Shadowing Practice: Rory Stewart reveals MPs have tried to kill themselves over job - ‘Miracle they aren't dead’ - Learn English Speaking with Video

Rory Stewart, it's good to see you.

We got elected back in 2010, different parties at the same time.

We're veterans together.

We went through the ringer together.

We really did.

Your list of achievements is far more impressive than mine.

You are a former diplomat.

You're a former Conservative cabinet minister.

You're a former Tory leadership candidate, your co-host of the most successful politics podcast,

an academic, and this book comes out the day after this is broadcast.

And I really enjoyed it.

And I'm going to talk largely to you about your experiences that you've detailed about your time in Westminster in the book.

But first of all, I just want to ask you, do you wish you were sitting here as Prime Minister?

Yes, I do.

I think it would have been a pretty tumultuous ride.

It's not been easy.

Brexit, COVID.

But I felt that we had a real opportunity in 2019 to try to bring the country together a bit more.

I felt it was terribly kind of divided and fractured.

A friend of mine just pointed out that in the opinion polls, when you and I were in Parliament,

50% of people who voted Remain said they wouldn't speak to someone who'd voted Brexit and vice versa.

And only 25% of either side were prepared to allow their children to marry someone from the other camp.

So I really felt that what we needed to do is bring people together, not get into this horrible standoff of us against them.

Do you see a future role for yourself in politics?

I think it's difficult.

I mean, you know, you know politics just as well as I do.

I'm not somebody who's in a very easy position with parties.

I sadly broke with the Conservative party because I belong to a tradition of a much more,

I guess, centrist, more traditional conservatism.

And so I don't feel comfortable in the direction the party's going at the moment.

Same time, obviously, I'm not a Labour supporter because I have very traditional views about the world.

So I think unless we change our electoral system, and it's one of the things I want to encourage, I think these parties are basically old, dead and broken.

And the only way to actually bring some new fresh ideas in is to do what New Zealand did, which is to change their electoral system,

a bit more proportional representation, smaller parties coming in.

Have you decided who you're going to vote for next year?

I haven't, no. Usually when I get really stuck, I'm afraid I give up and vote for the Lib Dems.

Okay, so let's talk about this memoir that you've written about your time in politics.

You're very critical of Westminster, but you're also critical of yourself.

And I've got picked out a few quotes to illustrate this.

Let's start with the real person I despised in all of this.

This is when you were in your first term as a Member of Parliament.

The real person I despised in all of this was myself.

Why?

Well, I'm, as you say, I'm quite critical of colleagues, but what I want to explain is that I was as bad, if not worse, than all of them.

I think what Westminster does, and I don't know whether you felt this, because you came in with a very impressive career before you came into Parliament,

is it often takes people who outside Parliament are actually reasonable people, right?

Very strange.

You know, I came in with people who were successful doctors, colonels in the army, business people,

writers, historians, academics, and within a few months we were all these sort of being treated like school children by the whips.

It's a very very odd system, nothing is what it seems, it's like Alice in Wonderland.

You're making speeches in the House of Commons Chamber and literally nobody's listening, you know all your colleagues are on their phones except maybe your mum

and even she gives up pretty soon with listening to your speeches in the House of Commons.

And you realize that the whole thing is basically about creeping up to your bosses.

I rebelled against David Cameron when I was early on in my time in Parliament.

And George Osborne said, if you rebel, we're not going to promote you for five years.

Now, that doesn't sound like a big deal, I guess, to the public listening.

They're like, fine.

But actually, you've come into Parliament to try to do things and make a difference.

And to spend five years stuck on the back benches watching Liz Truss, who joined at the same time as you,

becoming a cabinet minister, because you've rebelled once.

And you end up, and this is why I ended up despising myself, I would find myself sort of creepily trying to sit next to David Cameron at lunch.

And I'd send these texts saying, you know, congratulations on your latest policy that I didn't really believe in.

And so I began to feel that I was being made in my early 40s into some kind of child.

And one of the things that you say in the book about sending texts, about praising the Prime Minister's latest initiatives,

you say texts which even now make my ears burn with embarrassment.

You feel a sense of shame at how you behave.

Because, you know, I like you and I like many members of Parliament, you know, I'd been the acting governor of an Iraqi province responsible for three million people, been a Harvard professor.

I'd run a charity in Afghanistan.

I thought that I was a reasonably substantial person.

And I realized that as soon as I became an MP, all that's wiped out.

Nobody takes you seriously anymore.

I remember this guy called Archie Norman, who was the chief executive of ASDA, came to the House of Lords.

Yeah, big figure.

Yeah.

And you would have thought that if you'd been the chief executive, I'd run a huge supermarket chain.

People take you seriously.

I remember all my colleagues saying, oh, we knocked him down to size.

You know, we made him wait in the corner of the tea room.

We didn't promote him.

We showed him that it's it's literally there are some wonderful people in Parliament and people I really loved.

And I've praised a lot of them in the book.

But there is also a group of people who are very, very bitter unfortunately,

mostly men, feel passed over and feel that their basic mission in life is to try to humiliate other people.

You don't need to name names.

I'd love you to.

Did you feel, were there occasions when you felt you were being humiliated by colleagues on your own side?

Yeah, and actually on every time.

It's a very odd process.

I remember, for example, when I was elected to become chair of the Defence Select Committee.

So, you know, this was quite a big honour for me.

I was first term MP.

I'd stirred Labour MPs, voted because I'd turn up for my first day to chair my committee.

And there's a sort of mutiny.

And these older MPs say, we demand that you never speak again to the press without our permission.

And I'm thinking, well, is that a thing?

Are they allowed to say that?

Am I missing some unwritten rule of parliament?

The truth was they're just making it up.

They have no power at all to control my ability to speak to the press.

100

But they're all sitting there having worked this all out amongst themselves because they're angry.

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They're angry that they've stood to be chair of the defense committee

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when I've been elected and they want to knock me down a peg or two.

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It's a very, now, why does this matter?

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It doesn't matter in terms of me.

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I mean, obviously it's irrelevant, you know, my funny fragility, vanity, ego.

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What matters is that what that means for when these MPs become ministers.

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If you treat people as children, if you treat them as though they're incompetent,

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lazy, dishonest, you do not prepare them to take responsibility seriously

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and properly And I felt when I was eventually sitting around the cabinet table

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that the 10 years of kind of hazing, sort of.

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Schoolyard hazing doesn't produce proud, independent, confident decision makers.

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Right.

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Even when they're at the cabinet table, they're still sending creepy texts to the prime minister, hoping they can get a slightly more senior job at the cabinet.

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Right.

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Given everything you learned, I recognize a lot of what you say in it from my own experience.

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I want you to give some advice to the MPs, the new MPs, because it's only going to change from within,

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who get elected next year.

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How can they stop becoming these terrible creatures?

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So you and I came in at the end of the expenses scandal, and I thought that was a huge opportunity that we missed.

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I think all of the 2010 M-takes should have come together and said, actually, what was going on was disgusting.

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we're going to sign up to a code of conduct, we're not going to behave like this other lot.

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Instead of which, everybody was so delighted to be elected, they immediately wanted to be just like the people before.

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So I'd like to see the new MPs do that.

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I mean, I'm interested, I'd like to put it back on you, though, because you went through exactly the same thing.

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And I worry, writing the book, that I'm going to come across as completely sort of bitter and unfair, because I'm more critical upon.

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But do you feel it resonated with your experience?

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It did.

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And actually, I think people, the machine expected me, because I'd been a television presenter,

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to be able to go out and advocate the party line a lot more.

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But what I realised is that I couldn't remember lines

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that had been written by somebody else and could make them look natural.

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So I said, hang on, I have to step back.

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It's very difficult.

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It's abnormal to be able to deliver lines that somebody else has written.

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And that you don't believe often.

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Yeah, exactly.

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You don't fully believe.

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You don't fully understand.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, it's very odd.

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And I, let's trust Prati Patel, who were my first two bosses were kind of masters at this.

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And I remember sort of watching them on television, really repeating.

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I think in those days it was the long-term economic plan is working, the long-term economic plan is working.

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But I think although that might work in the short term, it's very damaging in the long term.

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One of the reasons why the public don't trust politicians, why almost half the public says they now don't want to watch the news is because of this.

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We're much more comfortable talking about mental health these days.

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Thank goodness.

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Some very prominent people have smashed taboos and there's been some great campaigns about this.

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I read something you said in your podcast actually about MPs, breakdowns and suicide attempts because you said the politics is deeply unpleasant.

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Did you watch some colleagues sort of crumble?

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Oh, terrible.

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I mean, genuinely terrible.

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I mean, I don't want to talk about the specifics because this is deeply personal to people.

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But yes, colleagues tried to kill themselves, people I knew, in very serious ways.

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I mean, almost killed themselves.

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It was a miracle they weren't dead.

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There were other colleagues who had total breakdowns in the most humiliating, personal, embarrassing fashion possible in public.

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I mean, it was, and I think this is

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because the gap between the way that MPs are encouraged to present themselves to the public and who they really are

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is almost unsustainable for most people.

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It's mad because you're pretending to be this all-knowing, perfect, dynamic, confident, I've got the answers to everything, I know where we're going.

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The truth is, this is a country of 70 million people.

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Politicians don't really know what's going on.

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The idea that anybody actually understands what's going on in every hospital in this country is mad.

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And yet we pretend to the public, don't worry, I've got it fixed.

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I'm sorting out the x-rays in the Carlisle Infirmary.

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You're not sorting out the x-rays in the Carlisle Infirmary, are you?

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Final question, by the way, I could chat to you for a lot longer.

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I'm intrigued because a few years ago you admitted smoking opium at a wedding in Iran.

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What's opium like?

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Well, it didn't have much impact on me.

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So in this particular village, it's a polite thing.

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You're invited to the wedding and they pass it all the way around.

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So this thing got to me and I thought, I'm going to be polite.

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And I then set off up the hill

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and I thought I'm going to have this sort of strange out of body experience.

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But in fact, I had a very, very boring day.

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I was walking for 21 months across Asia, and it was one of the most boring days of my 21-month walk.

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Okay.

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Well, you've done a good job for the war on drugs there.

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Rory Stewart, genuine pleasure, and I'm sure this is going to do really well.

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I really enjoyed it.

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Thank you.

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Thank you very much indeed.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Rory Stewart reveals MPs have tried to kill themselves over job - ‘Miracle they aren't dead’ - Learn English Speaking with Video

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