Book Review: Politics on the Edge, by Rory Stewart

As he climbs the greasy pole

He fears for losing his soul

It all ends in tears

Betrayed by his peers

Now Rory reflects on his role

Think that’s my first limerick executive summary – hope you like it.

I was a bit late to Politics on the Edge (my copy came via the local Oxfam shop), but was hooked from page one, not least because (shock!) Stewart is a politician who is a maverick, genuinely funny (wry observations of both his colleagues and the trappings of power) and writes like a dream.

He is also smart and thoughtful. For a few years, even while tackling a more than full time job as Minister of Justice, he would rock up to one of our my guest speaker slots at the LSE, pull out a flip chart, and in one of the highlights of the term, deliver an impromptu master class on development and the role of the state to hundreds of students. As the environment secretary Liz Truss once said to her junior minister: “Rory, stop being so interesting.” 

So what does the book say? Hard to beat the admirably crisp blurb:

‘Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.

Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become.

Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict.’

For anyone interested in the politics of change or stasis, he is an acute observer of the limits to power and reason. At each stage of his fairly meteoric rise, he thinks the next job will finally deliver him the levers to bring about change, and he is almost invariably frustrated. Real power lies with civil servants, or the Prime Minister, or is simply unfathomable.

I found him an intriguing and complex character. He has a slightly weird obsession with military men – lots of broad shoulders and straight backs, and bringing in such upright chaps to circumvent the numerous blockers trying to stymie his efforts.

He has a genuine affection for ‘the people’, whether in Afghanistan or his parliamentary constituency on the English-Scottish border, but really doesn’t seem to like most civil servants. A DFID lifer once told me that he was the rudest and worst minister out of the 30 or so he had served under, and there is a stellar bit of trolling in the review in Civil Service World by the head of communications at the HM Prison and Probation Service he once oversaw: ‘400-odd pages of how right Rory Stewart was at the time, and how history will prove him to be a visionary.’

And of course, that’s the problem with autobiographies marking their own homework, especially when politicians seek to establish their legacies.

Just like fellow Etonian Boris Johnson, who he openly loathes, he sometimes shows the limitless self-belief that rich parents pay hundreds of thousands to instil in their offspring. But he can also be disarmingly honest about his own doubts. Indeed, in his review on Politics Home, Lord Hennessy concluded 

‘Ultimately it’s a study in pain – the scarring effect of disillusion. If you can bear it, have a listen to this:

“Nine years in politics had been a shocking education in lack of seriousness. I had begun by noticing how grotesquely unqualified so many of us were for the offices we were given. I had found, working for Liz Truss, a culture that prized campaigning over careful governing, opinion polls over detailed policy debates, announcements over implementation. I felt that we had collectively failed to respond adequately to every major challenge of the past 15 years: the financial crisis, the collapse of the liberal ‘global order’, public despair and the polarisation of Brexit.”’

The pain is nowhere more striking than the sudden implosion (painstakingly detailed) of his political career, after a disastrous TV debate while running against Johnson for the leadership of the Tory Party.

‘Everyone else was leaning in, nodding genially and collegiately at each other’s remarks, while I had ripped off my tie and was alternately staring up at the ceiling or grimacing at the floor. For almost thirty years the British state had absorbed all my most romantic illusions about public service. But now at the culmination of my career, I felt trapped in a low-budget reality TV show.’

But he also thinks he got the politics wrong:

‘I was trying to be the prime minister in an age of populism and social media, appealing to the 65 million highly individual minds of this mysterious, recalcitrant, elusive online nation – a country in motion, always inverting its history and discarding its heroes. But I was behaving as though the task was to persuade in a public argument.’

His public meltdown was followed by a rapid exit from the party, a reinvention as a champion of cash transfers as President of GiveDirectly, and success as co-host of the ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast, in an ‘odd couple’ conversation with Alistair Campbell (who he usually outshines).

Overall, a great primer on the realities of UK politics, and a stocking filler for any political nerd friend or relative. The paperback is out now, or there’s always the Oxfam shop.

Here’s the man himself, in a 15m interview