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Former Tory MP Rory Stewart thought he was a politician “so bad” and felt like a fraud, he told an audience in Hay Festival on Saturday.
Asked if he would consider returning to politics, he said he found being a politician “personally very, very unpleasant” and “he doesn’t like it”, adding: “I feel like a fraud all the time, the whole series of ways.”
He said maintaining the image of working in three places at once – his Penrith and Borders constituency, Parliament and abroad as part of ministerial duties – as an MP was one such example.
He was expected to be in his constituency “full-time, focusing on the things that really matter” to voters.
“I am also a legislator in Parliament and everyone expects me to be 350 miles away from Cumbria in Westminster to consider legislation and vote on legislation.
“I’m also the minister for Africa and everyone expects me to be in South Sudan, worrying about the delivery of aid and how we’re dealing with the civil war.”
Stewart, 51, who was minister for Africa for six months between June 2017 and January 2018, said he could not “do it all” and be in three places at once.
Yet “on social media, I pretend to be all three at the same time. I’m tweeting, “Here I am in South Sudan with a warlord”, “Here I am in Cumbria with a farmer”, “Here I am in Westminster looking at legislation”, right? And at no point am I actually with my family or going to Pret or doing any of the things I might want to do.
He said he also felt like a “total fraud” when dealing with audiences, including at the festival on Saturday.
“I hate this,” he said, because he thinks he’s on a “tightrope” all the time. “I can chat, I can dance around, I can sell you ideas, maybe I can even get you to vote for me, but I’m aware that the situation is fundamentally unstable, that at some point, one or 10 or 20 or 100 of you will wake up and be like, “Who is this fool? Why am I listening to it? He is a fraud, he is a hypocrite.
Stewart also said that for the first time in his life he “briefly considered” suicide after telling a reporter that some areas of his constituency are “quite primitive, people hold their trousers up with string”.
Looking back, he felt he had a “very overreaction” as most of his constituents “really didn’t care and thought it was quite funny”.
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