Rory Stewart

Currently, the Conservatives are dominated by the hard right, and they're probably going to trounce Labour in over a week's time. This is despite the perception that most people hold - reflected, I think, in hard policy evidence - that public services have in many ways deteriorated.

People feel apathetic, cynical, disillusioned with politics and politicians. We have seen the longest stagnation of living standards since the Napoleonic war. Education spending has fallen in real per pupil terms since 2010. Police numbers have been cut since 2010. We've seen an explosion in precarious work, with a huge rise in in-work poverty, a more than doubling of homelessness; rampant inequality, the erosion of the principle of the NHS. The union is in danger. The super-rich are living ever more extravagant lifestyles because more wealth is being extracted from working people. The media is failing in its job of scrutiny, facilitating the Conservative campaign rather than challenging Mr Johnson's record; dismissing Mr Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser.

I put it to you. Had Mr Corbyn described 'watermelon smiles', dismissed death threats as 'humbug', led a political career of cynicism, backstabbing, been sacked for lying and gathered such an eminently incompetent record in his ministerial career, would the media treat him as a figure of amusement? Would they, as the Mail, the Telegraph and the Express have done, describe him in the tradition of Churchill?

For leading a campaign of ideological purification - removing the whip from 40 centrist MPs - and overseeing the most ideologically extreme cabinet since the 1970s, would they laud him as a great reformer?

More broadly, this article was supposed to be about Rory Stewart, but unfortunately divulged into a rant about the media.

I am watching Joe's interview with Rory, and he's such an eccentric, lovely man. I think his brand of politics would hugely benefit the UK.

In part, this is because he's non-ideological. As Prisons Minister, he actually had a really good record. He wasn't dogmatically bound to privatising the prisons; franchising them out as America has done (to disastrous effect).

It's frustrating that he would be a really good Prime Minister, certainly in policy terms, and yet much of the electorate seriously think that electing Boris Johnson would be a good idea. Five years later, with a record of incompetence - and an ideologically extreme cabinet, people will realise that actually he hasn't dealt with the very things that made them frustrated in the very first place.

This goes back to the reasons why people are frustrated. In part, I think it can be linked to tensions in modern capitalism. Inequality (regional, wealth and income) and globalisation; these, in turn, are linked to stagnating living standards, the tedious, underpaid and insecure reality of work in modern Britain, the absurd cost of housing and crumbling public services. People are also starting to care more about the environment, which is a wonderful thing to see, and I feel guilty about not getting involved with ER. I'll write more about thinkers like George Monbiot, and I'd like to investigate whether we need to get rid of capitalism to deal with the environmental crisis (as he tells us).

More to the point, people feel really cynical and angry, but why on earth would they seriously think that a person ideologically aligned with the forces that facilitated these tensions in the very first place is the person to solve these problems? 

Yeah, all very depressing.