Miriam González Durántez: the Lib Dems put the country first. People will see that
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Version 0 of 1. Miriam González Durántez knows all about red lines. Her husband, the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, has been drawing them all week. Now, after Ed Miliband suggested that Clegg would be forced into shadowy coalition talks after an inconclusive election, she has one of her own. “I saw Ed Miliband talking about dark rooms and Nick,” she says, the day after the final TV leaders event. “The only person who ever gets in a dark room with Nick is myself. So both Cameron and Miliband should stop daydreaming!” González Durántez’s faux horror is delivered in her lilting Spanish accent, in an interview with the Guardian after a campaign event in Aberdeenshire. The 46-year-old international trade lawyer has been notable for her gentle but firm rejection of the traditional role of political spouse, refusing to allow the couple’s three children to pose for family press portraits. Now, on her second visit to Scotland – where Liberal Democrats have increased funding and tactical support after internal polling suggested the party could hold most of its 11 seats – González Durántez insists her presence involves no personal compromise. “I have done this because I want to. I’ve spent the last 18 months organising Inspiring Women events,” she says, referring to the organisation she founded to get women to speak to teenage girls about their professional lives for an hour a year. “I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be good if I could try and help some of these excellent female candidates.’” So Friday lunchtime found her in Gordon, where the Liberal Democrat candidate, Christine Jardine, is facing off against the former first minister Alex Salmond, and the local party continues to talk up the possibility of claiming what would undoubtedly be the biggest scalp in Scotland. Giving a short speech to the smartly dressed throng, González Durántez is characteristically forthright in her description of Salmond as a man who is standing in this election “for himself and his own ego”. “He should come clean,” she says later, with genuine frustration. “He is the person who is standing behind Nicola Sturgeon. She is not standing to be an MP.” Salmond should also be spending his time in the constituency, she adds, rather than attending to his book tour – a point made frequently and with force by Jardine. “At the very minimum, when you ask people for their votes, you don’t sit there complacently just hoping that the votes are going to fall in your lap. It’s a basic lack of respect for people in this constituency,” says González Durántez. The kind of coalition you had here in 2010 is the cleanest form of coalition, where you negotiate in just a few days On a similar visit to the junior business minister Jo Swinson’s constituency on Tuesday, González Durántez claimed that a minority government faced blackmail by either Ukip or the SNP. Did Miliband’s firm dismissal of any deal with the SNP on Thursday convince her? She snorts in disbelief: “In terms of the arrangements, it’s clear that nobody is going to have a straight majority, so at some point there is going to be a need for people to put the country above their party and come to a sensible arrangement. Which is exactly what the Lib Dems had to do in 2010.” González Durántez, who grew up in rural Spain, where her father served as mayor of the north-western municipality of Olmedo, added: “I come from a country that has used coalitions for many years so I have seen all the different arrangements that you could have. The kind of coalition you had here in 2010 is the cleanest form of coalition, where you negotiate in just a few days, you write it, you publish, everybody knows what is going to happen. “That is completely different to having parties on life support from somebody else or with loose arrangements that the voters don’t know about. I think that the SNP has been clear because every step is a step towards independence.” Understandably unwilling to predict the outcome of next week’s poll, she concludes that “you’ve got to be respectful towards people to make their choice however they wish”. “But I do think that people will recognise what the Lib Dems have done. It hasn’t been easy to put country above party but they have done it. They have stabilised the economy. They have managed to put progressive policies into the government at a time when it’s really difficult. They have a track record.” Related: Lib Dem manifesto 2015 - the key points As for her own husband: “He has had a very good campaign,” she says in a tone that brooks no argument. And when I ask her if she feels protective towards her husband when he is criticised in the media, she is equally sanguine: “[The media] are doing their job.” “For me it has always been a privilege to see British politics from the front row. It has been fantastic what it has allowed me to do. I do realise that not everybody agrees all the time with what one particular politician says. “But you need to keep things in perspective. Nothing that any single politician or their families [go through] is anything in comparison to what most other families go through. I do not share this kind of victim complex that some other politicians and families develop. Honestly, you just deal with it together as you deal with everything else.” Now that she is ploughing her own campaign furrow, do she and Clegg analyse their respective events when they get home? She seems a little bemused by the suggestion: “Like any normal couple you talk about your day, but I have three boisterous sons and they take over. In 30 seconds, we are talking about the latest Arsenal score, or homework … a lot of homework!” |