Even James Bond would have struggled with how to reconcile his Scottish sense of conservativism with Brexit, according to Rory Stewart, a rising star among Britain’s Conservatives before he was expelled from the party for defying Boris Johnson.
Three years after voters opted to leave the European Union, Stewart said there was little chance of compromise and no end in sight to the crisis.
The result, he said during an interview in Washington, was a challenge from governments on both sides of the Atlantic to traditional ideas of conservatism as embodying patience, pragmatism, and respect.
“What worries me about this type of right-wing government is that it seems extremely impatient and not thoughtful or deferential towards our institutions or our past,” he said.
Stewart, 46, is an old-school Tory. Eton and Oxford-educated, he served as tutor to the young Princes William and Harry. After serving as a diplomat he forged a reputation as an adventurer, walking across Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and was appointed a deputy governor in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
In his 2004 book The Place In Between, about his Afghan odyssey, he described meeting “heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers” and a mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan’s first Mughal emperor.
He joined the Cabinet earlier this year under Theresa May and campaigned to replace her when she stood down. He was knocked out in the third round but won praise for engaging with voters in a series of nationwide walks and a moderate platform that avoided the bile of a bitter Brexit battle.
Two weeks ago he voted against Johnson, the winner, in one of a series of complex procedural parliamentary ballots aimed at preventing Britain leaving the EU without a deal. He was expelled with 20 other MPs and now sits as an independent.
“I think it is difficult now to return to the Conservative Party because they have gone off on a journey which feels to me at least to have some of the sort of language and attitudes of Trump,” he said.
“It’s a tonal thing. It’s not something that can possibly be reduced to policy. It’s a way of approaching the world.”
His strand of British conservatism, he said, might be understood as the sort that comes with a sort of romantic deference to the queen or other institutions, from the courts to the army.
“James Bond is a sort of conservative because he operates in a world of White Hall departments and unspoken rules, old-fashioned motor cars, and types of suit and drink,” said Stewart, a fellow Scot who is frequently rumored to have been a real life Bond, although he always denies having worked for MI6. “It’s a whole vision of what it means.”
Applying that to the rough and tumble of Brexit, questions of sovereignty, and Britain’s place in the world is problematic.
“I think he would have been terribly torn,” said Stewart. “He’s the classic example of the problem of this thing.”
On the one hand lies an optimism derived from the U.K.’s history, but on the other a pessimism born from decades of questioning its international role.
“One streak of romanticism is all about our deep history of independence, the sovereignty, being buccaneering and doing it on our own. And another part is a pragmatism and a common sense which always balanced that, which said OK, it may be a bit imperfect, but it works for us and our economy is doing reasonably well, and anyway we have quite a bit of influence in Europe.”
Brexit he said, lives on that edge between optimism and pessimism: a bright new dawn or a final retreat.
It feels as if some of America’s culture wars, in which any compromise on gun control or abortion seems impossible, have rubbed off on its transatlantic cousin. Neither side trusts the motives of the other; compromise is impossible.
“Britain for the first time, for hundreds of years, really that I am aware of, has found itself in a sort of culture war, or grand ideological battle, and both sides have convinced themselves that the other side has not just made a miscalculation on a policy issue,” he said. “They are not giving the other side the benefit of the doubt in any way at all.”
