This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

This is a Saturday edition of Spectator Coffee House Shots.

I'm James Kirkup, a sometime Spectator writer, also sometimes run a think tank.

I'm very pleased to be joined today by Rory Stewart.

So, Rory, I suppose to say a little bit about how this conversation came about.

It happens because you've been talking about your politics and your ambitions, and you said at some point recently, when someone asked you to describe your politics, you said you were a politician of the radical centre.

And I sent you a WhatsApp message about this because I run a think tank that describes itself as the think

tank of the radical centre. So should we start with that? What do you mean by the radical centre? Where is

the centre of politics? So the centre of politics is about unity. It's about reaching across, but it's radical because it's not a fudge or a grey area in the middle. It's not a weak place. It's a very strong place to be because you are taking the energy from the right and the left. And you're focusing on the issues which are at the heart of the centre and for me

they're about creating a britain which is if i sound a bit sound bitey for a moment which is fair

which is green and which is unified that's all that's all good that's nice that that sounds like

reaching out across party lines about trying to find points of consensus with people outside the Conservative Party.

But the reason we're running this conversation is because you're running to be leader of the Conservative Party.

So is there – isn't there a bit of a contradiction in that?

I mean, to get this job, you need the support of conservatives, but you're talking an awful lot about the need to reach out to non-conservatives.

In order to have a conservative government, in order to beat Jeremy Corbyn, get Brexit done, in order to unify the country, which are the three things that people want.

We have to be able to listen to people. We have to be able to win an election.

And winning an election means listening to everybody, talking to everybody.

I'm at the moment doing walks around Britain, and what I'm doing through those walks is walking around divided

communities, communities that can often feel divided between north and south or between Scotland

and England or between young and old or between different ethnic groups. And in every case,

what I'm finding is that if you move into the particular issues that really matter, GP waiting times, safety on the streets, the fact that you can't afford to rent a house if you live in Lewisham or Barking,

...