Foreign Secretary James Cleverly feared losing his wife after her breast cancer diagnosis

Published

2 years ago

November 10, 2022

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Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said he “could not speak or sleep” when he found out his wife had breast cancer.

Susie Cleverly, 49, was diagnosed with triple positive breast cancer in December 2021 after spotting dimpled skin underneath her right breast the month before – nearly a year ago to the day.

At the time, her husband was a minister in the Foreign Office, where Liz Truss was foreign secretary in the Boris Johnson administration.

The couple, who have been married for 29 years after meeting at university and have two teenage sons, spoke to Sky News’ Beth Rigby Interviews… programme about her diagnosis, how they have coped, and what it has been like to handle it all while holding one of the great offices of state.

After being diagnosed, Mrs Cleverly rang her husband, who was on the train into Westminster, and told him the doctor thought it was cancer.

“I just burst into tears and I think I cried most of that day,” she said.

‘I just couldn’t get the words out’

Mr Cleverly, 53, who has been the MP for Braintree since 2015, added: “I said I’ll come home.

“I had to ring my private secretary in the Foreign Office saying ‘can you cancel meetings because I need to go home’, and he said ‘is everything okay minister?’

“I tried to say Susie might have cancer, I just couldn’t get the words out, I couldn’t speak – I like to talk, but I just couldn’t speak.

“I said I’ll text you, and, you know, this organisation is amazing. Liz Truss was my boss at the time, she was absolutely amazing.

“I went home, Susie and I talked it through, and I tried to ring again to explain what was going on – and I still couldn’t say a word.

“For the next couple of hours everything was done on WhatsApp, and it really hit me, I never felt anything like that before.”

‘The most frightening word was cancer’

Mrs Cleverly then had about eight mammograms in one day, but they could not see anything until a scan found three lumps in her breast and a node in her arm.

After an MRI, the doctors found more than 12 lumps.

“I wasn’t scared when they told me that,” she said.

“I think the most frightening thing was the word ‘cancer’, so as soon as I was on board with having cancer, I just thought I’m going to get on with it.”

Massive wave of empathy from all MPs

Mr Cleverly said their family and friends have been “fantastic”, with many shaving their heads in solidarity and for charity.

He said despite politics being “ultra-competitive”, MPs from all parties have been very supportive.

“There was this massive wave of empathy and friendship, even from people I didn’t even know particularly well, that was really touching,” he said.

Mrs Cleverly’s treatment left her incredibly ill, with her toenails falling out, infected hives, her face ballooning and stomach and mouth ulcers.

She has now had a mastectomy but is still having immunotherapy to reduce the risk of recurrence and is on a waiting list for reconstructive surgery.

“I feel great, I feel so much more like me,” she said.

‘I thought I might lose her’

But Mr Cleverly admitted there were a “couple of times” he thought he might lose his wife.

Holding back tears, he said: “I haven’t thought about my mortality, and certainly haven’t ever really given any thought to losing Susie, or what that might feel like – and then suddenly you get to confront that. And, we are close.”

The MP, who was made foreign secretary by Ms Truss in September, said he could not have taken the job if it had been earlier in the year when she was going through chemotherapy.

Mrs Cleverly said: “I would have said, do it. But you could have done so.”

Her husband added: “Had I been asked perhaps six or seven months ago when you went through chemo, I don’t think I would have been able to give it the energy and the focus I think the job deserves.

“She’s always been very, very supportive of me and my career. And I do travel a lot. I think the big thing from this is, I think both of us, maybe me, I’m less blase about the time we do have together.

“So when we are together, we’re very, very conscious of making that time really valuable and really meaningful.”

Talking about his job, Mr Cleverly added that he truly believes Ukrainians will succeed in taking their country back from Vladimir Putin, with the best option now for the Russians to withdraw.

He added that Russia should give all the Ukrainian land it has taken back, including Crimea.

“We will continue to support the Ukrainians until this is done,” he said.

World

Why Vladimir Putin seems to be raising the stakes

Published

10 mins ago

April 14, 2025

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Why Vladimir Putin seems to be raising the stakes

He may not be the one to sit down with Vladimir Putin, but Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, summed up the horror of Sunday’s ballistic missile strikes on Sumy succinctly.

“Today’s Palm Sunday attack by Russian forces on civilian targets in Sumy crosses any line of decency,” he said.

“As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong.”

Ukraine war latest: At least 34 people killed

Vladimir Putin gave up on decency long before he started this war.

What he seems to be risking by attacks of this scale is Donald Trump‘s patience.

He does not seem to mind if strikes like this make a mockery of US attempts to bring the two warring parties to the table.

He does not seem to care if he alienates his US counterpart, who has been strangely predisposed to fawn over him to date.

Perhaps he is raising the stakes as high as he can to illustrate his strength of hand: Strikes on civilians damage Ukrainian morale – even if they are hardly battlefield wins – and on the battlefield, he is pushing ahead and does not want to stop.

Perhaps he knows that if he keeps up his military momentum, President Trump will tire of a conflict he realises he cannot solve and let the matter slip while staying true to his MAGA-economic priorities by letting funds for Ukraine dry up.

Perhaps he thinks President Trump is so keen on a rapprochement with Russia, on the big Putin-Trump bilateral, that the details, the civilian deaths along the way, will all be by-the-by when that long-sought photo-op finally happens.

Whatever it is, President Putin seems to be in no rush to get things settled.

His spokesman told a Russian state reporter on Sunday that talks were under way at several levels but that “of course, it is impossible to expect any instant results”.

Withdrawing his troops would get instant results. But that is not what Vladimir Putin wants.

His war economy is working for him, and he has the attention of the one country he considers a worthy adversary, the United States.

In the meantime, this attack reinforces why President Zelenskyy’s plea for air defence systems is his top priority. And why a ceasefire cannot come soon enough.

World

At least 34 dead in Ukrainian city of Sumy after Russian missile strikes

Published

18 hours ago

April 14, 2025

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At least 34 dead in Ukrainian city of Sumy after Russian missile strikes

At least 34 people – including two children – have been killed after a Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian city.

The country’s state emergency service said another 117 people have been injured, with 15 children among them, in the northeastern city of Sumy.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry later added that one of the children injured was a baby girl born this year, saying “even newborns are targets for Russia’s crimes”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy also shared videos on Telegram of the aftermath of the attack on social media, showing dead bodies in the middle of a city street near a destroyed bus.

As it happened: Russian attack is ‘signal’ to US and Ukraine

Russia ‘dragging out this war’ – Zelenskyy

The Ukrainian president said on social media “only scoundrels can act like this” and that “tough reaction from the world is needed”.

“Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out this war,” he added. “Without pressure on the aggressor, peace is impossible.

“Talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and air bombs. We need the kind of attitude towards Russia that a terrorist deserves.”

Andriy Kovalenko, a security official who runs Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation, noted the strike came after a visit to Moscow by US envoy Steve Witkoff.

US official: ‘This is wrong’

Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump‘s envoy for the Ukraine war, said the attack crosses “any line of decency” and that “there are scores of civilian dead and wounded”.

He added: “As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong. It is why President Trump is working hard to end this war.”

In response to Mr Kellogg, Mr Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvynm asked: “Don’t you think it’s time to smack the Moscow mule across the nose with a 2X4?”.

Later, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the strike was “horrifying” and a “tragic reminder of why President Trump and his Administration are putting so much time and effort into trying to end this war and achieve durable peace”.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy added he was “horrified” by Russia’s “barbaric strike” on Sumy, and called for an “immediate ceasefire”.

Meanwhile, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “cruelty struck again” and called the strike a “blatant violation of international law”.

It came hours before a separate Russian strike killed three people in the central district of the southern city of Kherson.

The local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said a 68-year-old woman was injured and died in hospital and that a 48-year-old man also died after “the occupiers dropped an explosive device from a drone”.

A 62-year-old woman was also killed “as a result of the shelling”.

On Saturday, a Russian guided bomb hit a house in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk on Saturday, injuring four people.

Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram that three others could be trapped under rubble.

It comes after Russian diplomats accused each other of violating a tentative US-brokered deal to pause strikes on energy infrastructure.

“The Ukrainians have been attacking us from the very beginning, every passing day, maybe with two or three exceptions,” Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said, adding that Moscow would provide a list of Kyiv’s attacks from the past three weeks.

Andrii Sybiha, his Ukrainian counterpart, dismissed the claim saying on Saturday that Russia launched “almost 70 missiles, over 2,200 [exploding] drones, and over 6,000 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine, mostly at civilians” since agreeing to the limited pause on strikes.

World

Why Vladimir Putin seems to be raising the stakes

Published

21 hours ago

April 13, 2025

admin

“Today’s Palm Sunday attack by Russian forces on civilian targets in Sumy crosses any line of decency,” he said.

“As a former military leader, I understand targeting and this is wrong.”

Ukraine war latest: At least 34 people killed

Vladimir Putin gave up on decency long before he started this war.

What he seems to be risking by attacks of this scale is Donald Trump‘s patience.

He does not seem to mind if strikes like this make a mockery of US attempts to bring the two warring parties to the table.

He does not seem to care if he alienates his US counterpart, who has been strangely predisposed to fawn over him to date.

Whatever it is, President Putin seems to be in no rush to get things settled.

His spokesman told a Russian state reporter on Sunday that talks were under way at several levels but that “of course, it is impossible to expect any instant results”.

Withdrawing his troops would get instant results. But that is not what Vladimir Putin wants.

His war economy is working for him, and he has the attention of the one country he considers a worthy adversary, the United States.

In the meantime, this attack reinforces why President Zelenskyy’s plea for air defence systems is his top priority. And why a ceasefire cannot come soon enough.