Rory Stewart

James was a friend of mine in Parliament.

He became an MP in 2015.

Before that, he was a long-time member of the London Assembly.

He was also a territorial army officer for a long time and is a colonel in the military.

He comes from a very interesting background, which we can talk about a little bit at the beginning.

There are persistent rumors that he might be our future mayor of London.

And he was also, for our listeners, our most favorite potential Tory leadership candidate in

Every time, literally, when we went round, it's true, isn't it?

We went round doing these live tours, literally 4,000, 5,000 people, including the O2, which is only 12,000 people.

And we'd ask them who they wanted to be the Tory leadership candidate, Generic, Badenoch or you.

And you would win like 90% of the time.

To defeat.

But interesting.

I mean, I concluded when the same thing happened to me that potentially Michael Gove and Grant Shapps were up to dirty tricks.

You did not conclude that Robert Jenrick was playing clever games with you.

How we meant to imagine, this is pretty amazing, right?

This is your dad is meeting, marrying your mum in, I suppose, 1967, 68, right?

So this is... Actually, the meeting and me came well before the marriage, but that's another... Brilliant, okay.

But anyway, let's say 67, 68.

And this feels quite kind of summer of love, hippie, liberal...