A very interesting article. He’s right about parliament though. Full of mediocrities on the back benches, and despised by the executive. Look at Sunak waiting until the recess before announcing his break with the net zero consensus, and the Speaker bloviating his protest.
Stewart is right about the need for electoral reform.
He might be right about PR - but it is generally the argument made by people who have tried and failed to move the system from inside the system. It's also worth bearing in mind that PR is probably the only way route he could get back into Westminster politics through. So his interests are tied up completely with what he argues is the national interest.
Western governance is heavily steered and therefore disadvantaged by corporate interests, sometimes through economic intimidation. Meanwhile, the biggest of businesses are getting unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting conglomeration. ...
As it is, in Canada corporate lobbyists are known to write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them up. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that it seems those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.
Nations like China, on the other hand, govern while maintaining control over its own industry/business sector thus market, which may give it an overall trade/relations edge over Western countries.
Anyone who doubts the potent persuasion of huge business interests here in the West need to consider how high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t met.
An astonishing section: “It was a strange kind of populism. They did not really understand that Stewart was a small-c conservative, a paternalist and a moralist.”
The contempt shown towards these people who’ve found something to respect in Stewart is quite something, and this is far from the first time I’ve seen it expressed by a journalist since his new book came out.
The implication here - that the listeners of the most popular political podcast in Britain are too stupid (sorry, “centrist”) to appreciate that Rory went-to-Eton Stewart is a Tory - is breathtaking, but none of the journalists who’ve run with this line over the past few weeks seem to appreciate it.
There is hubris here indeed, but hardly confined to Rory Stewart. I feel like we are doomed to go through these cycles forever, in which a tightly knit politician/media class plays court politics with each other while openly sneering at the people whose votes and clicks they want.
I assume you have read his book on his time in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. It certainly impressed me with its truths about how limited Britain’s resources are to effect change in Islamic countries.
A very interesting article. He’s right about parliament though. Full of mediocrities on the back benches, and despised by the executive. Look at Sunak waiting until the recess before announcing his break with the net zero consensus, and the Speaker bloviating his protest.
Stewart is right about the need for electoral reform.
He might be right about PR - but it is generally the argument made by people who have tried and failed to move the system from inside the system. It's also worth bearing in mind that PR is probably the only way route he could get back into Westminster politics through. So his interests are tied up completely with what he argues is the national interest.
Western governance is heavily steered and therefore disadvantaged by corporate interests, sometimes through economic intimidation. Meanwhile, the biggest of businesses are getting unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting conglomeration. ...
As it is, in Canada corporate lobbyists are known to write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them up. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that it seems those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.
Nations like China, on the other hand, govern while maintaining control over its own industry/business sector thus market, which may give it an overall trade/relations edge over Western countries.
Anyone who doubts the potent persuasion of huge business interests here in the West need to consider how high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t met.
An astonishing section: “It was a strange kind of populism. They did not really understand that Stewart was a small-c conservative, a paternalist and a moralist.”
The contempt shown towards these people who’ve found something to respect in Stewart is quite something, and this is far from the first time I’ve seen it expressed by a journalist since his new book came out.
The implication here - that the listeners of the most popular political podcast in Britain are too stupid (sorry, “centrist”) to appreciate that Rory went-to-Eton Stewart is a Tory - is breathtaking, but none of the journalists who’ve run with this line over the past few weeks seem to appreciate it.
There is hubris here indeed, but hardly confined to Rory Stewart. I feel like we are doomed to go through these cycles forever, in which a tightly knit politician/media class plays court politics with each other while openly sneering at the people whose votes and clicks they want.
I assume you have read his book on his time in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. It certainly impressed me with its truths about how limited Britain’s resources are to effect change in Islamic countries.
Yes I did, as well as the other books and everything else he has written - he is a terrific stylist.