Politics On the Edge Quotes

“Proper searching could stop drugs being carried through the gates. In the US and Sweden, where there was proper searching, I had discovered, the drug rates were far lower. But when I shared these suggestions with the ministry drugs team, they were wearily dismissive. 'If you stop drugs coming in one way they will come in another' they said. One said 'You don't want to be like your predecessors, fantasising about how to stop drugs coming in on drones.' My predecessor, it seemed, had suggested flying eagles at the drones.' Liz Truss had stood at the dispatch box and said 'I was at HMP Pentonville last week. They've got patrol dogs who are barking to deter drones.' This, I was told provoked an MP to shoat 'You are barking”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Back in London, Liz Truss asked me how my weekend had been. I explained that my father had died. She paused for a moment, nodded and asked when the twenty-five-year environment plan would be ready”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Liz Truss had stood at the despatch box and said, ‘I was at HMP Pentonville last week. They’ve now got patrol dogs who are barking which helps to deter drones.’ This, I was told, provoked an MP to shout ‘You are barking.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“We felt like a book club going to a Millwall game.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“This air of roguish solidity, however, was undermined by the furtive cunning of his eyes, which made it seem as though an alien creature had possessed his reassuring body, and was squinting out of the sockets.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Brexit: ‘The NHS will be stronger, class sizes will be smaller, taxes lower … wages will be higher, fuel bills will be lower.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Our air pollution was breaching EU standards. She unrolled a map of air pollution across Britain. I looked at the red halo around Leeds.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Britain was now, perhaps had always been, a place in hectic motion. A country that we were told had closed its industries and gone big into banking. A place that was now gambling on a new existence outside the European Union, and a closer relationship with China, at a time when the old political orders seemed ever more fragile, and energy security and food security ever less secure. An economy 80 per cent based on elusive intangible services; buoyed by an improbable housing bubble, and entirely dependent for its health and care on immigrants, whom citizens seemed to wish to exclude.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“consensus as an establishment conspiracy, deny the complexity of society and economy, and misrepresent what Britain shared, or what it could realistically be. He”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“What you say, what you always say, is that you want to make a difference. People want to hear you say that you are in it for them.”
― Rory Stewart, How Not to Be a Politician: A Memoir

“given a choice between discretion and honesty, I have chosen the latter.”
― Rory Stewart, How Not to Be a Politician: A Memoir