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Does Rory Stewart want you to be ignorant? Technocrats don't like people to join up the dots

Rory Stewart (Leon Neal/Getty)


July 19, 2024   7 mins

Are you the sort of person that likes interesting facts and quirky conclusions? If so, Rory Stewart has made a BBC radio series just for you. It’s called The Long History Of Ignorance, From Confucius To Q-Anon, and its accompanying Big Sexy Idea is that ignorance can sometimes be valuable, and knowledge harmful. Towards the series’ end, the former politician describes himself as having offered an argument for “strengthening ignorance and knowledge simultaneously”. Having listened to all six episodes, I am happy to report that at least one half of Stewart’s wish has definitely been achieved.

The opening of Episode One presents the listener with the implicit antagonist of the rest of the series, to be schooled by all that is to come: young Rory, a neurotic-sounding child who “grew up wanting to know everything and believing I could know everything”. He would take the newspaper to his bedroom and spend hours there, cataloguing the day’s stories on his computer: “I became worried about the fact there might be things I did not know, books I might not read before I died”. He assumed “this knowledge was vital for what it was to be a human”. Later, in his twenties, he set out to walk through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal as an extension of his quest to mentally devour the world and all its contents. But along the way — plot twist! — he began to realise that the village people whose hospitality he was freely receiving were no less human for being illiterate, entirely parochial, and never having heard of Alexander the Great.

This, like many other of the stunningly obvious points made in the course of the series, is delivered by Stewart with all the ponderous solemnity of someone addressing small boys at a prep school speech day. And did you also know that sometimes people who feel certain about some particular matter can get things badly wrong? That it is impossible for government ministers to know everything about their ministerial briefs? That no expert can possibly know the future with certainty? That “I should not listen in to my wife’s conversations with her therapist or read my wife’s letters, partly because I will hear things will be painful … but partly in order to respect her privacy?” One cannot help suspecting that the reason Stewart thinks such points will seem staggeringly revelatory to the listener is because at some point they have been staggeringly revelatory for him.

As for the edgy reversal that presumably first got the series commissioned — namely, that ignorance can be valuable, and knowledge harmful — though heavily trailed, it barely makes an appearance until late on in the series. Instead we get some obfuscatory fluff about the limits of knowledge which has nothing to do with the main point, and in fact tends to underline how devastating ignorance can be. And when the main theme does eventually appear, the arguments for it are either disappointingly anti-climactic or confused.

“When the main theme does eventually appear, the arguments for it are either disappointingly anti-climactic or confused.”

Ignorance can be valuable, it turns out, because it would be hellish to know what everyone really thought of you; or because watching horrible things on the internet can mess you up; or because in the context of double-blind refereeing, it is a way of filtering out prejudices; or because a teacher might usefully leave out some difficult details of a topic in order to concentrate on the main point. Philosopher John Rawls makes an appearance too, with his “veil of ignorance” thought experiment, encouraging us to abstract away from our own particular circumstances when deciding how to distribute goods fairly in society — not really a case of ignorance at all, strictly speaking, but rather a case of temporarily ignoring what you already know.

In other words — not that Stewart troubles himself to reflect on what these cases might have in common — “ignorance” about some matter X is valuable, wherever consciously reflecting upon X would work against some wider rational purpose you also have (e.g. functioning without crippling self-doubt; getting through life without distressing flashbacks; being fair to other people by eliminating bias; teaching students by layering up their knowledge slowly). Here again, there is very little counterintuitive bang for your buck, despite all the teasing and hinting earlier on.

And what about the corresponding claim that knowledge can be positively harmful? The central case offered concerns a familiar folk devil for BBC programme makers, the conspiracy theorist of the Q-Anon variety; and more precisely, someone who does lots of research and can cite encyclopaedic references for his crazy conclusions. Such people, Stewart says, do not “necessarily know less than the average person”. In fact, they are “much more knowledgeable, so much more wrong… their desire for and their accumulation of knowledge only strengthens their delusion”.

At best, this is another banality — namely, that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and especially in the mind of someone with an idée fixe, obsessively trying to justify some point for deep-seated emotional reasons he can barely discern. At worst, it confuses being a reliable knower with someone who has lots of disjointed facts at his disposal, yet who is unable to connect them into rational, evidence-responsive wholes. The man who insists that lizards run the White House, and who also has a lot of true beliefs up his sleeve about the mating habits of lizards, is still a much less reliable knower than the average person who knows nothing in particular about lizards and believes the White House is run by humans.

In fact, quite ironically given how sneery the programme is about conspiratorial thinking — loftily described as “pursuing knowledge through narcissism and insecurity” — the state of mind represented by The Long History Of Ignorance seems to me to have a lot in common with that of someone from Q-Anon. As with the format of many a BBC factual offering these days, we don’t so much get the slow and deliberate prosecution of a joined-up argument as a dizzying succession of historically orphaned facts and gnomic pronouncements. A variety of talking heads appear alongside Stewart, alternating between snippets of information to be taken on trust, and warnings about the dangers of taking things on trust from experts purporting to inform you. The series races from subject to subject — from indigenous wisdom to terrible mistakes in history, to the role of creativity in theory-construction, to the value of citizen’s assemblies, to William James, to personal relationships, and on and on — without spending more than a minute or two on each. It is impossible to solder the whole thing together into a coherent framework without leaving a lot of huge gaps.

We could call this style of thinking QAnon-style thinking, but equally we could call it QI-style thinking, in honour of the insufferable TV panel show of the same name. And indeed the originator of QI, television producer John Lloyd, pops up in the last episode of The Long History of Ignorance to tell us about the midlife crisis which prompted his creation: a personally difficult time, when he realised that all his many Bafta awards on the wall meant nothing, and that he understood very little about life. He then went travelling, and realised that “the world is inherently interesting, but for some reason it’s concealed from us”.

Of course this is true, though the solution hardly seems to be to chop the world up into tiny jigsaw puzzle pieces, only ever considering one or two in isolation at a time. A bit like Stewart’s series, effectively QI treats the building of human knowledge as if it is exactly the same project as rote learning a list of dislocated facts or quasi-facts, to be regurgitated entertainingly at dinner parties later. The conceit of the show is that the information to which various smug luvvies draw our attention is “surprising” and “interesting”, though this only works at all because collectively most of us are such ignoramuses. And as with Stewart’s series, the clever-clever public profiles of the celebrity presenters and guests — Stephen Fry, Sandi Toksvig, etc. — tend to do most of the work in establishing putative intellectual credibility.

That some piece of information is “interesting” in the QI sense, or indeed the Radio 4 sense say, that monkeys don’t actually eat bananas, or that until 1858 all British passports were written in French — is only because it exposes a previously false or lazy assumption of ours that we hadn’t noticed before. If we had fewer false assumptions, because we were able to connect discrete pieces of information up with their intellectual hinterlands and explain to ourselves coherently why they are likely to be true, the world would become much less “interesting “in this sense — you can’t be surprised by what you already know — but it would become more fascinating in quite another.

But perhaps a would-be technocrat like Stewart doesn’t want you to do too much of that sort of thing — you might end up seeing through the soundbites. For all that he frequently says he wants a more intelligent kind of government, in practice he often seems uneasy with treating audiences as intellectual equals. Along with his combative co-host on The Rest is Politics podcast, too often he opts for lazily smearing or mocking political opponents, saving them both the bother of having to try to justify their criticisms in detail. But one can’t have it both ways: finding a more intelligent way to govern requires spelling out to would-be voters the detailed thinking behind particular political decisions, in a way that doesn’t presuppose prior agreement, and isn’t just flirting gratifyingly with a home crowd.

In any case, given the dominant format of BBC factual programming these days, there is little hope of the licence fee providing something with more depth along these lines. There are honourable exceptions — the astonishing In Our Time is one — but for the most part, even Radio 4 shows badged as “serious” and “important” as this one are ludicrously superficial. The independent podcast market is now streets ahead, in terms of the extended time, focus, and degree of detail it can offer to juicily cerebral topics. It seems that there is a real appetite out there for completing the jigsaw.

Indeed, at the end of The Long History Of Ignorance, Stewart gravely tells us that “the boundary between knowledge and ignorance is never static… we are always dealing with the limits of knowledge. But we must explore and respond to those limits in every conceivable way.” Who could disagree with such a thought? But if it’s real insight into the relationship between intellectual light and darkness you are after, you should probably look elsewhere. It’s one thing to be given a leg up, by standing on the shoulders of giants; quite another to be helicoptered to the summit, then left there with no map.


Kathleen Stock is an UnHerd columnist and a co-director of The Lesbian Project.
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Jane Watson
Jane Watson
4 months ago

I’ve seen and read very little by Stewart because I found him so peculiarly annoying when I first saw him interviewed.

People exist who can memorise entire telephone directories (remember them?). This facility doesn’t make them wise or interesting. And I know waiters who speak half a dozen languages.

Accumulating facts, or even ‘knowledge’, does not make someone a ‘great thinker’. Often, these are the type who can’t see wood for trees and struggle to make decisions.

Rather than being impressed by people who consider themselves egg heads, I often wonder if humans have become more stupid since the Neanderthals.

You only need to look at Stonehenge and the Pyramids to wonder if we’ve gone backwards.

I suspect there are people running pubs who could run a government department as well as most Ministers (with PPE or Classics from Oxbridge).

Claire D
Claire D
4 months ago
Reply to  Jane Watson

Indeed, there is a chasm between being able to memorise facts and critical thinking. I think there is also instinctive intelligence – hunches, insights, emotional understanding – that are, perhaps, of more value to individuals than the skill of memorising. However, the two qualities when combined together have made humans as successful a species as they are.

Bernard Stewart
Bernard Stewart
2 months ago
Reply to  Jane Watson

re the pubs isn’t that exactly what we’ve got with Sue Gray?…

David McKee
David McKee
4 months ago

The way Kathleen tells it, the series sounds like a wholly inadequate and unnecessary retelling of one of Bronowski’s lectures in his “Ascent of Man” series in the 1970s, “Knowledge or Certainty”.

Bronowski’s point is that our information about the world around us is partial and incomplete, so the knowledge it produces is necessarily provisional. People who crave certainty, like conspiracy theorists or technocrats, cherry-pick or twist the facts to ‘prove’ their worldview.

Certainty can lead people down very dark paths indeed. Bronowski illustrated this to devastating effect, when standing in a small pond.

Dr E C
Dr E C
4 months ago
Reply to  David McKee

Quite. And I have no doubt RS is familiar with this series and has no problem passing the idea off as his own anyway.

Peter B
Peter B
4 months ago
Reply to  Dr E C

Far from a cert that he’s seen the program. He was born in 1973.
Sounds like it should be essential viewing though. I’m sadly still in the ignorant category on this one.

J B
J B
4 months ago
Reply to  David McKee
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
4 months ago
Reply to  David McKee

I think Donald Rumsfeld put it best

C C
C C
4 months ago
Reply to  David McKee

I am completely ignorant of the above but it sounds very interesting and worth listening to instead of Rory Stewart

David Harris
David Harris
4 months ago
Reply to  David McKee

“our information about the world around us is partial and incomplete, so the knowledge it produces is necessarily provisional”
Exactly. Yet apparently, the science of climate change is ‘settled’. As if…

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
4 months ago

Stewart is the MSM’s “savant du jour” who isn’t very savant at all. Hopefully his long day’s journey into media nuit is reaching its destination but no doubt another one will be along…all too soon.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
4 months ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

…and he’ll be transferred to Long Railway Journeys, or Great Orchestras of the World or whatever sinecure is reserved for lite-wate intellectual retired politicians these days…

Peter B
Peter B
4 months ago

A little unfair.
I think Michael Portillo’s railway stuff is excellent. And if the only achievement he ever made was keeping the Settle-Carlisle line open, that’s no small thing.
And Ed Balls looks like a man who’s on breakfast TV on merit. Never thought I’d be saying that.
I suspect that doing this TV stuff well isn’t as easy as we think.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago

Let me guess the moral of the story – stop asking questions and looking for answers, and trust us the experts and the anointed at the BBC.

Leigh A
Leigh A
4 months ago

I listened to Rory Stewart’s interview on Triggernometry the other week. He (I think) correctly identified all the challenges that bedevil politicians and leaders when making decisions about policy. Yes, people like Sunak are probably quite intelligent and across issues more than the average person (or demagogue) may ever be. And yes, perhaps their inability to do anything might be in spite of their efforts, not because of their incompetence or venality.
But he followed this diagnosis up with…not much at all. He had a few pet ideas he wants implemented, but other than pointing out that modern governing requires trade-offs where somebody loses out, there was no real insight into what to do next. Should politicians be more honest about what they can or can’t do? If the public need fairy tales to inspire them, at what point do these simplistic stories backfire and engender betrayal and resentment in institutions? Is it okay to keep overpromising (or crafting fairy tales that are outright lies) in order to win or retain power? If populists like Farage have valid criticisms about the state of government in the UK, when do ‘sensible’, mainstream political parties need to listen? Or, if voting for Reform is a fool’s errand, how can they be compelled to listen to electors?
Stewart didn’t really answer any of these – rather than forging a pathway through the byzantine labyrinths of power, he seems more content with just pointing out that ‘it’s complicated’. Which in practice means that he wishes us to simply defer to the technocratic class instead of the populists – presumably because technocrats are plugged into the rest of the global technocratic elite, allowing them to chalk up a few small wins with minimal animosity and adversity.
Well, if this is the view of a seasoned veteran of British politics, then it’s no wonder the voters are abandoning the major parties in droves. They want something different than the status quo, and if the only viable option is a demagogue with fairy tales, then they’re going to place their bets on the fairy tale.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
4 months ago
Reply to  Leigh A

He wasn’t a seasoned veteran of politics at all. He was an amateur who considered himself of more consequence than proved to be the case. Regrettably there are too many like him in politics.

Buck Rodgers
Buck Rodgers
4 months ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Exactly. He’s always struck me as a mediocrity waiting for the world to recognise his genius.

Mark Gilmour
Mark Gilmour
4 months ago
Reply to  Buck Rodgers

The quintessential “Gamma male”.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
4 months ago
Reply to  Mark Gilmour

I have him more in the ‘delta minus semi-moron’ category (a la Huxley).

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
4 months ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

But at the height of his fame (2019?) he was feted by the BBC, other major media outlets, and centrist dads as the messiah. He was never off our screens and newspaper pages. The constant adulation was nauseating.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
4 months ago
Reply to  Judy Englander

Or, as here, the constant stream of invectives hurled at him by lesser people.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
4 months ago
Reply to  Leigh A

I listened to the Triggernometry interview.

He said, near the very end, that in this information age, there’s too much information to assimilate, for example, when starting out as a (health?) minister.

Firstly, that’s why we used to value knowledge and experience. It could have filled in the many holes left when new graduates move straight into the political bubble, then eventually into government.

Knowing how to solve a new problem, by gathering data, getting to know the people involved, purturbing the troublesome system in order to determine the best course of action is called experience, something that cannot be replaced by technology, or History degree, of any sort, or PPE, from either university.

And if no one responsible, has a grounding in the appropriate basic subjects, say, at least to A level or equivalent, there’s the ‘opportunity’ to continue a catastrophic policy: as an example, just think of our new Energy Minister, except that he does have an A level in Physics, so something must be up. 🙂

Andrew Bridgen is well known to able to master a difficult subject, but then he read a related useful subject at university and, I think, took an interest in it afterwards. Just think how well Parliament could function with members having experience in a variety of useful subjects.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
4 months ago

There’s also the problem that arises when there’s lack of trust with those that provide the information.

But that is another story.

Peter B
Peter B
4 months ago
Reply to  Leigh A

Martin Luther King had a description for this: “analysis, paralysis”. Someone else described such people as “problem sellers” as opposed to “problem solvers”.
If we’re being very simplistic, we might divide people up into three groups: thinkers, talkers and doers. Very few people can do all of these well.
Stewart seems to be a passable thinker and a big talker, but not a doer.
The crime of populists like Trump and Farage is that they might actually be doers (though their real expertise is talk). And we tend to despise people like Trump and Reagan because they don’t seem to be thinkers (even though they’ve doubtless done some serious thinking in the background at some point).

William Amos
William Amos
4 months ago
Reply to  Leigh A

Can it be a coincidence that Mr Rory Stewart embodies so neatly the inherited intellectual disposition of the old Royal Stewart dynasty?
The old epitaph coined to mark the death of Charles II said that “He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one”
Or perhaps still more his grandfather James I & IV, the eponymous ‘Wisest Fool in Christendom’
Surely he must be a descendant of the Blood Royal?

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
4 months ago
Reply to  Leigh A

Rishi is so intelligent? I cant see it.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
4 months ago
Reply to  Anna Bramwell

Rishi could buy and sell all the other British politicians today, and showed that clearly in debates with Starmer. He has an exceptionally quick brain, usable intelligence and insight.

He never had a chance. He inherited Boris’s garbage and had to face global paralysis and costs from Covid, goods and labour supply shortages and energy price spikes as a result of Ukraine war, with inflation arising out of those situations. Any politician of any stripe would’ve struggled.

He’s young and he’s getting better. There’s no chance of that from Starmer, Boris or Farage – they’re as good as they’re ever going to be.

Ash Sangamneheri
Ash Sangamneheri
4 months ago

Ignorance is bliss…

Stuart Bennett
Stuart Bennett
4 months ago

I’ve wholly gone off Stewart recently. First because of the way he tried to throw Sam Harris under the bus to suck up to Humza Yusaf, resulting in a very embarrassing return to the Making Sense podcast for a tactful but complete dressing down from his better. Second because he’s become a sneery know it all who simultaneously fails to come to any discernible point about anything.

Dr E C
Dr E C
4 months ago
Reply to  Stuart Bennett

Same here. Post 7/10 anyone who still thinks Islamophobia is a greater concern than violent Islamism clearly either knows, or chooses to know, very little at all.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
4 months ago
Reply to  Dr E C

Or someone who chooses to believe that there is such a thing as Islamism.

Studio Largo
Studio Largo
4 months ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

Yes, of course. We all know the WTC towers blew themselves up.

Dr E C
Dr E C
4 months ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

Seriously: what are you talking about? Islamists believe in Islamism, ie trying to establish a global caliphate by any means necessary.
Or perhaps you don’t believe in dictionaries either?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Islamism

Dr Anne Kelley
Dr Anne Kelley
4 months ago
Reply to  Stuart Bennett

He always was a sneery know it all.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
4 months ago
Reply to  Stuart Bennett

Citizens assemblies are his answer to everything

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
4 months ago

Joining up the dots?
That could lead to people Noticing things.
Look what happens to people who start Noticing that some female swimmers are different to other female swimmers.
Noticing things can get you cancelled.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
4 months ago

I think my theory of knowledge and ignorance is a bit simpler:
Sometimes you know the things.
Sometimes you do not know the things.
But don’t worry, because if you don’t know the things, then you can learn the things.
It is still possible to accomplish alot while not knowing (enough of) the things. There is a lot to be said for just rolling your sleeves up and getting on with it. Incomplete knowledge can lead to great creativity and innovative solutions.
Happy end to the story: even if you mess up as a direct consequence of not knowing the things, it is mostly an annoyance rather than a disaster so just calm down and move forward.

AC Harper
AC Harper
4 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

One of my favourite sayings is “Maybe yes, maybe no”. If you proceed to do things bearing this in mind then you can recognise when things start going wrong and change course.
This requires a certain humility in your planning – and humility is often ‘trained’ out of experts and politicians.
Perhaps a longer aphorism:-
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Keep calm and carry on.”

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
4 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

I see this through the prism of my legal career. One of the very first things which you learn when you leave the realm of textbooks behind and have to start doing stuff in the real world is this: real life solutions often bear very little relation to what you have learned while sitting in a lecture theatre or library.
There is far less sitting around reflecting on the nuances of this principle or that case and far more thinking about what is realistic/practical/economical under the circumstances.
The transition is a bit scary because you spend alot of time really not knowing what you are doing, but you develop a certain mindset which allows you to get stuff done and that does require flexibility of thought and the ability to understand that it is time for a rethink and Plan B.

Claire D
Claire D
4 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Very well said.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
4 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I move forward with my gut at a pace where I hope I can step back from any brinks encountered.

J B
J B
4 months ago

The BBC ceased to make any decent content years ago (bar, as you say, In Our Time which I listen to via podcast).
Not sure if they will ever recover and bring us the likes of, say, James Burke Connectiins..

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
4 months ago
Reply to  J B

They need to start by leaving out the wretched and 199% distracting musical background.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
4 months ago

Indeed irritating beyond words. If i bother watching at all, it’s usually on silent with subtitles.

Jonathan Nash
Jonathan Nash
4 months ago

“As with the format of many a BBC factual offering these days, we don’t so much get the slow and deliberate prosecution of a joined-up argument as a dizzying succession of historically orphaned facts and gnomic pronouncements. ”

Exactly. Philomena Cunk is no longer parody.

I agree about In Our Time as well. Its the only thing on R4 worth listening to.

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
4 months ago

Another excellent article from UnHerd’s best contributor. The concluding paragraph is a gem.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
4 months ago

This would appear to fit the usual style of current BBC programming – which is “Blue Peter for adults”. It is surely unwatchable for anyone with intelligence (as opposed to just knowledge).

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
4 months ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

That deserves a badge!

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
4 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

🙂

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
4 months ago

Fantastic, polite, but rather pointed essay by Kathleen Stock. I actually like Rory Stewart, but why his confused musings merit a whole BBC series I don’t know. He also seems staggeringly unaware of his own prejudices.

I am not exactly sure how his own ethical pretensions can be squared with his involvement in the “The Rest is Politics” along with a proven bully and liar – on a rather more important subject than ‘Partygate’.! Of course Alistair Campbell is somehow not “a populist”, so that’s all right then!

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Rory forgot he was editor of the Daily Mirror for yonks, a somewhat populist journal.

Andrew R
Andrew R
4 months ago

We could use logic and evidence but we’re relying increasingly on heuristics and narrative.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew R

A direct result of having both only PPE graduates and career politicians from their 20s entering the HoC. Having said that, whilst not an MP the SAGE group have hardly covered themselves in glory since COVID

John RC
John RC
4 months ago

“Ignorance is strength”. Now, where have I heard that before?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago

Now all Rory has to do is explain and rehabilitate lying, arrogance and narcissism and he will have entirely legitimised his collaboration with Alistair Campbell.

Richard Powell
Richard Powell
4 months ago

I lapped this up; it just got better and better and the concluding sentence rounded it off delightfully. I had an unfortunate brush with Stewart during his Jakarta days, back in 1999. He was one of the rudest and most pretentious people I have ever met. It has been fascinating to watch his subsequent career and I am always amused when people express admiration for him.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
4 months ago
Reply to  Richard Powell

Rude in what way?

Richard Powell
Richard Powell
4 months ago

Distant and disdainful.

Robert White
Robert White
4 months ago

This bit is magnificent.
‘The man who insists that lizards run the White House, and who also has a lot of true beliefs up his sleeve about the mating habits of lizards, is still a much less reliable knower than the average person who knows nothing in particular about lizards and believes the White House is run by humans.‘

Brian Hunt
Brian Hunt
4 months ago

He’s a BBC darling, like Stephen Fry, whose intelligence and insight has never been robustly put to the test.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
4 months ago
Reply to  Brian Hunt

I was pleased to see K. Stock have a pop at QI and its presenters.
Stephen Fry seems to know a lot of facts but a prodigious memory is not the same as intelligence, or what you do with what you know.

A D Kent
A D Kent
4 months ago

Whenever I’ve raised issues with the ‘Rest Is Politics’ Centrist (Grand)Dad owner and company by name, I tend to see my comments disappear. Anyone who an share a platform – or give on to – Alistair Campbell is depraved, whatever they might want to parp about the plight of refugees.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
4 months ago

Rory Stewart is a ‘chameleon’ … he will do whatever it takes to thrust himself upon the media … a self opinonated bore at best.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
4 months ago

You sense that with the new Labour government too, his liberal caste is going to struggle.
There is just too much orientation to the Right on the Internet and it’s too loud and influential.
If they are going to sleep, or operate at all, they are better blocking it out and just concentrate on the relatively small task of the Maoists on their side, against whom the tide is clearly turning.

Peter B
Peter B
4 months ago

For some bizarre reason, I got not one, but two copies of Rory Stewart’s “Politics on the Edge” for my last birthday. From friends and family who clearly misread my appreciation of his talents.
I’m going to force myself to read the thing on holiday in a week’s time (since I’ll be meeting the donors there).
Enjoyed the article – especially this – “But perhaps a would-be technocrat like Stewart” – but certainly won’t be listening to the R4 program.
I always assumed that a technocrat was someone with actual scientific or technical knowledge.
It increasingly seems that it’s been redefined to mean someone who’s studied PPE at Oxford or at ENA in France. Or is a professional politician who graduated up from being a special adviser.
But then I suppose I’m just ignorant.
Perhaps 5% of those currently described as “technocrats” seem to have any actual technical qualifications or competence. No real technocrat would have been taken in by the decades of Post Office and Fujitsu BS in the Horizon scandal.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
4 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

He is thought of by people who are not conservative as a conservative intellectual hence the gifts to you and his constant presence on the BBC to provide thoughtful political balance.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
4 months ago

He’s an interesting chap who has led an interesting life, no doubt – but for all his accomplishments, Little Lord FauntleRory is very keen to admit to his faults, except that those faults always turn out to be a humble-brag polishing of his own brilliance and personal qualities.
He failed as a politician, in his mind, because he was slightly too noble, slightly too clever, slightly too incorruptible to get on.
Last year, Julie Burchill posed the question, “Do you know a Mary Sue – a self-adoring paragon of virtue who can only ever admit to faults which are actually boasts in disguise?”
As I read the article I was pondering who might be the biggest ‘Mary Sue’ in recent British Politics, when I realised it was not so much a Mary Sue as a ‘Rory Stew.’
No doubt Harriet Harperson would damn the patriarchy for stealing yet another accolade from the Sisterhood, but the biggest Mary Sue is, horrors, a bloke – to give him his full title, Roderick James Nugent Stewart OBE FRSGS FRSL, academic, diplomat, author, broadcaster, former soldier, rumoured-spook and politician-turned-podcaster. Haunted Eddie Redmayne, if fashioned by the chaps at Aardman Animation after a long lunch.
Rory is a man of undoubted abilities – but there’s no one in less doubt of his abilities than he is himself. His particular skill is the self-effacing humble-brag. Whilst often appearing to apologise for the privileges bestowed on him by his Eton and Balliol education, he still always manages to compare himself favourably to other Eton/Oxford grads and remind you that Boris is not really that posh after all. Nor, even, David Cameron. Rory’s never too shy to coyly drop a mention that, of course, he tutored the young Princes William & Harry, whilst his Spectator Diary was peppered with (seemingly casual) asides of his velvet-knickerbockered childhood, his view of Hyde Park from the windows of a large town house that has been in the family for generations and is close enough to Knightsbridge barracks that the Household Cavalry clop by, …. oh, and did I mention I’m a regular visitor to Highgrove?
There’s no question he’s led a genuinely interesting and varied life, and is a man with a prodigious CV – though his recollections do seem to differ from others who were present at each stage of his storied career. His brief stint as a Provincial Deputy Governor in Iraq earned him the sobriquet “Florence of Arabia” from the embedded press, as he loved nothing more than to have his photo taken in the desert, wearing flowing robes and striking suitably warrior-poet-philosopher poses.
Nothing could skewer Rory’s unadmitted hunger for acclaim more than his hero T.E. Lawrence’s observation of his own “craving to be famous, and a horror of being known to like being known”.
In his memoir – and every time I’ve heard him speak – Rory casts himself as the reluctant hero, come to save the country from Tory populism, and the Tories from themselves. For a man who claims not to want to be centre-stage, he seems to have a preternatural ability to wander ‘unknowingly’ into the limelight. He makes much of the idea that he’d like nothing more than to live the life of a poet, or perhaps a Victorian explorer, but duty calls and thus he reluctantly puts down his slim volume of Ovid to take up the challenge of leading the Tory Party or to have a run at becoming Mayor of London. How galling that both jobs were snaffled up by his deeply unserious nemesis.
Rory Stew hates Brexit, natch, but above all he loathes Boris Johnson – really despises him. Predictably the subject of Brexit and Boris provide much fodder for the podcast Rory co-hosts with the bagpipe-bothering Blairite bully-boy, Alastair Campbell. One wonders whether what Rory-Stew most dislikes about Bo-Jo is that they’re both sharp-elbowed Old Etonians who cultivated their quirks and studied eccentricities to a level of theatrical performance, yet it was the shambolic Boris who, unfathomably, succeeded in attaining the top job.
If you want a Guardian masterclass in how to squeeze self-aggrandisement and noble suffering into a description of one’s own humiliation, this takes some beating: “I had been rejected by my colleagues in the leadership race and I had been unable to prevent a man who was the antithesis of everything I valued in public life becoming the prime minister. I lost confidence in myself, my judgment and – because so many of its people had voted for Boris Johnson – almost in the country itself. In 2020, I moved to Yale University to teach and reflect on what I had learned in government and in defeat.”

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Masterful. You should do a book of potted bios like this.

Angela Thomas
Angela Thomas
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Brilliant!

Mark Gourley
Mark Gourley
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Very well said
What more can I add?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

So that’s what happened to Wills and Harry!

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
4 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The King must have bought in to Rory’s self image .

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

The reason Boris succeded was that he was more successful in tapping into prejudices of the hoi polloi.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
4 months ago
Reply to  mac mahmood

Apologies for the pedantry in advance .,,,,Just hoi polloi.

The ‘hoi’ is its own definite article

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Lol. Good job.
Yeh, the reason that people like Rory Stewart and Hugh Grant hate Boris Johnson so much is perhaps because they are so similar. Serious intra-class envy. The vanity of small differences.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
4 months ago

Exactly. The nephew of former Spectator editor Alexander Chancellor mocks other people who have posh voices , while himself speaking like a classic parody of an Edwardian toff .

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

The envy here is as thick as motor oil that needs to be changed.

jane baker
jane baker
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I am a Mary Sue. I’m going to find that article to read and hopefully laugh at myself. I love Julie Burchills writing . But I know if we met it’d be a cat fight,in spirit of not in reality.

Pedro the Exile
Pedro the Exile
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Fabulous piece of writing-more please!

Chipoko
Chipoko
4 months ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Bullseye!!

Samuel Gee
Samuel Gee
4 months ago

This reminded me of the girlfriend of a now lost friend back in 80s who was a trainee doctor. Sitting on my mum’s sofa and telling us that she had been on the bus and had actuallychosen to sit next to a black person in a “get me” kind of tone and that it was exciting. A lost for words silence was broken by her doubling down on the theme that she had in fact spoken with a cleaner in the hospital as well.
It reminded me because Rory Stewart seems to have the same sort of amazement at the real world and high regard for the profundity of his discoveries.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
4 months ago

It’s the acceptance that you are ignorant, and want to know more, that’s useful. It’s called Curiosity.

There’s also Humility, and Bravery, but Curiosity comes first.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
4 months ago

I intend to add to my capacious store of ignorance by not watching R Stewart’s series. Life is too short for some forms of knowledge. In contrast I am always happy to absorb K Stock’s contributions.

andy young
andy young
4 months ago

Until my late teens (I think the prospect of marriage changed me) I found it almost impossible to make a decision. Every time I tried to make one, competing voices would echo in my head, but what if … & then again … how sure am I? …
But in the end, making no decision is a decision in itself. We’re all players, to a greater or lesser extent, so long as we live (longer for some) & our very existence impacts the world in some way.
You do the best you can; another obvious point is that you have limited time,(off topic Marvell’s wonderful poem To His Coy Mistress) so trying to improve a decision by 0.1% will mean neglecting many other equally important ones.
It’s why I’m a fervent advocate of democracy: I trust the collective decisions of many people to any single person, no matter how clever that person may appear to be. The consensus may be wrong, I may well disagree with it, but I trust the average human’s judgement above any individual’s.

Andrew F
Andrew F
4 months ago
Reply to  andy young

Really?
Surely it only works within framework of Western Civilisation and few others like Japan.
I don’t trust average Muslim judgment at all.
That is the main reason why mass immigration and multiculti is such a disaster for the West.

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew F

But Rory has bothered to learn one of the languages of Afghanistan , which I suspect is why he ‘rather likes mass migration ‘ . He wants to be able to chat to some of the inhabitants of the Edgware road in their native tongue , when on a televised walk about .

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
4 months ago

Why am I not surprised to learn that Rory’s wife needs therapy?

Saul D
Saul D
4 months ago

Knowledge is expensive. It takes time and application to acquire it. Heuristics are cheaper and faster. Much of the time we only chase knowledge when we have to, or when we’re particularly interested in something.
The rest of the time we use the much cheaper heuristic of finding someone who knows more than you do about something, and then following their advice. The skill for this is an ability to judge if someone is trustworthy – where we also rely on heuristics – like appearances, certificates, track record, social connections, language skills and recommendations.
This is as true for plumbers, gardeners and hairdresser, as it is for doctors and rocket scientists – everyone has a bit of knowledge that someone else doesn’t have. Most of the time we sit in our box and trust the person who knows more than we do to get it right for us, or take what those experts offer us off-the-shelf.
However, the internet has made it much, much easier both to check and validate expert opinions (lowering the cost of knowledge), but also makes it much easier to run into other experts and to hear about experts with differing opinions.
A doctor will inform someone that they have IBS and should be on pro-biotics, and the patient will immediately Google it, query the diagnosis and go on some medical forums for more information. They then find out that pro-biotics aren’t the only treatment option and ‘other experts’ make different recommendations.
We’re still getting to grips with the complications this brings up. People who were fine about being ignorant and trusting someone else, suddenly find they’re ‘knowing’ stuff they wouldn’t have bothered with without Google or Youtube, such has how easy it is to change windscreen wipers on the car, or how little time it takes to set up an email account.
And from this, the expert we trusted can then end up looking like someone who isn’t quite as reliable as we thought. The expert has to convince us, by demonstrating command over his/her subject, and no longer just relying on authority or because that is what he/she always has done. Previously unassailable experts now have to learn to deal with being questioned. Their public are akin to avid football supporters, all of whom believe they have enough gen to challenge the coaches about tactics even though they’re only spectators.
It’s a re-run of the reformation. After Luther, Catholic clerics suddenly stopped being the trusted experts on all matters Christian.
This time it’s all the clerical classes that are affected. Experts can no longer demand or expect deference, or corral a public so it only follows prescribed viewpoint, censoring anything else a la inquisition’s press for doctrinal purity. We have to judge by outcomes instead of judging by knowledge and theory, and that includes seeing more failures along the way to more successes.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
4 months ago
Reply to  Saul D

Excellent comment.

Andrew F
Andrew F
4 months ago
Reply to  Saul D

Brilliant post.
I just had knee replacement surgery.
I did some research about it before and when NHS offered me an option of robitically assisted I jumped at it.
Even post operation rehabilitation options bring up so many contradictory approaches (with core approach staying the same) from accredited sources that you really wonder which one is the best.
You could not easily do it before internet age.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
4 months ago

For some reason, Rory Stuart (and Alistair Campbell) remind me of the cops out of Hitchhiker’s, (with Rory as the first cop and Alistair as the other cop):

“Now see here, guy,” said the voice on the loud hailer, “you’re not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we’re a couple of intelligent caring guys that you’d probably quite like if you met us socially! I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!” “And I write novels!” chimed in the other cop. “Though I haven’t had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I’m in a meeeean mood!”

David Jory
David Jory
4 months ago

Stewart might even learn something from Hayek’s Knowledge Argument.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
4 months ago

Stewart is not stupid, but he has very little depth of intellect, and my goodness, he loves attention.

He is at heart entirely narcissistic and seems to have no concept of loyalty or compromise (I like the way he let’s slip that his wife sees an analyst. I hope she approved that revelation.)

Did he really do all those things he claims to have done? Seems a lot to have packed into one life. And as for being tutor to the princes; really? That might explain a lot though

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
4 months ago

Good article, Ms Stock, very good, got the essence of this essentially empty vessel

Bored Writer
Bored Writer
4 months ago

The old adage that “Stephen Fry is a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like” also applies to Rory Stewart. Stewart is a stupid person’s far stupider brother’s idea of what an intelligent person is like.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
4 months ago
Reply to  Bored Writer

Very well put

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
4 months ago

No coincidence that this kind of mockery of “do your own research” goes hypersonic in the wake of a serious but not civilization ending virus during which people began to suspect and then argue that the authorities were wildly exaggerating its danger as a way of giving themselves more and more power. Such independent thinking must be stamped out lest it spread to all the other false truths that Progressivism is built upon.

William Cameron
William Cameron
4 months ago

Another lecture from a pampered Old Etonian.
Not for nothing did his troops call him ” Florence of Belgravia”.

R E P
R E P
4 months ago

Rory Stewart has become a sinister figure. His comment that we need 350,000 asylum seekers a year to ‘contend with populists’ may have revealed what I have heard leftists, including members of the Home Office say to me in private. Since Brexit, some of our population have been designated ‘deplorables’ whose influence at the ballot box is to be countered by newly imported citizens. No wonder he always agrees with Campbell on his globalist podcast.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
4 months ago
Reply to  R E P

Immigrants arent populists? What a peculiar idea..from where to where, how and why? How can you possibly generalise?

Andrew F
Andrew F
4 months ago
Reply to  R E P

If he really said it then he is nothing more but traitor to this country.

john d rockemella
john d rockemella
4 months ago

Ignorance needed, because when you awaken the mind that their is global cabal that focusses purely on conquering the minds of the “useless eaters” and that his buddy Alistair Campbell friends with Tony Blair and associate with Jeffrey Epstein, only leads you to the conclusion that the so called intellects are nothing but controlling parasites who cannot actually fix or mend or create anything, and are very anti-humanistic people with strange desires.

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
4 months ago

the clever-clever public profiles of the celebrity presenters and guests — Stephen Fry

Anything involving Stephen Fry is going to be well spoken intellectual flatulence.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

What was said about Stephen Fry? “A stupid person’s idea of a clever person”

Insufferable, arrogant, a know-it-all… similarly I doubt if Rory Stewart genuinely thinks he has gaps in his knowledge.

Similar people are in charge right now (and let’s face it, the last government wasn’t much different either). They never accept that their ideas haven’t or won’t work…just witness the raft of new bills. The renters charter, the new workers rights, they are likely (tho not guaranteed) to do the exact opposite of what they are intended to do. But the government knows best. People, nay technocrats, just like Rory.

William Amos
William Amos
4 months ago

“Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.”

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
4 months ago

I’ve heard Stewart described elsewhere as Alastair Campbells fluffer, which, on the basis of a couple of ‘listenings’ to their odious little podcast, seems to a reasonably accurate description. Stewart’s role being to coax and stroke the turgid Campbell into a state of semi-tumescence until he eventually manages to ejaculate his daily dose of socialist poison.

I have also heard him interviewed elsewhere and was equally unimpressed. Apart from the fact that he sounds like an ersatz tony blair, his pronouncements are eye-wateringly vacuous in a hand-wringing, centrist dad sort of way, and he offers no solutions at all, everything being “too difficult’ or “so complicated”. I can’t imagine what it would be like to listen to an entire series of this sort of thing, so well done to the author for her forbearance.

J Boyd
J Boyd
4 months ago

Julie Burchill memorably described Steven Fry as ‘a stupid person’s idea of a clever person”.

The description fits Stewart equally accurately.

Dr Anne Kelley
Dr Anne Kelley
4 months ago

Rory Stewart, would-be intellectual ……

Mark epperson
Mark epperson
4 months ago

Wow, the dude should stayed in his bedroom. Just another shill who sold out a long time ago for a few shekels.

Jaden Johnson
Jaden Johnson
4 months ago

Along with his combative co-host on The Rest is Politics podcast, too often he opts for lazily smearing or mocking political opponents, saving them both the bother of having to try to justify their criticisms in detail. 

Exactly. It’s a total mystery why people think this podcast is so marvellous. Stewart has more in common with his bête noire Boris Johnson than he realises. A monstrous sense of entitlement acquired, no doubt, at ‘School’.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
4 months ago

Well, having read the article and most of the comments, I have to say I’m glad I’m not Rory Stewart. After Kathleen’s hatchet job, readers were quick to jump in and bludgeon what was left of him. I haven’t seen or heard any of his programmes, but I might just try this latest one to see what it is that makes him so dislikeable. Donald Trump’s survival from assassination seems to have aroused more sympathy.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
4 months ago

I confess, I enjoyed listening to a lecture Rory gave a few months back. Still, I enjoyed the above article even more. Thank you.

Simon Woods
Simon Woods
4 months ago

I agree with Ms Stock absolutely but in broiadcast terms who can get past that prissy sibalent voice hissing like a women’s institute tea urn..

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

The man is truly revolting and I wouldn’t give him the time of day, let alone listen to his insane rambling.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
4 months ago

Is it ignorance that allows the elites of the Western world to elevate a bunch of murderous thugs with innumerable terrorist acts, 30 odd massacres, an ethnic cleansing and an ongoing genocide under their belt to the ranks of saints who must not be criticised and to vow to destroy their victims who are fighting them?
NO. Methinks it is racism.
See
State of Terror
How terrorism created modern Israel
By Thomas Suarez.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago

I’m going to guess this is a willful misreading of Stewart’s book. It is a common thing in the Groves of Academe.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

Stewart deserves a modicum of respect because he refused to serve in Johnson´s government; and like many other wets, was defenestrated. On another point entirely, just how many of our recent politicians have attended the university of Oxford? Starmer, Sunak, Truss, Johnson, May, Cameron, Blair, Thatcher, as well as Osborne, the author of many of our financial troubles. That leaves only Brown and Major since 1979. Scarcely a record of Oxonian success.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

“Knowledge is power”

jane baker
jane baker
4 months ago

There is now a subtly disguised,or even not so subtle project to educate the populace,that’s us,to TRUST THE SCIENCE. Not “science”. THE SCIENCE so next time they choose to invoke it the people who wont conform will look stupid as well as contrarian. I grew up believing it was important to read,to be informed,or “well informed” after all someone might initiate a conversation with you about the political situation in Burma. But they never have.!!!

Studio Largo
Studio Largo
4 months ago

Another condescending Insufferable windbag technocrat. No wonder his wife’s in thetapy.

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
4 months ago

I am muchly stimulated by the surpassing eloquence of Doc Stock’s essay here but find PT’s first comment to be of real interest only to Brits. Strange that it should so swiftly appear to eclipse the essay in terms of reader focus..?

Chipoko
Chipoko
4 months ago

What a superb essay! This has to be one of Kathleen’s best. I soooooooo enjoyed reading this! Here is a smattering a few of her brilliant lines – absolutely penetrating and devastating:

One cannot help suspecting that the reason Stewart thinks such points will seem staggeringly revelatory to the listener is because at some point they have been staggeringly revelatory for him.

… we don’t so much get the slow and deliberate prosecution of a joined-up argument as a dizzying succession of historically orphaned facts and gnomic pronouncements. [emphasis mine]

QI-style thinking, in honour of the insufferable TV panel show of the same name.

… the clever-clever public profiles of the celebrity presenters and guests — Stephen Fry, Sandi Toksvig, etc. — tend to do most of the work in establishing putative intellectual credibility. [stunning character capture!]

Radio 4 shows badged as “serious” and “important” as this one are ludicrously superficial.

It’s one thing to be given a leg up, by standing on the shoulders of giants; quite another to be helicoptered to the summit, then left there with no map.

I’ve always thought that Rory Stewart is creepy. This piece from Kathleen Stock confirms I was right. And the title of his programme – The Long History Of Ignorance??? Says it all! Stewart’s Wikipedia entry (no doubt carefully edited by him) might be entitled, The Long History of Rory!
Thank you Kathleen. What a towering intellect!

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
4 months ago

Spot on article.

Mike MacCormack
Mike MacCormack
4 months ago

A much better think piece, a book by the puitzer prize winning author Kathryn Schultz, examines the role that being wrong about stuff plays in finding a way through to the truth. It seems like a banal thought – but she gives many fascinating examples of how people as learned as, say, The Royal Navy thought impossible things about discoverable facts on the way to figuring out right from wrong. I would go so far as to say it might be one of the most important books I have read this century! It is called Being Wrong; Adventures in the Margin of Error.