Best of the Spectator

When it comes to political vision, Keir Starmer’s premiership has been something of a vacuum – and power abhors a vacuum. So cue Tony Blair, who this week has rushed in with a 5,000-word essay on what is wrong with Labour and, depending on who you listen to, either an outdated or radical view of where Britain should be as a country.
This has galvanised Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and (finally) Keir Starmer to put down on paper their vision for the country and how to solve the biggest issues we face. But whose is more convincing?
Oscar Edmondson discusses the question with James Heale and Rachel Wolf, founding partner at Public First and author of the 2019 manifesto.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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For this week’s Edition, Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator's deputy editor Freddy Gray, associate editor – and host of the Holy Smoke podcast – Damian Thompson and consultant psychiatrist and Daily Mail columnist Dr Max Pemberton.

This week, the guests examine the Pope's encyclical about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Magnifica Humanitas, which warns of the cost to humanity that this technological revolution could bring. This marks Pope Leo's first major policy intervention, a warning which Spectator editor Michael Gove celebrates in the magazine this week. Michael says that AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution’ yet decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated… in perilously few hands’. Damian argues that the Pope has passed the first test of his pontificate, but is AI changing how we view religion? As Max reveals the lies that an AI model told his partner, the guests ponder: could AI really extinguish humanity?

Also this week: can you tell the difference between Reform UK and Restore Britain? As a recent poll suggested that Rupert Lowe's Restore could harm Reform's chances in the Makerfield by-election, the team discuss whether they believe the polls and what it means if the Right fracture further. Damian dismisses followers of Restore Britain as 'quite brainwashed young fascists' – what is the appeal of Rupert Lowe?

Plus: how weight loss jabs can reduce more than just your appetite for food; why Gen Z are missing out on the pleasures of boozing; and, from dinner with Hugh Grant to meeting the nun Sister Wendy Beckett, the guests reveal the moments from their lives they'd love to relive.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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The Spectator's editor Michael Gove ‘was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture’, but – in this week's magazine – is ‘giving thanks to the Pope’ for producing Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical about artificial intelligence (AI). AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution’ but decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated... in perilously few hands’.

Michael joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain why the document reveals Pope Leo to be 'intellectually confident and coherent', what the Christian response to AI should be and why he believes Catholic social teaching is 'absolutely essential' in instructing us for how to deal with this next technological revolution.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Sam Leith's guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Siri Hustvedt, talking about her new book, Ghost Stories, a memoir of her long and loving marriage to the novelist Paul Auster, and of his death from cancer. Siri tells me why this book ‘needed’ to be written, what their relationship was like, how ‘horrible things’ came to this literary golden couple, and how she explains the experience of being visited, three days after his death, by her husband’s ghost.

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Peter Murrell's mafia-style SNP & could the Reform-Restore feud hand Burnham Makerfield?

This week: the Peter Murrell scandal and the collapse of the SNP’s moral authority. After Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband and the party’s former chief executive pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from SNP funds, Michael and Madeline ask what this reveals about the party that dominated Scottish politics for more than a decade. Was this simply one man’s disgrace – or a symptom of a political machine that had grown too powerful, too closed and too complacent?

Also on the podcast: the growing split on the right. As Rupert Lowe’s Restore threatens to divide the Reform vote in the Makerfield by-election, could Andy Burnham be saved by a battle between Nigel Farage and his former allies?

And finally: the rise of the well-worriers. From Zoe and Oura rings to sleep scores, glucose monitors and heart-rate variability, the middle classes are no longer just trying to be healthy – they are trying to measure every flicker of human existence. Is all this self-tracking making us fitter, or just more neurotic?

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