After various intervals and assignments overseas, including a solo walk across the width of Afghanistan in 2002 and governorship of an Iraqi "province", Stewart entered UK domestic politics in 2010 with a somewhat heroic sense of public service. But what worked in the artisanal back streets of Kabul seemed to have very little purchase back home and Stewart established a reputation for being a maverick, albeit one skilled at promoting himself in unorthodox ways. He is disarmingly if earnestly candid about some of his own personal shortcomings and motivations, although there is very little of the hilarious self-revelation which made Alan Clark's book such a joy. His judgement is sometimes suspect - he is, for example, an uncritical proponent of climate catastrophism. He also reveals a strong streak of vanity, such as in his mis-placed campaign to be Mayor of London having been an MP for a profoundly rural constituency in the English Borders. He even finds time to take a tilt at the leadership of the party. Yet overall these foibles are offset by a strong feeling that Stewart was a politician of integrity
For all that, Stewart's book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand how appallingly badly the UK is governed. For those who like their political gossip neat, Stewart pulls off some bravura assassinations, not least those of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. He is not much more complimentary about David Cameron. Indeed the only senior colleague for whom he seems to have any unalloyed admiration is David Gauke, Stewart's former boss at the MoJ who went on to lose his seat at the 2019 election whilst standing as an independent. Deservedly, a number of senior civil servants and quangocrats also take a knife in the front.
Stewart is also good on the institutional fragilities of the UK state and brings these to life in an engaging and fluent way. His case that Parliament has lost its ability to scrutinise legislation effectively and hold the executive to account is very persuasive as are his numerous observations about the power of patronage to ensure the compliance of MPs with flawed and ill considered policies. His ministerial experience is of tax payers money being colossally squandered on projects for which there is little democratic accountability and being withheld from public services which are absolutely essential. Through all this is threaded a narrative of a civil service which is contemptuous of the ministerial merry-go-round of Conservative politicians and which is not merely obstructive but very nearly in a state of revolt.
But if Stewart is good on the "how" he says far less about the "why". Chief culprit for the discontents must surely be the Conservatives themselves, who have now been in power one way or another for over a dozen years. It cannot honestly be said that they have used the years since their chastening defeat in 1997 as a springboard for any kind of intellectual renewal. Instead, in the 2001 and 2005 elections they tried the same negative tactics and bitter - tasting prescriptions which had failed to convince voters in 1997 and which failed again. The Conservatives then lost their nerve completely and decided elections would only be won by aping the techniques of New Labour under Tony Blair and by re-branding the party such that it would no longer be, in Theresa May's deathless phrase, the "nasty party". From now on the Conservatives were going to compete (like everyone else) for the "centre ground" where elections are apparently won.
Fortunes have been made and lost in the hunt for this mythical land and an enormous industry has grown up which purports to show politicians how to find it. Today, no political programme can be advanced unless it has been road tested with numerous and disparate focus groups such that the original proposal is often diluted beyond recognition or abandoned altogether in the quest to nail down the support of the "average" voter. In the case of the Conservatives, this resolved itself in "One Nation" branding and in nebulous concepts like Cameron's "Big Society" which imagined that community action and philanthropy could be galvanised by central government and was in some mysterious way compatible with Conservative "austerity".
The modernisers also thought that greater attention to diversity and "inclusion" would be an easier route to electoral success than any intellectual heavy lifting. But while it is true that the Conservative Party has produced three women leaders and one of colour while the Labour Party hasn't produced any, that cohort which pollsters think should be most impressed by this (those aged between 18-44) are anything but. Nor have they been by initiatives such as Cameron's endorsement of same-sex marriage. Indeed support from this group for the Conservatives has fallen steadily over the last four general elections. Whatever else they may like, younger voters are not persuaded by the contradiction-in-terms that is "progressive conservatism".
In its crab like leftward advance towards the "centre ground", modernisation of the Conservative Party has been characterised by an uncritical acceptance of propositions which have long been advanced by their traditional opponents and enemies. As a consequence the case for a smaller state has been abandoned; large scale immigration has been tacitly accepted; welfare spending has expanded; entrepreneurialism is disdained ("fuck business" Johnson passim); reform of rotten public institutions like the NHS, the courts and police has been shirked and ever higher levels of taxation accepted as the inevitable price of state intrusion into virtually every aspect of the lives of citizens.
But in the Gadarene rush to the "centre ground", the common ground has been thoroughly neglected. Surveys of social attitudes have consistently shown a majority in favour of social conservatism, high levels of funding for critical public services and a welfare system which is linked to contribution as well as need. None of these preferences need advocating on moral grounds but are grounded in a desire to support that which has practical utility and bears some relation to the individual efforts of citizens while giving support to those who genuinely need it as opposed to those who merely want it. As such, they are causes which Conservatives should be able to promote with ease. Yet today, you will find leading lights like William Hague who vehemently parrot the need for social liberalism and "sound money".
The Conservatives are kidding themselves if they think their ephemeral electoral success since 2010 has anything to do with their much trumpeted "modernisation". Indeed the need to continually update and re-evaluate a party's offering and appeal should go without saying and true conservatives realise that cherished institutions and traditional ways are best preserved by continually responding to change rather than resisting it. Today, the Conservatives seem determined to defend a Blairite dispensation that has given them only one very small majority in the past 13 years, despite the mis-steps of their opponents. Yet both Corbyn in 2017 and Johnson more decisively in 2019 showed what "populism" (aka a move off the "centre ground" onto the common ground) can achieve.
On its present course, the Conservative Party is doomed, not least because it seems determined to establish its irrelevance. At the next election, only a very small vote for the Reform Party will deprive many Conservatives of their seats in a first-past-the-post race and tactical voting will do the rest.
Rory Stewart's disengagement from the Conservative Party looks prescient.
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