MEMOIR

POLITICS ON THE EDGE 

by Rory Stewart (Jonathan Cape £22, 464pp)

Anyone with the slightest interest in politics should get a copy of Rory Stewart’s political memoir.

Not because he had a particularly long or even influential career: just nine years in Parliament and only months in the Cabinet. But you will learn more about the nature of Westminster machinations and how government actually works (or doesn’t) from this volume than from those of many more illustrious politicians. In terms of the quality of writing, there has been nothing to approach it since the diaries of Alan Clark (who never made it to the Cabinet at all).

But whereas Clark was a genuinely bad person — part of the attraction, perhaps — Stewart is a fundamentally good man, even if his self-belief, touching on the messianic, occasionally made him appear preposterous. This, combined with his extraordinary career before entering Parliament in 2010 — becoming a deputy governor of two Iraqi provinces at 30, while a foreign office official, and the author of an international best-seller about his earlier experiences in Afghanistan — made him the subject of deep jealousy among much longer-serving Conservative MPs with none of his talent or connections.

He doesn’t say that himself, but it clearly explains the behaviour, described here, of one of his colleagues, after Stewart disagreed with him about Iraq, telling him in the House of Commons corridor: ‘If you dare to speak to me like that again, I am going to punch you,’ and then, after a pause, ‘on the nose.’ Stewart then ‘wondered what it was going to be like to roll around with a 200lb, 60-year-old man, behind the Speaker’s Chair.’

This particular MP is an extreme example, but it was just part of Stewart’s rapid disillusionment: ‘Too many of the jokes in the tea rooms seemed to have the tone of prisoners laughing . . . Even four weeks in, I sensed more impotence, suspicion, envy, resentment, claustrophobia and schadenfreude than I had seen in any other profession.’

Stewart was as ambitious as any of them, probably more than most. This comes out disarmingly when he records asking the then leader of the opposition, David Cameron, whether, if he became an MP, ‘I might at some point be promoted to a minister’.

His fellow Old Etonian lectures him: ‘If you are lucky enough to find a seat, and be elected, you will find being a backbench Member of Parliament the greatest honour you can have in life.

‘I may be lucky enough to become prime minister, but when I cease to be prime minister I will return with great pride to the back benches as Member of Parliament for Witney for the rest of my life.’

Stewart goes on to record that after Cameron resigned as PM ‘and then almost immediately resigned from his seat on the backbenches, I learnt something more about him’.

Cameron did, in fact, put Stewart into government, at the lowest level (parliamentary under-secretary of state). It was under Theresa May that he prospered — she was much more in tune with his high-mindedness.

But despite his previous career as an official in the diplomatic service, some of Stewart’s most devastating passages are about the failings of the civil service, as he encountered them when he was Secretary of State for International Development.

Their indifference to how British taxpayers’ money was frittered away by corruption on the ground is laid bare here. And there is an extraordinary episode when, on coming into the job, he discovers that some of our largesse is funding municipal councils in north-west Syria.

‘Are not these enclaves controlled by jihadi factions?’ Stewart asks, getting the response from a civil servant ‘in her early 20s, “I think, Minister, that there are many different groups in these areas.” “So we are not funding jihadis?” “No, Minister.” ‘

Stewart then asks if any of them have visited the area, or had any staff there. No and no. But still, these officials spend many weeks obstructing his efforts to stop the money.

Later, film footage emerges of one of those funded by HMG, appearing on stage at an Al-Qaeda event. Stewart concludes by observing that our funding to these jihadis then ceased, but his officials ‘made no acknowledgment’ of their resistance to his (correct) demands.

If those civil servants thought that Stewart was just another here-today, gone-tomorrow minister, they were right. Within three months he had resigned, as he had promised he would if Boris Johnson became prime minister (he was subsequently expelled by Johnson from the Conservative Party for saying he would vote in Parliament against a so-called ‘No Deal’ Brexit).

Stewart is blisteringly self-lacerating about his failure to make it to the last two of the 2019 Conservative leadership campaign, after a disastrous performance in the final TV debate between the various candidates: ‘I had just performed a suicide routine. In one hour I had destroyed my hope of beating Boris . . . I sat in the green room still not quite able to understand what had occurred.’

He would never have beaten Johnson in the ballot of Conservative Party members, anyway. But we should grieve that he didn’t get that far, if only because his account of a fight to the political death against a man he despised would have been the most fitting way to end this riveting memoir.

There were several ‘potential failure points’ in the doomed Titan submersible – and a warning system probably alerted the five crew who perished shortly before the vessel imploded, Titanic director James Cameron has said.

A series of concerns were raised in recent years about the vessel’s carbon fiber hull – the cylinder which carried the five crew who perished – and its porthole, which was allegedly not certified to the immense depths Titan ventured to.

The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, even said the carbon fiber design broke a ‘rule’ and was accused of ignoring concerns from his own staff. 

Cameron, a renowned explorer who has traveled to the deepest known point in the ocean, said Titan had ‘three potential failure points’ and indicated that its ‘Achilles heel’ was the carbon fiber cylinder.

He added the hull was broken into ‘very small pieces’ after Titan imploded when the hull fractured because of the pressure. A warning system probably sounded an alert and the crew tried to ascend in the moment before the implosion, he added.

Concerns about the hull and porthole were also raised by OceanGate’s former head of marine operations, David Lochridge, in court documents in 2018. The filings state the viewport was ‘only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters’.

Cameron delivered a damning assessment of the Titan craft during a series of interviews following the grim news it had been destroyed during its mission.

He criticized the design for straying away from proven techniques in favor of experimental methods. 

‘There are three potential failure points and the investigation hopefully can localize it down to exactly what happened,’ he told Good Morning America.

‘The viewport in the front was an acrylic viewport. I’m told it was rated to less depth than they were diving to, which is one point. They also had two glass spheres on the sub, small glass spheres for floatation, which is a bad idea.’

Cameron didn’t clarify his statement about the ‘glass spheres’ but he said it was the carbon fiber hull that was the ‘weakest link’. 

‘If I had to put money down on what the finding will be, the Achilles heel of the sub was the composite cylinder that was the main hull that the people were inside,’ 

‘There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that’s what failed.’

Rush, who died in the Titan incident, said in a video posted online in 2021 that he had ‘broken some rules’ to create the vessel and added: ‘The carbon fiber and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that – well I did.’

He also said in 2020 that the hull had ‘showed signs of cyclical fatigue’. 

Carbon fiber is prone to delamination, the process whereby a material fractures into layers while put under pressure.

Cameron said: ‘The way it fails is it delaminates. You have to have a hull, a pressure hull, made out of a contiguous material like steel, or like titanium, which is the proven standard.’

‘This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack. And I think if that’s your idea of safety, then you’re doing it wrong. And they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, and it started to crack…

‘It’s our belief we understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.’

OceanGate has not shared a comment about reports into safety concerns about Titan since the incident.

The company had boasted in promotional material about Titan’s ‘Real Time Hull Health Monitoring’, which constantly checked the integrity of the vessel throughout the dive. The system used acoustic sensors and strain gauges to ‘analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure’.

But legal filings reveal Lochridge, the former director of marine operations, ‘expressed concern that this was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion—and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull.’

Cameron successfully reached the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, in 2012 using the Deepsea Challenger submersible.

It was only the fourth time the seven-mile descent to the Pacific sea bed has been made successfully – and the first time a man has made it the bottom and back since 1960.

The dive followed seven years of planning and design for the construction of the specialized sub which could withstand the immense pressure at the ocean floor. 

Titanic director and submersible expert James Cameron said he predicted Titan’s implosion days before the debris from the missing submersible was found, calling the search a ‘prolonged nightmarish charade’.

Mr Cameron, who has visited the world’s most famous seawreck 30 times, said the tragedy this week has parallels with the the Titanic disaster, where the captain repeatedly ignored warnings about an incoming iceberg but carried on at top speed.

The Titanic Five were killed instantly when the submersible suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ just 1,600ft from the bow of the wrecked ocean liner, the US Coast Guard announced yesterday. A remote operated submarine from a Canadian ship found debris on the ocean floor. 

But search and rescue officials say the men likely died on Sunday – before military planes using sonar buoys detected what they thought could have been SOS ‘banging’ sounds in the water. The US Navy said they heard a sound consistent with an implosion when communications were lost around two hours after they dived. The Navy passed on that information to the Coast Guard, an insider said.

Mr Cameron told BBC News that the Coast Guard search ‘felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff’.

‘I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it,’ he said.

According to court documents, safety concerns had previously been raised about the Titan submersible by a former employee of OceanGate. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, claimed wrongful dismissal after flagging worries about the company’s alleged ‘refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design’.

Mr Cameron said last night: ‘A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified and so on.

‘I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result It’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded — to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going around all around the world. I think it’s just astonishing, it’s really quite surreal’.

Mr Cameron said: ‘I felt in my bones what had happened. I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres.

‘For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone

‘We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings.’

The victims are OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French Navy veteran Paul-Henri (PH) Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19. 

‘The implosion would have generated a significant, broadband sound that the sonar buoys would have picked up,’ explained Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard at a press conference. 

James Cameron’s pointed message comes after it was revealed that emerged that OceanGate boss Rush had been warned years before that his ‘experimental approach’ could lead to a catastrophe – and in another interview he spoke about ‘breaking rules’ to make the submarine.

It would have been an instant death for the men, some of whom had paid $250,000 each to see the famous shipwreck. 

In a gut-wrenching blow for their families, experts say there is little prospect of recovering any of their remains. 

‘This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there. The debris is consistent of a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.. we’ll continue to work and search the area down there – but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time,’ Paul Hankin, a deep sea expert involved in the search, said. 

In a heartbreaking tribute, Richard Garriott, president of the Explorers Club, of which Harding and Nargeolet were both members, said that the men had been drawn to explore ‘in the name of meaningful science for the betterment of mankind.’

‘Our hearts are broken. I am so sorry to have to share this tragic news,’ Garriott announced. He said the club was ‘grateful for all our members and the scientific and exploration community around the world who have mobilized personnel and resources to support the search and rescue’.

Garriott described Harding as a ‘dear friend’ to himself and the club. ‘He holds several world records and has continued to push dragons off maps both in person and through supporting expeditions and worthy causes,’ he wrote. 

‘We’re heartbroken for the families, friends and colleagues of those who were lost. Their memories will be a blessing and will continue to inspire us in the name of science and exploration,’ Garriott said.

In addition to the vessel’s landing frame and rear cover that were the first pieces of debris detected, the ROV submarine also found fragments of the pressure hull – the main body of the submersible. 

‘The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber. Upon this determination we immediately notified the families. 

‘On behalf of the Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. 

‘I hope this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time,’ Rear Admiral Mauger said.

In its own statement, OceanGate said this afternoon: ‘We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.

‘These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. 

‘Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.’

The company added: ‘This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. 

‘The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission. 

‘We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families.

‘This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. 

‘We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time.’ 

Earlier, David Mearns, who was friends with two of the men on board, said the ‘only saving grace’ for the men was how quickly their deaths would have occurred. 

The world had been praying for a ‘miracle’ after rescuers estimated the vital oxygen supply would end at 7.08am EST (12.08pm UK time, 9.09pm Sydney) on Thursday.

Officials said the field had been found by Odysseus 6k, a remote operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the Canadian vessel, the Horizon Arctic, that can dive 20,000ft underwater. 

A glimmer of hope came yesterday when the Coast Guard confirmed consistent ‘banging’ noises had been detected by P-3 aircraft, but the search teams were unable to find the source of the sound, or confirm that they were the SOS signals the world had hoped for. 

The families of the five men on board the sub are yet to publicly react to news of the debris discovery.

Experts have for days warned of the possibility that the Titan had sprung a leak and imploded under the pressure, which is 400 times that experienced at sea level. 

‘They would be dead before they knew anything had even happened,’ L. David Marquet, a retired Navy nuclear submarine commander, said earlier this week. 

Earlier on Thursday, before the debris was found, Rear Admiral John Mauger, who coordinated the effort from Boston, said during an appearance on NBC’s Today show: ‘People’s will to live has to be accounted for.’ 

The submersible’s oxygen theoretically should have run out at 8am EST (1pm BST) Thursday, according to the 96 hours limit listed on OceanGate’s specs of the ship. 

The Titan submerged at 8am (1pm BST) and lost communications at 9.45am (2.45pm) but was not reported as missing to the US Coast Guard until 5.40pm (10.40pm). The sub was due to return to the Polar Prince ay 3pm EST (8pm BST) Sunday. 

Since Sunday night, there has been a frantic, international effort to find it and save the men on board.  

Kathleen Cosnett, a cousin of UK businessman Hamish Harding, 58, who was on the sub, said the eight-hour delay before contacting the authorities was ‘far too long’.

She told the Telegraph: ‘It’s very frightening. It took so long for them to get going to rescue them, it’s far too long. I would have thought three hours would be the bare minimum.’  

Titan lost communication on Sunday while about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland, during a voyage to the Titanic off the coast of Canada. The last ‘ping’ of its homing device was heard on Sunday afternoon – directly above the world’s most famous wreck.

A Canadian Navy ship carrying medics specializing in treating health issues relating to deep-sea diving arrived on the scene this morning on the HMCS Glace Bay. They also brought a hyperbaric chamber – which can be used for decompressing divers after they return to the surface. 

Above the wreck was flotilla of at least ten ships, two robot subs and several aircraft scanning the Atlantic for any sign of Titan as sonar continued to hear a banging noise from the depths.  A Royal Navy submariner, as well as equipment from a British company, was also sent to assist in the search.

Oceanographer and water search expert Dr David Gallo said earlier on Thursday: ‘It’s going to be almost impossible. We need a miracle — but miracles do happen’. 

But former Royal Navy Officer, Chris Parry, said as midday approached: ‘I’m afraid time’s up – I don’t think there’s any prospect of getting those people out alive now’. 

Rescuers were insistent that they would continue to look for the men even after the 96 hour oxygen window expired. 

As recently as Wednesday afternoon, Coast Guard response coordinator Captain Jamie Frederick for First Coast Guard District said: ‘This is a search and rescue mission, 100 per cent.’

Cameron Robbins’ devastated parents paid tribute to their ‘intense and driven’ son, who disappeared last month after jumping off a Bahamas party boat into shark infested waters. 

Speaking the day before a memorial for the 18-year-old, William and Shari Robbins, both 54, said they ‘appreciate’ the tributes being paid to their son. 

The couple described the high school baseball star as ‘funny and kind-hearted’ and ‘intense and driven’ to the New York Post. 

‘We are just mourning our son right now,’ Shari said. ‘We appreciate everyone’s support,’ added William. 

Their heartbreaking remarks come after chilling footage revealed a witness shouted the farewell ‘bye bye’ to the teenager after he jumped overboard on May 24. 

Robbins, 18, went missing after leaping from the party boat Blackbeard’s Revenge off uninhabited Athol Island while on a high school graduation trip. The search was called off two days later with no sign of the missing teen.

Video from the party boat shows the high school baseball star already in the water, with an indistinct white figure, possibly a shark, moving in the water near him. 

Screams go up from the crowd on board the boat, as a male is heard shouting: ‘This kid f***ing jumped off! Oh my f***ing God! Oh, shut the f*** up! Oh, bye, bye!’

‘Hey, grab the buoy!’ another person shouts, referring to a life preserver in the water. The video ends as Robbins swims away from the life preserver. 

Meanwhile, the Louisiana teen’s family paid tribute to his life in an obituary following a visit to the scene where he disappeared. 

In the online obituary, his family paid tribute to their ‘beloved grandson, son, brother and friend’ who ‘was a recent high school graduate of the University Lab School in Baton Rouge,’ Louisiana. 

The tribute says that Robbins was adopted shortly after his birth in November 2004, going on to participate ‘in any and every competitive activity that he could find, dominating numerous YMCA and church-league preschool team leagues.’

It says: ‘He eventually chose baseball as his first love. […] He was a tough player, battling back from multiple injuries, known to pitch through separated shoulders and broken hands. He hoped to continue his baseball career at the college level.’

His family says he had recently returned from a weekend fishing trip on the Louisiana Gulf Coast with his father and brother before he left for his graduation celebrations in the Bahamas.

In addition to being a sports lover, his family wrote ‘he loved his truck and country music, and was always a big star in the shower and with karaoke machines.

‘He was also an avid LSU fan regularly attending football, basketball and baseball games. Finally, he loved all things edible, especially his mother’s red beans and his grandmother’s spaghetti and meatballs. He made frequent late-night trips to his family’s pantry, where he consumed large quantities of fruity pebbles and popcorn.’ 

The tribute adds: ‘Though he left this world far too soon, he lived a life full of good friends and family He was funny and kind-hearted, but also intense and driven. He doted on his grandparents and he took pride in his work.

‘He will be missed desperately by his family and friends, who will carry their cherished memories of him to eternity.’

The family are holding a memorial service on Sunday, June 4, and have requested donations be made in his name to the charity – Christian Homes & Family Services in Abilene, Texas – an adoption agency.

On Friday, the mother of one of Robbins’ friends told Fox News that revealed that several students tried to grab him before he took the plunge but he broke free.

‘This was a booze cruise, and they were on their way back when this happened,’ the unnamed woman said.

‘My son texted me when it happened, saying, “Cameron jumped off. They can’t find him.” They were out there until 2, 3 the morning. It was terrible weather that night. The kids were cold, wet and traumatized.

‘The girls were in bikinis and bathing suits. The guys were giving them their shirts. It was a bad time to bring drunk 18-year-olds out into waters near this island where there’s nothing.’ 

Robbins had only been on the island mere hours before he joined the party cruise alongside dozens of recent graduates, who travelled to the Caribbean hotspot to celebrate finishing high school just days before the tragedy. 

But the mother said the other graduates were left in shock and disbelief after Robbins broke free and jumped into the water, leading to an exhaustive multi-day search that has since been called off.

Terrifying footage captured the moment Robbins was flung a life preserver by one of his fellow graduates, only for him to swim away from help as a shadowy image circled beneath.

The ominous video has fueled speculation he may have been attacked by a shark, and with no trace of the youngster, the multi-agency search for him was ended after two days.

Providing an update as the search was ended, Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) Commodore Raymond King confirmed that the area where Robbins went overboard is populated by a high number of sharks.

‘I can tell you that area where an individual reportedly jumped over, it’s an area that is really shark infested as well,’ he said.

‘It is so unfortunate, but I don’t want the family to lose hope.

‘The probability of survival decreases significantly particularly if a person did not have on a life vest and particularly if a person is perceived to be intoxicated.’

Before the operation was called off, the US Coast Guard deployed multiple search and rescue assets in response to obtaining assistance from the Royal Bahamas Defense Force.

The expansive search to find Robbins saw officials plot and scour a 325-square-mile area of the Caribbean Sea.

After the search for the teenager was ended, his heartbroken family travelled to the Bahamas to retrace his final movements. 

Speaking to WBRZ, United Cajun Navy Vice President Brian Trascher said: ‘It took a lot of strength for them to go out there and stay for a few days.

‘When we offered to take them out in a boat to the area where he went overboard and some of the area they were searching they went.

‘I know had to be very emotional for them, but they went and by Sunday they decided they wanted to go home.

‘Had they found a piece of clothing or any kind of clue, that would cause them to extend that 48-hour period, but if they don’t get any kind of indication then that’s usually when they call it off.’

Tributes have poured in for the teenager as the Baton Rouge community grapples with his disappearance.

His baseball coach, Justin Morgan, said: ‘Cameron is a kid who is truly loved by his teammates, teachers, and fellow classmates.

‘He is a fierce competitor on the baseball field. He is a hard worker both on and off of the playing field. Our school community is struggling right now but hoping for the very best.

‘Our thoughts and prayers have been and will remain with the Robbins family during this difficult time.’