Quite right!: Rory Stewart interview | Part two

0:00Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Cost climb. Too little? Production slows. Grangers, $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving. Call 1-800-Granjer. Click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the once, who get it done. Welcome back to part 2 of this quite right interview with Rory Stewart. I'll be talking to Rory today about the things that he didn't talk about with his friend Alice Takamble on the rest of his politics. Rory sometimes seems like just another centrist squish, but in fact, when he's alone with

1:00me, Rory discovers his inner Tory once more as we discuss class, private schools and how you get growth going. On the question of restoring confidence in Britain, do you think that the denigration of our past undermines confidence in Britain now? And would you, if you could equate people with our history, our traditions and our institutions better, would you point to particular things and say, this is a part of the British story that's insufficiently appreciated and needs to be vented more. Ten thousand things, but let me give you one which will wind you up. I think the great underappreciated part of the British story is the middle class. The middle class who generated Charles Darwin, who generated John Stuart Mill, who generated generations of army officers, generated generations of diplomats and civil servants, and the structures that enabled

2:02that and the structures that enabled that are complicated to explain. But Cumbria, Geber in the 1950s, was run by retired colonels, all of whom were sitting, retiring from the army, probably 40, 45, running charities, running voluntary organisations. They had a sense of past, they had a sense the future, they had independence and what was it based on? It was based on the ability to pass on to their children a small amount of money and a small amount of property which enabled their children to not feel that there was a choice between getting a good education and working for the civil service or becoming a teacher or becoming an army officer. I think we have created a world where the left is very against that because they see it as inherited wealth and your friends or some of your friends on the radical right are against that because they want wealth taxes, they want entrepreneurs, they want cutting edge businesses. I want to expand the values of the middle class to the whole country. I want everybody and my dream would be and this is,

3:05well, let's look at a Cumbrian farmer, so perfect examples, they're not traditionally middle class, they're actually working class but what are they actually represent? They represent people who are prepared to live on an income of 8,000 pounds a year while sitting on farms that are worth potentially 2 million pounds and they never liquidate it, they never turn themselves in as they continue living a tough life generation after generation, preserving a vision of themselves, their identity, their continuity and in doing so they are the heart and soul of our country. And so yes, that's the British tradition I want to talk about. I want to stand up for that. I don't want to stand up for the Zulu Wars, I don't want to stand up for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, I don't want to stand up for the Industrial Revolution which I think did a lot of pretty horrendous things, I'm not particularly sorry, I don't particularly want to celebrate the big bang or hedge funds, I'm not particularly interested in celebrating the Anglo-Saxon resistance, the Norman conquest, I am interested in celebrating actually what I saw as a pretty magical moment in British history,

4:07which was partly connected in the Industrial Revolution, which stretched from about 1780 to about 1950. It seems to me that many of your real models are like a square-author one of other four in Trollop's baritur Chronicles or Mr. Knightley in Jane Austen's Emma or Christopher Teachum's in Ford Maddox Fords' tetralogy about the First World War. Or boot and scoop? Yes, yeah. Your ideal and I'm not attempting to character, I'm attempting to capture is the rooted Tory Squire or Parsam who has an affection for where they grew up, respects wealth but is very anti-plutocratic, believes that it's very important to act as a steward is not scornful of business but hates the worship of wealth for its own sake, believes in continuity and obligation overall, hates the idea of envy or enthusiasm and believes that overall an element of prudence when looking at any change

5:17is more important than anything else. Now it's beautiful. It's a very very articulate, wonderful expression of my belief system and altruism and I can add some small contemporary examples but you've got a beautiful philosophical expression. Let me give you one example, Tisri. I think one element of it is that it's a group that has a sense of what's enough. They're not trying to endlessly accumulate wealth and become richer and richer and richer. They might be a group that would say, I'm very lucky. I've inherited a little bit from my parents. I've been lucky enough to have a good education but I'm very happy paying tax. Take me, I am not at all uncomfortable paying 45% tax. I think the government is pretty useless and wasteful but I'm very lucky and there's a lot of people out there who are much poorer than me and I feel pretty guilty about that because I'm conscious that a lot of what I've got in life is not my own brilliant brain. I do not want to live in Mississippi. I don't want to live in Abu Dhabi where people in Abu Dhabi don't understand the

6:20conditions that the Uber drivers living in where their 12th were room with no rights etc. That this tax-free dream is based on a massive exploitation of people living in grinding misery. So I want a system that I don't want to pay a wealth tax because the wealth tax would exactly destroy the existence of the possibility of independence. It destroys the possibility of public service. I mean, I want to actually have a contract almost which is yes. Okay, you're lucky. Got a bit of money but my god, you pay your tax and by the way, ideally your child becomes a vicar or a teacher or a diplomat because that's the point of having the money. Inevitably given our shared interest and I have to touch on education because impolite what you say is the importance of a fee-paying education are public schools. They were the institutions which overwhelmingly not exclusively generated and sustained the group of people

7:21whom you've described. You yourself as Al-Stakamwell reminds us every week where educated a deaton I think you're in children will keep the exact details out of it are educated privately put that one side. How important is private education and its survival and what would you say to someone who said what you're talking about even if it's a relatively open elite is the perpetuation of elite underpinned by wealth. Yeah, I mean, look, this is a very, very interesting, very uncomfortable conversation and I hope that people who watch clips of this will also be able to see the whole podcast as I try to navigate my way. No doubt that I hope so. Because I'm very conscious that I'm stretching into very taboo territory. A lot of what I'm saying is so out of step with the way in which most people on the right and the left see things. Defending private education is really difficult to do right because only 7% of people in Britain are able to go to private schools. So by definition 93% of the population it's not an option for them so why on earth should

8:22they have any sympathy for it at all. Well, what's my argument for it? My argument for it is that these are really, really good schools. Extra ordinary teachers, extraordinary facilities. Nobody's asking the government to pay for them. They no longer get VAT exemption. If a parent chooses to spend their money on it, you can't stop them really. I mean, you could make them all go to a state school. They'd still pay for private tutors, I'm afraid. They'd come out of their state school and they'd be private tutored up the gizzoukall if that's what the parents want to do. They can do that right? That is what happens in China where basically everybody's forced to go to state school and actually what then happens is people do five hours of private tutoring a day. So I think it's very odd that many people who are against private education seem to be happy when they can't get an NHS appointment to pay for a private doctor. I think it's very odd that people don't understand that, yes, there is a problem, which is that it means that wealthy, articulate parents are putting their initiates into private school running, proving the standards in the state sector, but it's also true that they're relieving the burden. So look, I think you could make the argument that if you are

9:27somebody just for the sake of our country, let's say you're somebody in Britain who has been lucky enough to have a house in London without a big mortgage and has a decent income and they're professional at some sort. They're paying 45% income tax, they pay capital gains tax, they pay their council tax. They choose to pay to send their children to school, they choose to send their kids to private healthcare themselves. They're paying quite a lot into the state, right? The top 10% of income players in this country are contributing 60% of the entire income tax around the country and the top 1% is generating nearly 30%. And they're taking very little back, right? Not using the schools, not using the hospitals, right? That seems to me an okay arrangement. And one I'm comfortable with, right? I'm neither on the side of the kind of labor party that would be like screw up, nor am I on the side of the kind of posh person moving to Dubai because they're disgusted that they're paying all this tax and they're not getting much benefit from it. I think it makes sense that I pay a lot of tax and I get much less from the state than I pay in tax.

10:31It is very clear that your political philosophy is opposed to selfishness and opposed to the idea of the sort of aynran sovereign individual saying if I pursue my own interests, that's best for everyone, very clear that you're against that. It's also clear that you've made an argument in general principle about why investing in private education actually saves the state some pressure. But what I inferred from what you said earlier is also that Britain's strength, one of its strengths, is that there is a cadre or a group of people who are infused with and sustain the sorts of values that would have been thought of as public school values. That in broad terms, a country with a healthy number of Etonian's carthusians and wikimists is a stronger country. My problem with that is that my theory doesn't match very well with reality because what I actually found with people like Boris

11:35Johnson is the terrible sense that he didn't actually share my vision of these things that as I've just witnessed with James Orr and watching carefully that 30-minute documentary, there is a wikimist who is a professor of whatever he is, moral theology, engaged in essentially conspiring, concealing. I think the uncomfortable thing for me is that this idea of the English gentleman, the old Etonian, they don't live up to their standards. The only excuse for them, the literal only excuse for being a upper middle class privileged English or Scottish gentleman is that you live up to those standards. If you join the foreign office, if you serve the memorapolament, if you're not selling yourself out to some crazy corporation, if you're working as a school teacher thicker, thumbs up. If you're not, I don't see the point. But there's always been the

12:35flashmen figure. Sure. There's always been the public school bully or renegade. Sure. But for every renegade, for every Boris, there's also at least one Alex Chalk. Yes. There's at least one wikimist who believes or Etonian. Or did Rishi Suneck. Or Rishi Suneck. Not at least one. And let me make some publics. Let me make it. So in a way, the model that you have is not invalidated by the rogue, the renegade or the pirate. It's actually the case that the existence of these institutions is a way of saying to those renegades, you're not living up to the traditions of this institution. You didn't deserve or you've abused the privilege that you've enjoyed. And those institutions are actually good things on the whole. And a world where there were more Alex Chalks, it would be a better world. Yeah. Or indeed Rishi Suneck. I know I keep bringing that Rishi, but I mean, no, very striking that everybody assumed that when he stopped being Prime Minister, he would do a David Cameron or Kirstama. Did he'd high-taire that out of

13:38there, call a bi-election and set off to California, put his kids in school and become a tech-brake? He has remained ruseid enrichment in Yorkshire. His children are riding horses. His wife is connected to the countryside. He is there on the back benches popping up and down in questions, serving as a good constituency MP. When everybody knows that his wife is the daughter of one of the wealthiest people in the world. You have to do that. So I- It's a very English thing to do. It's a very English archetype. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a wonderful, wonderful vision. And this is why I disagree with Peter Tiel, your friend, who comes over here and gives speeches frequently, says, oh, problem with Britain is that these people make money and they buy country houses and they faffer around going into public service when they should be roared to some claw entrepreneurs building this right? And of course, in some ways, you could say that, you know, I don't know what Alex is going to get a country house. I imagine probably might quite like to have a house in the country, right? Certainly Rishi Suneak has got my

14:40enrichment, right? I think this is lovely. I think it's a lovely- and of course, remember what we're talking about with- to- to be frank, Miek is Guayos, great again. Yeah. But also it's not quite as one imagines. Look at the reality of who Rishi Suneak is. He's actually not from some wealthy posh English family going back to the normal conquest by definition, you know, his parents came over without a great deal and he was formed in the system. I'm not sure Alex is claiming to be descended from Squires going back to the normal conquest. This is actually a story often of people whose grandparents had relatively modest lives aspiring to be a certain sort of human. So the reason I'm sort of getting on to this is that we're in a world in which certainly a lot of the listeners to your show will have heard James Orr and other reformed ideologues or scrutin or others talk about virtue and politics, moral, serious, messed and politics, right? My best examples of virtue and moral, serious, system politics are, you know, I had David Gork to this who didn't go

15:45to a libous goal, right? But who seems to me to epitomize this? Unfortunately for reform, many of the figures that I want of Richard Benian, right, that I want to point to, tend to be more on the left of the Conservative Party because actually their notion of what wealth and privilege means is not radical scrum, keep them out. It is inclusive, it's generous, it's confident, it's relaxed, and it has a sense of past and future. It's unpanicked by the world. There's something very demeaning about the reform view that it's, there's something hysterical and panic about it. They've lost confidence and they don't know who they're talking for. I mean, one of the things I notice when I talk to people from reform reformed donors, they switch very, very easily from saying, you know, we got to cut tax for the lowest paid, which, in sent me, if we're going to have another, because I said catastrophic idea. If you want to finance the British state, everybody should be paying tax, right? And that the secret of

16:49Sweden is no wealth taxes, close to no inheritance tax, but everybody paying tax, median income earners paying income tax is central for funding a state, right? But they're not quite sure whether what they're saying is, I'm on the side of the white van man who's paying too much tax, incidentally, often the person they're describing is actually taking much more from the state than they're paying a tax, but they don't understand it, right? Or whether they're what they're really saying is my mates moved to Dubai. And if I somehow change something in Britain, my mate would come back from Dubai. This is the story of the one as a shipping manager. He's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift, call 1-800-GRANJER. Click ranger.com or just up by Granger for the ones who get it done.

17:57How do we get growth in Britain? I would say that firstly nobody knows, right? It's a hell of a lot of nonsense. The story that she told is its productivity. And the story you're told about productivity is its skills infrastructure and increasingly people say innovation, but certainly when we were in government largely they banged on about skills and infrastructure. Turned out that's obviously insufficient. Germany's got skills and infrastructure going through the ceiling and America's growing much more quickly. So clearly part of it is a good ecosystem for business. We want entrepreneurs to move here. We want to make it easy for them. And that also involves a very uncomfortable story where I want to be able to say I'm happy to have non-doms. I'm happy for them to pay less tax. I'll charge them an upfront amount, but they're giving us more than they're taking out. And do you think that part of growth involves changing some of the rules around things like planning in order to make it easier to develop new homes, new businesses, the transport infrastructure that would link places like Wigton with the rest of the UK's economy

19:03and also inevitably data centers. Yeah. So I'm very pro data center. I think data centers are essential that without them we're going to build an NHS on the back of American systems. We're going to build our defense and security on the back of American systems. We're going to build our businesses on the back of American or Chinese systems. And the result is that we will be taken hostage by at best American businesses at worst American presidents and Chinese presidents will simply disable the frontier models. And we've just seen it. I mean, Trump did it with unsropically basically said the stuff that we rely on for our cybersecurity protection. So we have to have the data centers because whatever you think of AI, it would be insane to allow the US and China to get all the advantage, suck all the economic activity to them on the back of their frontier models. So we need the data centers because we don't have data centers. We don't have the chips. And if we don't have the chips, we can't host the weights. And if we don't have the weights, we can't host the models. And we can't say to them, oh, okay, you can stop us getting the next model, but we're going to continue to host the old model. Do I think building a brand

20:08new train line up to North England is central? Probably not. Do I think connecting leads and Manchester is a very good idea and much greater priority. Absolutely. Yes. Do I think we need to build a hell of a lot more housing? Yes. And is there a paradox that I sound like an Indian country? Yes. But here in my defense, you've anticipated my question about the tension between the drive for economic growth, which will enable Britain to take more control of his own destiny. And respect for communities that find that growth destabilizing and disorienting. Well, let me talk about grief. So I am in a posture. So I live, my family lived on the junctions between the lowlands and the highlands in a house, which parts my family have had connections to over 700 years. So I can create a lovely story about myself, wumbling around in my kilt. And this particular bit of land has a cursor line, which is like a mini stone hinge going back 5,000 years. And there's a neolithic mound where the earls of Strathurne did justice in the

21:10middle ages of life. And into this landscape, 200 yards from my front door have gone 450 houses. And I am happy with that. Right. So the medieval cursor's line has now gone underground. They've built over it. The neolithic mound where the earls of Strathurne did medieval justice is under, you know, number 17, whatever avenue is Starbucks has emerged. A leisure center has been built, schools been built. And grief is doing much, much better. And now my drive is now full of people walking dogs. And I'm no longer able to pretend that I'm living in a country house. I'm basically living in a house with a big garden on the edge of a growing town. Have I lost something absolutely? I'd be stupid not to say that there is light pollution, there is noise pollution. I go to my garden now. I can hear people chatting and sending. Do I feel that that is a, that the world is getting worse? Absolutely not. I feel when I go on the park run and grief when I go to Starbucks, when I see people in these houses that we are vigorous with growing its dynamic. It's a lovely story.

22:13And that they are in miniature terms. Everybody living in those housing estates, living lives which are not a million miles from my sort of Rishi-Suneat dream. Right? They are property owners. They are going on the park run. They are volunteering and local things. They might be also a paint decorator or a outdoor instructor or acting as a sommelier in the local restaurant. But they are proud citizens of a lovely community. So I think we can do it. But the way to do it is to be thoughtful about where those houses go, except that there are going to be losers, but that what I've lost is not remotely comparable to what they've gained and to lean into the rich positive story of this. We have to draw this conversation to a close. I hope that we'll have the chance to chat again in the future. But I've got a few brief cheeky questions just to conclude. We both attended the King's coronation. So she better said, Bullington Club. And you wore a privy counselor You know this. Yes, yes. Yes. Why? That's a beautiful uniform. It supports local artisans and

23:18crafts people and every privy counselor should have worn one. And I was deeply disappointed that you didn't Michael. No, I was just in plain morning dress. Yeah, I didn't even wear a kilt. You are podcast with our mutual friend, Helestock Amble, has you disagreeing agreeably. Your critics say actually that you agree with Helestock far more than you disagree with him. You agree that Trump's a monster. You agree that Brexit was a disaster. You agree that populism appeals to the worst instincts in citizens. What do you really disagree with Helestock over everything we've talked about in this podcast? He would find it completely incomprehensible. This entire discussion, he wouldn't understand where I was coming from. He wouldn't understand the values I'm trying to express. And in so far as he understood it, he would be totally revolted. Yeah, I think you're probably right actually. Those viewers in this is all conclude. You're a brilliant writer. Even though we disagree on a fair number of things, I enjoy reading everything you've written. Who are your models? Who are the authors you admire?

24:19So I'm absolutely in love with Lawrence Stern, who wrote Tristram Chandie, whose portrait of an 18th century English gentleman is one of the most beautiful expressions of my entire philosophy while being funny. I'm a lever site, which for viewers who are into this kind of stuff, means that I believe in a great tradition of literature. And so I would put Austin and Conrad and Henry James in that tradition. I'm very interested in a particular sparse writers, in 1950s American, radical James Salter, I'd be interested in. I quite like certain kinds of children's writers, Ursula Laguin. I think is a very interesting stylist. I am allergic to people like Patrick Lee Furmer. I paint overly flowery like I don't like Bruce Chapman. There's a travel writer. I would rather for all his flaws read Hemingway than I would Bruce Chapman. And I think to maybe tie our composition together, the push away from rhetoric to reality is I

25:21think the key to things. I'm not very good at it. I'm not actually a very good writer, but the writers that I really admire of whom Tolstoy is the supreme example are able in the most astonishing way to capture the unexpected texture of the reality and the way that it pushes back against our theories, fantasies, ambitions and just conferences with the raw stuff of life. Finally, do you believe in God? Yes. If you do, are you an Anglican or a Presbyterian? I'm a Scottish Episcopanian, which means that I am an Anglican and Scotland. Yes. Rory Stewart, thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed. Granger Nose If you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies

26:24across the operation. Too much inventory? Cost climb. Too little? Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving. Call 1-800-Granjer. Click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. You send you a £20 Amazon gift card. Absolutely free. Go to www.spectator.com forward slash voucher to claim this offer now.