Rory Stewart is reliably wrong about literally everything

One of the most amusing political spats of last year was when the self-made JD Vance gave a right royal ‘fagging’ to the ghastly Rory Stewart, co-host of The Rest Is Politics and former Conservative minister. Thanks to his inability to avoid spouting off about absolutely everything, Stewart embroiled himself in a row on X with the new vice-president of the US when Vance opined: ‘It’s a very Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.’

Stewart couldn’t help himself, and hissed back on X that this was ‘a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.’ To which Vance answered thrillingly: ‘The problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the past 40 years.’

Just as one can imagine TRIP co-host Alastair Campbell’s poor dessicated face mouthing ‘Rockstar!’ into the mirror before he goes onstage to face his adoring fans of an evening at the enormo-dome, one can imagine poor, daft Stewart pouting nervously into his: ‘This time I’ll get it right, by gosh!’ Except we know he won’t. He’ll get it wrong again. It’s his USP. Like Campbell’s is persuading people to pay him to lie.

Stewart’s most infamous gaffe was his confident declaration that Kamala Harris would win the 2024 US presidential elections ‘comfortably’. And last week, he had to admit he was wrong and that Dominic Cummings was right to warn jihadism had taken such hold in the British education system that even Middle Eastern parents fear sending their kids to Blighty, lest they return as ‘radical Islamist nutjobs’.

But finally some good news: Stewart is now warning us on X that the Iranian revolution currently underway will probably fail. So that’ll be 73 one-way tickets for an 86-year-old man and his 72 virgins to Moscow, pozhaluysta!

Rory Stewart’s CV is very predictable for one literally to the manor born. He was expensively educated at Eton and then at Oxford. He joined the diplomatic service, was made a deputy governor of two Iraqi provinces and then became an MP. He has, over the years, carved himself a cushy billet with the BBC, making several series: The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia, Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart, and Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland. He hosted the Radio 4 podcast, The Long History Of Argument, before cosying up to the gruesome Alastair Campbell for The Rest Is Politics, best described as the ‘Tubular Bells’ of podcasts.

Stewart is a cut-and-dried, dyed-in-the-wool member of the establishment. He’s not some exotic outlier, despite his liking for posing in the flowing robes of Araby, like someone who was enthralled by too many Fry’s Turkish Delight commercials at an impressionable age. His dad was – quelle surprise – a diplomat, which brings to mind something Mrs T’s character said in Channel 4’s Thatcher / Walden drama, Brian and Maggie, about some Tory MPs: ‘There are so many of them who didn’t earn their place; they knew someone who knew someone, and they bluff their way through.’ This is the curse of Stewart and his kind, flouncing through life thinking you’re something special when the best that can be said of you is that you had a very good start in life.

Stewart has developed a habit of dashing about in a dish-dash in search of broadcasting dosh, pouting all the while like an ambitious member of an all-boy fifth-form drama club determined to play Portia in The Merchant of Venice. (I’d be keen to see his Portia, btw – her famously pompous speech would suit him to a tee.) Because – for a politician, at least – he’s not ugly. I bet more people watch him with the sound turned off than on. And though blamelessly wed, it took more than one smoulder over the Desert Song shoulder to change his (nick)name to Florence of Belgravia / Arabia.

Like Tony Blair before him (whose nickname at school was Miranda), before his political ambitions, he always wanted to be an actress (sorry, actor). In contrast, Campbell – the Hardy to Stewart’s Laurel – is his own object of desire. Back in the 1980s, when Campbell was writing soft pornos as a callow youth, no one believed his boast that women would pay to have sex with him, not even the kinky kind who like their husband to watch. Admittedly, the beautiful Upstairs, Downstairs actress Nicola Pagett became obsessed with him in the 1990s. But the poor creature had already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder by then.

So what a strange pair Campbell and Stewart are – the Dick Dastardly and Muttley of English politics. In the manner of the HM Bateman cartoons, we have the Man Who Is Never Wrong (in his own mind at least) and the Man Who Is Never Right (no ifs or buts here); the man who lied about weapons of mass destruction and the man who does his earnest best to tell the truth, but invariably gets it wrong. What a brace of chumps!

One thing’s for sure: we’ll look back in amusement rather than anger at these oddities, just as we do other odd couples, like Morecambe and Wise, Little and Large, and the Chuckle Brothers. And with Campbell as the straight man, and somewhat sinister, it will be Stewart who we recall for the silly pratfalls. Despite the eye-waveringly expensive education, you could stick a tea towel over his head, put him pouting enigmatically at the end of the pier and call him Madame Rosa. Chances are he’ll see a tall dark stranger in your immediate future, but not the one you’re hankering after. Rather, when you exit, you’ll be pursued by a bear.

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Follow her Substack, ‘Notes from the Naughty Step’, here.