I can’t say this on The Rest Is Politics – Rory Stewart | Part two

Quite right!

In this second part of his interview with Michael Gove, Rory Stewart defends controversial positions regarding class, private education, and

Key takeaways

• Rory Stewart argues that wealth taxes would destroy the possibility of individuals maintaining the independence required for public service roles.
• He defends private education on the grounds that it provides high-quality instruction and facilities without placing a financial burden on the state.
• Stewart highlights Rishi Sunak's continued presence as an MP in Richmond as a positive example of commitment to parliamentary duty.
• The conversation emphasizes the necessity of building domestic data centers to avoid technological dependency on US or Chinese frontier models.
• Stewart supports local housing development, noting that new construction in Perthshire brought vitality and community growth to his area.

Main topics

• Private Education
• Wealth Tax
• Economic Growth

Notable quotes

The only excuse for being a upper middle class, privileged English or Scottish gentleman is that you live up to those standards.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep dive into Stewart's nuanced, often unpopul

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivalled books and arts reviews and so much more, all for just £12. Not only that, but we'll also send you a £20 Amazon gift card, absolutely free. Go to www.spectator.com forward slash voucher to claim this offer now. Speaker 1 (0:23) Choosing a wealth manager shouldn't feel like guesswork. Speaker 2 (0:26) Quite right. But with so many firms to choose from, how do you know which one is right for you? Speaker 1 (0:31) Well, Compare Wealth Managers makes it easier. They do the research comparing wealth managers across performance, fees, investment approach, client reviews and service. So Speaker 2 (0:41) you can actually see your options clearly. Without the jargon. Exactly. And whether you're planning for retirement, managing an inheritance, selling a business, or simply wondering if your current advisor is still the right fit. Speaker 1 (0:52) Compare Wealth Managers can help you compare your options. It's free and easy to use. So before you choose a wealth manager, do your homework. Speaker 2 (1:00) And start comparing. Speaker 2 (1:11) Welcome back to part two of this Quite Right interview with Rory Stewart. I'll be talking to Rory today about the things that he dared talk about with his friend Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Politics. Rory sometimes seems like just another centrist squish. But in fact, when he's alone with me, Rory discovers his inner Tory once more as we discuss class, private schools and how you get growth going. Speaker 2 (1:43) On the question of restoring confidence in Britain, do you think that the denigration of our past undermines confidence in Britain now? And would you, if you could acquaint people with our history, our traditions and our institutions better, would you point to particular things and say, this is a part of the British story that's insufficiently appreciated and needs to be vaunted more? 10,000 things, Speaker 3 (2:09) but let me give you one which will wind you up. Okay. I think the great underappreciated part of the British story is the middle class. The middle class who generated Charles Darwin, who generated John Stuart Mill, who generated generations of army officers, generated generations of diplomats and civil servants, and the structures that enabled that. And the structures that enabled that are complicated to explain. But Cumbria, go back to the 1950s, was run by retired colonels. all of whom were sitting, retiring from the army, probably 40, 45, running charities, running voluntary organizations. They had a sense of the past. They had a sense of the future. They had independence. And what was it based on? It was based on the ability to pass on to their children a small amount of money and a small amount of property, which enabled their children to not feel that there was a choice between getting a good education and working for the civil service. or becoming a teacher, or becoming an army officer. I think we have created a world where the left is very against that because they see it as inherited wealth. And your friends or some of your friends on the radical right are against that because they want wealth taxes, they want entrepreneurs, they want cutting edge businesses. I want to expand the values of the middle class to the whole country. I want everybody, and my dream would be, and this is, you know, well, let's look at a Cumbrian farmer. So a perfect example is they're not traditionally middle class, they're traditionally working class. But what do they actually represent? They represent people who are prepared to live on an income of £8,000 a year while sitting on farms that are worth potentially £2 million. They never liquidate it. They never turn themselves to men. They continue living a tough life, generation after generation, preserving a vision of themselves, their identity, their continuity. And in doing so, they are the heart and soul of our country. And so, yes, that's the British tradition I want to talk about. I want to stand up for that. I don't want to stand up for the Zulu wars. I don't want to stand up for Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I don't want to stand up for the Industrial Revolution. which I think did a lot of pretty horrendous things. I'm not particularly excited about it. I don't particularly want to celebrate the Big Bang or hedge funds. I'm not particularly interested in celebrating the Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman conquest. I am interested in celebrating actually what I saw as a pretty magical moment in British history, which was partly connected to the Industrial Revolution, which stretched from about 1780 to about 1950. Speaker 2 (4:43) It seems to me that many of your role models are like Squire Thorne of Ullathorne in Trollope's Part of the Chronicles or Mr. Knightley in Jane Austen's Emma or Christopher Teachon's in Ford Maddox Ford's tetralogy about the First World War. Or Boot and Scoop. Yes. Your ideal, and I'm not attempting to caricature, I'm attempting to capture, is the... Rooted Tory squire or parson who has an affection for where they grew up, respects wealth, but is very anti-Plutocratic, believes that it's very important to act as a steward, is not scornful of business, but hates the worship of wealth for its own sake, believes in continuity and obligation overall, hates the idea of envy. or enthusiasm and believes that overall an element of prudence when looking at any change is more important than anything else. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a very, very articulate, Speaker 3 (5:52) wonderful expression of my belief system and altruism. And I can add some small contemporary examples, but you've got a beautiful philosophical expression. I mean, let me give you one example of this, right? I think one element of it is that it's a group that has a sense of what's enough. They're not trying to endlessly accumulate wealth and become richer and richer and richer, right? They might be a group that would say, I'm very lucky. I've inherited a little bit from my parents. I've been lucky enough to have a good education. But I'm very happy paying tax. Take me, right? I am not at all uncomfortable paying 45 % tax. Now, I think the government is pretty useless and wasteful, but I'm very lucky. And there's a lot of people out there who are much poorer than me. And I feel pretty guilty about that because I'm conscious that a lot of what I've got in life is not my own brilliant brain. I do not want to live in Mississippi. I don't want to live in Abu Dhabi. where people in Abu Dhabi don't understand the conditions that the Uber driver's living in, where they're 12 to a room with no rights, etc. This tax-free dream is based on a massive exploitation of people living in grinding misery. So, I want a system that, and actually I'm happy paying income tax, I don't want to pay a wealth tax, because the wealth tax would exactly destroy the existence of the possibility of independence. It'd destroy