Hello and welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast and on this week's episode

we'll be discussing what the end of ISIS means for a fragile Middle East. We'll also be debating

whether John Burko should be packing his bags and finally we'll be asking whether the days of the

Billingdon Club have finally ended.

First up, the attempt by ISIS to establish a caliphate has been on the rocks for some time now.

And with President Trump now at the tiller of the US military, its days may be numbered.

Trump wants to retake the Syrian city of Raqa quickly, but, in order to do so,

he may have to rewrite the cautious approach of his predecessor Barack Obama.

Paul Wood writes about this and more in this week's magazine cover piece,

and he joins me now from Washington, along with the Conservative MP and Iraq War veteran Tom Tuggenhard.

So Paul, in your piece you suggest that Trump, well Trump said that he wants to have a big win over ISIS within 90 days.

We're now 30 days into his presidency.

How's that plan looking for Trump?

The Islamic State was already pretty sick when Mr Trump arrived in office.

And if he's the one who performs the coup de grace, then he can claim credit for it.

It is a very, very short timetable.

Raka is a city of 300,000 people. And I remember being embedded with the US Marines back in 2004 attacking a city of 300,000 people, which was largely empty,

with 25,000 extremely professional US forces, and it was a very, very difficult fight. It took a very

long time, as the Iraqi army is experiencing

in Mosul. So a quick end to this, I think, will be much more difficult than he may have thought

on the campaign trail, but it all depends on what he's going to do. American troops could do it a lot

faster than the Kurdish and Arab coalition, backed by some US special forces that are there now,

...