Politics on the Edge

This is a gloomy book. It’s the third book I’ve read this year about how & why UK politics is broken, and it’s the gloomiest of the three. Dunt’s “How Westminster Works … And Why It Doesn’t” made many of the same points that Stewart makes in this book, but ended with a list of relatively small pragmatic suggestions for how it could all be fixed (many of which Dunt points out have been tried before and shown to work, just subsequently dismantled). Campbell’s “But What Can I Do?” is a call to arms – yes, it’s broken, but we can all play a part in fixing it. But Stewart’s book is the story of a man who believed … first in the institutions of government, and then in his capacity to bring change … but who had that belief shattered by the reality he encountered.

It’s also the story of a man who has quite incredible privilege. Which only makes it feel the more gloomy – if a man who can (almost as an aside) say how the then Prince of Wales had been a valuable mentor when he (Stewart) was setting up his Afghanistan charity, or who can just casually get a meeting with the leader of the Conservative Party to talk about running for Parliament, if he can’t make anything happen how can anyone else? Of course part of the problem seems to be that he’s not a natural politician and although he slowly learns on the job he’s still always painfully earnest and somehow a little naive.

And clearly it’s a story of burnout, by the end it’s clear that Stewart feels he wasted a decade of his life constantly thinking if he just made it to the next level (be an MP, be a junior minister, be a member of the Cabinet, whatever) then he’d begin to get something done. Probably if he’d managed to be Prime Minister that too would’ve turned out to be more circumscribed or badly incentivised than he’d hoped. In the final chapter he sounds defeated and like he wishes he’d got out early or never started, and done something more useful.

I did enjoy reading it, even tho it’s gloomy. And anyway, not every book has to set out to provide solutions. Stewart writes well, with a sense of humour at all times, and describes both people and situations in a way that brings them to vivid life. Particularly the little descriptions of people one recognises as public figures, where he mostly confirms they are just as bad behind the scenes as one had imagined. And even tho my politics are not the same as his, he definitely comes across as someone who genuinely tried his best to do the right thing for his constituency & country in all his various roles, in his own slightly odd, earnest, naive & privileged way.