(personal underlines)
(LBC - Any doubt? I would say: That's all folks...music)
Rory Stewart is no match for J.D. Vance
I was highly amused to see that JD Vance has administered a right old ‘fagging’ – or whatever public school boys call it – to the ghastly Rory Stewart. Better known in some quarters as ‘Florence of Belgravia’, Stewart has developed a habit of dashing about in a dish-dash in search of broadcasting dosh, pouting all the while like an ambitious member of an all-boy fifth-form drama club determined to play Portia. Thanks to his inability to avoid spouting off, Stewart has embroiled himself in a spat on X with the new vice president of the US, JD Vance.
In an interview with Fox News last week, Vance said:
It’s a very Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.
Stewart couldn’t help himself, and opined on X that this was ‘a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love’. To which Vance answered – thrillingly: ‘The problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.’
The reason I found this thrilling is because working-class people who have become successful in their field generally don’t rub their achievements in the faces of their less talented but more privileged colleagues. Even despite the huge handicap we started with, and the fact that our class-ridden society has seen social mobility – never going great guns – savagely reversing in recent years.
There are several reasons why we meritocrats don’t crow more in the manner of Vance. American success stories of humble origin are prouder; they’re less liable than Brits to make themselves into cuddly mascots who accentuate the worst alleged qualities of their class, like the ghastly pugilist and toilet-seat-breaker John Prescott. Also, no one wants to be called ‘chippy’ – a slur only ever used to describe the white section of the proletariat who complain about the unfair set up, I’ve noticed – probably stemming from plain cowardice at the wrath that would descend on the mockers should they sneer at anyone non-white. Also, meritocrats by their very nature swerve anything that sounds like our old mate the politics of envy.
Vance is not just the second most powerful man in the world’s most powerful nation, but was born into poverty and abuse, raised by his grandparents due to his mother’s drug addiction. He describes himself as a ‘Scots-Irish hillbilly’ from the Appalachian region and might well have been described as ‘white trash’ by his alleged betters – a ‘deplorable’ (Clinton, H) or ‘garbage’ (Biden) at least. As is often the way of those who are poor enough to be patriots, he joined the military as a teenager, afterwards utilising the excellent GI Bill to study political science and philosophy and then attending Yale Law School. During his first year, he began his majestic memoir, the best-selling Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, published in 2016. He’s 40 years old.
Rory Stewart’s CV, at the age of 52, isn’t quite so striking – and very predicable for one literally to the manor born. He was expensively educated at Eton and Oxford. He joined the diplomatic service and became an MP. He has, over the years, carved himself a cushy billet with the BBC, making several series: The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia; Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart and Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland. He hosted the Radio 4 podcast The Long History Of Argument as well as cosying up to the ghastly Alastair Campbell for The Rest Is Politics, best described as the tubular bells of podcasts.
Stewart is a cut-and-dried, dyed-in-the-wool member of the establishment. He’s not some exotic outlier, despite his liking for posing in the flowing robes of Araby like someone who was enthralled by too many Fry’s Turkish Delight commercials at an impressionable age.
That’s why it was so typically cloth-eared of him to take on a man like Vance: of all the dumb things anyone can do, a privileged person trying to appear cleverer than an under-privileged person who has made it big has to be the dumbest. When he brought up the IQ thing, Vance was basically saying ‘You, like many of your kind, had a great start in life, and you are still nowhere near as smart as me.’ Rory Stewart’s dad was – surprise! – a diplomat and high-flying government functionary. This brings to mind something Mrs T’s character says in the new Thatcher/Walden drama Brian and Maggie about some Tory MPs: ‘There are so many of them who didn’t earn their place; they knew someone who knew someone, and they bluff their way through.’
It’s a fact: if you reach the top of your profession without having had family money, a famous name or inside help, you are a really exceptional person. You’re far cleverer than those who had a head start. It’s so simple that saying it aloud – as Vance did – can sound quite shocking and rude. I’d love to know how Stewart will react; maybe he’ll even use this opportunity to keep those luscious lips buttoned and learn something rather than ceaselessly offering his precious opinion and getting it wrong.
Maybe all those – from actors to journalists – who haven’t made it totally on merit might learn something here. A handy little momento mori when your head gets a little too big might be to look in the bathroom mirror and say ‘I am Brooklyn Beckham…’ in the manner of the Spartacus film highlight. That way, you will hopefully avoid the curse of Stewart, flouncing through life thinking you’re something special when the best that can be said of you is that you had a very good start in life. And make the best of your hand-me-down name while you can, because AI is no respecter of lucky sperm, I’ll wager – and no one’s easier to replace than someone who didn’t make it on merit.
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