On bank holiday Monday, Conservative MP Rory Stewart left his constituency of Penrith and The Border and went walkabout. Calling on voters to approach him for a chat or a challenge, he then posted short videos and pictures with captions on social media. In one video he is chatting in rusty Dari to a Barking resident, originally from Kabul; in another photo he is sitting in Costa Coffee on his laptop inviting people to come find him, like a Tinder hopeful still in denial that their date has not turned up. It was a sight both novel and cringemaking as he seemed unable to find the right register or physical mien.
Stewart is a Tory MP straight out of central casting: Eton, PPE at Oxford, the Foreign Office, OBE, FRSL, FRSGS, ETC. PP. A strong hint of MI6 pervades his career before becoming a member of parliament. But here he was, peering with earnest concentration into his phone camera as he camped in coffee shops and, at one point, near a McDonald’s.
Yesterday, dressed in standard-issue Tory smart casual and looking extremely uncomfortable as he talked awkwardly to people in the street, he visited Borough Market in south London and then moved east to Barking. As I write these words, his camera-face tells me he is in Kew Gardens for the next hour. Social media has been mostly unkind. It seemed impossible not to quip. Reports are that Westminster is also scoffing. Buzzfeed’s political correspondent reported that MPs called Stewart a “suicide bomber” for Michael Gove, adding that the general “suspicion is that despite the fun Twitter vids Rory is not a genuine candidate, his pitch is not seriously designed to win and he has next to no MPs”.
But I come to praise Stewart, despite my Tinder-date-at-Costa swipe, and not to bury him. Yes, there is plenty wrong with his campaign, the most serious of which is the tone. It’s ever so slightly off, a kumbaya saccharine sloganeering that jars with an underlying pitch of self-aggrandisement.
All of this confirms the sense that, like most Conservative politicians of his background, his whole life has been leading up to this moment. But he seems not to have noticed that the Conservative party has become a place where there is no room for discussion. Never mind the people of Barking, try convincing your own colleagues first that there is “room for debate” when it comes to Brexit.
It is telling that his approach is dismissed as an indication that he is not a “genuine candidate”. The worst that his whole “let’s talk about it” shtick could say about him is that he is hopelessly idealistic. Imagine believing – as a Conservative, let alone one running for the party leadership – that you can still get away with not parroting whatever will get you a cheap Question Time cheer about “the will of the people” and still stand a chance. Imagine thinking that there was another way for Theresa May to be prime minister, one that didn’t involve debasing herself entirely to the most nativist “citizens of nowhere” tendencies of the leave vote, but instead tried to lead. Imagine there is a world where the Labour leadership were not just wary of the anger that taking a stronger position on Brexit and a second referendum might trigger, and instead tried to convince people that there was another way.
This is the curse of British politics at this moment. It is not one of polarisation, but lack of conviction. Whether it is those who back remain with so much fervour that there is no discussion to be had about the nature of a second referendum, just that it must include remain as an option, or those for whom Brexit now simply means no deal, so much of it now is posturing. Who is hard enough to dunk on Brexit voters, tell them they were wrong, and get enough support to pull it off? Who has the gumption to take the keys of No 10 and no-deal the hell out of it? Even the way the media covered last week’s European elections followed the same pattern, splicing the votes along leave and remain lines, with the Green party support being an inconvenient anomaly.
Everyone is trying to divine which way the wind is blowing and either take shelter from it, hoping it will pass, or be swept away, all the while shelving policies or positions that are in the real interests of the voting public, in order to be spared its ire at the ballot box. The question for the Conservatives and Labour after their erosion at last week’s elections is: how’s that working out for you?
It’s not, and it never does. Take the hostile environment: both the Conservative and Labour parties decided that the public wanted a harder line on immigration and passed anti-immigration policies, or at least abstained from opposing them, too afraid to make a pro-immigration case and convince the British public with strength and vision. That position paved the way for Ukip, for Brexit, and the two parties’ own eventual cannibalisation by policies and rhetoric they established.
Rory Stewart will almost inevitably lose to Boris Johnson, a man who is the final destination in this race to the bottom. He will lose to a man often referred to as one who waits to see the way the crowd is running before dashing in front of it and saying “follow me”. Perhaps this is Stewart’s “suicide mission”, in a final act, to show that there is another way, if only one chooses to put principle before power.
• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
