Rory Stewart, 51, has been a diplomat, an academic, an adventurer and a politician. He served as a deputy governor in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. Between 2010 and 2019 he was a Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, resigning having lost a leadership election to Boris Johnson. His podcast with Alastair Campbell, The Rest Is Politics, boasts more than 200,000 regular listeners; his book, Politics on the Edge, now out in paperback, reflects on his decade in government. Do you think we’re seeing the death of the Tory party? I think there are two possibilities. One is it experiences defeat, it recognises it’s got itself on the wrong path and it moves back to the centre, which is what happened, broadly speaking, under David Cameron. The other is that it experiences defeat as confirmation that it needs to lean ever further to the right – the temptation of the Suella Braverman faction or even out to the fringes of Nigel Farage. In your book, you recall how Liz Truss suggested your fatal flaw was a desire “to be interesting”, which actually sounded more like a desire to be honest, rather than mouthing platitudes. In different ways it seems both main candidates in this election are not in any danger of making your error – but surely we need more “interesting” debate? That’s a good way of putting it. We know, in our own lives, complexity, humility, the ability to accept uncertainty, the ability to listen to other people and change your mind, all these things are at the very centre of what makes for a competent human being. In politics, though, we seem to be insisting on the reverse of all those things. Is that why senior politicians – I’m thinking John Major, Ed Balls, even Michael Portillo – become more sympathetic figures once they’ve failed? Yes, but the reason is, they’re no longer trapped in that world. I just interviewed Sajid Javid. He’s a completely different human being from when he was a cabinet minister. He’s funny, he’s frank about his own family background, he’s frank about mental health… Where does that denial of personality in office come from? At a fundamental level, it’s about party loyalty. In our first-past-the-post system, promotion comes not from ability or character but through loyalty. If I look at the sort of people who were promoted quickly in my intake, they were Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Matt Hancock. These are people who never voted once against the party. Cameron had this phrase, you’re either a team player or you’re a wanker.
Perhaps he had that the wrong way round. Surely a decent leader should welcome some dissent? It’s the spirit of the age. Alastair [Campbell] wouldn’t like this, but the roots of it are in New Labour ideas of message discipline. I remember Lynton Crosby, the Australian strategist, saying [to Tory MPs]: “You’re not a commentator. Your job is only to repeat the phrase ‘The long-term economic plan is working’ so much that you feel sick. Because when you’ve said it 150 times, you will suddenly get that wonderful moment where you see somebody being interviewed in Wolverhampton, saying: ‘The reason I voted for the Conservatives is because the long-term economic plan is working.’” It sounded to me like a description of an early desert father repeating some sacred phrase until you reach some transcendental level through it. Or, given the phrase generally wasn’t true, like totalitarianism 101? Yes. On a personal level, you characterise your younger self in the book as being in thrall to the romance of being a man of destiny, a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia. Are you over that? It’s largely in the past, because I think that sentiment doesn’t make much sense for an older person. I think my younger self would be pretty suspicious of my older self. But I don’t believe in heroic individuals any more. I don’t believe this is a game of solitary geniuses leading their country. I now think that’s a dangerous idea.
I remember a banner at a pro-EU march that read “Welcome Estonians and deport Etonians”. Do you think the sense of entitlement inculcated by your former school has been responsible for a lot of the problems we now face? What I would put against that is how, say, Liz Truss and Priti Patel and Suella Braverman rose to very senior positions having come from more modest backgrounds or ethnically diverse backgrounds, or having gone to state schools… But as you’ve said, didn’t they get there primarily by being slavishly loyal to one or other Old Etonian? That’s true. But the reason I’m pushing back against that a little bit is that I think Britain is unhelpfully still titillated by class, by social class. And titillated by the idea that somehow if you could simply abolish Eton, things would suddenly improve.
You’ve been a doer in the past, but you are now cast in the role of pundit and commentator. Is that ever going to be enough for you? I don’t know. Unlike Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, I didn’t start life as a journalist. I started life briefly as a soldier, and then I joined the Foreign Office, and then I ran a charity in Afghanistan. Part of my personality likes fixing problems. At the same time, my book is about the ways in which politics made me deeply unhappy – and the ways in which I felt I and my colleagues were not up to scratch, and often making things worse rather than better. I’m wondering if I can have more of an impact as a writer; and of course the book offended and horrified a lot of my colleagues, so it’s no doubt burnt a lot of bridges, on all sides. Who are you going to vote for? Well, the answer to that is that usually, when I go into a voting lobby, I panic. I think the Conservative party should no longer be in government. I guess my hand will once again float over Labour, but will probably come down on Lib Dems or the Greens. Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart is published by Vintage (£10.99). To support the Observer and Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply • This article was amended on 24 June 2024 to correct a miscaptioning of an image of Rory Stewart as showing “Rory Campbell”.