Only now, at 49, is Stewart diving into the zeitgeist as a successful podcaster. The Rest Is Politics, which he presents with former Labor spin doctor Alastair Campbell, regularly tops the UK podcast charts. He has found an unlikely following among liberal political followers who would normally shun anything to do with a former Tory cabinet minister but have given Stewart a pass because of his willingness to anger Boris Johnson and share juicy Tory party gossip. “I went into it not really knowing what I was doing,” Stewart says. “And it was an amazingly weird and painless experience. We just sit for an hour and chat. It’s a little strange that anyone would want to hear that.” Dressed in an open-necked white shirt, Stewart speaks in complete sentences, sometimes grimacing when asked the odd question. He describes Campbell and himself as “centrist dads” who talk politics, although centrist dads who complain they are exhausted from all their international travel attract guests including Labor leader Keir Starmer and reminisce about their meetings with world leaders . The son of a spy and former colonial official, Stewart was born in Hong Kong, although his family hailed from Perth and Kinross, and he spent much of his childhood in Kensington (he once jokingly described himself as “lower-upper- middle class”) . He was sent to boarding school in Oxford at eight and then attended Eton. “It made me very bad at dealing with women,” he says. “I was in an all-male environment until I was 18. It took me a long time to learn anything about British society. These schools are like islands floating in the sea. They have nothing to do with each other. You might as well be in a space camp.” ‘An extraordinary privilege’ … walking in Afghanistan in 2002. Photo: Rick Loomis/LA Times/Getty Images He spent five months as a soldier in the Black Watch after leaving school, before studying at Oxford, where he attended a single meeting of the Bullingdon Club, the notorious all-male dining club whose members include Boris Johnson and David Cameron. “It seemed to be an extreme statement of a very unpleasant vision of a class system that was completely undignified,” he recalls. “I thought it was unpleasant. I thought people should be ashamed of things like that.” After university, he worked for the Foreign Office – or MI6, depending on who you believe – in the Balkans, before taking extended leave to travel extensively in the Middle East. He returned to the State Department after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, publishing a memoir of his time there in 2006. Occupational Hazards details Stewart’s growing disillusionment with the war. Initially supportive, he realized the folly of the coalition’s activities in the country. At times, the memoir reads like a dark farce, with Stewart doling out wads of cash to corrupt local officials, failing to mediate between warring factions, and nearly dying in a siege of his compound. “I think the main problem with Iraq is that people just didn’t understand what they were doing,” he says now. “They had a fantasy in their head of a country that didn’t exist.” Is it weird to do a podcast with one of the architects of the Iraq war? “I interviewed him a few years ago when I was thinking about starting my own podcast, but I never got it out,” says Stewart. “The whole time I was trying to talk about what it was like on the ground in Iraq, trying to understand what he thought was going on and why he signed up for it.” He says he encouraged Campbell to read Occupational Hazards. We got austerity wrong. In the departments I went to, most dramatically in prisons, these cuts were almost insane Stewart draws a parallel between his concerns about Iraq and the concern a Labor supporter like Campbell might feel about him as a former Conservative politician. “There are the concerns that I and, I guess, people who agree with me would have about things like the Iraq war,” Stewart says. “And then there is, for him, the flip side, which is that he has a lot of listeners, friends and supporters who think the Tories are bad and will be equally horrified by my voting record.” He sees the podcast as a way to reconcile people with opposing views in a spirit of heated debate. “I honestly feel a lot of admiration and respect and affection for him, and I believe and hope that this is reciprocated,” says Stewart. These are noble sentiments in our polarized age, but I wonder if such magnanimity is only possible when you have not suffered catastrophic loss as a result of one person’s decision-making: not airstrikes on your home. no relatives were impoverished by government cuts. I also wonder if Campbell and Stewart aren’t more ideologically aligned than they suggest. They are white, centrist Scottish men who have been kicked out of their parties. Stewart lost the Conservative whip in 2019 after he voted against the government to block a no-deal Brexit and subsequently resigned from the party. Campbell was expelled from the Labor Party in the same year after he admitted voting Lib Dems in the European elections. Parents are also delighted, often mentioning their children on the podcast. Stewart is married to Shosanna, the Chief Executive of a heritage charity, Turquoise Mountain. they have two sons, aged seven and five. She gave birth to their first child, Alexander, on their bathroom floor, without medical assistance. “We were timing the contractions and thought everything was fine,” says Stewart. “And suddenly the baby started coming. But I did. I mean, obviously, my wife did. She was incredibly calm about the whole thing.” The family lives in Jordan, where Turquoise Mountain operates. “I have a lot of admiration, respect and affection for him” … with Alastair Campbell, the podcast’s co-host. Photo: Men’s Health UK Rest Is Politics recently hosted Starmer. “I was disappointed,” says Stewart. “There is so much that I admired him from afar. I like the idea of it. What disappointed me was that he didn’t seem radical enough. I didn’t understand what the big picture was. I got the impression of a nice, thoughtful, moderate man, but I didn’t feel the radical ambition.” In general, he believes that politicians, even ex-politicians, are too guarded to be interesting interviewees. Stewart is one of Johnson’s most credible opponents, variously describing the soon-to-be former prime minister as “a monster”, “the best liar we’ve ever had” and “evil”. Now that Johnson has been deposed, will Stewart stop kicking him? “I think he’s dangerous and there are people out there who want him back,” Stewart says. “I think we need to remind people why he left. He should have gone much, much earlier. What he did was deeply, deeply shameful – and dangerous.” He believes Johnson will attempt to return to politics. “He’s trying to do an Imran Khan or a Berlusconi. He’ll be hovering around, hoping for a populist comeback.” In The Rest Is Politics, Stewart is noticeably less critical of Rishi Sunak than Liz Truss, although he expresses no support for either. He expresses tentative hopes that a Truss premiership could finally mark the end of the Conservative party’s long march to the right. “I hope that what we have next is a coalition and through that we achieve a change in our electoral system,” he says. “I think it’s very important for the country.” Public schools are like islands floating in the sea. You might as well be in a space camp When he was at the forefront of politics – first as an MP, then as secretary for the environment, international development, Africa and prisons before becoming secretary of state for international development – Stewart represented a defunct breed of Tory centrist. He laments that the party’s drift to the right has displaced politicians like him. “There’s a huge hole in the center of the ground,” says Stewart. “There is a constituency for moderate, centre-right Conservatives who can embrace the environment, climate, gender, race, social justice, doing much more about poverty, much more about social care, much more about prisons, but also for fiscal responsibility. “ Stewart’s problem for a long time has been that he is the accepted face of Conservatism for people who don’t vote Conservative. “That was something when I ran for the leadership against Boris Johnson [in 2019]”, he says with a sigh. “Everybody said, ‘The problem with this guy is that he’s the favorite for everyone who would never vote Conservative.’ But Stewart was very conservative – something left-wing fans of The Rest Is Politics would be horrified to discover if they checked his voting record. As an MP, Stewart voted for a tougher asylum system, raising tuition fees, introducing the bedroom tax and cutting welfare benefits. Stewart defended his vote share by pointing out that MPs must vote with their parties to retain the whip, which can sometimes mean voting for measures they don’t agree with. Are there any votes he particularly regrets? He takes a long pause…
