But you are changing far more lives now – one stroke of a pen on plastic bags has changed the behaviour of millions.’ DAVID CAMERON, Boris Johnson, and Rory Stewart were all educated at Eton and Oxford. Two became Prime Ministers; one did not. Already an acclaimed author, Stewart (Features, 3 November) — with ruthless honesty, not least about himself — describes his nine years in Parliament, concluding with the débâcle of the second television debate that led to his elimination from the chance to challenge Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party. It is both a riveting and painful read, which, frankly, exposes the glaring inadequacies of the dysfunctional way in which Britain is governed. Prison violence was on the way down when Stewart was asked to see the prime minister. With “some of the monarch’s stiff authority” Theresa May promoted him to a cabinet role split between the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where an unhappy Boris Johnson held the position of foreign secretary. As Stewart tells us: “A man who enjoyed the improbable, the incongruous and the comically over-stated had been trapped in a department whose religion was tact and caution.”

Disillusionment was swift. MPs were uninterested in policy, he discovered. Instead they were obsessed with scandal. He found “impotence, suspicion, envy, resentment, claustrophobia and Schadenfreude”. Cameron made speeches about diversity. But he filled his private office with white-shirted old Etonians, drawn “from an unimaginably narrow social group”. In one vote Stewart rebelled over an amendment on mountain rescue by hiding in the loo. No one noticed. Stewart, it seems, was confused that this roster of “the uncurious, uncritical, inept” were selected to build the modern Conservative Party instead of, erm, him. It is hard not to read into the thinly veiled subtext that the worst thing about Cameron is not his politics or his management style, nor his elevation of Liz Truss, but that he held little affection for Rory.Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age. Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, this is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life; a new classic of political memoir and a remarkable portrait of our age. These days Stewart leads a non-profit organisation that gives cash handouts to the poor of East Africa, and, with Alastair Campbell, co-hosts every centrist dad’s favourite podcast, The Rest is Politics. He has also, however, found time to write this memoir, Politics on the Edge: the story of his 10 years as a Tory MP. It’s very good. Even so, I’m not sure I should recommend it. This is because it casts such a depressing light on Westminster that it may put the reader off voting ever again. From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Overall, this is worth reading given how different it is to most memoirs, but it is unfortunately, and understandably, less interesting than those whose political careers went a bit further.

It was now with three defeats for her Brexit deal behind her, and a crumbling administration, that May promoted Stewart to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development. Long passages in this chapter advocate for all the merits of the agreement – its sensitivity to Ireland, its best-of-both-worlds problem-solving. I find it convincing now as I found it convincing then. But her abject failure to interrogate, deeply, why Remainers and Leavers alike didn’t see promise in her arrangement is telling. She thinks they crashed her deal just “because they could” without considering that anyone might have good reason to. Rory Stewart interview: ‘I fought an existential fight against Boris Johnson, who is a terrible human being’ ] It is hard to disagree with any of Stewart’s conclusions, about the dire state of our politics, and the strange and empty character of its representatives. I was left wondering if he would have had a less bruising time as a Labour MP. In 2019 Johnson purged leading remainers and Stewart quit both the Tories and his seat. Last year he reinvented himself as one half of a hugely successful current affairs podcast, The Rest Is Politics, co-hosted with Alastair Campbell. I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel like what I mean by power. I felt far more powerful running a small NGO in Kabul.’It doesn’t help that so few people at the top, or indeed anywhere else in politics, seem to have a clue what they’re doing. Time and again, ministers find themselves abruptly appointed to jobs for which they have little if any relevant experience, aptitude or even enthusiasm. Barely have they begun to get to grips with the role than they’re just as abruptly shunted off to another. Stewart deplores “how grotesquely unqualified so many of us were for the offices we were given”, and “a culture that prized campaigning over careful governing, opinion polls over detailed policy debates, announcements over implementation”. By the time he launches his bid for No10, he sounds so miserably disillusioned it’s a wonder he found the energy to sign his nomination papers. Penance completed, Stewart embarked on a ministerial career that provides the main course in this feast of political insight. Rarely before has the life of a government minister been described in such granular detail or with such literary flair.

Maybe. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels very distant and theoretical. In Kabul, we delivered the first water supply, the first sanitation, the first electricity for people who had never had these things before. Every week, we seemed to be erecting a new building. It was fast. I was on the ground, shaping, managing. Not signing paper in an office. I was confident that I was changing lives.’ The book has several moments of self-contempt. At one point Stewart thought about killing himself. He brooded in the middle of the night and often experienced disgust. Politics, he came to think, was a “rebarbative profession”. “In London, I felt increasingly exhausted and ashamed,” he admits. He developed migraines and kept going by taking painkillers. Despite all this, his idealism and love of country – his stated reason for joining the Tories – never quite left him. Austerity was beginning to bite, and when a journalist suggested that his constituency was too prosperous to feel its effects, Stewart replied that parts of it were “pretty primitive” and some farmers used twine to hold up their trousers. Cue a media storm so vicious he contemplated suicide. But the tough hill farmers who he thought he’d insulted were more amused than outraged, and at the 2015 election his majority nearly doubled. Stewart realises that up against the aggressive exaggeration of the ERG, his allies are ‘like a book club going to a Millwall game’

Church Times/Canterbury Press:

But that was tiny, Rory. You were only working with a few hundred people. Now you can change the lives of millions.’ Politics always seemed to me like some monolithic, Mammon-oriented Rube Goldberg Machine whose main function is to serve itself while using up resources and churning out illusions as well as mostly avoiding any positive outcome based on reality. Stewart’s recent work, I think is an eloquent document of support with regard to this view. Yet, in 2009, Rory found himself considering an unlikely move. David Cameron had reopened the Conservative candidates’ list to ‘anybody who wants to apply’. He decided to stand. PDF / EPUB File Name: Politics_On_the_Edge_-_Rory_Stewart.pdf, Politics_On_the_Edge_-_Rory_Stewart.epub Recognising that fawning loyalty was necessary for promotion, Stewart began to play the game, despising himself in the process. He even considered standing down at the next election. But that would have been a betrayal of his constituents, for whom he worked assiduously — work that made up for all the frustrations of Parliament. At last, after the 2015 election, Cameron appointed Stewart a junior Minister at DEFRA, under Liz Truss.

In a way, it is a great demonstration of the reality of the sad nature of modern (British) politics that it is structurally limited to be more inhibited by careerists and sycophants than by actually interesting and skilled leaders. That the politics is so separated from real life - through the parliamentary groupings and necessity to show loyalty to the whips, or by the generalist and extremely myopic nature of the modern civil service. Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is published by Guardian FaberAll of which makes for a superbly readable book. After his unexpected 2015 election victory, Cameron made Stewart a junior environment minister, serving under Liz Truss. Truss prized “exaggerated simplicity” above “critical thinking”, “power and manipulation” over “truth and reason”. Stewart observes that this “new politics” offered “untethered hope” and “vagueness” instead of accuracy. Truss was allergic to “caution and detail”, he adds. However, in doing so, Stewart does not appear self-serving or egotistical. Instead, Stewart appears introspective, transparent and articulate in his self-reflection, recognising that he made mistakes and that he could have done things differently. This enables Politics on the Edge to read in an enthralling manner and to be void of unwarranted self-promotion, unlike certain other memoirs. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. And a party that seeks to take down May rather than endorse her apparently ingenious Brexit deal completely confounds those who self-style as cool-headed rationalists. In short, the problem – as diagnosed by May and Stewart – is not in fact anything to do with the institutional “abuse of power” or the systematic eschewal of expertise. No, their problem is that the Conservative party does not specifically reward people like them. From beginning to end the reader is astonished that the author lasted as long as he did in a career field that seems not only not to value the qualities of honesty, integrity, truthfulness, any kind of loyalty or work ethic but essentially finds these qualities abhorrent to its mechanical day to day functioning.