Soon after he was elected as a Conservative MP, Rory Stewart tried to sit down next to a party colleague. "This seat is reserved," growled at him. Stewart pointed out there was no "prayer card" in the brass holder at the back of the seat, meaning it was free. The unnamed Tory glowered. "Why don't you just fuck off," he told Stewart.
Stewart's memoir of his nine years in British politics is an excoriating account of a dysfunctional governing system. At every level - backbench MP, minister, permanent secretary Stewart finds shallowness where there should be depth, vapidity instead of seriousness. His book is a brilliant insider portrait of a nation in decline, penned by an exasperated modern Boswell.
Educated at Eton, and the son of a British spook, Stewart governed an Iraqi province after the US-UK led invasion. He set up a charity in Kabul and took up a chair at Harvard. In 2009, filled with the idea of public service, he decided to stand for parliament. The following year he was elected, a newbie politician with a closeup view of David Cameron's coalition government.
Disillusionment was swift. MPs were uninterested in policy, he discovered. Instead they were obsessed with scandal. Cameron made speeches about diversity. But he filled his private office with white-shirted old Etonians.
Denne historien er fra September 15, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra September 15, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
The concept of \"elite overproduction\" was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs.
'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
