party, I've always been in the Labour Party, where my mum left in the beginning, in the early 1980s, in those sort of dreadful, well, the last lot of dreadful years, and went and joined the SDP, I still stayed in the Labour Party. Whilst Jeremy Corbyn was leader, and I was despairing about the state of our party, I still stayed in it. So I'm tribal and I often describe the Labour Party as being the longest relationship in my life. And it's been stormy and turbulent at times, but it's lasted.

CRAIG

A lot of people come to me and ask about becoming an MP. And my usual reaction is, don't - unless you're prepared to soak up a lot of punishment and have your life turned upside down. I think there's something almost unusual about people who want to be MPs. It's something in their blood, something they have to do, and they're prepared to sacrifice huge amounts in order to achieve it. Is that true of you?

JACQUI

I think it probably is, when I look back on it. Nobody likes to think that they were the kid in school who wanted to be the prime minister. And I didn't think I was. And then, when I actually was elected, some of my school friends were interviewed and they said, oh, yeah, we always knew she wanted to go into parliament. So I suppose I wasn't hiding it as well as I thought, I wasn't quite the cool kid that I believed I was in school. So I then went to university and did student politics. I then spent a year in the House of Commons. I then went off actually and had an 11-year career as a teacher, but during that time, I was also a local councillor as well in Redditch, which then became my constituency when I was elected. So all of that was working towards my political career. People say to me, oh, would you go back and do it again? And I say, well, I loved it, and despite everything that happened to me, I don't regret doing it. And it's sort of the fulfilment of my life's ambition in many ways. But I was very hungry for it.

CRAIG

And I think a lot of people who aren't as close to politics perhaps as you and I are, don't realise the sheer amount of energy and effort that goes into it. So you have to have another job, and meanwhile, you're seeking out a seat, and in order to get a seat, you often have to go for a seat that's perhaps not very winnable, or you have to serve your time on a local council. So you're almost having to run at least two jobs at the same time, there's the job that you're having to pay the bills and the job that you have to be an MP. And then you've also got to try and have relationships and a family on top. That is an extraordinary pressure not to put just on yourself, but it's also an extraordinary pressure to put on the people around you who you love and love you.

JACQUI

So I first stood for parliament in 1992 in what was then the Mid Worcestershire seat, against Eric Forth, and I lost. And then there was a boundary reorganisation, and then I was elected in 1997. But I mean, you're absolutely right, essentially my hobby, my spare time, was doing politics. My job was as a teacher, you know, I would have gone for more promotions had it not been that I was aiming for the 1997 election. I was, and I am, enormously fortunate that my then-husband had also come from, you know, was also interested in politics. His parents had both been councillors as well, we sometimes described ourselves as the only two Labour families in Malvern, Worcestershire, where we both grew up. And he was willing, frankly, you know, he was a civil engineer by qualification, but he was willing to put that on the back burner to care for our children. I had - so when I was elected in 1997, I had a four-year-old. And then I was pregnant quite soon after the general election and had our second son a year after I was elected in 1997. And I wasn't the mother that would have been ideal, I don't think, I wasn't the wife that would have been ideal. He describes it sometimes as this being our family business. And had he not been willing to take on that family responsibility, I don't think, you know - I may have become an MP, but I don't think I could have done what was necessary in order to then have a 10-year ministerial career.

CRAIG

Interesting, you using that phrase, like you don't think that you were the mother or wife that was ideal. And I'm not trying to make you feel bad or guilty about that, I'm just interested in unpacking that, because I think lots of people in lots of relationships, in order to succeed in their career, it does mean that often other things have to at times be secondary. And I think a lot of people later in life, reflect on that and wonder about it.

JACQUI

I have reflected, I mean, you know, let me say I think most women who work have an element of guilt about their family responsibilities. And increasingly, I think men with children do as well. So I'm not suggesting that I’m special in that way. But you know, my job in Parliament did mean that I was away from home from Monday until Thursday night. So, you know, I did leave my second son four months after he was born to go back to Parliament in London, because my family and my children stayed in Redditch, in the constituency. And when I look back at that, I think I'm not quite sure how I managed it really. I mean, I had lots of very good female friends in the parliamentary Labour Party, who I think sort of supported me through it. But subsequently, I've sort of talked to my boy and there is a slight family joke that, you know, I was a dreadful mother. But when they're being generous to me, they talk about how proud they were of me, they talk about actually some of the benefits of having a father much more present and a mother who gives them a role model of powerful and successful women.

CRAIG

Do they have children now? Or are they too young?

JACQUI

They are 29 and 24, and I'm not yet a grandma, but I am quite keen to do it. I can remember my oldest son when he was 18, so 11 years ago, in other words, sort of just after I left Parliament, on his 18th birthday, he sent me an email, in which he said how proud he was of me and what it had meant for him to grow up with me being the Home Secretary for example. And that was a sort of really significant and important reassurance, because, you know, nevermind all of the really bad stuff that happened, just being Home Secretary, I mean, I can always remember the time when we were doing a big announcement speech on alcohol policy. And I had to ring up my then 15-16 year old son the night before and say to him, James, can I just say, tomorrow I'm talking about alcohol and underage drinking. It would be really good if you… (laughs).

CRAIG

It’s interesting because my father was a chief constable, so not quite the same as having a mother who's the Home Secretary, but definitely throughout my secondary education there was a thing hanging over me of like, you better not get into trouble sort of thing. Yeah. So let's go back to the day that you were elected. That must have been an extraordinary moment where suddenly - cause you were elected on a huge tide of Labour coming back to power after being out of for ages, Tony Blair with a massive majority, a lot of optimism and excitement. Just tell me about that moment.

JACQUI

Well, the actual moment was really pretty nerve-wracking because although by the time we got to the election, despite my seat being marginal, I sort of thought, well, unless something goes very, very badly wrong, I should be elected as an MP, the count took longer than it should have done, because there was a problem with making sure that the ballot boxes were all right. And the person who was the returning officer is now a friend of mine, and I quite often sort of remind her of the way in which she certainly shortened my life by spending a very, very long time looking slightly quizzical at what was happening. And I sort of was convinced that as the results were coming in, during the course of the evening, and we were winning all sorts of seats that we never thought we would win, I was going to be the one person that didn't end up getting elected as a Labour MP. Anyway, it was all okay in the end. And I was elected and my husband and I, after having sort of gone to the party and thanked the supporters, decided we were then sort of incredibly hungry and went off to the service station on the M5 at Frankley, and had a cooked breakfast, which was our celebration. And we sort of looked at each other and said, what have we done? And you know, this is what we've been working for for so long, and this is what we've put things on hold for. And then a couple of days later, off I go down to London, clutching my election leaflet, because they used to advise you in those days that you know, if you wanted to actually get into parliament, because the doorkeepers didn't know who anybody was, you should take your election leaflet with a photo of you on it, so that they could, you could sort of show it to the doorkeeper so that they'd let you in.

CRAIG

I heard an old interview with you when I was researching this, and it was interesting, a woman was interviewing you and she described you as a ‘Blair Babe’. You know, it's 25 years later, but extraordinary that that's how you were seen, and I actually did an interview the other day where somebody talked about ‘Cameron Cuties’, which was even later. And just extraordinary, really, the sorts of levels of sexism really, that was still around the fact that you were an MP on the rise, was considered almost slightly unusual and that you were characterised by being a babe or a cutie.

JACQUI

I'm really ambivalent about that description. Because of course, on the one hand, this was an election in which 101 women were elected for Labour, it was a sort of breakthrough in women's representation. And then we had that photo, that sort of famous photo on the steps of Church House where all of those 101 women MPs were gathered around Tony Blair in the middle. And it was after that that the phrase was coined. So on the one hand, it was a celebration of women being elected; on the other hand, the only prism through which people could see it was a sort of bevy of women surrounding the one man in the middle. So it's both frustrating, but also, you know, a sort of moment, both of personal and political celebration that so many women actually got into parliament in 1997.

CRAIG

No, no, I get that. And it was a massive achievement. And the reality was that it was a very male-dominated place. A lot of people don't like talking about ambition, and they kind of feel that other people will judge them for it, but knowing politics, you must have been pretty ambitious, you must have been pretty clear that you wanted to get to the top of that stage. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Is that true?

JACQUI

It is absolutely true. But it has taken me some time in my life to accept, as you say, Craig, that it is perfectly okay to say, I am ambitious. I can remember being asked in the selection, actually. If you're elected, would you like to be in the cabinet? And almost the first thing that came out of my mouth was, oh you know, oh well, you know, I don't know, it'll be up to…. And then I thought, be honest, of course, you want to be in the cabinet! You know, my view is, any elected politician who says they don't want to be a minister and all that, or they don't even want to be the prime minister is almost certainly lying. Why would you put your life on hold, why would you put yourself in the public eye, not in a sort of celebrity sort of way, but in a way that is going to lead you to be challenged and insulted and… why would you do all of those things, if you weren't ambitious to get to a position where you can actually do some of the things that you came into politics in the first place.

CRAIG

Yeah, and it's very hard actually, I think as a backbencher to actually get things done even if your party is in power. I was very lucky in being parachuted into Number 10. And I remember very early on somebody's name being mentioned in a meeting and very senior people saying, who is he? And I think people would be shocked to the extent to which, because if you're in government, you've got hundreds of MPs, that often there's a very, very loose relationship. You're not at the centre of people's thoughts. It's very, very hard to get noticed. And I suppose this is a very long-winded way of saying, you've got to get noticed if you're going to get up the greasy pole. So you're almost starting another campaign at that moment.

JACQUI

That's absolutely right. And, I mean, you're right about backbench MPs. When I was elected in 1997, I'd been a councillor, I had more ability to actually change things on a much smaller scale. But you know, as the chair of the then-Economic Development Committee on Redditch Borough Council, I could initiate much more than I could as a backbench Labour MP. And of course, the other thing about 1997 was there was so many of us. So I think I was lucky. I mean, I became a minister after less than two years, and I went on the Treasury committee after a year. I don't remember having a plan, but I do remember thinking, I don't think I want to stay on the back benches.

CRAIG

I don't think you can have a plan. I mean, those famous people who write on the back of the envelope all the stages to Prime Minister, and, of course, that doesn't survive contact with reality. But I think you do have to be constantly, it sounds terrible, but on the make, looking for the opportunity, that kind of thing. I wanted to move back, though, because to that moment, where you know, you're talking about your husband, and you celebrating in the motorway service caf, which in some ways is very romantic, in other ways not. But at that moment, the dynamic in your relationship is just inevitably going to change, isn't it? I mean, you are suddenly, as you say, going to London, you're going up the greasy pole, and he's back at home looking after the kids, sorting out the constituency. Did you notice it changing? Did you feel the change? Did you feel the pressure then?

JACQUI

Probably from the time that we got married in 1987, he knew and I knew that this was where we were heading, and we were working as a team even then, you know, one of my favourite photos of him is him with a canvassing clipboard, leading the campaign that eventually led to me being elected in 1997. So it felt very much like, you know, as he described, our sort of family business, a team, a team effort. And because, you know, shock, horror, I employed him in my constituency office, you know, we were a team like that. And he never, he never particularly wanted to do the Westminster thing. So we fell quite nicely into that arrangement, and were very, you know, were very personally happy for the whole of the time that I was in Parliament and when I was a minister, perhaps because I was away four nights a week, who knows.

CRAIG

Let's fast forward to you being Home Secretary. What's interesting I think about being Home Secretary in a Labour government was certainly then it was felt that Labour had to prove its credentials on crime and that it was tough on a lot of things, you know, around 42 days for terrorist suspects, which was incredibly controversial at the time. There was also other controversial legislation around reclassifying drugs and that kind of thing. Did you feel uncomfortable doing things that people didn't think were traditionally Labour or left-of-centre things?

JACQUI

No. I felt one of the sort of key moments in the development of the Labour Party in our electability was Tony Blair talking about being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I had a political philosophy about crime that was absolutely clear that, you know, if you were a progressive, you should be on the side of victims because they were the least powerful people, they were the people who, as victims of crime or victims of terrorism, had had their ability to live full lives taken away from them.

CRAIG

So I’m gonna interrupt you there, because I think you're slightly going into politician mode.

JACQUI

You're right, I was going to!

CRAIG

Actually, in reality, when you look back, a lot of people say, hang on a minute, you're literally going to put people in prison for 42 days without charge. And that was a wrong thing. I'm not judging whatever, or you know, you're being very, very hardline in certain areas. And actually to be, also in my research, you look at it, you think, maybe we did spend way too much energy and effort on 42 days, and maybe we did get the reclassifications wrong and that kind of thing.

JACQUI

I do think we spent too long on the counter-terror proposals around 42 days. And there was an element of that, not only about me as Home Secretary, but also about Gordon Brown as Prime Minister wanting to demonstrate that we were tough on terrorism. But the other thing, which does affect you personally, is that once you've been in government for that long, you know, remember I said how involved I'd been in politics, I've been in student politics, I've got friends who were in Liberty or who were campaigning on those sorts of issues, you become, to an extent, alienated from the people who were your political allies, when you need to take action like that. And that, you know, personally, that is difficult.

CRAIG

Would you do it again?

JACQUI

Would I do those policies again?

CRAIG

Yeah.

JACQUI

I would do the counter-terror legislation differently. I still stand by the reclassification of cannabis, actually. But what I was proud of was that actually, the legal elements of drug policy were much less important to me than, is treatment available? Is education appropriate? Are we actually supporting people to live a life where they don't become dependent on drugs? That was much more important to me and I… but let's not forget, Craig, just to go back to politics again, you identified it in your question, if you're a Labour politician and you want permission to do those things, people have got to believe that you care about crime, and you're not going to be soft on it. That's just the political reality.

CRAIG

Yeah. So how long would you’ve been Home Secretary before the expenses scandal hit?

JACQUI

I had been Home Secretary for about 18 months, so I was coming up to my second Christmas, Christmas 2008. And I can actually remember thinking to myself, I'm getting the hang of this, you know, being Home Secretary is never easy. But I was thinking to myself, I’m sort of getting the hang of this., and I know what I want to do. And I, you know, I feel quite as comfortable as you can do in the job. And I think, you know, I've made mistakes, but I think on the whole people don't think I'm a, you know, complete waste of space. And then it hit.

CRAIG

And was it like a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky? Did you realise you're in trouble from the off?

JACQUI

Yeah. You know, it was clear that everybody who was an MP was impacted by the expenses scandal. So I was driving back to my constituency, being driven by my protection team back to my constituency, my special advisor rang me up and said, the newspapers have got a story about your expenses, that you claimed for pornography on your expenses. And it was just gut-wrenching.

CRAIG

Did you know it was true at that moment? Did you know that that was correct?

JACQUI

I think because of the way it was described - because, of course, what happens is, you put in your expenses that are involved in having a second home. So in this case, it was the bill for the broadband connection. And of course, if as part of your broadband connection you buy films, that will also be on the bill. So on this bill, which we’d put in as evidence of the broadband connection, there were three films. I think it was something like Finding Nemo or something like that, Ocean's 12, and a adult movie for the sake of other expressions. And so of course, that had been included in the total. So it was true. I had claimed public money for a pornographic film, watched in my house. And so I was bang to rights on that. Of course, the other element of it was, where I'd also faced criticism and was investigated was in the what is your main home? And the rules had always been if you were a minister that you had to claim your main home as your London home. And when the rules had changed a couple of years before, I hadn't shifted my main home, I had thought to myself, well, you're the Home Secretary, you spend probably more time - well, as it proved, I did spend more time in London. I didn't own the house, I shared it with my sister. But the rules previously had suggested that that should be my main home, and I saw no reason to change it. And I actually wrote to the authorities in the House of Commons to say, this is my interpretation, do you think this is a reasonable interpretation? And they said, yes, they did think it was. So I never flipped my house. I never changed it in order to, you know, went backwards and forwards in order to get benefit. I just stuck with what the previous rules had been. And, you know, I got done for that, as well. So…

CRAIG

Yeah, and I think what's interesting is like, again, without judging in any way, that I think I remember that I was actually editor of the BBC's 10 o'clock news at that time, and I was just so aware of MPs feeling that on the homes thing, that they’d basically been allowed to do this, and that it was a permissive environment, and then that was what the norm was and what everybody did, and feeling suddenly that the rug was being pulled out from under them. But I think that the thing that you described yourself as a sort of poster girl for the expenses scandal - that was the phrase you used. And so because pornography is just such a, you know, a word that suddenly you hear in an MP that you've been watching a pornographic film, and then it was charged to the public. I'm just imagining you in that car, and that sense that the world is just blowing up around you. Did you think at that moment, I'm finished, my career is toast, or…?

JACQUI

My sister is a BBC reporter, and she said to me, you do know, don't you, that the combination - I mean, she doesn't need to tell me this, but she said - the combination of: first female Home Secretary, taxpayers’ money, pornography - it is hard to imagine a more significant, juicy story than that. So I wholly understand why this is a sort of absolute manifestation of what people felt about the expenses situation. And I understand why I was in the spotlight.

CRAIG

We should explain that, so as far as I can work out what had happened was, your husband had watched the pornographic film, he was also responsible for putting in your expenses because of the relationship you had with him, he just put in the broadband thing without really thinking, he hadn’t gone, oh, I'm going to watch a pornographic film and charge the taxpayer. So you know, in mitigation to you, you hadn't been aware of that. Describe that moment where you had to have the conversation with him. I mean, that must have been extraordinary.

JACQUI

Yeah. I was going back to my constituency to attend a meeting, I was being lobbied about something that was sort of a very big issue in the constituency, I thought to myself, I can't miss this. And he was there, I got out of the car and I said to him - because he'd been, my special advisor had obviously talked to him as well about it by then. I was angry, I said I'm gonna have to resign. And then I went into the meeting, and did the meeting. And God knows how I did it, but I did. And then we went home and talked about it and I said, I think I'm gonna have to resign. And then I talked to my special advisers. It was the weekend of the G8 summit around the financial crisis. And my special adviser said to me, you know what, the Prime Minister is not going to want you to resign on a weekend like this. So I didn't, and I… did I think I could tough it out? I don't know if I did, but I sort of didn't think it was the worst thing that anybody had ever done. So I carried on as Home Secretary, but essentially, in the end, I had to resign. The Prime Minister never asked me to, by the way, Gordon Brown was incredibly supportive of me, you know, he was, for certain other people he slightly hung them out to dry but he was enormously supportive of me on this.

CRAIG

But so tell me, with your husband, what were your feelings to him at that moment? I mean, there must have been, you know, anger, irritation.

JACQUI

Of course, there was - not that he'd watched a pornographic film, frankly, you know, that wasn't, I wasn't that surprised that he had.

CRAIG

That's interesting, because I think a lot of women, if they discover a partner's been looking at it, or anybody actually discovers a partner has been looking at porn might think, what's going on here, why is this happening? So you weren't surprised?

JACQUI

I wasn't particularly surprised. You know, we had a very happy marriage, but I was away from home for four days in the week. So to that extent, I wasn't that surprised, what I was cross about was that he'd got responsibility for filling in the form, and he put in a bloody bill that had landed us in this position. Incidentally, I was also cross with myself, because I'd signed the cover sheet, and I hadn't properly checked, you know, what I was signing when we put in that month's expenses. So I was sort of really crossed and frustrated about those things. But I also, you know, let's not forget, he had to go out the front of our house and apologise on television to a sort of crowd of reporters, TV cameras, He'd never done that before.

CRAIG

And I think what's interesting about those moments, there is a huge amount of shaming and finger pointing, and the media can be incredibly vicious as well. And that there's no sort of mitigation. And actually what was interesting, I read a book by Matthew Parris called Great Parliamentary Scandals, and in the introduction to that book, he said often when he talked to people, they didn't necessarily dispute the facts that were presented. But what really did bother them was that all of the mitigation was stripped out, and that there was no sort of clearer picture of what happened. Did you feel that?

JACQUI

Totally, I felt like that. But I also understood there was almost no point trying to do it, because actually, as soon as you tried to explain it… well, you know, in some ways I was bang to rights, but as you say, there are all sorts of reasons why it happened. You don't get the opportunity to say that, and you're almost wasting your time trying to say it. But the other thing I felt was, you know, the utter shitstorm that that whole thing was also meant that people, you know, my fellow MPs couldn't support me either, because nobody was going to put their head above the parapet to defend a colleague.

CRAIG

Yeah, because they were going to be so associated with it. And interestingly, your thing about, I think it was interesting, you were saying that the politics being put forward, that you know, that basically, I've got a really big weekend, the last thing I need is my Home Secretary resigning, that in a way that you aren't given freedom to manoeuvre because you're sort of trapped by the politics of it as well. For what it's worth, my advice would have been, go immediately, just because I think that if you continue with this, you will just have more and more and more agony, and it'll just be more and more drawn out.

JACQUI

I think you're probably right, Craig, because then I put up with weeks of, you know, coming home every night to photographers, people outside the house. I mean, actually, even after I had resigned, it still continued. My sons had to walk home from school, past campaigners demanding that their mother, at the very least stops being an MP, and probably goes to prison.

CRAIG

How was that, coping with knowing that your children were also having to face it?

JACQUI

The worst thing. Absolutely the worst thing. Telling my parents and the impact on my kids, which lives on to this day.

CRAIG

And what, because telling your parents was the shame of it?

JACQUI

Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, they were proud of me. And I had to say to them, look, you know, this is what's happened, this is what's going to come out. I mean, you know, I had to drill my dad not to read the comments below. There’s stories, no Dad, stop!

CRAIG

It's like injecting poison into your veins. Looking back, what did you learn from it all?

JACQUI

Check anything you’re gonna sign, really carefully! I mean, look, you know, I ended up losing my seat, which I would have done anyway, I've now got a new and interesting career. In the end, my marriage came to an end, partly because of having gone through that experience. but that wasn't the only reason, you know, we'd been married for 30 years.

CRAIG

I was talking to somebody yesterday, who's a friend who's having issues in their marriage. And they said, it's okay, for now we've brushed it under the carpet and actually, it seems stable. And I was saying that this thing isn't going to go away necessarily. It might be in abeyance at the moment, but actually it's almost certainly going to come back. And unless you confront it or deal with it now, it may be worse later.

JACQUI

I also looked back to a time when Jack Straw had been the leader of the House and had been the chief whip. And I can remember standing in a room saying, this expenses system is just not right, is it, and we should really do something about it, and then going, but can you imagine going out and knocking on doors in my marginal constituency and saying, do you know what we're going to be focusing on reforming our expenses system this week. I mean, you'd have been torn limb from limb. But on my marriage, I spent a long time trying to save it, my husband had an affair, and I thought that we could save the marriage and I spent too long trying to save that, I spent too long trying to save my political career. Sometimes you have to accept that things have happened. And you have to move on to the next thing, you have to, you know, one of the things that I do a lot more now than I ever did when I was in the heart of politics is try to be mindful, to live in the moment. I do yoga, I do a bit of meditation.

CRAIG

And again, this is so common, I think, as well as a lot of people say that the hardest thing is just actually accepting that something happened or something is the way that it is, you can then as you say, move on if you do that.

JACQUI

But doesn't it take a lot of getting used to though, Craig? Because, you know, we want to explain ourselves. Why did I come into politics? Because I wanted to put things right. And in the end, I had to accept that I couldn't put my own career right, I couldn't put my marriage right. I have to just understand and recognise that. Celebrate the very many amazing things that I have going on in my life, but not be bitter. You know, I very, very occasionally, after a couple of drinks, I will cry bitter tears about what happened to me. But very, very, very rarely. Because where is the benefit in that for my life now?

CRAIG

And a lot of people that I talked to as well, they'd never wish what happened to themselves on their worst enemy sort of thing. But they also have a kind of feeling, a strange feeling that actually it taught them a lot and they grew from it. Is that something you feel?

JACQUI

Totally, both from the expenses stuff, both from the sort of career stuff, and from the divorce. I think I'm a better person, I'm a better friend. I'm a better mother, probably. I'm a more thoughtful person to be around. I'm a gentler person, I think. I'm probably a more content person. So although it would have been nice not to have gone through, if I had a choice.

CRAIG

It's very complicated, isn't it? Because there's so much pain and bitterness and difficulty and everything that's inside, but actually it is almost how you learn to be more balanced, centred, better person, learn to forgive others, forgive yourself, all of those things. And I think that that's really clear. I'm really conscious of time, but I do want to just touch on very quickly your post-politics life, it seems to me that you have this extraordinary, busy, fulfilling existence. Did that take a long time to build?

JACQUI

Yeah, it did. And the, you know, I think people sort of assume that if you've been a minister, and if you've been an MP you leave parliament, you walk into another job.

CRAIG

No. And a lot of people are wary of you as well, because of particularly if you've had to go in difficult circumstances,

JACQUI

Exactly, your reputation’s trashed, you know, actually, when it comes to the workplace, you sort of haven't done a proper job. There aren't many things you qualified to do. I didn't want to go back to teaching, that sort of didn't feel right for me, and I can't imagine any head teacher would have wanted me to teach. So then you have to build a new life. I mean, I was helped by the fact that I said very quickly, I didn't want to stand for election again, which freed me up. I made new friends. So you know, somebody like Iain Dale, who, when I was Home Secretary used to write the most hideous things in his blog about me.

CRAIG

Interestingly, I've had that experience. He's written some pretty horrible stuff about me, but actually, we have a very nice relationship now.

I want to let you go because your very busy life is calling. But the one question that we always ask people at the end of this, if there's one piece of wisdom that you could pass on, what would it be?

JACQUI

I think it's that, you know, this too will pass and keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you will find a new contentment. And you'll have wisdom with it.

CRAIG

That's lovely to hear. And Jacqui, I'm really happy that you are finding such a wonderful life going forward. You've been incredibly open and honest, and I really appreciate that. I know that people listening to this will appreciate it, too. So thank you.

JACQUI

Thank you, Craig.

CRAIG

Huge thanks to Jacqui Smith. It's great to see her thriving after facing so many tough problems. Our next guest is a New York Times best-selling author of the Untethered Soul, Michael Singer.

Michael Singer

If you store everything that ever bothered you inside of you, you're going to be bothered. I don't know why people can't understand that, right?

CRAIG

Oprah Winfrey has called him a guru.

Michael Singer

If you learn to let go, you can live a full life and be open and enjoy much more of your life, as opposed to being anxious. That's where all the anxiety comes from. And yes, I know Oprah, when I've talked to Oprah, she loves it. That's all she talks about. And she says she teaches it to all her students and everything.

CRAIG

Michael has had a huge impact on my thinking, or should I say, he's taught me not to think so much. It's a wonderful conversation with so much insight. If you haven't already done so, please like and subscribe to this podcast, and why not leave a review. Desperately Seeking Wisdom is produced by Sarah Parker for Creators Inc. Until next time, goodbye.