He said that despite being “quite critical of colleagues” he now looked back on his time in Parliament and realised “I was as bad, if not worse, than all of them”. Mr Stewart eventually rose to international development secretary under Theresa May, though he only served three months in the post before she resigned.

“And so, I began to feel that I was being made, in my early 40s, into some kind of child.” “I would find myself sort of creepily trying to sit next to David Cameron at lunch, and I’d send these texts saying ‘congratulations on your latest policy’ that I didn’t really believe in. “If 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,” he said. Mr Stewart said that he responded by trying to ingratiate himself with the former prime minister and that “this is why I ended up despising myself”.

He said that George Osborne, the then chancellor, had told him beforehand that if he did so he would remain a backbencher for at least the next five years. Mr Stewart, who was elected in 2010, has told how he had an offer of promotion to become a minister withdrawn after he rebelled against the Government in one vote.Įarly on in his Commons career he voted against David Cameron’s plans to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber. He added that Parliament was dominated by “a group of people who are very, very bitter” and who “feel that their basic mission in life is to try to humiliate others”. In an interview with GB News he said that becoming an MP means “nobody takes you seriously” and that Westminster had turned him “into some kind of child”. Rory Stewart, who served as international development secretary, said he had praised policies “that I didn’t really believe in” to try and get a seat at the top table. A former Tory Cabinet minister has admitted that he acted “creepily” in the pursuit of a promotion and said he “ended up despising” himself when in Parliament.

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