Discomforting Political Admiration

The Curious Case of Rory Stewart

*The main purpose of this post is to share the video below, and I would be very glad to hear what you think of it.*

My highlight of The Realisation Festival at the end of June was interviewing Rory Stewart. He is known in the UK as one of the most articulate and thoughtful politicians of recent years, perhaps because he is so much more than a politician. His openness, humour, and clarity make him the kind of Conservative ('Tory') that many non-conservatives (including myself) warm to. There was even a "Go Tory for Rory" campaign slogan when he ran to be London Mayor a few years ago, which is when I first met him.

I find that I admire and respect Rory, and like to hear him talking, all the while knowing I could almost certainly never vote for him. I think that's a good democratic feeling to have and I am curious to understand it better. I am mostly politically homeless but I am from a Scottish social democratic background and grew up with family members supporting strikes, and my Grandfather shouting "those bloody tories" at the TV; to even express admiration for a conservative thinker is socially risky for me, albeit in a mostly playful way; but to vote accordingly would be a kind of betrayal of my roots.

Rory is now independent, but his thinking is informed by the Conservative philosophical tradition in a way that I think progressives could learn a lot from, or at least be helpfully challenged by. In my experience, people who are broadly liberal or progressive struggle to see Conservativism beyond its current political mutations relating to plutocracy, neoliberalism, libertarianism, and anti-woke cultural warfare, which is understandable but sad. When properly understood and articulated, conservatism has its own dignity and coherence relating to tradition, family, craft, localism, prudence, gradualism, and so on (which is not to say it doesn’t also have a shadow relating to colonialism, patriarchy, and corporatism…).

As well as being the father of a young family, Rory is currently the President of GiveDirectly, an NGO that advocates and enables direct cash payments to poor households. The work is premised on a growing body of evidence that this is the most effective form of philanthropy for addressing poverty. He is also the author of several books and has been an academic at Harvard and Yale, a Diplomat, an MP, a government minister, and before all that he was a prolific walker and a house guest(!), particularly in Afghan rural communities, and also a Deputy Governor of Amara and then Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq. He has lived an impressively full life and combines theory and practice (praxis) in a way that commands authority. He may have had a privileged start, and class-related advantages (for instance he attended Eton) but that applies to many of us more than we are willing to admit and he played his good cards very well, and seems to be constantly giving back in the way he deems best.

There are two main reasons to be excited to interview Rory now. The first is that his profile has grown further through The Rest is Politics podcast, which is consistently among the most popular podcast in the UK. Rory co-hosts with Labour's former 'spin doctor' Alastair Campbell and it has been a runaway success due to their personal chemistry and stories from their political lives and networks.

The second reason, perhaps particular to myself, is that Rory represents the kind of upper limit of conventional wisdom. Rory is a 'reform, not revolution' guy, and he believes in incremental change in which you bring people with you through democratic consent. So do I, and yet, today I find I am no longer sure this way of thinking is adequate. The 'time being worlds' and 'metacrisis' framings that inform my work suggest we are part of a much larger historical wave of change calling for a deeper commitment to a transformation of institutions, rather than merely working within them and preserving them; by that I don’t mean anything authoritarian, but equally I am not totally sure what I do mean, nor how such major changes could arise without coercion or even violence (my essay on The Impossible We? reflects further on this). If someone of Rory’s calibre is not ‘getting’ the need for a deeper transformation of societal purpose and priorities particularly in response to our permanent ecological emergency, then either I am missing something, or we are in even more trouble than I imagined (or perhaps both!). I reflected on this in my previous post about The Realisation Festival, where the interview took place.

There are some technical and presentational glitches in the recording, which was prepared for, but with in-house between-session technical support rather than anything more professional. There were 120 people at the festival, but this session, after a full second day and just before dinner, was attended by only about forty (not all of whom can be seen because the laptop perched on the stool could not fully rotate due to the wires!) but we also told people we’d be recording it to give them a chance to have a break.

Overall I am pleased with it. The conversation moves from Rory’s formative experience of walking, to his time in Iraq, to a reflection on his use of philosophy and why Aristotle reveals the heart of the problem with Boris Johnson, to his call for Scotland to stay in the UK “In the name of love”, to a question about God and the meaning of life, to his lucid account of meditative experience and why he longs for silent retreats. He was also remarkably open about his sense of performativity while talking, and his discomfort with how easy it is for him to speak, and get credit where credit may not always be due.

But as indicated, in my last post, there was some heat too, not least when we discussed his reaction to Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. I feel this The Rest is Politics interview is emblematic of the different realities of what might loosely be called ‘old and new politics’. And by extension, when Rory helpfully clarified that his idea of ‘new capitalism’ is something like 'Sweden’ and his idea of ‘new democracy’ is (mostly) about citizens’ assemblies, this does not feel (to me) altogether adequate for the clear and present dangers we face, as outlined in a previous post where I suggest collapse is inevitable. But then again, what did I really expect him to say? And I respect his suspicion of grander schemes too. So I continue to feel conflicted, which is not such a bad place to be.