HOW NOT TO BE A POLITICIAN

A personal, sharp exposé of British politics.

Stewart, who once ran to become Britain’s prime minister, recounts his time as a politician, first representing Cumbria as a member of Parliament and later holding six ministerial positions in four departments. The author, who wrote The Prince of the Marshes, The Places in Between, and other books, entered politics with the hope of effecting needed change. As acting governor of an Iraqi province in 2003, he saw how much Iraqis resented the U.S. and U.K. and “how humiliating and degrading our work had become.” As director of a small charity in Afghanistan for three years, he witnessed the “mess, corruption, and half-failures” of Britain’s international aid programs. After directing Harvard’s center on human rights and global governance, he decided to take the plunge into political life. Stewart explains the complicated process of becoming a candidate: vying for party support at many levels and mounting a frenetic campaign to muster votes. After winning handily, he found himself in a system “defined by claustrophobia.” The culture was “inert, depressing, and shallow,” and he was treated like an upstart. Frustrated, he decided to devote himself to community action and local issues, where he achieved real success. After several years as a backbencher, he was promoted to ministerial positions, where the power he anticipated wielding was repeatedly compromised by calcified systems and staff lacking expertise. Doctors, for example, “were not allowed on the health legislation committee.” Change, he saw, “did not come from winning arguments on merits.” With rapier wit, Stewart skewers many of his pompous, cynical colleagues: glib David Cameron; Liz Truss, who affected “instead of accuracy, vagueness”; and Boris Johnson, a blustering “egotistical chancer.” The author’s disillusion proved insurmountable: “I began to feel that the longer I stayed in politics, the stupider and the less honourable I was becoming.”

A biting, captivating memoir.