Podcast: The lure of the crowd, anti-Semitism and Cameron’s uncertain future

Hell, as one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters said, is other people. Unless, that is, you happen to be British and born after about 1980, in which case hell is the opposite: being alone for more than about five minutes. In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Ross Clark looks at the rise of crowd culture. We have succumbed to the lure of the crowd, he says. Lara Prendergast suggests social media is to blame.

In this week’s Spectator, Melanie Phillips argues that anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. The silence from the political class in the face of this is appalling. Douglas Murray and Ben Soffa, secretary for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, discuss the rise of anti-Semitism, and how it is linked to the events unfolding in the Middle East.

And finally, could this be David Cameron’s last summer in politics? In his column this week, James Forsyth suggests it might be. Once the Scottish referendum is over, the party leaders face a battle for which none seems fully prepared. James discusses both the election and the Scottish referendum with Alex Massie in the final section of the podcast.

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The View from 22 podcast

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