Welcome to the home of scandal, scares and squabbles, Mr Vice President.
Chevening is the final word ministerial perk. Aside from the prime minister’s hideaway, Chequers, it is essentially the most lavish of all authorities grace-and-favour mansions.
International Secretary David Lammy says he and his weekend home visitor JD Vance get on as a result of they “share a similar working-class background” and are “both Christians”.
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However Chevening couldn’t be extra higher class. It was house to earls, viscounts and different titled aristocrats for 250 years – and has had an ungodly historical past.
Set in 3,000 acres in Kent countryside, this Seventeenth-century mansion has a lake, marble fireplaces and chandeliers, 13 Roman tombstones and a swimsuit of armour from the Spanish Armada.
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Chevening Home. Pic: PA
Chevening confronted scandal in 1999 when Labour international secretary Robin Cook dinner’s ex-wife, Margaret, who cherished the place, vented her fury at him taking second spouse, Gaynor Regan, who had been his mistress, to Chevening.
In a bitter memoir, A Slight and Delicate Creature, through which she accused him of womanising and drunkenness, Margaret wrote acidly that she hoped Gaynor loved the food and drinks that she had paid for.
In 2020, at first of the Covid pandemic, simply weeks after divorcing his spouse Marina, PM Boris Johnson was accused of lacking Cobra conferences as he spent two weeks at Chevening with then-girlfriend Carrie Symonds, now his spouse.
Probably the most alarming scare got here when a senior diplomat apparently couldn’t escape Chevening’s maze. It is claimed that an Italian ambassador who was not very tall had ventured into the maze.
So the story goes, sporting an beautiful darkish blue designer swimsuit and Gucci loafers, His Excellency was misplaced within the maze for over an hour and tore his garments and muddied his fancy sneakers.
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Then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson with the Czech Republic’s deputy international minister Ivo Sramek at Chevening in 2017. Pic: AP
Squabbles over the tenancy of this jewel of HM Authorities’s grace-and-favour mansions date again to Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe and have continued to a present-day rivalry between Mr Lammy and Angela Rayner.
It is claimed that again in 1989, Sir Geoffrey, livid at being shuffled by Mrs Thatcher from the International Workplace to Chief of the Commons, turned political murderer and triggered her downfall partly due to the bitter blow of dropping Chevening.
In David Cameron’s Coalition authorities, international secretary William Hague and the Liberal Democrat deputy PM Nick Clegg have been compelled to take it in turns to get pleasure from weekends in Chevening’s luxurious.
And beneath Theresa Might, Mr Johnson – then international secretary – was compelled to share with not one ministerial colleague however two, Brexit secretary David Davis and worldwide commerce secretary Liam Fox.
Extra just lately, one other international secretary, Liz Truss, and deputy PM Dominic Raab fought a bitter battle over who was entitled to spend weekends there. Finally, she referred to as it an “exalted flat share”.
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Liz Truss attends a gathering with European Fee VP Maros Sefcovic in 2022. Pic: Reuters
And embarrassingly, when she turned PM, she was requested to repay £12,000 for lacking bathrobes, lavish dinners and wine-fuelled summer time events throughout her Tory management marketing campaign, although she disputed the quantity.
After Labour’s election victory final 12 months, deputy PM Rayner was stated to have “locked horns” with Mr Lammy over Chevening after she misplaced out to Rachel Reeves over the Dorneywood grace-and-favour mansion.
Within the Blair years, hair-shirt chancellor Gordon Brown had little interest in luxurious stately houses, so Dorneywood was given to John Prescott, who was famously photographed enjoying croquet when he was presupposed to be operating the nation.
This weekend, regardless of Chevening’s ungodly historical past, Mr Lammy and Mr Vance are anticipated to deepen their relationship by attending Twelfth-century St Botolph’s Church, which is contained in the huge grounds.
In March this 12 months, as their transatlantic bromance was burgeoning, they took mass collectively on the vp’s residence in Washington when Vance hosted the Lammy household.
So with relations between the Labour international secretary and the Republican vp so cordial, what might probably go improper? Simply do not go within the maze, JD.
