Tangled up in blue

A former minister exposes the 'shameful state' of Britain's Tory administration in this brilliant account of dysfunctional rule

- Luke Harding

Soon after he was elected as a Conservative MP, Rory Stewart tried to sit down next to a party colleague. "This seat is reserved," growled at him. Stewart pointed out there was no "prayer card" in the brass holder at the back of the seat, meaning it was free. The unnamed Tory glowered. "Why don't you just fuck off," he told Stewart.

Stewart's memoir of his nine years in British politics is an excoriating account of a dysfunctional governing system. At every level - backbench MP, minister, permanent secretary Stewart finds shallowness where there should be depth, vapidity instead of seriousness. His book is a brilliant insider portrait of a nation in decline, penned by an exasperated modern Boswell.

Educated at Eton, and the son of a British spook, Stewart governed an Iraqi province after the US-UK led invasion. He set up a charity in Kabul and took up a chair at Harvard. In 2009, filled with the idea of public service, he decided to stand for parliament. The following year he was elected, a newbie politician with a closeup view of David Cameron's coalition government.

Disillusionment was swift. MPs were uninterested in policy, he discovered. Instead they were obsessed with scandal. Cameron made speeches about diversity. But he filled his private office with white-shirted old Etonians.