Rory Stewart

Roderick James Nugent "Rory" Stewart (born 3 January 1973) is a British academic, broadcaster, writer, and former diplomat and politician. He teaches and co-directs the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Since 2022, Stewart has co-hosted the podcast The Rest Is Politics with Alastair Campbell. Stewart served as a British Member of Parliament between 2010 and 2019, and in the British government, between 2015 and 2019.

Born in British Hong Kong, Stewart attended the Dragon School and Eton College. After a brief period of military service in the Black Watch, Stewart studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduating he joined the Foreign Office, holding diplomatic positions in Indonesia and Montenegro. He left the Foreign Office to undertake a solo walk across Asia, which later became the subject of his best-selling book The Places in Between. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Stewart was involved in the Coalition Provisional Authority in the Maysan province. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, an NGO focused on human development in Afghanistan, before becoming a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. He joined the Conservative Party in 2009.

Stewart served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border between 2010 and 2019, representing the Conservative Party. In 2014 he was elected chair of the Defence Select Committee. He served under David Cameron as Minister for the Environment from 2015 to 2016. He was a minister throughout Theresa May's government: as Minister of State for International Development, Africa, and Prisons. He joined the Cabinet and National Security Council as Secretary of State for International Development.

After May resigned, Stewart stood as a candidate to be Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 2019 leadership contest. His campaign was defined by unorthodox use of social media and opposition to a no-deal Brexit. He stated at the beginning of his campaign that he would not serve under Boris Johnson. When Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, Stewart resigned from the cabinet. In September 2019, Stewart had the Conservative Whip removed after voting to delay the UK's exit from the European Union. In October 2019, Stewart resigned from the Conservative Party and stood down as an MP at the 2019 general election. He announced he would stand as an independent in the London mayoral election, but withdrew in May 2020 on the grounds of it being postponed to 2021 due to the COVID pandemic.

Stewart was the president of GiveDirectly from 2022 to 2023 and a visiting fellow at Yale Jackson from 2020 to 2022. In 2023 he published a memoir, Politics on the Edge.