William Moore is features editor of The Spectator
45 min listen
First: an economic reckoning is looming ‘Britain’s numbers… don’t add up’, says economics editor Michael Simmons. We are ‘an ageing population with too few taxpayers’. ‘If the picture looks bad now,’ he warns, ‘the next few years will be disastrous.’ Governments have consistently spent more than they raised; Britain’s debt costs ‘are the worst in
50 min listen
First: Putin has set a trap for Europe and Ukraine ‘Though you wouldn’t know from the smiles in the White House this week… a trap has been set by Vladimir Putin to split the United States from its European allies,’ warns Owen Matthews. The Russian President wants to make a deal with Donald Trump, but
38 min listen
First: how Merkel killed the European dream ‘Ten years ago,’ Lisa Haseldine says, ‘Angela Merkel told the German press what she was going to do about the swell of Syrian refugees heading to Europe’: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – we can handle it. With these words, ‘she ushered in a new era of uncontrolled mass migration’.
17 min listen
Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman, for the cover piece of the Spectator this week. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun
46 min listen
First: Nigel Farage is winning over women Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun to change’.
39 min listen
First: the new era of censorship A year ago, John Power notes, the UK was consumed by race riots precipitated by online rumours about the perpetrator of the Southport atrocity. This summer, there have been protests, but ‘something is different’. With the introduction of the Online Safety Act, ‘the government is exerting far greater control
44 min listen
First up: how private equity is ruining Britain Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children’s homes owned by PE has doubled in the last
49 min listen
First up: how the Bank of England wrecked the economy Britain’s economy is teetering on the brink of a deep fiscal hole, created by billions of pounds of unfunded spending – never-ending health promises, a spiralling welfare bill and a triple lock on the state pension, which will cost three times as much as originally
44 min listen
This week: Peerless – the purge of the hereditary peers For this week’s cover, Charles Moore declares that the hereditary principle in Parliament is dead. Even though he lacks ‘a New Model Army’ to enforce the chamber’s full abolition, Keir Starmer is removing the hereditary peers. In doing so, he creates more room, reduces the
46 min listen
This week: one year of Labour – the verdict In the magazine this week Tim Shipman declares his verdict on Keir Starmer’s Labour government as we approach the first anniversary of their election victory. One year on, some of Labour’s most notable policies have been completely changed – from the u-turn over winter fuel allowance
45 min listen
This week: war and peace Despite initial concerns, the ‘Complete and Total CEASEFIRE’ – according to Donald Trump – appears to be holding. Tom Gross writes this week’s cover piece and argues that a weakened Iran offers hope for the whole Middle East. But how? He joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside Gregg Carlstrom,
46 min listen
Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister’s perilous position This week, our new political editor Tim Shipman takes the helm and, in his cover piece, examines how Keir Starmer can no longer find political refuge in foreign affairs. After a period of globe-trotting in which the Prime Minister was dubbed ‘never-here Keir’, Starmer’s handling of international
47 min listen
OnlyFans is giving the Treasury what it wants – but should we be concerned? ‘OnlyFans,’ writes Louise Perry, ‘is the most profitable content subscription service in the world.’ Yet ‘the vast majority of its content creators make very little from it’. So why are around 4 per cent of young British women selling their wares
52 min listen
How Reform plans to win Just a year ago, Nigel Farage ended his self-imposed exile from politics and returned to lead Reform. Since then, Reform have won more MPs than the Green Party, two new mayoralties, a parliamentary by-election, and numerous councils. Now the party leads in every poll and, as our deputy political editor
50 min listen
End of the rainbow: Pride’s fall What ‘started half a century ago as an afternoon’s little march for lesbians and gay men’, argues Gareth Roberts, became ‘a jamboree not only of boring homosexuality’ but ‘anything else that its purveyors consider unconventional’. Yet now Reform-led councils are taking down Pride flags, Pride events are being cancelled
39 min listen
After Pope Francis died, it took the Roman Catholic Church just 17 days to choose a successor in Pope Leo XIV. It has been well over 6 months since Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned and we are only just making sense of those chosen to sit on the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), that will
44 min listen
The real Brexit betrayal: Starmer vs the workers ‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agreement with the EU perpetuates the failure to understand Brexit’s opportunities, and that Labour ‘doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t exist to
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To mark the second anniversary of the death of Jeremy Clarke – one of the Spectator’s most loved writers – we’ve compiled some of his Low Life columns, as read by Jeremy in 2016, for this special episode of Spectator Out Loud. Included in this compilation are: New Man (00:42); Virgin (5:16); Debauchery Competition (9:32); Buddhism (14:12);
38 min listen
This week: the many crises awaiting the next pope ‘Francis was a charismatic pope loved by most of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics’ writes Damian Thompson in the cover article this week. But few of them ‘grasp the scale of the crisis in the Church… The next Vicar of Christ, liberal or conservative’ faces ‘challenges
34 min listen
This week: should the assisted dying bill be killed off? Six months after Kim Leadbeater MP launched the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a group of Labour MPs have pronounced it ‘irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law’. They say the most basic aspects of the bill – having gone through its
