Andrew Smith's Reviews > Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

I suppose Rory Steward first clearly appeared on my radar when he stood as one of many candidates for Tory leadership (and therefore Prime Minister) following Theresa May’s resignation in 2019. I recall it being claimed that he’d been a ‘spook’, working for the British Intelligence Service, MI6, for several years after completing his degree at Oxford. It made him sound interesting and whenever I’d heard him talk he did seem to have some engaging things to say. He definitely came across as somebody a little different from the normal boring MP’s that turn up on British television, churning out their party’s policy by rote.

The spy element to his past is unverified, what is known is that he’d spent time as a diplomat, a charity worker and a Harvard professor before becoming a Member of Parliament. This book largely covers the period immediately before his election and up to the time he left Parliament, not long after his abortive leadership campaign. Rory talks us through what he considers to be his major successes (which might just be the least interesting element of this memoir), explains why he chose to become and MP and also what his constituency duties comprised. All this is interesting enough, but it’s hardly what has made this book such a hot topic since it’s release. What people (myself included) are interested in is what it was like to have David Cameron, Liz Truss, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson as a boss?

Stewart doesn’t pull any punches. He lets rip at each of them, with the exception of May, whom he admired. He has nothing good to say about Cameron, whom he found to be disinterested in him and his ideas, a man who populated his office exclusively with ex-classmates from Eton. Of Liz Truss, he says that she valued announcement and polling over implementation and delivery. In fact, he paints a picture of someone who is totally unbearable. But it’s Boris that comes in for most disparagement, described as a feckless blowhard and, above all, a compulsive liar. Others that face harsh criticism include ex-Cabinet ministers, Michael Gove and Gavin Williamson. But in truth there’s very little positive language aimed at any of his fellow MP’s here. Other than May, the only close allegiances he mentions are those with his one-time boss, David Gauke and veteran Conservative Ken Clarke.

The parliamentary machine, he claims, doesn’t work. Ministers are often appointed without the requisite knowledge or background to fulfil their briefs and usually only for a short period of time - often no more than a year. They are then shuffled up, down or sideways, making room for another unqualified appointee to occupy their barely warmed chair. Meanwhile, senior civil servants, who can see that yet another change of direction is in the wind, try their darndest to either explain that the latest idea is ‘not possible’ or frustrate it in other ways, until their new minister is also moved aside.

Interesting though all this is, it does paint a truly horrible picture of our government in action. Moreover, many unnamed MP’s flit in and out of the frame, each seeming to fit one or other of the following stereotypes: an eccentric, an entitled snob, or a weirdo. Is it really this bad? Are the people who run our country really so self-serving, so self-aggrandising? Is Britain’s government system really so flawed and so filled with inappropriate members? I wasn’t always so cynical, but these days, I fear there is only one answer to all of the above.