This week: the carve-up of Ukraine’s natural resources From the success of Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington to the squabbling we saw in the Oval Office and the breakdown of security guarantees for Ukraine – we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of geopolitics in the last week, say Niall Ferguson and Nicholas Kulish in this week’s cover piece. They argue that what Donald Trump is really concerned with when it comes to Ukraine is rare earth minerals – which Ukraine has in abundance under i...
Mar 06, 2025•42 min
This week: Nigel’s gang – Reform’s plan for power. Look at any opinion survey or poll, and it’s clear that Reform is hard to dismiss, write Katy Balls and James Heale. Yet surprisingly little is known about the main players behind the scenes who make up Nigel Farage’s new gang. There are ‘the lifers’ – Dan Jukes and ‘Posh George’ Cottrell. Then there are the Tory defectors, trained by Richard Murphy, a valued CCHQ veteran, who is described as a ‘secret weapon’. The most curious new additions are...
Feb 27, 2025•38 min
This week: the world needs a realist reset Donald Trump’s presidency is the harbinger of many things, writes The Spectator ’s editor Michael Gove, one of which is a return to a more pitiless world landscape. The ideal of a rules-based international order has proved to be a false hope. Britain must accept that if we are to earn the respect of others and the right to determine the future, we need a realist reset. What are the consequences of this new world order? And is the Trump administration re...
Feb 20, 2025•48 min
This week: The Spectator launches SPAFF The civil service does one thing right, writes The Spectator ’s data editor Michael Simmons: spaffing money away. The advent of Elon Musk’s DOGE in the US has inspired The Spectator to launch our own war on wasteful spending – the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or SPAFF. Examples of waste range from the comic to the tragic. The Department for Work and Pensions, Michael writes, ‘bought one Universal Credit claimant a £1,500 e-bike after he per...
Feb 13, 2025•39 min
This week: Morgan McSweeney, the insurgent behind Keir Starmer’s premiership As a man with the instincts of an insurgent, Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has found Labour’s first six months in office a frustrating time, writes The Spectator ’s editor Michael Gove. ‘Many of his insights – those that made Labour electable – appeared to have been overlooked by the very ministers he propelled into power.’ McSweeney is trying to wrench the government away from complacent incumbency: ...
Feb 06, 2025•48 min
This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always undercounted. For example, in England alone, nearly 64 million patients are registered with GP practices – higher than the Office for National Statistics (ONS)'s es...
Jan 30, 2025•46 min
This week: the death of British industry In the cover piece for the magazine, Matthew Lynn argues that Britain is in danger of entering a ‘zero-industrial society’. The country that gave the world the Industrial Revolution has presided over a steep decline in British manufacturing. He argues there are serious consequences: foreign ownership, poorer societies, a lack of innovation, and even national security concerns. Why has this happened? Who is to blame? And could Labour turn it around? Matthe...
Jan 23, 2025•42 min
This week: President Trump’s plan to Make America Greater In the cover piece for the magazine, our deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, Freddy Gray, delves into Trump’s plans. He speaks to insiders, including Steve Bannon, about the President’s ambitions for empire-building. Could he really take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal? And if not, what is he really hoping to achieve? Academic and long-time friend of J.D. Vance, James Orr, also writes in the magazine this week abo...
Jan 16, 2025•42 min
This week: what does justice look like for the victims of the grooming gangs? In the cover piece for the magazine, Douglas Murray writes about the conspiracy of silence on the grooming gangs and offers his view on what justice should look like for the perpetrators. He also encourages the government to take a step back and consider its own failings. He writes: ‘If any government or political party wants to do something about the scandal, they will need to stop reviewing and start acting. Where to...
Jan 09, 2025•47 min
This week: the fight for the future of the right From Milei in Argentina to Trump in the US, Meloni in Italy to the rise of the AfD in Germany, the world appears to be turning to the right, say James Kanagasooriam and Patrick Flynn. One country, however, seems to be the exception to this rule: our own. Britain under Keir Starmer appears to be putting on a revival of the old classic Socialism in One Country. However, beyond Westminster, the data show that Britain is not moving to the left in line...
Jan 02, 2025•46 min
This week is a special episode of the podcast where we are looking back on some of our favourite pieces from the magazine over the past year and revisiting some of the conversations we had around them. First up: the Starmer supremacy Let’s start with undoubtedly the biggest news of the year: Starmer’s supermajority and the first Labour government in 14 years. In April, we spoke to Katy Balls and Harriet Harman about just what a supermajority could mean for Keir Starmer. Listening back, it’s an i...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator ’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a different Prime Minister, and The Spectator had a different editor! Luckily, The Spectator ’s regular columnists are on hand to declare what they got right – and wrong – throughout the year, and w...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 11 min
This week: are we drowning in a sea of twee? Gareth Roberts writes the cover article this week, arguing against what he sees as the hideous triviality of our times. ‘The British have lost their aversion to glutinous sentimentality,’ he declares. How did we get here, and who are the worst offenders? Gareth argues that the triumph of twee has left us unable to face serious things with seriousness. Could there be sinister consequences if we don’t take this more seriously? Gareth joined the podcast ...
Dec 05, 2024•37 min
This week: SAS SOS The enemy that most concerns Britain’s elite military unit isn’t the IRA, the Taliban or Isis, but a phalanx of lawyers armed with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), writes Paul Wood in The Spectator . Many SAS soldiers now believe that if they kill a terrorist during an operation, they’ll spend decades being hounded through the courts. Paul speaks to former SAS soldiers who say that stories of men being ‘dragged back to be screamed at in interview rooms’ are ‘fly...
Nov 28, 2024•48 min
This week: Wild Wes. Ahead of next week’s vote on whether to legalise assisted dying, Health Secretary Wes Streeting is causing trouble for Keir Starmer, writes Katy Balls in the magazine this week. Starmer has been clear that he doesn’t want government ministers to be too outspoken on the issue ahead of a free vote in Parliament. But Streeting’s opposition is well-known. How much of a headache is this for Starmer? And does this speak to wider ambitions that Wes might have? Katy joins the podcas...
Nov 21, 2024•43 min
This week: welcome to Planet Elon. We knew that he would likely be a big part of Donald Trump’s second term, so it was unsurprising when this week Elon Musk was named – alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – as a co-leader of the new US Department of Government Efficiency, which will look at federal government waste. When Musk took over Twitter, he fired swathes of employees whose work was actively harming the company, so he’s in a perfect position to turn his sights on the bloated federal gov...
Nov 14, 2024•45 min
This week: King of the Hill You can’t ignore what could be the political comeback of the century: Donald Trump’s remarkable win in this week’s US election. The magazine this week carries analysis about why Trump won, and why the Democrats lost, from Freddy Gray, Niall Ferguson and Yascha Mounk, amongst others. To make sense of how Trump became only the second President in history to win non-consecutive terms, we’re joined by the journalist Jacqueline Sweet and Cliff Young, president of polling a...
Nov 07, 2024•37 min
This week: Team Trump – who’s in, and who’s out? To understand Trumpworld you need to appreciate it’s a family affair, writes Freddy Gray in the magazine this week. For instance, it was 18-year-old Barron Trump who persuaded his father to do a series of long ‘bro-casts’ with online male influencers such as Joe Rogan. In 2016, Donald’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was the reigning prince; this year, he has been largely out of the picture. Which family figures are helping Trump run things this time ar...
Oct 31, 2024•43 min
This week: Decline and Fall – how our greatest universities are betraying students. Our greatest universities are betraying students, writes David Butterfield, who has just resigned from teaching Classics at Cambridge after 21 years. What went wrong? First, class lists of exam results became private, under alleged grounds of ‘data protection’, which snuffed out much of the competitive spirit of the university. Now even the fate of examinations hangs in the balance. Grade inflation is rampant, an...
Oct 24, 2024•53 min
This week: the Chancellor’s Budget dilemma. ‘As a former championship chess player, Rachel Reeves must know that the first few moves can be some of the most important of the game,’ writes Rupert Harrison – former chief of staff to George Osborne – for the cover of the magazine this week. But, he says, the truth is that she has played herself into a corner ahead of this month's Budget, with her room for manoeuvre dramatically limited by a series of rash decisions. Her biggest problem is that she ...
Oct 17, 2024•52 min
Successive governments have struggled with how to deal with China, balancing them as a geopolitical rival yet necessary trade partner. Recent moves from Labour have sent mixed signals, from the free speech act to the return of the Chagos Islands. Further decisions loom on the horizon. As Rachel Reeves seeks some economic wiggle room, can Labour resist the lure of the Chinese market? The Spectator ’s Katy Balls, and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) James Crabtre...
Oct 10, 2024•48 min
This week: Israel’s revenge and Iran’s humiliation. As the anniversary of the October 7th attacks by Hamas approaches, the crisis in the Middle East has only widened. Israel has sent troops into southern Lebanon and there have been attempted missile strikes from the Houthi rebels in Yemen and from Iran. Is there any way the situation can de-escalate? And how could Israel respond to Iran? Former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood and defence and security research Dr Limor Simhony join the podcas...
Oct 03, 2024•37 min
This week: who’s on top in the Conservative leadership race? That’s the question Katy Balls asks in the magazine this week as she looks ahead to the Conservative Party conference. Each Tory hopeful will be pitching for the support of MPs and the party faithful ahead of the next round of voting. Who’s got the most to lose, and could there be some sneaky tactics behind the scenes? Katy joins the podcast to discuss, alongside Conservative peer Ruth Porter, who ran Liz Truss’s leadership campaign in...
Sep 26, 2024•43 min
This week: Nigel’s next target. What’s Reform UK’s plan to take on Labour? Reform UK surpassed expectations at the general election to win 5 MPs. This includes James McMurdock, who Katy interviews for the magazine this week, who only decided to stand at the last moment. How much threat could Reform pose and why has Farage done so well? Katy joins the podcast to discuss, alongside Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, who fought Nigel Farage as the Labour candidate for Clacton (1:02). Next: who determines the mora...
Sep 19, 2024•45 min
This week: The US election is back on a knife-edge. Republicans hoped this week’s debate would expose Kamala Harris’s weaknesses. ‘They forgot that, when it comes to one-on-one intellectual sparring matches with candidates who aren’t senile, Donald Trump is very bad indeed,’ writes Freddy Gray. ‘A skilled politician would have been able to unpick Harris’s act, but Trump could not.’ Harris is enigmatic to the point of absurdity, but Trump failed to pin her down and may well have squandered his na...
Sep 12, 2024•39 min
This week: Miliband’s empty energy promises. Ed Miliband has written a public letter confirming that Labour plans to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030. The problem with this, though, is that he doesn’t have the first idea about how to do it. The grid doesn’t have the capacity to transmit the required energy, Ross Clark writes, and Miliband’s claim that wind is ‘nine times cheaper’ than fossil fuels is based upon false assumptions. What is more, disclosed plans about ‘GB Energy’ reveal t...
Sep 05, 2024•39 min
This week: Alt reich. The Spectator ’s Lisa Haseldine asks if Germany’s far right is about to go mainstream, ahead of regional elections this weekend. Lisa joined the podcast, alongside the historian Katja Hoyer, to discuss why the AfD are polling so well in parts of Germany, and how comparable this is to other trends across Europe (1:13). Then: why are traditional hobbies being threatened in Britain? Writer Richard Bratby joins the podcast, alongside Chris Bradbury, the drone support officer at...
Aug 29, 2024•45 min
This week: All hail Harris! As the Democratic National Convention approaches its climax, The Spectator’ s deputy editor Freddy Gray explores vice president Kamala Harris’s remarkable rise to the top of the democratic ticket in his cover article this week. Freddy joins the podcast from Chicago (1:30). Next: live from the DNC. Freddy and Natasha Feroze, The Spectator ’s deputy broadcast editor, have been out and about at the convention talking to delegates – and detractors – of the Democratic Part...
Aug 22, 2024•36 min
This week: Power play. The Spectator’s Svitlana Morenets writes the cover article in this week’s magazine exploring Zelensky’s plan for his Russian conquests. What’s his aim? And how could Putin respond? Svitlana joins the podcast alongside historian and author Mark Galeotti (02:10). Next: Will and Gus discuss their favourite pieces from the magazine, including Richard Madeley’s diary and Lara Prendergast’s argument that bankers are hot again. Then: how concerned should we be about falling ferti...
Aug 15, 2024•40 min
This week: The Spectator ’s Gus Carter was in Rotherham and Birmingham in the days after the riots. Locals tell Gus that ‘violent disorder isn’t acceptable but people from down south don’t know what it’s like up here’. A retired policeman in Birmingham adds that ‘it’s just yobs looking for an excuse – and yobbos come in all sorts of colours’. You can hear Gus’ report on the podcast. (02:25) Next: Gus and Lara take us through some of their favourite pieces in the magazine, including Flora Watkins...
Aug 08, 2024•33 min
