Rory Stewart Is No Match For JD Vance

A Reply to Julie Burchill Of The Spectator

Dear Julie Burchill,

Ah, The Spectator—where irony sips a gin and tonic and pretends it’s not at the country club. Your recent article, "Rory Stewart is No Match for J.D. Vance," was quite the literary feat. It’s not often one gets to witness a seasoned columnist attempt Olympic-level mental gymnastics while convincing readers that the Vice President of the United States is, somehow, still an anti-establishment hero. Bravo.

It takes some impressive rhetorical acrobatics to sell the idea that J.D. Vance is still a scrappy underdog battling against privilege. The man is backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, has navigated politics with the ease of someone who’s been handed a VIP pass, and now sits a heartbeat away from the nuclear codes—but sure, let’s all pretend he’s still a coal-dusted hillbilly fending off the Etonian overlords. I assume next week’s article will be about how Rishi Sunak is actually a struggling single mum.

What makes your argument particularly amusing is that it hinges on one of the oldest, laziest tricks in the populist playbook: the idea that power is bad when the other side holds it, but totally fine when your side does. You rail against Stewart as the embodiment of elite excess while conveniently ignoring that Vance is just another breed of elite—one that happens to wear cowboy boots while cutting tax deals for billionaires. It’s a familiar con, repackaged for a new audience: paint one politician as an out-of-touch aristocrat while dressing up another as an everyman, even when both are creatures of the establishment.

Let’s be real—Vance is as entrenched in elite power as anyone in Washington. His Senate run wasn’t some grassroots, fight-the-system insurgency; it was bankrolled by Peter Thiel and the same dark-money networks that shape modern American conservatism. His ascent to the vice presidency wasn’t some organic rise driven by the will of the people—it was the result of careful grooming, calculated ideological shifts, and a keen awareness of where power was shifting within the Republican Party. If he had stuck to his original anti-Trump stance, he’d be just another forgotten commentator. Instead, he flipped, and he was rewarded handsomely for it.

Meanwhile, Rory Stewart—despite his privileged background—actually did the work. He didn’t just write about hardship, he governed through it. He served in war zones. He was put in charge of entire provinces in Iraq and Afghanistan at an age when Vance was still figuring out his political brand. He tackled real policy, not just grievance-laced monologues on cable news. And yet, in your world, none of this matters. All that counts is that Stewart went to the “wrong” schools, spoke with the “wrong” accent, and failed to master the populist art of dumbing himself down for mass consumption.

Then there’s Vance’s cutting remark about Stewart’s IQ being 110 but thinking it’s 130. Ah, the great political debate technique of our time: sneering at intelligence. Once upon a time, people valued competence, expertise, and yes—intellectualism or even I might dare say journalism. Now, the new right has embraced a peculiar obsession with tearing down anyone who displays actual knowledge or independent thought. This is the movement that rages against “experts” while electing Heritage Foundation backed funded senators to lecture the public about being “real Americans.” It’s a peculiar trick, to cast yourself as an outsider while attending Yale and collecting Silicon Valley checks, but Vance has managed it spectacularly.

If Stewart’s crime is overestimating his IQ, then Vance’s is underestimating how obvious his opportunism is. The man is not a political philosopher; he is a marketing strategist. He saw which way the wind was blowing and rebranded accordingly. His shift from Never-Trump is a Nazi conservative to MAGA nationalist wasn’t some grand ideological awakening—it was a business decision. And it worked. But let’s not pretend that someone who so effortlessly reinvented himself in service of power is somehow the antidote to elite excess.

But here’s the real kicker, Julie—your entire article hinges on the tired trope of “the elites vs. the real people,” but conveniently ignores that Vance is now every bit as entrenched in power as the so-called establishment he rails against. The only difference? He wears a trucker hat while doing it. The right-wing populist grift is built on selling the fantasy that there is a “good elite” and a “bad elite.” The bad ones read books, speak multiple languages, and take nuanced positions on foreign policy. The good ones pretend to hate the system while using it to their full advantage. This is how we get people like Vance—hand-picked by billionaires, propped up by the Heritage Foundation machine—still being framed as an anti-establishment warrior.

Stewart’s great sin, in your eyes, is that he engages in serious, measured discussions on governance rather than pumping out Fox News soundbites. His mistake is that he doesn’t perform working-class authenticity as a party trick. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. Unlike Vance, he hasn’t rebranded himself every few years to match the mood of the billionaire class. He’s remained consistent in his worldview, even when it’s cost him politically. That, in my book, is far more admirable than someone who changes ideological stripes whenever it suits their ambitions.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a battle between a plucky, working-class hero and a detached aristocrat. It’s a contest between a man who has demonstrated competence and a man who has demonstrated an exceptional talent for self-promotion. The true mark of a leader isn’t where they started—it’s how they wield power once they have it. And when given that test, I’d take someone with actual governing experience over a man whose greatest skill is knowing when to pivot.

What’s particularly galling is that you seem to recognise that Vance has won, yet pretend it was an underdog victory rather than the carefully orchestrated rise of a man who made all the right moves at the right time, for the right amount of $$. The reality is, you don’t actually oppose elites—you just prefer a different type of elite. You don’t mind power, so long as it’s power that plays to your ideological preference$. That’s why Vance gets a pass, while Stewart—who actually engaged with governance rather than marketing himself as an angry outsider—is dismissed as a relic of a failed establishment.

The biggest irony here is that this debate shouldn’t even be necessary. Once upon a time, people valued leadership, intelligence, competence, and integrity. Now, the standard has shifted: anger is mistaken for authenticity, cynicism for wisdom, and performance for leadership. In that climate, it’s no surprise that Vance has thrived. But let’s not pretend that makes him the better man. It just makes him the more useful idiot.

Yours sincerely,

We Value Substance Over Slogans—And Prefer Leaders Who Govern Over Those Who Grandstand.

Willy And Bill

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