Rory talks (and walks)

Source: Rory for London campaign

Rory Stewart walks and talks with Opinion Editor Nikolas Koch, discussing his politics and campaign to become London Mayor.

As London prepares to move on from the General Election, Rory Stewart offers us a new and ambitious kind of politics. Speaking to Pi after a talk at UCL, he details his vision. From Indonesia to Afghanistan, Rory has had a distinguished career in the army, civil service and politics. Now, the former Labour party member and Conservative MP sees himself as the voice for pragmatic centrism which London needs. Discussing his previous life experiences both in public service and through his personal travels, he outlines his clear goal: “to translate the language of politics into real change. What I like is what I can get done.”

Rory’s anti-partisan language is appealing in an age of constant slogans and electioneering. A fierce critic of Boris Johnson, he states that “I ran as Conservative leader to stop a no-deal Brexit and beat Boris.” Rory has been an independent candidate for Mayor since quitting the Conservative Party in October. Disliking politics by slogans and abstract rhetoric he believes that “the last election campaign was what could be printed on a baseball cap.” Throughout the conversation Rory makes it clear that he sees the politics of change as not about slogans but about management, criticising “free-floating words” which mean little. He reminisces on the difficulty of translating grand proposals into practice during his solo walk from Herat to Kabul in 2002. How could he describe Afghanistan’s avowed commitment to a “gender-sensitive, multi-ethnic, centralized government based on human rights, policy, and the rule of law” to ordinary people living in the 550 houses he visited?

Arguing that good politics is local, Rory talks to Londoners about the problems and issues they want to change. Applying his thoughts from Kabul to Camden, he believes that listening to citizens is severely lacking in our politics. When I ask him what kind of mayor he wants to be, he states that he imagines himself not as an overarching figure but someone “who walks around London, standing outside Tube stations and talking … I’m interested in listening and changing, not in the role for its own sake.”  Throughout his work, like the ‘London Speaks’ initiative, Rory’s campaign focusses on bringing politics back to London’s communities. He describes the capital as “a city of 700 villages and of nearly 9 million minds.”

The Rory for London campaign is centred on three predominant issues for Londoners: safety, security and affordability. With a mayoral budget of almost £18 billion, Rory’s goals are certainly bold. Outlining his campaign priorities, he vows to “build 200,000 affordable houses at a variety of levels.” Pointing to Barking and Dagenham boroughs’ proposals to build 50,000 homes within the next 20 years, he says that his goals are a matter of management, “moving forward with competence, focus and energy rather than moving left or right.” Rory also demands that Londoners “boot me out if I fail to reduce knife crime.” This is a similar vow to his commitment to reduce violence as Prisons Minister, which saw the rate of assaults fall by 16% and failed drug tests drop across ten prisons. Rory plans to tackle the issue of crime and homicide in London by putting thousands more police officers on the street, focussing on community centred-policies by increasing training and neighbourhood-based policing.

At the core of Rory’s campaign is his continued insistence that “we must get the basics right before tackling other issues.” This is exemplified by his three tenets of safety, security and affordability. When I push him on the importance of other matters such as the environment, he agrees that issues of diversity and the climate crisis will shape London’s politics in the years to come. However, he maintains these issues are addressed in his core message. Commenting on his lack of specific pledges on environmental issues he explains that “the challenge of making a green, liveable, safe city is something that has to be approached detail by detail, not as a series of soundbites.” The lack of promises is not representative of a lack of focus on the environment, but a broader disdain of politics by catchphrases rather than change. Indeed, he goes on to argue that “there’s a huge amount London can do. We must lead the way on our vehicle fleet, electrification … we do terribly on tree planting … domestic boilers, construction machinery and electricity generation are all a problem.” Politicians are often criticised for overpromising and under-delivering. A novelty of Rory’s campaign is his general lack of a manifesto or a plethora of pledges, building his campaign on vows he is sure to deliver.  

From the environment to technology, Rory hopes to prepare London for the future. He tells me how he wants to “celebrate London as a utopia of innovation and education, as one of the greatest cities on earth.” Comparing London to New York, Rory outlines his hopes to “invest in smart people and systems to analyse London’s data better … New York is streets ahead in using data for traffic management to hotspot policing.” He believes his focus on affordable housing, safety and air pollution are issues which young people care about, and attendance at the event at UCL certainly gives him evidence to support this claim. “Education will become a bigger part of everybody’s life, partly because of AI and robotics … you can’t be a great city without putting education at its heart and celebrating that.”

Rory’s campaign is ambitious in its aims, as well as its proposals. Described as a Macron-style candidate, he sees himself as the way to signal change in London by arguing that he is in a two-horse race with the current mayor, Sadiq Khan. Khan prefers to characterise the election as a direct battle to ‘defend London’s values’ against the Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey and is trying to ‘lovebomb’ Lib Dem voters by emphasising these shared values. The independent ‘Rory for London’ campaign faces a struggle to raise funds and build independent campaign machinery without party backing. Rory explains that “financing has to be raised through individuals, person by person … including students and former Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative donors.” While Rory is disrupting the conventional two-party narrative, it is unclear whether enough Londoners back change to make the decisive difference. When asked directly, he estimates his chances of winning as “currently about 30%, hopefully increasing to 50% in the next six weeks.” 

One thing which Londoners would back Rory on is his love for Pret a Manger. I ask him the most eagerly awaited question of what he orders for lunch: “My favourite is the Salad Nicoise!” Rory is providing an energetic, ambitious vision for London, promising attention and change to the issues people care most about. Will Londoners share his vision on May 7th?

Many thanks to Rory Stewart and the “Rory for London” campaign for agreeing to be interviewed, and to UCL International Relations Society, who hosted his talk at UCL.