Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart
Stewart has some claim to be one of the people who has most left a mark on the national debate in 2023. His chart topping political podcast with Alistair Campbell has struck a chord with a section of middle ground voters who want to listen to political conversation that is civil, thoughtful and allows room for disagreement in an agreeable manner. Its popularity can be judged by the number of copycat odd pairing podcasts it has spawned as well as Stewart’s increasing appearances on the UK media.
It has been argued that there is little actual disagreement between Stewart and Campbell – they despair of this government and despise Johnson in particular – and there is something in this. However, one of the reasons I admire Stewart is that he is less brazenly partisan than Campbell and often, rather gently, pushes his pod partner to examine the consequences of the less successful aspects of the New Labour government. He also persists in drawing out the complexity and knottiness of the issues that all post war UK government have to address. Yet he is never someone who simply provides a brilliant analysis of what’s wrong. Unlike most political commentators, he understands this is the starting point and is, therefore, willing to explore practical, evidence based policies and processes to impact on all those recurring problems of our modern state – social inequality, lack of affordable housing, a failing prison system, and the lack of decent social care amongst many others.
That’s why I have always enjoyed his interventions in the national debate because, unlike Campbell and most other politicians, he understands the need to make some changes with immediate impact whilst also laying the foundations for longer term changes to arrest the country’s decline. That approach is manifest in this memoir but it also offers something more. It’s impressive sales, I believe, reinforce my first claim about his importance for the national debate in 2023. It is simply one of the finest books about politics I have read.
The book mainly focuses on his time in parliament from his selection as a Tory candidate in 2009 for the Penrith constituency, through his election in 2010 and then a series of government and cabinet roles until he left in 2019 unable to stomach serving a government led by Johnson. His route to the edges of power might appear ordained because of his father’s work as part of the secret service establishment and his Eton and Oxford education but it is clear that he was always a more interesting and unusual public servant than his background suggests. He is an old fashioned, one nation Tory with a love of the land expressed through his passion for long distance walks. He appears driven by love of country, albeit a wryly sardonic love for the better part of our historical legacy.
He certainly appears driven by public service: after stints as a civil service administrator in Iraq following the 2003 invasion and then charity work in Kabul, he comes to the conclusion that entering politics is probably the only way to effect the sort of substantial changes he felt were needed. His path was not smooth because he received little encouragement from Cameron who saw him as the sort of free thinker that might disrupt his smooth operation to arrest thirteen years of Tory electoral defeats. It was, however, Stewart’s good fortune to be around when many sitting MPs were standing down after the expenses scandal.
His account of the campaigns to secure the constituency party’s support and then the constituency itself reveal Stewart as a quirkily effective politician. He eschewed the received wisdom about how to secure support and came up with a series of novel strategies. Nevertheless, his capacity for hard-work and the fact that he was able to call on several talented former colleagues and associates to help run his campaign were just as important. He emerges, therefore, as an odd mixture of savvy insider, with good networks, who can get things done and, at the same time, a political innocent who reveres the best parts of the British political system whilst continually asking the awkward question – yes, but why do we have to do things this way just because we always have?
When he makes it into parliament in 2010, it is this melange of characteristics that makes the book such a riveting read; and, incidentally, it explains why the book’s title is so appropriate. His distinctive personality meant that he was often at odds with his party and civil servants. Yes, he understood the importance of party loyalty for a government to operate effectively but he despised the game playing and sense of complacency of many MPs who seemed too readily to accept the limits of their power as legislators. His account of his time as a backbencher reminded me of Isabel Hardman’s excellent book ‘Why We Get the Politicians We Do’. Both make the role seem powerless, tedious and dependent on not rocking the boat rather than doing something positive.
When Stewart is eventually made a junior minister by Cameron, the book becomes an entertaining but, for Stewart and the reader, an intensely frustrating experience. I didn’t expect to be so interested in reading about how the government machinery responds to major floods, or what the prison service sees as its role in keeping drugs out prison, nor what the best way is to make sure the UK’s limited international aid budget actually has an impact, but I was. That was all down to Stewart’s desire to be accountable and effective in his various ministerial roles at Environment, the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Time and again he tries to set targets for improvement for which he makes himself accountable and then tries to introduce evidence based strategies to meet them, only to receive a “computer says no” response. In particular, he is genuinely moved to anger at international aid because he had his own on the ground expertise to call on, and many of the civil servants were people he had worked with effectively during his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, these officials all seemed to treat him, the minister, as a figurehead to be guided what to do and say whilst they got on with running things.
I would recommend that you read this book just for his clear-eyed account of what politicians do and the limits of their ability to get things done. However, there are two other aspects that only go to enrich this memoir.
First of all, Stewart is gloriously indiscreet and reveals interactions with colleagues and many high-profile politicians that are both funny and horrifying. I’m sure you could have guessed that his attempts to work as a junior minister with Liz Truss’ as his boss are the most jaw-dropping of these accounts. Once again, it reminded me of a book I have read recently, ‘Chums’ by Simon Kuper – in his account of the Eton and/or Oxford educated caste who have run the country these last few years, he dispels the myth the chums have propagated that it’s all about excellence. Stewart’s account of how Truss and many other Tory ministers went about governing only goes to show that this myth of the best of us leading the country with wisdom and integrity is just that, a myth.
The other aspect is to do with events dear boy. Stewart was in parliament at one of the craziest times in recent political history. Brexit and everything that came in its wake provide the perfect backdrop for Stewart’s gradual disillusionment with his party, in particular, and parliamentary politics more generally. The former is apparent, Stewart believes, in the party’s treatment of May when she was prime minister, and the forcing out of talented, sane Tory politicians such as Ken Clarke and Davis Gauke.
The wider malaise of our traditional political system is something that he explores every week in his podcast. He is fizzing with ideas about how to improve matters and, so, I just hope that eventually he steps back into the ring.