Rory Stewart on Trump, Nationalism and The Value of Rural Life (Part One)
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Why times can differ in your player
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with former MP and co-host of The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart. For over a decade in British politics, Rory Stewart saw firsthand how power really worked. and what forces drive communities apart.
He served as a backbench MP, held several ministerial posts, and even ran for Prime Minister, before being sacked from a Conservative party he had come to barely recognise. Now from outside the political arena, he shares his insights on global affairs as co-host of the UK's leading political podcast. Stewart joined us recently at Friends House, in London, to discuss the state of Britain and the world today, and his new book Middle Land, Dispatches from the Borders. In conversation with Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party, Stewart argued that to truly create a better future for all, we must understand the tensions that exist between rural and urban, between farming and the natural world, between the need to preserve and the need to grow, and between local and national politics. Let's join our host, Caroline Lucas, now with more.
Well, I am delighted to see you all of you here tonight for this conversation and even more delighted to be in that conversation with Rory Stewart about his new book, Middle Land Dispatches from the Borders, which is a book that I absolutely loved. And unless you've been under a rock for the past couple of years, you will know that Rory Stewart is the co-presenter of the hit podcast The Rest is Politics, author of the Sunday Times bestseller Politics on the Edge, and that for nine years between 2010 and 2019, he was the MP for Penrith and the Border. He has served as Minister for Environment, for International Development, for Africa, for prisons, and then as Secretary of State for International Development. Experiences that he documents in all their headiness and horror in politics on the edge. But this book is very different.
We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (32 minutes, 5,298 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.
No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.