Lorries backing up in Kent, a Mars bar shortage, and no more Rome city breaks – these are just some of the things that we have been warned about when it comes to a no deal Brexit. But what will really happen? In this week’s cover piece, Ross Clark weighs up the pros and the cons. It’s fairly neutral, but on the podcast, we hear from two people who are anything but. Lord Peter Lilley, Tory MP, has said that a no-deal Brexit would be better than the status quo; he’s joined by Ian Dunt, editor of politics.co.uk, who thinks that it would be an ‘unmitigated disaster’. It was a pretty fiery exchange from the two Brexit experts – the debate ranged from nuclear isotopes to Chinese kettles. Tune in to make your own mind up about no deal.
And while Russia may have been behind Trump’s electoral victory, poisoned the Skripals, and sustained Syria’s civil war, is China actually the bigger threat? In this week’s issue, Brendan Simms and K.C. Lin explain that it might be – and argue that it’s time for the British government to pay attention. Does it even have a coherent China policy? We hear from Tom Tugendhat MP, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and Professor Kerry Brown, China expert at King’s College London. The short answer is, ‘no’. But Kerry warns that we may be about to find out what the public thinks of China:
‘I suspect it’s gonna be some big investment in infrastructure that comes from China, there will be a problem, and we’ll immediately find out whether there are issues about public opinion here. We need to know what we really feel about China.’
And it wouldn’t be a Spectator Podcast without a bit of Cosmo Landesman on sex. This week, he writes about the weird British obsession with aristocrats going off the rails – especially, with the idea of posh sex parties. From the Profumo affair to the Denning Report, just why are we so fascinated by posh people having sex? Cosmo joins the podcast with Sophia Money-Coutts, author and Sunday Telegraph columnist to get to the bottom of it.
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