Read It In Books:Politics On The Edge.

"'Politics' dominated the news - but it was treated as a horse race where all that mattered was position - and to enquire after the character or beliefs of a politician was considered as absurd as to ask the same of a horse" - Rory Stewart

I hesitated before picking it up (in Village Books) and I even felt a small degree of shame walking through Dulwich Village with it in my hand. Not because I thought Rory Stewart's Politics On The Edge would be a bad, uninteresting, or embarrassing read. But because Rory Stewart was once, and may still in some ways be, a Tory. I don't buy, or read, books by members of the Conservative Party.

Obviously Rory is no Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Jacob Rees-Mogg, or Boris Johnson (the latter of whom also has a book out which I saw thrown in a bin near Herne Hill - the best place for it) and therefore his book is unlikely to be full of lies and idle boasts. I've enjoyed Rory Stewart's The Rest Is Politics with Alistair Campbell and the fact he was kicked out of the Tory party by Boris Johnson suggests to me he's at least got some moral fibre. Rory Stewart is an old school Tory. Somebody I'd fundamentally disagree with on many issues but at least has honest intentions. You can't say that for the likes of Johnson, Truss, or Michael Gove.

But, what's the book like? Is it just Rory Stewart settling scores. In a foreword he warns us that some will see it that way and then he lists the 'dramatis personae' who will populate the book. An absolute rogue's gallery, with the names stretching from Johnson to Steve Baker, Priti Patel to David Cameron, and Liz Truss to Dominic Raab (and let's not forget Gove, Hancock, Kwarteng, and Rees-Mogg). I must admit I was hoping he was going to seriously spill the beans on them. Did he let me down?

Well, Johnson's first blatant lie comes as early as page two of the book, Rory Stewart considers the man, quite correctly, to be an "egotistical chancer" who destroyed what was left of the One Nation tradition within the Conservative party, damaged the economy, created a "weeping wound" in Ireland, and further alienated Scotland. Indifferent to truth, shameless, and utterly incapable of responding to the problems of our modern age except in glib soundbites and dismissive put downs. 

Elsewhere, Dominic Cummings is revealed (again) as a man who confided in Rory that he loathed Boris Johnson but offered Johnson, Stewart, and, in fact, all other Tory leadership candidates (Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid etc;) the same advice:- "get Brexit done, beat Jeremy Corbyn, unify the country". He even had the audacity to tell Rory Stewart where he should go on holiday and for how long. It's not clear if that destination was Barnard Castle.

Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid are revealed as spineless chancers who voted for Teresa May's Brexit deal and then a month later, trying to win either votes or favour from Boris Johnson, opined that to do so would be to join a remainer's conspiracy. Rory's Tory colleagues are not the only terrible people in the book. Saddam Hussein and the Taliban crop up too as Stewart traces his journey from his time in Iraq to the frontline of British politics via stints in Indonesia, USA, Bosnia, Kosovo, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Afghanistan (he could come across as a show-off but he's too self-effacing for that) to excitedly becoming a new MP in 2010 (unaware of the shitstorm that was coming down the line) and on to failing to beat Johnson to become Tory leader in 2019.

He's lived quite the life. Iraqis wave banners calling for his death, mortars crash through the roof of his Baghdad office,he huddlses from mortar fire in Nasiriyah, meets Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar where he tries (and fails) to persuade her to stop the Burmese army's rapes and massacres of the Rohingya people in Rakhine. Consulting with George Clooney about the possibility of a genocide in South Sudan is almost light relief.

The times he has lived through, too, have turned out to be interesting in ways many of us would have preferred them not too be. In the UK, he sees Scottish independence narrowly averted, Brexit narrowly win, and division and rancour enter into British politics in a nastier, more mean spirited way than many of us can care to remember. Further afield, he witnesses the rise of populism in the forms of Modi and Trump.

He's pretty matter of fact about it at all and the book is never less than readable. He's also got a pretty good turn of phrase. A dinner with John Kerry and Al Gore is described as "what it might have been like to dine with Roman senators on their way to becoming marble statues" and when George Osborne says the word 'Conservative' he leans backwards and lifts his nose for emphasis, "as though posing for a statue, or anticipating a punch". Even buildings come in for his light, yet deft, criticism. Portcullis House looks as if "a 1980s retail block was experimenting with the identity of an Edwardian power station"

As well as these comic sketches, there's some interesting insight into what politicians really think. Not least when Paddy Ashdown, then leader of the Lib Dems, advises Rory not to become a Lib Dem as "Lib Dems get nothing done". Ashdown at least sounds like a man with a sense of humour and a degree of self-awareness. Others not so much.

David Cameron comes across as a well meaning, but not very serious, man who surrounded himself with Etonian chums and rapidly promoted cretinous jokes like Priti Patel and Liz Truss through the ranks and made a promise to Rory Stewart that when he ceased to be PM he would return to the back benches. That promise, of course, was a lie. In fact, Witney - Cameron's former seat - deserted the Conservatives for the first time ever, voting in a Lib Dem, at the last general election. 

It remains inexcusable, however, that Cameron once suggested to the then Justice Secretary Ken Clarke that he listen to the disgraced/disgraceful Sun editor Rebekah Brooks and her proposal to establish prison ships. Just one of many examples of how Cameron's privilege and ego allowed him to make fatal mistakes. 'Dave' thought the British government's policy in Afghanistan wouldn't result in disaster and he fatally called the bluff of the country on the Brexit vote. So sure of victory was he he instructed departments not to do any contingency planning whatsoever in the case of the alternative.

George Osborne is depicted as a man who holds grudges, Jeremy Corbyn's only real legacy is inspiring the populist right to retreat into blinkered nostalgia, and Kwasi Kwarteng, who Rory Stewart had gone to school with, doesn't seem to have much time for anyone except himself and teases Stewart as "a wet, Europhile, out of touch with 'real people'" - whoever they are. Matt Hancock, remember him?, comes across as a spineless toad who loathed Boris Johnson but backed him anyway in a bid to advance his own career.

He saves the worst for Liz 'the lettuce' Truss, a woman who couldn't even be bothered to offer him one iota of sympathy on hearing of his father's death and once claimed that barking dogs could deter drones from delivering drugs to prisons. As well as trashing the British economy and going on to shill for the fascist right in the US. Truss is portrayed, correctly, as a monotone party animal who refuses to ever answer a question and simply parrots whatever line the Tories are pushing at any given time. Truss, Stewart says. "was the leading exponent of Instagram in Parliament. She seemed to be using images of herself in different costumes to suggest a pattern of progress, just as she used provocative policy announcements to create an impression of forcefulness". 

He goes on:- "her genius lay in exagerrated simplicity. Governing might be about critical thinking but the new style of politics, in which she was a leading exponent, was not. If critical thinking required humility this politics demanded absolute confidence: in place of reality it offered untethered hope; instead of accuracy, vaguenss. While critical thinking required scepticism, open-mindedness, and an instinct for complexity, the new politics demanded loyalty, partisanship, and slogans: not truth and reason but power and manipulation".

Johnson fares just as badly and Gove's no better. Aberdeen's most infamous suit wearing raver went from telling Rory Stewart that Boris Johnson was chaotic and unstable to asking Rory to back Johnson in a leadership contest to then going against Johnson again. All in very quick succession. A whole book could be written about Johnson and Gove's fucked up friendship though to call it a friendship is not really a Tory thing to do so let's call it an alliance, a oft severed alliance.

It's a bit irritating when Stewart doesn't name names (and sometimes even Googling doesn't help). I wanted to know the name of the Tory MP who threatened to punch him on the nose for having the audacity to critique the invasion of Iraq and that was just one occasion when Rory Stewart, and his sense of fairness, let me down a little.

Did anyone come out of it looking good? Question Time's most regular panelist Ken Clarke comes across as a decent enough old cove who's neither hamstrung by bitterness or wanton ambition, Theresa May at least had the sense to sack George Osborne and Michael Gove and demote Liz Truss and Matt Hancock and it's clear that Rory Stewart liked and backed her (yeah, she was better than Johnson and Truss but, come on, that's a very low bar).

Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan receive some very feint praise but probably doing the best is David Gauke who Rory seems almost in awe of. Stewart talks of Gauke's "unexpected warmth and irreverence", marvels at his patience, admires how "tough" he can be when he makes a decision, and later goes on this panegryic:- Gauke was "skilfully adept at unpopular decisions, practical and moral, modest and natural, a good listener and an astute and elegant observer of politics, generous, provocative and witty". Get a room.

Rory, himself, always tries to be self-effacing and self-aware and I don't think he's aiming to big himself up in this book but you can't help warming to him. Walking is a major passion in his life and that's something I share with him. In Politics On The Edge he talks about walking from his home in Scotland to his new constituency in Penrith, how during the Brexit debates he was told by a Brexit supporter he should be "ashamed to be alive" and by a Remain supporter that he's a "Brexiteer cunt".

But, perhaps, more than the individuals - himself included, that come up for criticism, it is the whole process, the institution, itself that Rory Stewart feels let down by. Right at the start of his journey as an MP he complains there's not enough conversation about policy and too much "gossip about the promotion of one colleague, or the scandal engulfing another" and claims he "sensed more impotence, suspicion, envy, resentment, claustrophobia, and Schadenfreude" than he'd seen in any other profession.

There are some very moving testimonies about how political actions play out in people's actual lives and it is during these moments that you're reminded that politics is a serious business and Rory Stewart, agree with him or not, is a man who took it, and still takes it, seriously. Too bad for him that he arrived in politics just as the lunatics had taken over the asylum.