Rory Stewart

speaker

24,987 appearances 93 recordings 4 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard yesterday

Rory Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 93 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 16.

Appearances

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The Rest Is Politics · 562. The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge · 12 Aug 2026 podcast

going into prisons. voice-verified

That was somebody who was a lawyer coming from the left. voice-verified

So the cumulative change and this is about populist politics from the left and from the right. voice-verified

Andy Burnham's playing into this too, right? voice-verified

In the end, Starmer decided to bring in David Gork and try to get a relatively technocratic solution to this. voice-verified

And of course Burnham senses this isn't popular. voice-verified

Well, there's two things you can do. voice-verified

You can either build many, many, many more prisons and where are you going to build them? voice-verified

Also seven seven billion seven billion quidowack. voice-verified

Absolutely incredibly expensive, very unpopular with the communities near which they're built. voice-verified

Or you can reduce sentence length. voice-verified

The reason why we have many more people in prison than in the Netherlands, where the Netherlands are actually offering us prison places because they're not using although they were, because they weren't using their prisons. voice-verified

But that's because the politicians have been prepared to have a row with the public. voice-verified

It's not that the Dutch voter wants people to have short sentences, it's that Dutch politicians have recognised that the only voice-verified

Way of controlling this is shorter sentences. voice-verified

And then the final thing, which is much, much better, community sentences and probation and looking after people when they leave prison so that we don't have this mad situation where seventy percent of people on short sentences reoffend and return to prison again. voice-verified

Fifty percent of all prisoners reoffend and return to prison. voice-verified

So that a lot of these numbers are just about the fact that we're not remotely looking after people when they leave prison. voice-verified

So it's an endless cycle effect where they're all going voice-verified

going back again, whereas places like Sweden have much, much lower reoffending rates. voice-verified

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