Rory Stewart moans that British politicians aren’t paid enough

Recently, Rory Stewart argued that western politicians are “impoverished” on their lofty annual salaries of £93,904, attempting to excuse their corruption.

He ignored the generous expenses MPs claim from taxpayers, and critics have condemned what they view as a blatantly self-interested attempt to provide political cover for corruption. Since then, the Canary has spoken with Andrew Feinstein for his take on corruption in the UK government, the disgraced Mandelson, and his response to Rory Stewart.

Feinstein is a former ANC member alongside Nelson Mandela and has built his career fighting corruption linked to the global arms trade. He also challenged UK prime minister Keir Starmer in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency during the 2024 general election. His experience gives him a unique perspective on corruption.

And unsurprisingly, Feinstein was far from impressed at Rory Stewart’s desperate defence.

An existential moment in human history

Recent revelations involving Mandelson and public figures connected to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have exposed a sprawling web of corruption among powerful men. This elite group of politicians and royal family members have used women and girls, trading them around the world to serve their nefarious, self-interested agendas. Their actions reveal a disturbing pattern of exploitation at the highest levels of power. The extent of their abuse continues to outrage the global public.

Rory Stewart’s remarks compound the damage, showing disregard for the severe harms ordinary people suffer.

Andrew Feinstein — ‘From the belly of the corrupted beast’

Our own Joe Glenton recently gave his take on Rory Stewart’s desperate attempt to defend the indefensible, writing:

The average wage in the UK seems to be about £30,000. The mathematical geniuses among us will notice that that is…. quite a lot less than what MPs get paid.

It’s almost like Roderick James Nugent “Rory” Stewart – a humble Oxford educated one-time tutor to the future king of England, former army officer, and imperial governor of a province of Iraq – hasn’t got a fucking clue what he is talking about.

When we put Rory’s defence of ‘impoverished MPs’ to Feinstein, he responded with:

So that tells you everything you need to know about Rory Stewart, whose podcast, of course, is co-hosted by a war criminal in Alastair Campbell, who enabled Tony Blair’s extreme war profiteering and lied in order to get Britain into the invasion of Iraq. So I take that comment as coming from the belly of the corrupted beast.

To think that a political class, an MP, earning £94,000 a year before expenses, and as we all know, claim ridiculous expenses, is frankly an appalling insult to the vast majority of people in Britain. And if that’s what he thinks is impoverishment, then he needs to get his head out of the sand or out of the fancy restaurant he spends his life in and actually understand how many people in Britain are living right now.

Because in Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell’s Britain, we have more billionaires than at any time in this country’s history, while more families are having to use food banks to feed themselves than at any time since the end of the Second World War. And if he thinks the solution to that is to pay our mendacious, mediocre, corrupted politicians more money, then he’s even more stupid than I thought he was.

But at the same time, it’s important to say that I’ve experienced a totally corrupted political class in apartheid South Africa. And South Africa again now, 30 odd years after our democracy, has another corrupted political class running it. But we still managed to defeat the system of apartheid. We didn’t get rid of any of the economic problems. But simply by dint of the fact that we managed to defeat the apartheid state, it makes me think that enough committed people within a country around the world can bring fundamental political change.

We also asked Feinstein for his perspective on the importance of radical honesty and transparency in government. Referring to known war criminals and the recently exposed shadiness of Mandelson and co, he said:

Absolutely. I think we, just as responsible citizens, have a duty to expose the lies of our leaders, remembering that we elected them, that they exist because of the money that we pay to the state, and they’re ingratiating themselves and their billionaire friends and corporate donors. And I like the idea of radical truth, because if we are truthful about our political systems, we would have to admit that they are not fit for purpose and require fundamental change.

I mean in Britain as we speak, we have someone [Mandelson] who is and has been for decades incredibly powerful and influential in our politics. Not only being close friends with a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker but actually giving information to this person that is then used in this web of influence and deceit.

And all the while, we are participating in conflict and often causing conflict around the world from which again, the same elites profit. And the corollary of that is that our own democratic space is closing so rapidly because it’s the only way you can maintain such a totally corrupted system is if you reduce democracy, you reduce civil rights.

And the companies that are central to these conflicts now, the AI companies, the big tech companies, are exactly the same companies who are central to the erosion of our democracies, are central to the authoritarianism that is becoming a part of our daily lives in the US and Britain and in much of Europe. And so, by being aware of what we’re doing in the rest of the world, we’re also becoming aware of what is being done to us by our own leaders. We’re at an existential moment in human history. And if we don’t inform ourselves and challenge our political and economic elite who have become one and the same thing, we’re effectively consigning our countries to despotism. So that’s really the scale of the moment we’re in.

The agency to decide how our world is organised

Finally, Feinstein finished with a rallying cry to voters and activists across the country:

And I think that’s what we need to do. We need to realise that one of the things that the sort of late era neoliberal capitalism does is it intentionally stifles our imaginations and our creativity to make us believe there is no alternative. As Margaret Thatcher famously and evilly said, to believe that this is the only way the world can be organised. And it’s not. We have the agency to decide how our world should be organised and we need to take that agency.

Referring to his upcoming book set for release in Autumn this year, he added:

And this book [Making a Killing] is an attempt to give people the information and to propose some of the ways in which we can take agency about something that is destroying our societies and our politics. And I’m always reminded when people feel very depressed and defeated, which of course I sometimes do too, I’m always reminded of what Nelson Mandela said when he was asked how he retained hope in an apartheid prison and in very dark and depressing days.

And he [Mandela] said, because anything is always impossible only until it’s done.

And I think we have the ability, we have the brains amongst us ordinary people to change the world profoundly and fundamentally. And I hope that this book will be a very small contribution towards that.

Rory Stewart and his neoliberal ilk can consider themselves ‘told’ after this brilliant takedown from a man who makes fighting corruption his day job.

Featured image via the Canary