Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you!

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Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying:

‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that has changed more than me.’

Speaking on the podcast, James Forsyth tells Isabel Hardman that:

‘He knows that he is in the fight of his political life. He knows that the stakes for him in this referendum campaign are very high because what Boris needs to show that on a real matter of substance, he can persuade voters to trust his judgement.’

With the Eurovision finals this weekend, is it time us Brits started taking the contest more seriously? Fraser Nelson thinks so and he argues that the annual event serves up a mixture of music, politics and culture. Fraser, who is joined by fellow Eurovision fan Rob Lyons, from the Institute of Ideas, says that:

‘You can tell the politics of a country through their culture – not the high culture, the classical music. If you want to find out the differences, look at the pop music. That’s what we see in its glorious dimension on Eurovision night. There are two ways to find out what is happening in European politics: one is to follow all the debates in Parliament, the other is to tune in on Eurovision night and watch the voting.

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