Podcast: Benefits Street vs the left, Cameron’s Euro mission and our 1964 expose

Has Benefits Street exposed Britain’s dirty secret? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson debates the Labour MP Frank Field on the left’s reaction to the Channel 4 programme, why successive governments have failed to tackle the problem of welfare dependency and whether Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms will finally crack the problem.

Professor Vernon Bogdanor also looks at the 50th anniversary of Ian Macleod’s infamous ‘What Happened’ article in The Spectator — apparently blowing the lid on Alec Douglas-Home’s succession to the Tory leadership. Was Ian Macleod a saboteur or truth teller? Was Macleod lying in his article? And why did the Tory party distrust R. A. Butler enough not to make him leader?

Plus, the Spectator’s James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss David Cameron’s political mission for 2014 — to not to come third in May’s European elections. Why does the Tory party continue to continue to bang on about Europe? Can anything be done to stop Ukip coming in first place?

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