#88 A British Minister on Why Being a Politician Is the Worst Job Imaginable with Rory Stewart

What this episode is about

In this discussion, Rory Stewart, a seasoned British politician and diplomat, shares his insights on Britain's shifting role in a post-Brexit world, particularly in relation to the rising influence of China. He articulates the profound challenges facing medium-sized nations like the UK, while also reflecting on the demanding and often detrimental nature of political life, which he describes as "the most awful life imaginable."

Key takeaways

• Britain post-Brexit is a classic case of a medium-sized country grappling with a changing global hierarchy.
• The US's retreat from Afghanistan symbolizes a broader crisis of confidence, impacting global alliances and responsibilities.
• Britain's future may lie in reclaiming its historical roles in Africa and the Middle East rather than chasing superpower aspirations.
• The West's democratic values are fraying; it's time to rebuild resilience or risk losing global influence.
• America's self-doubt about its global role mirrors Britain's, highlighting a shared dilemma among Western powers in disarray.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomlin (Host) · 10 min speaking
• Rory Stewart (Guest) · 22 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Donald Trump, UK
2. 15:00 – 20:00: Donald Trump
3. 20:00 – 25:00: COP

Notable quotes from "#88 A British Minister on Why Being a Politician Is the Worst Job Imaginable with Rory Stewart"

• How do you see Britain's role in the world post brexit I think the first thing to start with is that Britain is on a very dramatic Journey as recently as 2005 the British…

  about UK · at 1:30

• In a muddle in a way although there's a lot of talk about a tilt towards China we're in a period of isolation that this is the long Legacy of Donald Trump's view of the world…

  about Donald Trump · at 4:19

• And an aggressive relationship the more difficult it will be to get joint action going what was achieved in cop I think probably two things one of them is that at least people…

  about COP · at 24:37

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Donald Trump — Person · Referenced former US President (policy antecedent) · 3 mentions · first at 4:26
  Cited as shaping the isolationist legacy and political incentives that contributed to the US decision to leave Afghanistan and reduced leverage in negotiations with the Taliban.

Places & events

• UK — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 2:53
  Discussed in terms of its role post-Brexit and its relationship with the US and NATO.
• COP — Event · Referenced · 1 mention · first at 24:41
  Mentioned in the context of global warming and progress toward reducing its rate.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with Rory Stewart he's a British Diplomat and politician who has served across the UK government as Secretary of State for International Development minister of the environment minister of State for justice and as chair of the house Commons defense Select Committee in addition he's an author and explorer who has walked solo across Afghanistan I'm excited to find out how Rory sees the UK role in the world post brexit and what impact the US withdrawal

0:59 from Afghan an will have on allies and adversaries I'm also excited to hear what it's really like to be a politician why he thinks it's the most awful life imaginable and how the business of politics is corrosive and disintegrates politicians brains bodies and souls welcome Rory and thanks so much for our conversation today thank you for having me my pleasure let's start by talking broadly about Britain and the US how do you see Britain's role in the world post brexit I think the first thing to start with is that Britain is on a very dramatic Journey as recently as 2005 the British economy was larger than the Chinese economy today just 17 years later the Chinese economy is seven times larger than the British economy so you can see the shift in power so when Britain went into Afghanistan Iraq with the United States it still had a larger economy than China's and the reason I'm saying that is is that in a way what

2:01 Britain is struggling with is what it means to be a large mediumsized country in a world in which obviously Nations like United States and China are operating at a totally different level the United States has an economy nearly 10 times the size of the British economy and that goes into the core of all the problems that we're trying to do Post brexit do we have a role in Africa do we have a role in the Middle East how do we work with other nations do we really have a military anymore are we able to operate independently and perhaps the most dramatic example of that was that when the United States left Afghanistan they had only 2,500 soldiers left on the ground and traditionally you would have thought that a country like Britain would have been able to take out that weight 2,500 soldiers is not very many but Britain chose not to and I think that's a real sign at least at the moment of lack of national

2:53 confidence and what role do you think that Britain can play in the world as you say A medium large-sized country with limited resources compared to some other countries I think Britain like any organization in that kind of size needs to focus prioritize so my honest view is that we shouldn't be talking about Britain tilting towards China and the asia-pacific region that's not where our expertise lies our expertise really lies in Africa and the Middle East so we should be saying to the United States or President Biden by all means you tilt towards China and we will will take over some of the roles that the United States used to do in places where currently the president seems to be less interested um that will involve investing more in those places rebuilding relationships in those places I think the second thing clearly that we need to do is try to work out whether it's possible to rebuild what the old west this Alliance

3:51 of democracies which was incredibly important really through the whole 20th century and which is now feels terribly lack in confidence terribly fraying and all over the world essentially people are paying less and less attention to what Europe Britain United States Canada would traditionally have pushed in terms of values in terms of approaches how do you see US foreign policy I think it's in a muddle in a way although there's a lot of talk about a tilt towards China we're in a period of isolation that this is the long Legacy of Donald Trump's view of the world that the decision to lead Afghanistan was not a rational decision it wasn't driven by things on the ground no American Soldier being killed for 18 months were only 2,500 soldiers there it was a very very light investment it wasn't necessary it's not as though the investment in Afghanistan was somehow preventing the United States for doing things elsewhere but it was

4:49 very very symbolic because what it suggests is that the United States is giving up retreating from the position it's really had since the second world war of having quite a large presence across the world in unexpected places Philippines Colombia South Korea Japan which was For Better or Worse about the United States having a sense that it was going to play a globally responsible World role we may not like the idea of global policeman but at least that the United States stood for things stood for values stood for democracy stood for human rights and that has collapsed for understandable reasons partly because many many Americans when you say that will grow and say come off it you know we didn't really do democracy and human rights did we so there's a problem which is there's a problem of external legitimacy and other words what do other countries think about the United States but there's also a deep problem within the

5:42 United States where America may have lost its own sense of confidence in its Mission and sometimes for quite understandable reasons which is of course like Britain and European countries the United States as well as doing a lot of good in the world did a lot of harm how do other countries see the US now with its partis cens ship and divisions I think we're worried I mean that's another obvious problem which is that if the greatest democracy in the world that's in the business of promoting and exporting democracy seems to be having problems with its own democracy things do become a little bit more troubling but of course populism partisanship is not a uson phenomenon it's something to be very worried about around the world so it's very sad let's talk more specifically about Afghanistan from your perspective as a British Diplomat and politician how do you see British and NATO involvement in the war

6:34 in Afghanistan essentially in Afghanistan we made the mistake of getting into a Allin or allout mentality in the early days there was a lot to be proud of in Afghanistan United States his allies went in with very very few troops toppled the Taliban government supported president Kay and he was running a country now it had many problems as you can imagine because Afghan started from a very very low base it was one of the poorest countries on Earth but in those early years the first four years Afghanistan did make a lot of progress the economy doubled in size many refugees returned to the country and particularly in the Central and the north of the country lives got better women went back to school Services began to roll out the problem really was that in 2005 the us became over ambitious and perfectionist as did nato in general and they began to say ah yes yes but there are many problems in the South and the

7:31 East with corruption and human rights abuse and kazm doing a good enough job and that was really the beginning of these troop deployments initially the foreign soldiers stayed in kabon in the capital but they were tempted into difficult areas in the south of Afghanistan initially believing that if they went in there they would be able to improve ordinary people's lives that they could get rid of corrupt Warlords and they could get girls back to school and they could create security for economic development but in fact what happened by trying to do that is they sparked Taliban resistance which grew and grew and grew and grew and finally in 2014 we came to our senses again and realized that it didn't make sense to try to Nation build in that way so we went back to a light footprint and from 2014 to 2021 that's what we had we had very few troops and generally they were not engaged in ground operations and

8:20 they didn't do very much outside bases very few and and actually the development money was increasingly about supporting the Afghan government but it was just enough to stop the Taliban from taking over the country and I thought President Biden because he'd argued for a light footprint back in the day when he'd been the vice president under President Obama would Embrace this instead of which for some reason he woke up and said I'm not prepared to accept even 2,500 American soldiers not prepared to do anything to say in that and despite the fact that the US has remained in countries like South Korea for 70 years he said 20 years is quite long enough we're out and in doing so collapsed the whole state so that we are now on the edge of a horrifying humanitarian crisis many Afghans will starve this winter the US stretched NATO into Iraq and Afghanistan and neither worked out particularly well given this

9:13 do you think NATO will be unwilling to take actions outside of Europe I think NATO will be skeptical and it'll also be feeling a bit bruised and betrayed remember that President Biden didn't really consult in the departure from Afghanistan Taliban captured Kabul on Sunday he and prime minister Boris Johnson asked for a call with him on Sunday he didn't bother to speak to him till the Tuesday that doesn't sound like a big deal but it is a big deal because of course Britain lost nearly 500 soldiers in Afghanistan and we spent 20 years there with British politicians telling the British people that Afghanistan is the most important place on Earth that failure is not an option and then suddenly our Ally gets up and leaves and what are we supposed to say and so the United States needs to think a little bit about its allies what are the British politicians supposed to say to the British people we've been telling

10:02 you for 20 years that we're here with the United States this is an existential threat to Global Security we can't leave because terrorists are going to take over and we're suddenly supposed to wake up the next morning and say oh actually we've changed our minds 180 degrees Afghanistan doesn't matter at all it doesn't even justify having 2,500 soldiers doesn't matter if the Taliban takes over we've got better things to do so I do think that's going to be one of the problems how does the US sustain relationships with allies if it no longer has a consistent foreign policy if it's able to Lurch that quickly from position to position do you have any insight into why President Biden did not return prime minister Johnson's phone call the call Sunday night and did not return it until Tuesday at such a critical time well I think he essentially intuitively for understandable reasons puts America First it wasn't a priority for him had

10:56 other things to worry about that's fine but if you're going to make a big deal out of relationships and allies these things do matter because remember when America wants you to get into these countries they can be super Charming so it's a bit brutal when you suddenly wake up and realize that actually to some extent the US thinks that nobody else really matters except the US I think at some level Biden thought well if he thinks we should go everybody else should think we should go and at the end there was a very light footprint as you mentioned 2500 US troops there hadn't been a US fatality in almost 18 months and NATO had slightly more than that in terms of number of troops about 3500 or so do you think it would have been sustainable on a longer term basis to have just those few number of NATO troops in the country very difficult for NATO to operate if there had been no us enablers the us

11:51 would have had to continue to provide at least some of the contractors to maintain the Afghan Air Force I mean one of the problems is the US so sold a lot of American planes to the Afghans that can't be operated without American contractors so if you remove them you've essentially just sold somebody a $200 million piece of junk that can't really get off the ground or fly anywhere and they probably would have had to keep some of the US command and control system some of the software it systems but yes I think it's very much with air power the Taliban could have been prevented from taking and holding a city what do you think was accomplished over 20 years in Afghanistan and do you think that those accomplishments will be sustainable huge accomplishment in terms of transformation of Afghan lives remember if we don't think in terms of the state but in terms of millions of individual people there are millions of

12:44 girls who were able to get an education who wouldn't otherwise have got an education and you can't take that away from them they now can read and write know those things have those skills have worked and for 20 years people were able to live in a more open Society with free media with elections without a real fear particularly in the cities and Central north of the country of political repression now it's not a simple story because in many of the villages in the South and the East situation remained very very bad for 20 years so if you were a woman living in Helman Province you probably say things didn't change very much for you you're still on the same mud hut you were in 20 years ago but that's not true if you lived in the rural areas of the center if you lived in hazar bamyan Valley so it's a comp at picture but essentially many many millions of lives got much much better and the Afghanistan that I knew in 2021

13:36 was immeasurably better than the Afghanistan I knew at the end of the talibon period you've basically alluded to the military strategy being flawed with the heavy Reliance on expensive and sophisticated US military equipment that the Afghan Army the majority of whose members were illiterate could not effectively use or maintain and the heavy Reliance on massive us spending was another issue what do you think an effective strategy in Afghanistan would have looked like I think the key is the notion of a light footprint the idea is to accept that of course the US and its allies can make a difference if the US and its allies had not intervened the Taliban would have just remained and the only reason the Taliban went is because of that intervention but you need to be modest and realistic about what you can achieve you can certainly topple a regime you can do quite a lot to end a war and you can do quite a lot in

14:33 development particularly Education Health but what you can't do is rebuild somebody else's State and you can't win a counterinsurgency Warfare campaign in somebody else's country so it's about being able to say in so and it's a difficult thing to say I'm not suggesting it would have been easy but somebody would have had to hold their Nerf in 2005 and say okay it's messy it's not all we wanted and there's a lot of things in the south and east Afghanistan that are very disturbing that they're growing a lot of drugs there's a lot of Human Rights abuses but the truth is there's nothing that the US can do about that and if it tries to do it by deploying soldiers it's going to make the situation worse not better so we're going to hold on Earth and we're going to continue with a few troops and a relatively moderate amount of money supporting an elected government and see how it does nation building has been

15:22 successful in a couple of countries South Korea Japan and Germany what made nation building in those countries successful as opposed to in Iraq and Afghanistan it's difficult to be certain about these things and there are many many different analysises one basic thing is that those were very wellestablished sophisticated States before the war that led to the intervention certainly in the case of Germany and Japan they were amongst the wealthiest countries in the world with Highly Educated populations and Incredibly well-developed State structures in the case of Japan stretching back many many many centuries in the case of South Korea a little bit more complicated but in South Korea the added element was us patience we were in Afghanistan for 20 years 20 years after the US first deployed to South Korea South Korea was still a military dictatorship and the GDP per capita in South Korea 20 years after the initial

16:16 intervention was lower than the Congo it's a very very poor place now 70 years later it's one of the most prosperous democracies on Earth but if we had done what President Biden has done in Afghanistan we would have been saying goodbye to a very very poor military dictatorship the US seems to be very good at Waging War and projecting power but less good at least recently at the next steps and staying power is the US buying one military and essentially operating another I think that's right I think that the design of the US military is difficult the Temptation Of course with any politician with the military is it's the only bit of government that you can really deploy you don't have a standing Army and any other bit of government and that's one of the reasons why when there's a flooding disaster or an emergency people end up deploying troops or national Guardsman because for a politician whatever the problem

17:11 doesn't matter could be flooding could be democratization and governance it's tempting to reach to the military to do it and the military are can do people so they're reluctant to say really our skill is fighting Wars that's what we're trained to do we're trained to engage with the Enemy and kill them we're not really trained to create democracies or fill sandbags and deal with floods and that is the Perpetual tension because of course hidden in the background of this is a much more difficult question are there going to be big wars in the Future Part of the military fears there might not be that they may not be relevant that there's a use it or lose it phenomenon going on where they want to continue in order to defend understandbly their belief that there should be large defense budgets and lots of people that they are relevant that they can do things and it's that tension between them being can do wanting to do

18:09 things show that they can really do things in the world and the reality of the fact that many of the things that they're called on to do are not really either areas of their or in some cases things that anyone can do the Biden Administration with Drew from Afghanistan unconditionally do you think they could have or should have negot iated conditions for withdrawal and if so what conditions I think it was terrible what they did but President Biden just wanted to get out president Trump just wanted to get out in the end that was the problem for the negotiators a lot of effort was put into negotiation with the Taliban it started in 2008 that had been going on for 13 years these conversations and really got going properly 2018 but the Obama administration had tried hard in 2008 2016 to reach out informly but the problem once they already sat down in 2018 is that president Trump made it quite clear that he wanted to get out in

19:01 which case really the Taliban calculated that they didn't really need to make any concessions at all they would be able to take the whole country without conceding anything the only way that you ever would have been able to get the Taliban to make any concessions is by keeping your troops on the ground saying we're not leaving barram Airbase we're going to continue to prevent you taking any District capital and holding it and then perhaps yes over time you might have been able to get a peace deal but if you take out all the force that supports Central government you're not going to have a peace deal the withdrawal as you mentioned the US did not consult with the UK it seems like at all prior to the withdrawal but apart from that obvious Fiasco at the end were the UK and NATO involved with decision makak in Afghanistan was it just a change at the end a disastrous change very involved in the early days 2005 67 The General

19:58 commanding was British in 20056 from the time of the Obama surge onwards from 2008 onwards the US military were increasingly in charge because they had 90% of the soldiers on the ground and were spending 95% of the money increasingly the NATO countries became a sort of diplomatic Coalition and yes the US was very good about including people and sitting them around the table but the truth of the matter was that it was the US general who decided what happened and there really wasn't much scope for disagreeing with us view what impact do you think the withdrawal from Afghanistan has on the thinking of both allies and adversaries about America the UK and NATO what it does is it's a real big blow to the notion that there is an american-led alliance of Western democracies which are trying to campaign for shared values and I think that's the real tragedy out of it that it's going to be very difficult to rebuild the

20:58 foundations the values of the global system which has really kept us safe in many ways since the second world war people will be watching very very carefully to see whether America has the energy or the confidence to be involved with the world anymore Rory what do you think an effective policy towards China would look like I think the first thing is to work out things that we haven't really worked out and where does this end what sort of power have we got against China what kind of Leverage have we got against China it makes sense I suppose broadly to diversify away from China in other words not be entirely dependent on China for every single thing that you do because you don't want to be entirely dependent on any country anywhere in the world for everything you do and in the case of china particularly when you don't feel that you necessarily share the full spectrum of values you may not want to be in a position where

21:44 every single metal and every mobile phone depends on China and where every semiconductor chip ends up and every electric vehicle end up come from China but at the same time I don't imagine that there is honestly the will in America anymore to really engage militarily with China I think the administration May pretend there is and there may be a lot of investment in trying to put those messages across but I would be very surprised if China were to attack Taiwan whether there really was us support for sending an aircraft carrier out and I'd be very surprised if as seemed likely in that kind of situation the Chinese blew up an aircraft carry and killed 5 and a half thousand American soldiers whether the US public would think that that sacrifice was worth it what do you think China will do in the next I'm going to say five to 10 years with respect to Taiwan I think it's very dangerous I think C Jinping is looking for a legacy

22:44 C Jinping believes that it is the historical Destiny of China to reunite Taiwan with China he won't want to fight he want to do it peacefully by putting pressure on Taiwan his ability to do that is constrained by the fact that what he was offering in the past would be a sort of Hong Kong model of one country two systems but of course the repression in Hong Kong means that if you're Taiwanese you think not so sure about this one country two systems model anymore but yes I would be very anxious it's ridiculous to predict these sort of things but I would say there's at least a 50% likelihood that China will make an aggressive move to reincorporate taiwwan in the next let us say 10 to 15 years what do you think that the rest of the world can do about that if anything that includes Western Nations Asian Nations and other friends of Taiwan you can't ultimately prevent them from doing it I mean they have medium- range missiles

23:35 sitting on the Chinese Coast that can just rain down on Taiwan in definely if they actually wanted to obliterate Taiwan from the face of the Earth there's very little that one could do about it but what one can do is make the costs for China doing it much higher and make them feel that there would be a period of extreme economic uncertainty your best hope is to raise the costs and risks for China to doing it so that c jingping would only do it in extremist as a former minister of the environment how do you see global warming and World progress toward reducing the rate of global warming this also goes to this whole question around China I mean China and to some extent India are the great elephants in the room here and there is a very simple dilemma facing President Biden does he prioritize climate or does he prioritize the geostrategic competition with China if it's climate what he'll want to do

24:28 basically is to try to make friends with them find out how to cooperate and the more he emphasizes competition tariffs and an aggressive relationship the more difficult it will be to get joint action going what was achieved in cop I think probably two things one of them is that at least people produced a date for Net Zero and people agreed to meet again next year and there is more talk about fossil fuels but it's clearly not the Breakthrough that you would need to limit warming to 1.5% before the end of the century Rory let's talk a little about what it's like to be a politician what is the business of politics like I think the first thing is that people need to empathize with politicians voters need to I mean obviously we're very angry with them most of the time we read about newspaper we see them on television and we want to throw things at the screen but it is the most awful life imaginable we think of politicians

25:26 as enjoying the power and having fantastic priv the truth is that it's brutal I was talking to a US congresswoman who calculated in two years she made 12,000 hours worth of phone calls to donors to try to raise money and you are treated by the public most of the time as an incompetent criminal right the public basically assume that you're in it for the very worst reasons and politician become a byword for everything that we hate but the public are your bosses so it's like being managed by somebody who despises you it's a very odd relationship and that's before you get the social media it's not just the abuse that you get yourself I was lucky enough in politics for people not to be too nasty to me but I'm aware all the time that all my colleagues are perpetually appearing on the newspapers being attacked because they said the wrong thing or they did the wrong thing so that you're in a perpetually paranoid

26:15 Universe I spent 10 years as a politician with elected politician and many of them are good people and that's true in the US Congress and US Senate and if you ask them they would probably tell their families that doing it because they believe in public service and they want to help people but the truth of the matter is that many of them don't achieve a great deal in their lives to be brutal they are not trained necessarily to be great at governing the training is by being a loyal party activist who communicates well on a doorstep day in day out they are not selected for having a profound understanding of international geopolitics or profound understanding of the operations and infrastructure before I ask for the three takeaways you you'd like to leave the audience with is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already touched upon I think the key thing is that it doesn't matter

27:07 whether you're talking about populism in the United States or Europe or whether you're talking about Afghanistan or whether you're talking about climate change the fundamental problem we face in our civilization is a problem of jargon and abstraction we are very very bad at focusing on the real the particular the local example let's take Afghanistan President Biden left Afghanistan because instead of focusing on the fact that actually he had only 2,500 soldiers on the ground they were doing very fighting and there would be no casualties for 18 months he labeled it as a Forever War and by doing so convinced himself and 70% of the American people that we were still back in 2012 in this huge military operation which no longer existed the same is true with environment stuff very easy to talk about sustainability rewilding biodiversity without ever really getting into the detail of what that means in this place

28:01 what does that mean for this community in East Kentucky what does that mean for this community in South Dakota what does it actually mean in Brazil what does it mean in India and the same basic problem underlies all our politics which is that we are now in a world of politics without detail everything now is three-word cens everything is sort of very vague statement the real questions are not does AOC sign off to an infrastructure bill or not but why why on Earth are you spending so little so little on the train connections up and down the East Coast everybody's saying this is sort of groundbreaking announcement in the infrastructure build because you're spending a few tens of billions right from a European point of view this is a joke we're spending well over 120 billion pounds just on a single rail line heading up called highspeed 2 and yet getting from Boston to Washington on the train which is the

28:53 absolute no-brainer could be done but it can only be done if we change politics to start thinking about practical local specific problems rather than getting ourselves stuck in this nonsense of jargon and abstraction Rory what are the three key takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today the first one is that right get away from grotesque abstraction and jargon and get down to the specific and the local always ask the politician or the policy maker no no what exactly do you mean what does that actually look like the second thing I think think is to believe in your opponents right one of the problems for polarization and the extremism and populism in politics is that we don't give any credit to the other side assume if you're a Democrat that the Republicans that you're talking to are highly intelligent people who've had a lot of experience in the world and have a lot of wisdom to share even if you

29:47 disagree with them because you have to be able to empathize with the other side if you're going to achieve anything in politics you have to assume that the person who you hate and disagree with from their point of view thinks they're right and has a lot of reasons good reasons from their point of view to think they're right and then I think the final thing is we've got to think about character in politics again not rules we have constitutions that are based on rules we somehow believe that you can deal with the threats posed by frankly mediocre thoughtless politicians by having a separation of powers or tinkering with the Constitution the truth is we need to educate people to be people of good character and being people of good character means that they need to be able to think about their whole life they need to think about not just what I do now but how I will look back on the whole shape of my life and

30:43 above all politicians need to learn how to say no we're too focused on success but the most powerful moral statement a politician can make is the negative I will not do this I'm not going to go along with this I may not even stand for election again because I actually morally cannot accept what is happening interesting I would have thought you would have said something more about compromising rather than saying no I believe that compromise is incredibly important as a politici but I think that the secret of pluralism is to have an idea that there is a very very broad spectrum of things where you should compromise and agree but that it isn't Limitless that there needs to be ultimately around the edge of that agreement red lines Beyond which you will not go thank you Rory this has been terrific thank you very much indeed if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new

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Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#88 A British Minister on Why Being a Politician Is the Worst Job Imaginable with Rory Stewart"?

Lynn Tomlin (Host), Rory Stewart (Guest).

What is "#88 A British Minister on Why Being a Politician Is the Worst Job Imaginable with Rory Stewart" about?

In this discussion, Rory Stewart, a seasoned British politician and diplomat, shares his insights on Britain's shifting role in a post-Brexit world, particularly in relation to the rising influence of China. He articulates the profound challenges facing medium-sized nations like the UK, while also reflecting on the demanding and often detrimental nature of political life, which he describes as…

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Donald Trump, UK, COP. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#88 A British Minister on Why Being a Politician Is the Worst Job Imaginable with Rory Stewart"?

The episode runs 32 min; the transcript is about 5,910 words in 36 timestamped sections.

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