William Moore is features editor of The Spectator
43 min listen
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?
47 min listen
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
45 min listen
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
75 min listen
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
71 min listen
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
37 min listen
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
48 min listen
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
43 min listen
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
12 min listen
Thousands of farmers descended on Westminster today to protest the inheritance tax changes proposed in Labour’s Budget. Amidst a sea of tweed and wellington boots, speeches and support came from the likes of Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey, Nigel Farage and Jeremy Clarkson. To what extent is this just a fringe issue that the government will
45 min listen
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
It’s taken him more than a decade, but Justin Welby has finally united the Church of England. The petition calling for him to resign over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth was set up by three clergymen who would normally disagree: Dr Ian Paul, Robert Thompson and Marcus Walker,
37 min listen
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
43 min listen
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.
53 min listen
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
18 min listen
The House of Lords contains 26 Church of England archbishops and bishops who possess an automatic right to sit and vote in the House, as established by ancient usage and by statute. But for how much longer? Labour have big plans for the Lords and have been pushing ahead with their crackdown on hereditary peers.
52 min listen
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
48 min listen
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
37 min listen
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
43 min listen
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
39 min listen
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
