Roderick James Nugent Stewart, known as Rory Stewart, is a British academic, author and broadcaster, and former diplomat and politician. He is the Brady-Johnson Professor of the Practice of Grand Strategy at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He hosts The Rest Is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border from 2010 to 2019, and between 2015 and 2019 he served as a minister in four departments of the British Government. He then became a Cabinet minister as Secretary of State for International Development from May to July 2019.
Born in Hong Kong, Stewart was educated at the Dragon School and Eton College. After studying at Balliol College, Oxford, Stewart worked for Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service as a diplomat in Indonesia and as British Representative to Montenegro. He left the diplomatic service to undertake a two-year walk across Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. He later wrote a best-selling book, The Places in Between, about his experiences.
He subsequently served as Deputy Governor in Maysan and Dhi Qar for the Coalition Provisional Authority following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and wrote a second book covering this period, Occupational Hazards or The Prince of the Marshes. In 2005, he moved to Kabul to establish and run the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. He was the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University from 2008 to 2010.
In 2010, Stewart was elected to the House of Commons and in 2014 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, Minister of State for Africa and Minister of State for Prisons. He ultimately 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 his 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.
On 3 September 2019, Stewart had the Conservative Whip removed after voting to back a motion paving the way for a law seeking to delay the UK's exit date from the European Union. On 3 October 2019, Stewart announced he had resigned from the Conservative Party and that he would stand down as an MP at the next general election. He initially announced that he would stand as an independent candidate in the 2021 London mayoral election but withdrew on 6 May 2020 on the grounds of the election being postponed on account of COVID-19. His career in politics is described in his bestselling memoir Politics On The Edge (published in the US as How Not To Be a Politician).
Stewart was the President of GiveDirectly from 2022 to 2023, and was a visiting fellow at Yale Jackson from 2020 to 2022, teaching politics and international relations. In March 2022, Stewart and Alastair Campbell launched The Rest Is Politics, which has topped politics podcast ratings in the UK most weeks.
