Rory Stewart in conversation with CNN's Clarissa Ward

Live events with journalists and experts to discuss world news from a global perspective.

[@Bolga4K]

Fascinating, informative talk. Is it just my lying ears or is Clarissa alternating between a British and a US accent? 😊

[@andrewhume821]

Agreed 😂

[@osasueo]

Your ears deceive you not.

[@markgriffiths6540]

Odd accent mix

[@markmcnulty7736]

She grew up in Britain and went to school there.

[@dschoene57]

That's fairly normal. You pick up local dialects quickly. I was a freelance IT consultant for 20 years and I was doing projects in all corners of Germany and Austria, always several months at a new place. Although I still largely have my thick Prussian accent, people notice that I also occasionally use Austrian-German phrases or have a slight tinge of west German dialects creep in occasionally.

[@janparker492]

His latest book is a great read, been top of UK bestsellers paperback list and prob made great contribution to defeat of Tories. Thanks Rory!

[@millrace32]

dig beyond the superficial, & he's another one out of the eton / anderson line of politicians, granted the right to run the country in such a way that no-one does better than his schoolmates notice how close he is to campbell - & recall that blair was also brought through by anderson. we either have to face up to the fact that this line of politicians run the country for the benefit of an elite - first & foremost - or succumb to serfdom

[@drewkavi6327]

it made no difference whatsoever

[@keithwarburton9610]

What evidence is there that the book had ANY effect on the result of the general election?

[@millrace32]

@@keithwarburton9610 i did notice he came out in strong support of gillian keegan in the the last couple of weeks of the campaign, before she lost her seat for the first time in a century

[@millrace32]

if rowan atkinson ever does a johnny english rainman film without rory, it would be a travesty

[@bilinguru]

Such a sad fact that intelligent, experienced and caring people like Rory, who are more needed than ever to be in positions of power, are reluctant to subject themselves to the vagaries of a broken system occupied by incompetent and selfish people who don't care about the people they purport to represent and claim to want to help. Indeed, they block his efforts to get things done in a measured and realistic way because that approach doesn't create the necessary soundbites to please party leaders.

[@alanrobertson3172]

It’s always great to listen to Professor Stewart.

[@derrick021]

Ms. Ward suddenly starts speaking in a British accent by the middle of the event

[@markmcnulty7736]

She is partly British. Was born there and went to school there. Her accent is a blend of American and English (or "British" as Americans say). Many people are like this because of their upbringing. Also it's Ms Ward not Mrs.

[@derrick021]

@@markmcnulty7736 my bad

[@lauriebarns9901]

This guy is good. I am a 69 yr old left of centre animal but what shines through is his morality integrity and hope. A once in a generation politician who needs to be empowered.

[@millrace32]

the thing you need to try to get your head around with rory is that, while he can pretend to be a man of the people, he's another old etonian. we have to address eton. the fact of the matter is that eton is not like other private schools. it is, to all intents & purposes, quite easy to consider eton to be an arm of the british state - or, perhaps more worryingly, the state as an arm of the old etonian cohort. i'm not joking. just look how many elite families have educated at least one child there for the last two-hundred years. the uk has pretty much been ruled by the pupils of a guy call anderson for the last quarter of a century. anderson was headmaster of eton for cameron, osborne, johnson, rory stewart, here, as well as having played a formative role in blair's schooldays & also guided sunak prior to his political career. you then look at the line from eton into - not just politics - but also the higher reaches (see what i didn't do there) of the security services & the law, & you begin to get an idea of just how abusive any country they build risks becoming in a way, you can see how it must make sense to them. they got to the top school in the land, where the children of the british elite are raised to rule. the problem with this is that they are not just raised to rule over others in politics, or law, but also through land & money. for the old etonian, each of whom has been given a connective head-start (second-only to royalty) on the rest of the country, those with whom you went to school ought to do much above-average. if they don't, then they - & you - have failed. hence, the uk remains under the leadership of these feckless nepobabies, as they fall up, & the country falls down rory, at this point, seems to be here largely to direct us all away from recognizing this

[@lauriebarns9901]

@@millrace32 blair went fettes in Edinburgh

[@millrace32]

@@lauriebarns9901 search for 'tony blair' anderson teacher

[@millrace32]

@@lauriebarns9901 search for "tony blair" anderson teacher

[@millrace32]

@@lauriebarns9901 During his early career, Anderson taught at Fettes College in Edinburgh[2] and at Gordonstoun where he taught Prince Charles and directed him as Macbeth in the school play. He moved back to Fettes (1966-70) and then to be headmaster at Abingdon School (1970-75),[3] Shrewsbury School (1975-80) and Eton College (1980-94)[4] and he was rector of Lincoln College, Oxford (1994-2000), when its undergraduate students included Rishi Sunak. He was chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund (1998-2001) and provost of Eton College (2000-2009). At Fettes, he was Prime Minister Tony Blair's housemaster. Blair subsequently named Anderson in a 1997 advertising campaign run by the Teacher Training Agency, entitled "No one forgets a good teacher". He was Head Master of Eton while David Cameron and Boris Johnson were there,[3] as well as Rory Stewart, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Olympic oarsman Matthew Pinsent and the actors Dominic West and Damian Lewis. He was a supporter of the direct grant system.[4][3]

[@andyevans8585]

Gotta love Rory; genuinely the best tory I've ever seen.

[@andrewjohnston9115]

He is not a Tory.

[@Pherron]

@@andrewjohnston9115 He has said before that he is still very much a person who believes in love for one's country and the preservation of tradition and historical practices. If that isn't the literal definition of conservatism, I don't know what is. His economic views are centre-right but he is liberal socially.

[@geraldbutler5484]

@@andrewjohnston9115He’s a ‘high’ Tory. God is in his heaven, the King is on his throne, the natural party of government is in power keeping a benevolent eye on the serfs grafting away below.

[@Mitchellgcc]

I cant concentrate on anything other than if the next word out of Clarissa Ward’s mouth is going to be with an American accent or a British accent. The most fluctuation I’ve ever heard

[@Grizzleface]

little bit like gillian anderson i suppose. like her, maybe she has spent a long time in both countries. it's not that strange

[@omiethamsia9009]

@@Grizzleface gillian doesn't have a transatlantic accent. she goes with one or the other at one time.

[@bilinguru]

It is very distracting. Not unattractive, but after 6 minutes into the video, I paused and came to see if anyone else had commented on it, and Lo and Behold! It's not just me! It's half the comments!!

[@davidbingham66]

Excellent from Rory. Just a small correction. Reform finished on just over 14% and the Lib Dems on something over 12%. You overstated the vote of Reform and understated the vote of Lib Dems

[@ryanmercer3165]

Yes, and it's worth noting that the Lab/Lib Dem combined vote was 46% and the Tory/Reform combined was 38%, with most of the rest being Green + SNP. So the right has been quite emphatically rejected, not just the Tory Government.

[@lewisfensome8133]

She starts her question with a British accent with a tinge of Irish and then becomes American toward the closing of her question 😂

[@judithdavidson2356]

I find it difficult to believe in Rory’s claim that he is an optimist. His book is amazingly good.

[@TomHodder]

I like to think of it as being a "cultural optimist" i.e. adopting the practices and rituals, but deep down, knowing it's not real

[@robbie_]

Pass the sick bag.

[@carnivaltym]

Very impressive.

[@robertjohnston2252]

Just bought his book as always thought Rory Stewart is the type of politician we need. Don’t agree with some of his more traditional positions such as the House of Lords however clearly has a real grasp of what needs to happen to keep liberal democracy functioning.

[@anthonygarciaguitar]

Is this a jazz bar… where the jazz?

[@hwjgage]

~minute 6:53 RS begins monologue on the rise of popularism. Great on political history, nothing on the impact of social media, the failure of education (in the US and arguably in the UK). The failure to re-skill US rust belt workers in the wake of a declining heavy industry (mining and steel) in the US. RS is undoubtedly a remarkable intellect but not without his biases and blinkers.

[@backgammonbacon]

Most reform voters knew that their vote was really for the Labour party, those that stayed at home knew it was a vote for Labour. Don't fool yourself about what people really wanted Rory. Labour were predicted to win big even before support for reform took off.

[@knockshinnoch1950]

Fascinating discussion despite Clarissa appearing to continually criss cross the Atlantic throughout with the most distracting shifting accent I've heard for a long time!

[@marc21091]

Yes, you can see how her accent shifts within a single sentence. It is distracting. When she appears on CNN in the USA she must lose the British-English half.

[@lilscottieme]

That’s the comment you want to leave on this conversation is about someone’s accent. Superficial and not seeing the bigger picture springs to mind 😊

[@nyshkominternational7085]

Rory Stewart is a genuinely decent and very capable fellow, who could have rescued Britain from a horrible defeat, if only he had led the government instead of dodgy dave cameron.

[@WH-hi5ew]

The increasingly powerful and vocal right wing of the Tory party would have had an issue with Stewart even more than they had with Cameron.

[@TM-yr3pc]

Intelligent but lacks sound judgement in the national interest. Capricious bell curve politico at heart.

[@WH-hi5ew]

@@TM-yr3pc Shorthand I expect for not tough enough of immigration and too much of a remainer!

[@Olof-r1f]

Low voter turnout in democracies should be resolved by facilitating voting; this is after all 2024. My entire life is managed from apps on my smartphone.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

Thanks for the upload. I intend to read his book.

[@SarahMcCartney4160]

Thank goodness, someone who recognises that growth needs to shut up and take a back seat. Great to hear Kate Raworth get recognition.

[@Olof-r1f]

Rory for PM.

[@lilscottieme]

Wonderful conversation and very insightful

[@manfredbazarov6417]

Why are people so focused on her accent? It really isn't important.

[@GYoung-ew7iz]

Rent must have been cheap, looks like a prison.

[@aperson7584]

It's his duty to keep physically fit, focus on longevity, etc., since he's the *only one who might acceptably bring the Tory party back eventually and render it able to form a Government.

[@alandmunk3h]

Host, after 30:00 changes from US accent to UK accent? Switches back at 30:50 ?

[@dellwright1407]

Almost certainly means she had a childhood spent in both countries. Gillian Anderson also does this. I do it when I speak Spanish for the same reason.

[@HannahHodson28]

@@dellwright1407 Correct! She grew up between the UK and NYC.

[@davidjames9626]

There are very few Tory's I have any time for..however this chap is one and I find his views very engaging..he obviously thinks quite deeply unlike the idiotic pomposity of Rees Mogg and that twerp Johnson...

[@michaelgoss9606]

Excellent, thank you.

[@stevewatkinson4593]

Interesting how the Tory rhetoric comes out when Rory has an audience. He is a bit more thoughtful with his language on his podcast The rest it politics. I am Rory fan and have read his book so was surprised when listening to this.

[@sluglife9785]

"We all wanted to be Denmark." What? Did I misunderstand this? I know I haven't been in government like Rory, but in my remembered experience and my many studies, I don't see that at all. I think our politicians, business community, and intelligentsia mostly wanted to be the United States. A pretty different model. The vast majority of the policy of the time was basically cut and paste from Stateside, and not against our will. That's part of why we ultimately got ourselves in trouble. We swallowed that ideology hook, like, and sinker, and weren't able to start moving away from it until the Biden administration finally had the guts to start shifting, post-Trump, and saying "trickle down is dead." And I'm not saying that was just the Tories. Labour just toned down Reaganism into Clintonism, for the most part. If we'd genuinely been trying to be Denmark or one of those mild-mannered, relatively pragmatic, higher tax northern European states, we'd arguably be in a much better way. Nobody was looking to Norway for inspiration apart from some isolated progressives and intellectuals. To start with the argument, "we were trying to be a sensible European social democracy, but then the populace rejected it," strikes me as an insanely bad-faithed way to start to understand the problem. That's what a lot of us have been begging for for decades, as the elite in fact decided that the state and the public sector were actually a bad thing on the whole, and started ripping them out and handing ever more power over to the markets, making life much worse for basically anyone in the country who was on the lower rungs or outright vulnerable. You could vote for Labour or the Tories from the mid-90s the the mid-10s and get a loose variation of the same thing. In my opinion, people have for the most part been rebelling against hard neo-liberalism. Even Brexit was ultimately, in my experience, about neo-liberalism - very loose immigration systems being a part of the pro-capital globalisation agenda - albeit a part often supported by the libertarian left for human rights reasons. Hopefully northern European social democrat 'near left' is what we'll try and do from hereon in - Scotland already seem like they've been trying to move that way - but it's absolutely not what anyone in power was trying to do in previous decades.

[@seanoconnor8843]

There's a huge backlog of economic growth here and abroad. Money is not going to be a problem

[@andrewjohnston9115]

He was my MP in Penrith and the Borders, I had the opportunity to meet and discuss a local issue and I'm afraid to say he was simply an empty vessel, uninformed, incapable and no help - he is without doubt everything that is wrong with modern politics, great communication skills, a veneer of erudition, apparently well written, appealing, ineffectual military service, opinions about everything, but in reality has simply never achieved anything, been there, seen it, done it, and did nothing of any consequence.

[@redrev674]

He can analyse everything but achieve nothing

[@JudePi-jx7yo]

Interesting. I think like his Africa example he might have known nothing about your issue. More likley I think he disagreed with you and didn't placate you and thus you consider him empty and uniformed.

[@johngoddard2270]

I find him incredibly naive.

[@andrewjohnston9115]

@@JudePi-jx7yo Can't really agree with you on that, I know who was informed and who wasn't, and as a lifelong conservative I was hoping for a more informed and helpful discussion with him, he was not on the same page, had I had the same conversation with Willie Whitelaw the outcome would have been considerbly more tolerable - and thats a magitude of difference in ability and quality.

[@m.c4210]

The last part on growth was very true . We can’t get growth in a finite resource country and our economy is in serious trouble. There’s no money.

[@markgriffiths6540]

Top bloke

[@TheWorldRealist]

Rory the referendum to leave only 27% of the voter base voted to leave. That was not democratic.

[@owentill]

I say this as an ardent remainer myself but not voting is still a democratic choice and so to downplay the share of 52% of the leaver vote of those who did vote feels wrong. I would just say that 48% votes to remain of those who did should’ve been taken as a mandate to moderate Brexit (soft deal in effect) considering it’s still a sizeable proportion of the population.

[@Nomadicmillennial92]

So a democratic vote only counts with a 100% turnout?

[@TheWorldRealist]

@@owentill This why constitutional votes should be super majority usually 60/40 as in the USA. People who did not vote were not ardent remainers but were shocked by the result. It seems that a lot of people did not bother to vote because they thought it was ludicrous that we would leave. Plus it was supposed to be advisory like all referenda previously. Remain just kept telling us how bad it would be instaed of talking up all the benefits of being in the EU.

[@geraldbutler5484]

@@Nomadicmillennial92The question is how low do you go?

[@redrev674]

@@TheWorldRealistlot of assumptions there. How do you know what the people who didn’t vote felt?

[@wendyfield7708]

What is his book called?

[@shaneintheuk2026]

38:54 Rory rants about ministers without experience but doesn’t acknowledge that Labour have appointed many people who are experts in the fields they are appointed to.

[@goonies4616]

God! it's so jarring and cringe inducing every time she lapses into her English accent

[@WH-hi5ew]

When I speak Spanish my accent changes between Southern Andalusian and more RP Spanish depending on who am speaking to... I can understand the accent switching.

[@mandead]

I can't deal with that. I turned off when it first flipped haha.

[@vintage0x]

Real life accent coach here! I teach my clients with transatlantic dispositions as strong as this to train themselves to PICK one to use in professional situations because as you say, it's incredibly distracting for a discerning listener as they won't be able to focus on the words if all they can hear is the accent. But man....this stuff is difficult as hell to learn how to do, for anybody.

[@therealbettyswollocks]

I’ve seen Clarissa reporting on CNN in a very pronounced American accent so I was very surprised to hear her like this. Maybe the US accent is just an act and this is how she really speaks?

[@WH-hi5ew]

@@therealbettyswollocks When people accent switch its probably because they have had a childhood split between two countries... and they switch depending on context.

[@hacksaw]

Interviewer needs to just. choose. an. accent.

[@yasminanjum3310]

"Politics is the creation of human beings, and as such, is therefore flawed. As with any situation in which two separate entities seek a similar outcome, little is accomplished, much is wasted, and the many it was intended to help are left with little to nothing. Were they to work together to serve a common purpose, rather than to work against one another to accomplish the same, they would one day learn that they have risen above being human. You are here not just to be human, but to remain a spiritual being."

[@ricado7535]

The 2 questions at a time really doesn't work

[@WM-ln4dz]

How are MPs so powerless in the UK? Members of Congress in the US are the representative of their constituencies, they have independent power from their election - there is no threat of the whip being taken from them.

[@backgammonbacon]

They won't win their seat next time if they get kicked out of the party...that's the power that held over them....its exactly the same in the USA.

[@normanlazarus1836]

Whilst the US Congress may not have a formal whip there is political pressure or a conscience of loyalty to the party that is present. Couple those with the apparent absolute power of the Speaker who prevented a bill for funding aid to Ukraine for 6 months (that a majority of Congress supported). It would appear that elected representatives don’t have that much power on either side of the pond.

[@yscol1313]

Man, how can Rory ever claim to have been a conservative when he is still raving about no-growth donut economics? Lunacy.

[@plightbody]

I don't believe; as was said, that it's cynicism. It's narcicism, it's the populous reflecting the attitude of many leaders; a narcissism that believes that an in depth knowledge of a subject is equivalent to watching a couple of KZbin clips

[@AlistairHann]

Bravura stuff from this brilliant and highly amusing man

[@philipellis7039]

Just started watching although I’ve seen so much of Rory lately I’m not expecting any surprises. But as others have said the interviewer sounds like she is trying out different accents and can’t quite decide.

[@MayorMcC666]

Hamsa Youssef "blew himself up" ?? Rory hasn't gotten the US media training I see

[@peterkirby7546]

I imagine this is what it would sound like in the future, if an advanced AI's U.S. and U.K. dictionaries were to unexpectedly start to conflict ;)

[@creasedlinen]

I thought this was an excellent overview of Populism

[@lolly1811]

Wtf is going to on with her accent? Like Madonna.

[@heliotropezzz333]

It looks like the host is deliberately ignoring the woman in front of her who keeps putting up her hand to ask a question whenever questions are invited.

[@lucianopavarotti2843]

Having moderated a lot of events, I can say that the people who are most eager /insistent to intervene typically ask the worst questions or tend to be cranks. I always turned a Nelson's eye to them.

[@JG-ib7xk]

Her accent is the strangest thing I've ever heard. She will often say the same word twice in one sentence but with totally different accents! The first half will be American and the second half British. It's so difficult to concentrate or take anything she says seriously.

[@iainmarin7484]

What's wrong with the woman in the front?

[@petergoose8164]

I'm an admirer of Rory's intellect and ideas but of course being human he is also full of contradictions. After pointing out the futility of trillion dollar wars in the Middle East he then suggests the solution to the Ukraine conflict is spending more trillions.

[@normanlazarus1836]

I seem to remember that he said the rapid & uncoordinated (my words) withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the downfall of the government & a takeover by the Taliban; that was the rationale behind that comment. If the west pump trillions of $ into Ukraine & that doesn’t lead to Russia being forced back to its own, internationally recognised borders, then I guess that those donations would also have been futile.

[@tombennett1636]

All talk,

[@normanlazarus1836]

That’s what interviews tend to be.

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

​@@normanlazarus1836dude expected some MMA fight in-between.

[@ericboxer3053]

It's encouraging that a radical Marxist came in first is it rory? I guess anything to stop someone who shows any care for indigenous Europeans huh rory

[@felipem.8234]

Just bought the book (which, btw no one names)

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

"Politics on the Edge"

[@davidhartley1155]

he ain't the messiah ..

[@janparker492]

Not everyone would describe Corbyn as extreme Rory, and millions in UK voted for him 2017 and 2019

[@somenamethatdoesntmatter]

Jan he said "more extreme", which makes it difficult to assume how extreme rory thinks he is. So lets just give the man a bit of wiggle room. I would flip the question, would corbyn have been an extremely different pm to the last 5 pm's we had? - im editing my post after thinking on it a little more. he is not extreme you are correct, but he is far left in the british context.

[@davegold]

He is probably the most extreme leader (leftwards) of the labour party since the second world war (with a nod to Michael Foot).

[@simonpaine2347]

The irony of asking about Biden being suitable because of his missteps in the debate, a minute after Rory, says that (16:59) "I was watching it on the night, night after night as the results come in, labour's just scraping through" So should we disregard everything else that Rory says because of a grammatical error?

[@Lysdexia]

Rory the Tory. Leopards and their spots. Rory the Tory.

[@martinobrien7110]

Voting Record ?

[@owentill]

… is almost certainly meaningless because important votes are whipped by the parties (so they lose the “whip”, membership of the parliamentary party if they vote against their part). Like you vote against your party (on a whipped vote) once and it’s over, and indeed in the end that is exactly what he did and to be honest that is what counts (Boris Johnson’s attempted no deal-barebones deal Brexit got him kicked from the tories).

[@millrace32]

@@owentill perhaps you'd like to extend this whip analogy to the garrick club?

[@owentill]

@@millrace32 not an analogy, they actually call these things whipped votes you can look it up. 😭

[@millrace32]

@@owentill iow, the party hierarchy sanctions those who act in a way deemed harmful to the party. my question is whether - or to what extent - those who graduate from eton are similarly sanctioned by the more senior figures in the institutional hierarchies stuffed with other old etonians

[@richardabbot8724]

A masterclass in disconnection from reality.

[@humphreybradley3060]

Eh?!

[@millrace32]

this guy looks more & more hopeless the longer he hangs about the political scene

[@millrace32]

the thing you need to try to get your head around with rory is that, while he can pretend to be a man of the people, he's another old etonian. we have to address eton. the fact of the matter is that eton is not like other private schools. it is, to all intents & purposes, quite easy to consider eton to be an arm of the british state - or, perhaps more worryingly, the state as an arm of the old etonian cohort. i'm not joking. just look how many elite families have educated at least one child there for the last two-hundred years. the uk has pretty much been ruled by the pupils of a guy call anderson for the last quarter of a century. anderson was headmaster of eton for cameron, osborne, johnson, rory stewart, here, as well as having played a formative role in blair's schooldays & also guided sunak prior to his political career. you then look at the line from eton into - not just politics - but also the higher reaches (see what i didn't do there) of the security services & the law, & you begin to get an idea of just how abusive any country they build risks becoming in a way, you can see how it must make sense to them. they got to the top school in the land, where the children of the british elite are raised to rule. the problem with this is that they are not just raised to rule over others in politics, or law, but also through land & money. for the old etonian, each of whom has been given a connective head-start (second-only to royalty) on the rest of the country, those with whom you went to school ought to do much above-average. if they don't, then they - & you - have failed. hence, the uk remains under the leadership of these feckless nepobabies, as they fall up, & the country falls down rory, at this point, seems to be here largely to direct us all away from recognizing this

[@MountCydonia]

@@millrace32Rory has spoken many times about Eton being a force for bad and is embarrassed about having gone there

[@millrace32]

@@MountCydonia i think in this regard he flatters to deceive

[@frankbrennan1619]

Rory 'I'm not a Tory & friend of Goebbels Campbell''' Stewart.

[@alanmcmichael6681]

Rory Stewart is a joke. And always has been. I served in the military also, I served with real men and Stewart was not one of them. I despise the guy..