Rory stewart

Remember #rorywalks? This was the hashtag created to follow the progress of Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart as he travelled around Britain meeting people in places detached from mainstream politics. One encounter that sticks in my mind happened when he met a couple from east London, who told him that they wouldn’t start a family because their local area was too unsafe to bring a child into the world. Whether apocryphal or not, it is clear that there are parts of Britain where criminality and incivility has become normal, battering the morale of our most vulnerable citizens. The public mood is not receptive to further ‘understanding’ of people who seem to

Rory Stewart’s pitch for prime minister seems strangely distant now, lost in the enveloping chaos of Boris Johnston’s shamble to glory. All is not lost, however. The divergent metrics of parliamentary and public sentiment – and the character deficits of the frontrunner, who claims to be able to square that circle – make it abundantly possible that Stewart will have another chance to shine before the year is out. So what should he be doing in the meantime? I was peripherally involved in Stewart’s leadership campaign, helping to organise some of his Northern Ireland visit, including a trip to my home county (and Britain’s true Lake District) Fermanagh. Here Stewart

In this contest, Rory Stewart has established himself as the new champion of the Tory left. He has become a significant figure in the party. The interests of party unity mean that any new prime minister would want to have him inside the tent rather than on the backbenches where he would be the natural leader of any rebellion. But Rory Stewart has already said that he wouldn’t serve in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet. Indeed, he seems unlikely to serve in any new Tory leader’s government. This poses a problem for the incoming PM. Stewart’s absence will make it that much harder to bring the Tory party back together. Stewart is

With five candidates surviving Tuesday’s ballot, the surprise result was Rory Stewart. The wildcard entry won 37 votes – with Sajid Javid behind on 33 votes. It follows that when it comes to who is most likely to be knocked out in this afternoon’s ballot, it’s the Home Secretary who ought to be the most vulnerable. However, Stewart is not home and dry. Although the DfID Secretary has been building momentum of late, he had a challenging appearance in the BBC debate – admitting after that it wasn’t his preferred format. His Cabinet candidate rivals also turned on him at points – with both Michael Gove and Sajid Javid directly

When Rory Stewart first announced his intention to enter the race to be the UK’s next prime minister, he was seen by colleagues as having little to no chance of making it far in the leadership contest. Yet as the Parliamentary contest goes into its second week, Stewart is one of six contenders left standing and has today won a ministerial endorsement in the form of Tobias Ellwood. The Defence Minister had been backing Matt Hancock but after the Health Secretary bowed out on Friday, he will now back Stewart – praising the DfID Secretary’s enthusiasm. This could become a recurring theme – Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt

Britain is not quite in the grip of Rorymania. He gave a properly impressive speech this week and he has spoken with honesty and clarity about politics and policy. But Rory Stewart isn’t going to be our next prime minister and it’s hard to see him remaining in Cabinet for much longer. He’s a hit on Twitter, but Twitter is not real life. Most voters still don’t know who he is. None of that means what Stewart has done during the Conservative leadership election is irrelevant or unimportant. He, like Matt Hancock, has run towards conversations about difficult and important things like social care when many of their colleagues have

Rory Stewart has not exactly had the most orthodox of campaign strategies to become the next leader of the Conservative party. The dark horse of the leadership race has built up a cult following by heading out across the country, recording hand-held campaign videos and having conversations with various members of the public. And he decided to continue this trend of unorthodoxy once again today when he officially launched his leadership bid: in a small circus-tent in the Southbank in London. There, the international development secretary used his launch to put forward his vision for the United Kingdom. But it was Stewart’s view that the frontrunner Boris Johnson could not

Will Rory Stewart still be in the Tory leadership race come Tuesday? The International Development Secretary is seen as the wildcard of the contest. Regarding at first as having little to no chance of becoming leader owing to his pro-deal position, the undeterred Tory MP has ran a rather creative campaign going on various walks and meet and greets with members of the public in a bid to convince members of Parliament to get behind his leadership bid. His efforts have garnered a lot of attention and endorsements from unlikely places. The problem is very few of those endorsements are coming from the Conservative parliamentary party that decides who makes

The remarkable thing about the Tory leadership election is how long it has been coming. When Theresa May blew the party’s majority in the 2017 general election, few imagined that it would be two years before she quit as leader. What kept her in place was not a lack of Tory ruthlessness but a failure to agree on who should replace her. A lack of consensus is the defining feature of this contest. No candidate is pulling ahead in the endorsements, and no one has the backing of most of the cabinet. Instead, the race is as fractured as it is crowded. There are two sides to this election: full-on

With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five – Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – who currently don’t have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot paper. Harper tried to get some attention by asking a question about the Peterborough by-election at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, while Gyimah has been doing the rounds in Portcullis House as MPs have trundled through. Meanwhile I understand that Rory Stewart has cancelled all his media appearances in order to hold as many meetings as

What the hell has got into Rory Stewart? The man’s everywhere, outstretched phone in hand, like an Instagram influencer on the edge, asking people to come and talk to him about Brexit. He’s at the Lewisham market by the stinky fish! No wait – now he’s on a train to Wigan. Now he’s talking Dari in Barking; now he’s in Kew Gardens searching for a Brexiteer. But wait: he’s on the move again, chatting in a taxi! Then to Borough Market, filling the tiny screen with his distinctive features. He has more energy than the rest of his rivals put together, and is even making arch-careerist Boris Johnson look indifferent

Leavers only, please Sir: Your leading article (‘The end of May’, 25 May) correctly calls for the Conservative party to establish itself as ‘unequivocally the party of Brexit’. The meltdown at the EU elections confirmed this is now the only course of action open to it, if it wishes to survive. Conservative MPs should show they have finally woken up to reality. They need to send the membership two candidates with impeccable Leave credentials, and who are not in the current cabinet. Placing any Remain-tainted candidates on the shortlist would display MPs’ continuing contempt for the party’s activists, supporters and donors. It would also show a curious lack of interest

It’s one day since Theresa May set an exit date for her departure from 10 Downing Street and the leadership contest to replace her is already heating up. This morning, Rory Stewart – the International Development Secretary – performed a media round in which the Tory MP declared that he would not be able to serve in a Boris Johnson-led government. The reason? BoJo, the current favourite, would explicitly push for a no deal Brexit – something Stewart could not contemplate. Besides Stewart is planning to run himself. However, he is seen as an outside bet as someone who voted Remain and backs Theresa May’s deal. He has previously hit

There is little doubt that Rory Stewart is amply-qualified for his belated promotion to the cabinet. The new International Development Secretary also has a background that means he understands what his brief actually does, and its value. But his move from the Ministry of Justice has also prompted a round of complaining that Stewart will not be held accountable for a pledge that he made.  When he became prisons minister, Stewart set himself a deadline of 12 months in which to reduce levels of drug use and violence in 10 struggling prisons. If he failed, he promised, he would resign.  At the time, it seemed rather obvious that Stewart would

In sacking Gavin Williamson for an offence he strenuously denies Theresa May has created for herself a potential embarrassment. What if a criminal inquiry were to find the former defence secretary not guilty of any breach of the Official Secrets Act? Yet as no-one seems to have noticed, the mini-reshuffle she carried out in the wake of the sacking has avoided another fast-looming embarrassment. In promoting Rory Stewart to the Cabinet as International Development Secretary  she has averted the loss of a popular and up and coming minister. Last August, when prisons minister, Stewart made a rash promise. He said he would resign if he had not succeeded in reducing

Rory Stewart has just been appointed international development secretary. Last week, he explained to Katy Balls why he would make a good Prime Minister: Almost nobody in Westminster admits to wanting to be prime minister. Rory Stewart is a cheerful exception. Most leadership hopefuls prefer to plot in dark corners and woo supporters in candlelit bars. The Prisons Minister is happy to sit in the sun in Hyde Park and talk openly about his ambition. It’s a tricky time for this country, he says. ‘In a normal situation I probably wouldn’t want to run.’ One of his friends thinks he’s mad: what’s the matter with just being MP for Penrith