RORY STEWART has published more details of who funded his Tory leadership bid. 

“Rory for leader” failed, but he built his Tory profile and won the hearts of supposedly non-Tory pundits. So it’s worth thinking a bit more about what Stewart represents. 

The Watergate affair, when reporters exposed corruption and caused the downfall of president Richard Nixon, is universally seen as one of the highest pinnacles of journalism. 

The reporters’ wisdom was distilled in a three-word phrase: “Follow the money.” But for some reason, political reporters rarely do. The money Stewart gathered behind him must show something.

I’m certainly not saying Stewart is Nixon. He hasn’t illegally bugged his opponents or launched a vast secret destabilisation and spying campaign against domestic protesters or a secret war in Cambodia. 

Stewart just did some surprising videos and a meeting in a tent. But what I am saying is the money shows Stewart has a mildly “maverick” act, covering a very mainstream Tory politics.  

Just the fact that Stewart raised £150,000 in £10,000 and £5,000 donations for his campaign in a few short months tells you this is not an “insurgent” campaign.

Stewart says Edward Cadogan gave £10,000 for his leadership bid. Cadogan is better known by his title — Viscount Chelsea. 

In the absurd cod-medieval dance of the British system, a viscount stands directly below an earl and above a baron. You can also call him Lord Chelsea. 

You get the idea: he is the lord of one of the poshest and richest bits of London. Hence very posh and very rich. 

Edward Cadogan is the son of Charles Cadogan, the billionaire 8th Earl of Cadogan. He and his family are the 17th richest people in the UK, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. 

Their £6 billion family firm, Cadogan Estates, owns 93 acres of Kensington and Chelsea. Edward Cadogan works for his dad in the family firm. The bulk of the property is inherited, having been in the family for around 300 years.

Eton-educated Tory Rory getting funded by an aristocrat who works for his billionaire dad says this isn’t some kind of meritocratic breakthrough. 

Stewart might walk around Britain like some inquisitive imperial administrator investigating “native” opinion, but he does so as an emissary of the most Establishment bits of the Establishment. 

Stewart also got £10,000 for his leadership campaign from a company called Spartan Advisers. This company is owned and controlled by Richard Faber. He works for the Barclay brothers — the billionaire twins who own the Telegraph. 

Faber was married to Frederick Barclay’s daughter. They have since divorced, but Faber continues working in Barclay companies and is widely viewed as a spokesman for the Barclays. 

Perhaps Faber decided to donate to the Stewart campaign by himself. But to me this suggests that, while the Barclay brothers back Boris Johnson through the Telegraph, their associate Faber is funding Stewart as a small experiment in dressing Toryism in a different guise. 

As previously reported, other donations to Stewart’s leadership include £10,000 from Khaled Said, son of billionaire arms dealer Wafic Said. 

Wafic made a huge fortune arranging arms sales from Britain to Saudi Arabia. Said’s family are big Tory donors. Stewart also raised £10,000 from British-based Lev Mikheev, another long-term Tory donor who made big money as a financier in the land of his birth, Russia. 

All told, Stewart’s donations are from the “ultra high net worth” individuals, investors and an arms dealer’s family: he was funded by typical Tory funders, because he is a typical Tory. The bigger mystery is why some leading commentators convinced themselves he is something else.  

A whole swathe of “liberal” pundits thought Stewart was the bee’s knees. 

David Aaronovitch bizarrely suggested that it was “obvious” that Britain should be governed by a “party/alliance” containing Stewart alongside the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson and Labour’s Keir Starmer. Many other supposedly non-Tory pundits seemed to swoon over Stewart. 

But you don’t even have to look through his funding to see Stewart is nowhere near Starmer. The TheyWorkForYou website relies on actual voting patterns rather than the passing crushes of pundits, and puts where Stewart stands succinctly: “Rory Stewart is a Conservative MP, and on the vast majority of issues votes the same way as other Conservative MPs” — that means for the bedroom tax, welfare cuts and austerity.  

Stewart isn’t even on the liberal pundits’ side on their favourite issue, Brexit. He is for Theresa May’s Brexit deal and against a second referendum. 

So why the big crush? There is just a desperation among the pundits to find “nice Tories,” even though they are as rare as hen’s teeth. 

Partly this seems to be because they accept the Tories are our natural rulers, so in a rather craven way they are looking for a “nice face” in the boss class. 

Partly it is because they have worked themselves into such a frenzy about Jeremy Corbyn being somehow equivalent to Charles Manson being in charge of Labour that they are driven to look for comfort in the Conservatives, and so force themselves to be taken in by Stewart’s quizzical Eton air and shallow gestures. 

Where’s the beef?

THE “centrist” MPs who broke away from Labour and the Tories are in turn breaking away from each other.

Their fabled “middle ground” of voters yearning for a new centrist party only existed in the media, not the ballot booths.  

Stung by unpopularity, the faction is turning into fractions. In the latest move, ex-Tory Heidi Allen has joined ex-Labour MPs Angela Smith, John Woodcock, Gavin Shuker and Luciana Berger to form “The Independents” — a tiny, pointless rival to the already tiny and pointless “Change UK” led by ex-Tory Anna Soubry with ex-Labour Chris Leslie and some others I can’t remember.

Who could support this pointless move? Allen says in the latest Register of MPs’ Interests that she got £5,000 of support from David Gunner.  

He is the joint chief executive of Dovecote Park, the meat processing firm that supplies Waitrose with beef and venison. Being supported by the man behind the meat at Waitrose seems somehow appropriate for centrism, a kind of upmarket consumer politics.