Yesterday's Radio 3 broadcast reminded us of the loss to British politics of the man who could have been a great Foreign Secretary and was, for all too brief a time, a Prisons Minister who could have made a dramatic difference to the treatment of prisoners and therefore the level of recidivism. To Michael Berkeley he expressed no regrets at leaving the political scene, though one suspects that this is mainly because of the depths to which Johnson and his cronies have dragged it. Stewart is still interested enough in politics in general to have been teaching the subject at Yale.
At the same time, he has been actively supporting the charity he and his wife set up in Afghanistan with the Prince of Wales and whose future they are negotiating with the Taliban administration. He and his family are now on the way to a new challenge, a rebuilding project in Jordan which will give much-needed employment to some displaced Palestinians. This could put him in more danger than any of his previous adventures, given the determination of some extremists to deny Palestinians any chance of making a living.
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