The former home secretary Jacqui Smith says tomorrow she knew her husband had been watching pornographic films and that they had argued about it before it emerged she made expenses claims for two adult movies seen by him.
In a candid interview with the's Guardian, her first with a newspaper since she resigned ahead of Gordon Brown's reshuffle, she says she doubts the damage to her reputation "will ever go away". The expenses scandal, in which Smith was the first and arguably the most high-profile victim, was handled "appallingly badly" by politicians, she says. Tony Blair would have handled it better as prime minister than did Gordon Brown, Smith believes.
Richard Timney, Smith's husband, whom she employed as her parliamentary aide, issued an apology in March after it was revealed she claimed parliamentary expenses from a Virgin media package for two porn films watched by him, which cost £5 each. Included in the claim were two showings of the film Ocean's 13 at £3.75 each, and £3.50 to watch Surf's Up.
Smith says their mistake was in claiming for any kind of movie, not simply that two were pornographic. "It didn't happen a lot, but I was much more angry with him about the fact that we had not, between us, properly checked the expense claim than I was about the film.
"I think porn is wrong because of my feminist background, and I would argue with him about it, but it was as wrong for us to claim for Surf's Up and Oceans 13 as it was for us to claim for porn."
Smith says Brown asked her to stay in her job, but she believed her position had become untenable. Her resignation leaked three days before the reshuffle in June. It got to a point at which she found it difficult to focus on her joband lost confidence, she says. "It was part of the reason I resigned. You become known as the person who is associated with those things," Smith said. "The whole of my life has been about trying to do the right thing, trying to be somebody people can respect, and this is hung round my neck, and I don't know if it will ever go away.
"My sister, who is a journalist, says you couldn't have designed a story that was more embarrassing."
In February it was reported that her family house in Redditch had been registered as her second home and that she had claimed a total of £116,000 on it between 2001 and 2007. She said she has no regrets about claiming her family home as a second home because she spent most of her time living in London with her sister, but she does feel that she was wrong to claim certain household goods.
"There are some things I look at now and think, no, it wasn't justified to charge that much to the taxpayer – for example, £500 for a sink." She said the 88p plug she claimed for, which led to accusations of penny pinching, was only one item on a larger receipt.
Smith, Britain's first female home secretary, believes a disproportionate number of women have resigned from the government over the expenses scandal. "Women probably feel more hurt about the impact on the rest of their families from going through that kind of thing," she said. "That's a horrible thing to say about my male colleagues, but I just feel it might be true." But she "loved" being home secretary and would return "if I had the opportunity".
On the government's doomed attempts to allow the police to hold terror suspects for up to 42 days, which Smith championed and then was forced to shelve, she admits: "I'm not sure the amount of effort and political capital and time we used on it was justified even had we been successful getting it ... I think we probably spent too long on it. And it distorted the focus we had on terrorism."
She told the Guardian that she will fight for her seat at the next election but knows it will be a struggle to win. Boundary changes have made her marginal Redditch seat an even more likely Tory target.
Smith accepted that the British public is disillusioned with politics and that the expenses scandal had been handled "appallingly badly." Combined with the recession, it had created a situation that is "absolutely toxic".
She admitted the government, and she herself, had been out of touch with the public and under-estimated their anger. While she stated she felt Brown was the right man to fix the economy, she said Blair would have probably handled the expenses crisis better, and that the government missed his experience.
"We've missed him individually, and we've missed that ability to communicate," she said. "I think he would have got the zeitgeist about the expenses. One of his strengths is he understands how people feel about things, he identifies it quickly, and then he's able to take action about it."
