Former Conservative MP Rory Stewart found being a politician “very yucky” and felt like a fraud, he told an audience at Hay festival on Saturday. Asked whether he would consider going back into politics, he said that he found being a politician “personally very, very unpleasant” and “didn’t like it”, adding: “I feel like a fraud all the time, in a whole series of ways.” He said that maintaining the image of working in three places at once – his Penrith and the Border constituency, parliament and abroad as part of ministerial duties – as an MP was one such example. He was expected to be in his constituency “full-time, focusing on the things that really matter” to constituents. “I’m also a legislator in parliament, and everybody’s expecting me to be 350 miles away from Cumbria in Westminster scrutinising legislation and voting on legislation. “I’m also the minister for Africa, and everybody’s expecting me to be in South Sudan worrying about the delivery of aid and how we deal with the civil war.” Stewart, 51, who was minister for Africa for six months between June 2017 and January 2018, said that he could not “do it all” and be in three places at once.
Yet “on social media, I’m pretending I’m in all three at the same time. I’m sending out tweets, ‘Here I am in South Sudan with a war lord’, ‘Here I am in Cumbria with a farmer’, ‘Here I am in Westminster scrutinising legislation’, right? And at no time am I actually with my family or going to Pret or doing any of the things that I might want to do.” He said that he also feels like a “total fraud” dealing with the public, including at Saturday’s festival. “I hate this,” he said, because he thinks he is on a “tightrope” all the time. “I can chit-chat, I can dance around, I can sell you ideas, I can maybe even make you vote for me, but I’m aware that the situation is fundamentally unstable, that at some point, one, or 10, or 20 or a 100 of you are going to wake up and be like, ‘Who is this prick? Why am I listening to him? He’s a fraud, he’s a hypocrite.’” Stewart also said that he had, for the first time in his life, “thought briefly” about suicide after telling a reporter that some areas of his constituency were “pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine”. Looking back, he felt he had a “very excessive reaction” because most of his constituents “didn’t really care and thought it was quite funny”.