1/
Rory Stewart has gone walkabout.... 🚶♂️
He has ideas on Brexit and other things...
"Our leaders either don’t understand or don’t care what they’re doing to people"
thetimes.co.uk/article/rory-s…
2/
"At the moment I tend to be worried when I wake up at 3am about whether this no-deal Brexit episode suggests there are people in government who either don’t understand what they are doing or don’t care"
3/
He decided to set out on a journey across Britain to find out what the country really thought.
He spent time in Northern Ireland, the north of England, and the East End of London, where he arrived shortly after yet another knife attack.
4/
In Northern Ireland he found a fragile peace still holding, but signs of potential conflict.
"It was an extraordinary eye-opener from the time I spent in Derry & Enniskillen because to see the 14ft brick walls....
...you got the sense that peace there is very fragile"
5/
In Enniskillen, the entire farming economy was dependent on trade with the Republic.
85% of the sheep went to abattoirs across the border.
It's a reminder that nationalism is about borders.
The line on the map that says:
"This is us, this is you"
6/
Everyone has deeply neglected about 10% of our population, whom I saw very directly when I was prisons minister, 50% of whom had reading ages under 11, and 40% of whom had been in care.
7/
I realised that nobody was really speaking for them, not just the Conservatives, not Labour either, because by definition most of these people don’t vote.
In fact almost none of them vote.
8/
Rory Stewart is returning to with a project....
Stopping a no-deal Brexit and explaining what will happen when it's stopped.
1. Extension to 31st October.
The only way to heal is through compromise.
2. #CitizensAssembly
Similar to the Irish one on abortion.
9/
One way or another it seems that Rory Stewart has overcome his moment of self-doubt and is back in the political mainstream, trying to work out solutions for a country which he sees as broken but which he still believes can be fixed.
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