Best of the Spectator

Two titans of broadcasting – LBC’s Iain Dale and Sky's Jon Craig – join deputy political editor James Heale for a whistle-stop tour of British by-elections. From Oxford City in 1938 to Chesterfield in 1984 right up to Runcorn in 2025, why do by-elections matter? When have they been most significant? And are longer vote counts the product of fractured politics in the modern age?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is an area of public spending nearly double what Britain spends on defence, more than policing borders or our streets. It's servicing the costs of what Britain has borrowed in the past. The growing debt bomb is continuing to climb with real consequences for the taxpayer. Michael Simmons takes a look at the data and speaks to the economist Paul Johnson about what political measures the government will have to take to tackle Britain's debt crisis, what it means for the taxpayer and why the reviving modern monetary theory movement is nonsense.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the philosophy professor Hanna Pickard, whose new book is What Would You Do Alone In A Cage With Nothing But Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction. She tells me why we need a new approach to ‘the puzzle of addiction’. She says the idea that addicts are helplessly in thrall to the compulsions of a ‘broken brain’ is wrong, that we need to understand how sometimes using even if it's looks like killing you can make a sort of sense – and describes how her own one-off experience of morphine set her on the path of trying to change the way we think about drugs.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Britain is defenceless, declares the Spectator's cover piece this week. From the size of the armed forces to protection against cyber warfare, the government is not spending fast enough to meet the UK's security challenges. But is the public ready to choose warfare over welfare? And can we blame the young people who don't want to fight for their country?

For this week's Edition, host William Moore is joined by opinion editor Rupert Hawksley, columnist Matthew Parris, and Whitehall editor of the Financial Times Lucy Fisher.

As well as meeting Britain's defence challenge, they discuss: whether the Mandelson scandal is bigger than the Profumo affair; the organised gangs terrorising rural farmers in the UK; and, why some people just can't get enough of conspiracy theories.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

General Sir Nick Carter, former chief of the defence staff, joins Tim Shipman to discuss Britain's military preparedness – or rather, lack thereof. While a friendlier US presence at the Munich Security Conference may have provided some relief, the military threats to the UK and to Europe presented are still stark. So what choices need to be addressed to ensure that Britain is equipped to deal with these threats? Is the government doing enough to address the awareness gap with the public? And how could AI change warfare?

Tim's cover piece, Defenceless: the grim truth about Britain's military, can be found here.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.