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

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The first is the narrative about the British political system. It is genuinely enlightening to be introduced to the various byzantine structures that a politician must navigate through the raw eyes of a naive first-timer: the party machine (whips, wannabe grandees & the PM inclusive), the British press, and the Civil Service. The first impressions are laughable and absurd. After twenty chapters, it becomes hard to laugh. But the overall narrative seems to be that no one is really in charge, and no one is interested in taking charge. No one is concerned about the details, except for all the people too concerned with the details. Yes, Minister prefigured this by forty years, but it is harder to swallow when you realise that it really, really is true. The most comically dark passage is Stewart's determination to cease funding to north-west Syria, for fear that the UK government is inadvertently cashing up members of al-Qaeda. Months of flying Bond-like around the world to find out who truly possesses the authority to cut the program leaves him with no answers. He had been told that the decision had to come, variously, from him, from the secretary of state, from the prime minister, from MI5 or MI6, from the NSC, from Cabinet, from the senior civil servants within his department, from the embassy on the ground, from the foreign secretary, even from the American president. Despite all this, the funding never stops. That is, until months later when Stewart was proved entirely correct: Britain had been sending money that ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda. As soon as bad press was on the horizon, the funding stopped... When Stewart talks of political communication rather than decision making, someone like Baudrillard would find himself surprised precisely never. Discussions about policy have been hollowed out by a party machine obsessed with shaping the narrative, a fourth estate obsessed with misrepresenting it, and a constituency of voters obsessed with ignoring it. Disillusionment was swift. MPs were uninterested in policy, he discovered. Instead they were obsessed with scandal. He found “impotence, suspicion, envy, resentment, claustrophobia and Schadenfreude”. Cameron made speeches about diversity. But he filled his private office with white-shirted old Etonians, drawn “from an unimaginably narrow social group”. In one vote Stewart rebelled over an amendment on mountain rescue by hiding in the loo. No one noticed. We will,” she said, sitting me down very close to her, “become the most open, transparent department in the government. And the most efficient. I want you to write a 10-point plan for the national parks.” But Secretary of State, if you could just give us a couple of weeks, we might really have a chance to—”

In a way, it is a great demonstration of the reality of the sad nature of modern (British) politics that it is structurally limited to be more inhibited by careerists and sycophants than by actually interesting and skilled leaders. That the politics is so separated from real life - through the parliamentary groupings and necessity to show loyalty to the whips, or by the generalist and extremely myopic nature of the modern civil service. The book has several moments of self-contempt. At one point Stewart thought about killing himself. He brooded in the middle of the night and often experienced disgust. Politics, he came to think, was a “rebarbative profession”. “In London, I felt increasingly exhausted and ashamed,” he admits. He developed migraines and kept going by taking painkillers. Despite all this, his idealism and love of country – his stated reason for joining the Tories – never quite left him. However, in doing so, Stewart does not appear self-serving or egotistical. Instead, Stewart appears introspective, transparent and articulate in his self-reflection, recognising that he made mistakes and that he could have done things differently. This enables Politics on the Edge to read in an enthralling manner and to be void of unwarranted self-promotion, unlike certain other memoirs. Perhaps Kwasi and I found it difficult to believe in our government because it had given neither of us a job. But most journalists, and perhaps Cameron himself, also agreed that we could not win a majority and therefore would not be held to the promise of a referendum on Europe (the Lib Dems would throw the referendum out in the coalition agreement).A truly absorbing and fascinating book, Rory Stewart’s memoir reveals the scarring effect of disillusionment Come on Rory, I can write it myself already. Do you want me to give you some clues? Point one, connect young people with nature; point two, apprenticeships; point three, health and well-being… Make it eight points, if you can’t find 10. But ten is better.” And again she smiled, as though she were testing me. For the first time, the door of No 10 was opened before I reached it by the policeman who had been watching me on a camera. I sat in a waiting room. Officials whom I knew walked past, smiling congratulations. After five years of waiting for my first job, I was not sure what Cameron would choose to use me for. Perhaps because of the work I had done on broadband, a job on digital infrastructure? Or perhaps, having run a heritage charity, I would be appointed to the Ministry of Culture? Big Society minister? Or maybe as a Scot and a Unionist campaigner I would be put in the Scottish Office? But that was tiny, Rory. You were only working with a few hundred people. Now you can change the lives of millions.’ Compelling… Stewart's book is so well and often so wittily written, and so revealing about British politics from top to bottom, that it is destined to become a classic of the genre Literary Review

PDF / EPUB File Name: Politics_On_the_Edge_-_Rory_Stewart.pdf, Politics_On_the_Edge_-_Rory_Stewart.epub Rory Stewart and then-environment minister Liz Truss attend Martha Kearney’s Bee Garden Party at Marlborough House, July 2015. Photo: Dave J Hogan/Getty From beginning to end the reader is astonished that the author lasted as long as he did in a career field that seems not only not to value the qualities of honesty, integrity, truthfulness, any kind of loyalty or work ethic but essentially finds these qualities abhorrent to its mechanical day to day functioning. It’s tempting to say that he wasted 10 years trapped in the party politics he abhors. But this book is a vital work of documentation: Orwell down the coal mine, Swift on religious excess. We should be grateful it was written and that Stewart never stopped being interesting. Well, I suppose, it is something like, if we know they bought Stilton, perhaps, as opposed to edamame, at Tesco’s, they are more likely to vote Conservative… but Cheddar…” I was not sure if he was joking.

An excoriating picture of a shamefully dysfunctional political culture - idle, entitled, ignorant and frivolous. I hope it will make its readers angry enough to work harder for something more honest and effective Rowan Williams