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Politics On the Edge: The instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller from the host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics

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Rory defeats the odds when he becomes the unlikely MP for Penrith and gets a few things done as a minister despite a few all too comfortable civil servants. Stewart observes that this “new politics” offered “untethered hope” and “vagueness” instead of accuracy.

Politics on the Edge: A Memoir from Within (Audio Download

But it is an entertaining and, at times, depressing book about life as a frustrated backbencher and junior minister trying and (mostly) failing to make a big difference, whilst watching charlatans and less principled colleagues move ahead. She applies this rather banal logic to parliament: Labour, Speaker of the House John Bercow (whom she clearly loathes) and many on her own team wielded their power to disingenuously thwart her Brexit deal and harm the nation.At every turn, ideas are thwarted, diluted or ditched, whether because of cuts, in-fighting, civil service intransigence, or rank ineptitude. May’s repeated insistence that her Brexit deal really was the best one available, that nothing could match it, that the country failed itself by not ratifying it, speaks to this impulse. In an author’s note, Stewart acknowledges that his former top colleagues will be angry with him for revealing their private conversations. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within written by Rory Stewart which was published in September 14, 2023. But it wouldn’t be until 2015 that Stewart would receive a job – as a low-ranking minister at the department for environment, food and rural affairs.

Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart review – a ringside seat

Moving on to the Department of International Development, Stewart finds ill-conceived aid programmes operating in a vacuum of local knowledge and understanding caused by decades of deep cuts to Britain’s foreign service; then as prisons minister, Stewart is profoundly shocked both by conditions in some of England’s prisons – the filth, the violence, the pervasive drug culture – and by the dazed state of the civil servants, mouthing “an imprecise and evasive liturgy” of management-speak, in a department which had suffered savage cuts since 2010.This enables Politics on the Edge to read in an enthralling manner and to be void of unwarranted self-promotion, unlike certain other memoirs. He shows that despite its recognition of the need for change, the government faces challenges in implementing these changes,Two challenges stand out: the profound influence of platforms like Twitter and Facebook that lead audited individuals to extreme behaviours, and the civil service's consistent reluctance to embrace change.

Politics On the Edge - Penguin Books UK Politics On the Edge - Penguin Books UK

After the Brexit vote and Cameron’s resignation, May made Stewart development minister, followed by prisons, and then promoted him to cabinet as secretary of state for international development. Though Stewart always had terribly high opinions of himself, he believed that the MP’s role was to strive to understand “ordinary lives”. He worked in the British Embassy in Indonesia and then, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, as the British Representative in Montenegro. Stewart deplores “how grotesquely unqualified so many of us were for the offices we were given”, and “a culture that prized campaigning over careful governing, opinion polls over detailed policy debates, announcements over implementation”.Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, this is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life; a new classic of political memoir and a remarkable portrait of our age. But the defining feature of this period – as suggested by the Telegraph’s political editor Ben Riley-Smith in his new book The Right To Rule – is the party’s willingness to sack its leaders, “alter its image, and retain power”. By the time he became an MP in 2010, he’d already been deputy governor of an Iraqi province, walked through Afghanistan just after the Twin Towers fell and later commanded a besieged compound in Iraq knowing he’d be executed should the defences be breached.

Politics on the Edge: A Memoir From Within Politics on the Edge: A Memoir From Within

His 'memoir from within' covers his 10 years serving as an MP and brings you shockingly close to the UK political system. It benefits from two crucial factors: firstly, it’s very well written; and secondly, its author adheres to the rule that the best autobiographical writing tells it like it is, and doesn’t pull punches. Unsure really why the time leading up to Stewart’s departure from parliament following the election of Boris Johnson, including Stewart’s removal from the Conservative Party, is not included. But the man from Cumbria wandered lonely as a cloud through all the turbulence, keeping his temper, doing his job.But he filled his private office with white-shirted old Etonians, drawn “from an unimaginably narrow social group”. This is personified by Stewart’s recollection of the Conservative Party leadership race towards the end of the book. The entire chapter reads as one long plea: if only my colleagues were more like me, then we wouldn’t be in such a mess! Most damaging of all, however, was the inescapable impression that he said things because he genuinely meant them, rather than because a pollster had told him they would be popular.

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