If only more politicians were like Rory Stewart. That is pretty much the gist of his book Politics on the Edge. While Stewart is the man called into politics to serve the people, the same isn’t true of his colleagues. Stewart’s memoir has a short list of ‘goodies’; namely, himself. But there is a long list of ‘baddies’ who, by Stewart’s account, have brought British politics into disrepute. Mr S has read Stewart’s book so you don’t have to – and here are seven of the worst people on Rory’s naughty list:
George Osborne:
There’s no love lost between Stewart and Osborne. The former chancellor, who is now doing his best to single handedly solve the labour market crisis, is painted as a cynical Cameron stooge who can’t be trusted. Mr S is shocked! Stewart’s description of Osborne is a textbook example of a backhanded compliment: ‘He reminded me of an eighteenth-century French cardinal: wryly observant of colleagues, capable of breathtaking cynicism, but also erudite, irreverent, poised and witty…’
David Cameron:
The former Tory leader is painted as an old Etonian buffoon who only cares about himself. Stewart refers repeatedly in the book to Dave’s locks, which seems to serve as a metaphor for his suaveness. ‘Looking at Cameron’s fine hair, pink full cheeks, narrow eyes and blurred features,’ Stewart writes, ‘I struggled to imagine him in any other profession.’ Poor Dave.
Stewart also recounts a damning conversation with Cameron in 2009, when he was weighing up whether to become a Tory MP: ‘When I cease to be prime minister I will return with great pride to the backbenches and (be) Member of Parliament for Witney, for the rest of my life,’ Cameron is said to have told Stewart. Mr S thinks that given the speed of Dave’s departure from politics after the EU referendum, the good people of Witney might have something to say about that promise.
Etonians:
Rory Stewart went to Eton but don’t you dare mention it. David Cameron, who also went to Eton, comes in for particular criticism for the number of school mates employed in his private office: ‘Four men sat in Cameron’s outer office, with floppy hair and open-necked white shirts: speech writer, head of strategy, chief of staff, chancellor’s chief of staff, all Old Etonians,’ Rory tells us. Stewart says he was ‘astonished’ to encounter so many people from the same school in one place and suggests Dave would have been better off widening his recruitment pool: ‘I employed 300 people in Kabul,’ says Stewart,’ including thirty foreigners, and not one had been to my school’. Good on you, Rory.
Tory teachers’ pets:
David Cameron is said to have divided the world ‘between team players and wankers,’ according to Stewart. ‘A team player was someone who parroted the party line with fervour, never rebelled, and was never abashed.’ Who does Stewart accuse of taking this to a ‘vertigo-inducing extreme’? Step forward Priti Patel, Liz Truss and Matt Hancock. Of course, no political memoir these days is complete without taking a pop at Hancock. Mr S is pleased to see that Stewart doesn’t make an exception.
Boris Johnson:
While Saddam Hussein and even Joseph Goebbels earn a mention or two in Stewart’s book, Rory saves his ire for the big baddy of modern British politics: Boris Johnson. The pair attended the same school, of course, but Stewart is keen to make it clear that’s where the comparison ends.
On their first encounter, in Iraq in 2005, Johnson is ‘serene, cheerful and cheeky’. But if he’s fishing for more warm words, Boris should stop reading there: of his rivals in the Tory leadership race, Boris is, Stewart writes, ‘the only truly dangerous one’:
‘He alone could cloak a darker narrative in clowning. He alone allowed the public to indulge ever more offensive opinions under the excuse that some of it might be a joke.’
Nadine Dorries:
Dorries’ position as a Boris superfan makes her inclusion in Rory’s bad books no great surprise. Stewart says that Nadine found in Boris ‘everything she sought in the Conservative Party, her ally in the fight against ‘left-wing snowflakes who were taking the Christ out of Christmas’, and someone who was prepared to mock the look of women in burqas’. Oh dear.
Michael Gove:
Stewart met all kinds of unsavoury characters during his time as a governor of Iraq, but it seems nothing prepared him for an awkward encounter with one of his fellow Tory colleagues. Stewart recalls the moment that Gove infuriated him by asking him to imagine that ‘a jihadi broke into your house and the choice was either to let a jihadi kiss Shoshana (your wife) or something worse’.
Stewart was furious at the mention of his wife. ‘Someone thought for a moment I was going to hit Michael Gove,’ he writes. Now now, boys.
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