Coffee House Shots: Britain’s decline – and how to reverse it | with John Bew
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
In this special edition of Coffee House Shots, our political editor Tim Shipman is joined by historian, biographer and foreign policy adviser to four different prime ministers, John Bew. In his 7,000-word essay published in the New Statesman last week, John sets out the historical context which has contributed to the malaise and decline of the British state – and hypothesises that we are currently living in the ‘fourth great disruption’ to the political and economic order. He takes Tim through the previous three disruptions and the lessons that government needs to learn from them in order to stop the rot. Does the secret to forging a new place in the world order lie in fixing the machinery of government? Which figures from the past should we take inspiration from?
Produced by Megan McElroy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On Tuesday the 24th of March, our speakers will debate the motion, |
| 0:04.0 | this House believes we should abolish the licence fee. |
| 0:07.2 | Spectator Chairman Charles Moore and the telegraphs Alison Pearson |
| 0:10.2 | will propose the motion with Spectator editor Michael Gove |
| 0:13.4 | and former BBC America editor John Sopel opposing. |
| 0:16.8 | I'm Isabel Hardman and I'll be in the chair to maintain decorum and take your pressing questions. |
| 0:22.2 | Join us on Tuesday the 24th of March at 7pm and book your tickets at spectator.com forward slash debate. |
| 0:35.8 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House. I'm Tim Shipman, the plus clubs of The Spectator, |
| 0:39.8 | and I am delighted to be joined today by John Bue, Professor John Bue. John is one of the most |
| 0:45.9 | interesting people I know. He is an academic. He's a historian. He's a biographer of leaders, |
| 0:52.6 | including Castle Ray and Clement Attlee. He is a |
| 0:56.2 | realist in the foreign policy sphere and a centrist dad by training and inclination. But he's a |
| 1:03.2 | centrist dad, I'm with a Kalashnikov. John is an interesting character who has served four |
| 1:08.8 | different prime ministers advising them on foreign affairs from both |
| 1:12.2 | different parties and in some regards is one of the sort of consistent threads that has held |
| 1:17.3 | the British security state together over the last decade. So I'm delighted to welcome John |
| 1:23.5 | to our show today. Now, you have just penned a staggering seven and a half thousand word |
| 1:30.0 | essay for our dechrist rivals over at the New Statesman. New Statesman readers are lucky enough to |
| 1:35.9 | have waded through all of that, but fortunately, the spectator viewer, the spectator reader, |
| 1:41.6 | is going to get the benefit of you explaining it all quite quickly. |
| 1:44.7 | Your argument basically is that we're at a bit of a crunch moment here in foreign affairs |
| 1:49.3 | and that that has huge domestic implications as well. |
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