Bad news appeared in the Irish Times, of all places, this week, for Nigel Farage MP, leader of the UK’s Reform party. What was the devastating blow, you ask? Well it is that a man called Rory Stewart has vaguely said he might win the next British general election.
In an interview with the Times, Stewart said, “A lot can happen in four years, and Nigel Farage is perfectly capable of blowing himself up, et cetera. But there is a very significant chance that Farage could replace the Conservative Party as the big party in British politics alongside Labour.”
The problem with this is that Rory Stewart is famously wrong about everything. He was wrong about Brexit and he was so spectacularly wrong about the last US election that he was roundly mocked on social media.
Now, before you ask, I know what you are saying. Laura, who the heck is Rory Stewart and why would I care about what he has to say about anything.
Well Rory Stewart is what the kids these days call a “Centrist Dad”. He was a former Tory MP and Cabinet minister but doesn’t like anything conservative which is why he is a darling of the UK media and why the Irish Times saw fit to ask him for an interview. Stewart by the way took the Irish Times so seriously that he did the interview while on the school run. Which is a bit rude if you ask me.
“The conversation with writer, podcaster and former Conservative Party MP Rory Stewart starts in his London sitting room and ends outside his children’s school gate, frequently veering into the poetry of William Butler Yeats along the way.”
First some background. There is nothing the mainstream media (UK or Ireland) likes more than a repentant former conservative politician. Just like in the American media, the only good Republican president is the cowardly sell – out. For years they told you John McCain was to the right of Genghis Khan. They even tried to tell you Mitt Romney was a fascist in waiting. Then Trump came along and we were all supposed to forget about what they said about Reagan (economically extreme) McCain (fascist) and Romney (a misogynist with ‘binders full of women.’ Oh just google it.) It is similar in Ireland and the UK.
Rory Stewart. Well I had to suffer hearing Rory Stewart and Dominic Grieve and the rest of them morning, noon and night telling me how bad their party once was. I did BBC Any Questions with Stewart and I can’t remember much of what was said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0910z8b
But I do know this. I will have talked sense and Stewart will have talked half – baked rubbish but in a proper posh Brit accent. And I hate to sound all socialist again but Rory Stewart is a good example of the unearned privilege that comes with being Brit posh. He wouldn’t get the same amount of air – time if he spoke Liverpool while wearing a shell suit. That’s the truth.
They always put me on these BBC programmes to make the Tory MP look reasonable. The implication being sure the Tory MP is bad, but look who is sitting next to him. Turns out I was right about much of what I said, including the grooming scandal.
Anyway this isn’t about me, more’s the pity. Since 2022, Stewart has co-hosted The Rest Is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell. This is the podcast you listen to if you want to save your money and not go to Dignitas in Switzerland. No joke. If you put that on you’d want to finish yourself off within 15 minutes.
Also, Steward has one of those CVs only the chosen few in Britain get. There is not Irish equivalent. Born in Hong Kong when the Brits were still in charge he was sent back to Britain to boarding school when he was 8. After that he attended Eton College and then on to Balliol College, Oxford. He then went into the British diplomatic service, obviously.
Stewart worked for Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service as a diplomat in Indonesia and as British Representative to Montenegro. He left the diplomatic service to undertake a two-year walk across Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Forrest Gump has nothing on Rory Stewart.
Think how privileged you’d have to be to be able to take two years out of the prime of your adult male life and go walking? That’s some privilege right there. Sometime after that he was elected as Tory MP. He never had a real job in his life so that makes perfect sense. No hang on that’s not really fair, he did once have a job. While a student at Oxford, Stewart was a private tutor to Prince William and Prince Harry during the summer. That can’t have been easy…
The point about Rory Stewart is with this immense life experience of the walking and tutoring Prince William and the diplomatic career he has taken a good look around the world and doesn’t like what he sees. Now you might say he sounds a bit like you Laura, but that wouldn’t be fair.
Stewart doesn’t like the huge political change in the last 10 years. Which means, that really annoying quote from the Yeats poem is never far away. The Irish Times had it front and centre.
“The Irish poet has lessons for today’s politics, especially his 1919 poem The Second Coming, written after the first World War as the War of Independence in Ireland was about to get under way.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” Yeats wrote.
The poem reflects Stewart’s current mood.”
Goodness, that verse really annoys me. People who don’t like the political change of the last 10 years are forever quoting it.
This is because these people had it sweet before Brexit and before Trump. They were the centre. It didn’t hold for people like Stewart and now they have no power. They only have podcasts.
Things haven’t gone their way, so according to these people (those who can take two years out to go for a long walk) everything is now “falling apart.” Give me a break.
No, your cushy, upper middle class world of privilege might be falling part (but I suspect Stewart is fine and he picked those kids up at a private school) but that’s the feeling. The voters aren’t listening to him. The hoi-polloi are getting ideas above their station. They are not on board with the entire open borders experiment men like the evil Alastair Campbell brought in, so it’s all pass me the tissues while I dry my tears off my Balliol tie. Who am I kidding, centrist dads never wear ties.
Also, if you lack conviction, then you are not ‘the best.’ If you lack all conviction then you don’t care about the issues, don’t read about them or read any books. Instead you spend your time watching Netflix while scrolling TikTok. On any objective test, you are not the best.
Now it is true that some of the worst people are passionate about all their errors – but at least they take a position. And then there are people like me, often full of passionate intensity and right on the substance. Yes, this makes me one of the best.
Finally, Rory Stewart has very bad hygiene phone habits. “You glimpse something for a second on your phone on a bus, or in the toilet, that appears funny or provocative or confirms some theory that you’ve got, and you share it before you flush the toilet, and then you’re on to your next,” he says.
Stop that. Do not Tweet while on the Throne. This is unpleasant and wrong. Not as wrong as the drone pizza delivery system but still wrong.
Stewart’s final complaint, shoved out there for the Irish audience, was that the Brits don’t care about Ireland enough. They don’t care much for the Scots either, but they should also care about Ireland.
“In the past, too many in Britain looked down on Ireland. Today, the situation is, perhaps, even worse: “It’s become almost more insulting. It’s gone from a patronising assertion of superiority to complete ignorance and indifference.”
Look, sorry to put this brutally, but why the heck if you lived in Britain would you care about Ireland? Why? They have enough going on the cuts to the winter fuel payments, the NHS falling apart, the Muslim grooming gangs and the schools closing. And that’s just this week.
My parents used to complain about this. Oh, the schools don’t teach anything about the famine ‘over there’. First, they do a bit. But secondly, no the English school system does not teach much about the famine because they are too busy getting through the Romans, the Empire and the two world wars they fought and won. That takes time.
Also, in my 20 years of living out there, you learn one clear thing about London. No one who lives in London cares about what happens outside the M25, unless your second home is outside the M25. They don’t care about what happens in Liverpool or Birmingham either. So no, they don’t care about what happens in Louth.
So that’s Rory Stewart. Never right about anything which is why he is an oracle of wisdom for those who read the Irish Times. I do it, so you don’t have to.