Quite right!: was Cameron wrong about China?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Listeners on the Best of Spectator playlist can enjoy a section of the latest episode of Quite right! but for the full thing please seek out the Quite right! channel. Just search ‘Quite right!’ wherever you are listening now.
This week on Quite right! Michael and Maddie turn their sights to Westminster’s latest espionage scandal – and the collapse of the case to prosecute two men accused of spying for China. Was the case dropped out of incompetence, or out of fear of offending Beijing? As Michael puts it, ‘Either we’re not being told the truth, or this is a government of staggering incompetence.’
They also unpick the growing row over Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s National Security Adviser, and his alleged role in shelving the case. What does his re-emergence, along with Peter Mandelson and other ‘Sith Lords of Blairism’, tell us about the return of New Labour’s old moral compromises?
Elsewhere, Donald Trump’s surprise Gaza peace deal has upended diplomatic expectations and ushered in a new style of negotiation – the ‘Manhattan real estate’ approach – which has succeeded where the UN’s moralising failed. Is it Trump’s world and we’re all living in it?
Finally: The Traitors. Maddie confesses she’s never watched an episode, but would Michael be a traitor or a faithful? What does the show reveal about the darker truths of human nature? And which politicians would make the perfect traitors?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Poppy's come to the end of her work visa. She partied most nights and now can't afford her flight back to the UK. |
| 0:05.9 | Her parents are annoyed, but not too worried. With their HSBC Premier bank account, they can transfer |
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| 0:29.3 | status abroad. Hello, this is Madeline Grant, host of Quite Right alongside Michael Gove. |
| 0:36.5 | If you want to hear the latest episode |
| 0:38.3 | of Quite Right in full, then you can do so on its dedicated podcast channel. Just search |
| 0:42.9 | Quite Right wherever you are listening now. Listeners on the best of Spectator playlist can enjoy |
| 0:47.8 | a section of our discussions, but for the full thing, please seek out the Quite Right channel. |
| 0:52.6 | While you're there, click the follow button |
| 0:54.2 | to never miss an episode. And why not give us a rating and review? It really helps us out. Happy |
| 0:59.5 | listening. |
| 1:06.1 | Hello and welcome to Quite Right with me, Michael Gove, editor of the Spectator. |
| 1:15.5 | And me, Madeline Grant, assistant editor and parliamentary sketchwriter at The Spectator. |
| 1:20.8 | And this week we'll be looking at foreign policy and also at betrayal closer to home. |
| 1:29.5 | We'll be looking at China and the malign role it may be playing in the latest espionage intrigue in Westminster, and Maddie will be putting me on the spot on perhaps the most difficult moral question I've ever faced. Am I a faithful, |
| 1:35.7 | or am I a traitor? |
| 1:40.4 | So this week, Keir Stama has been enjoying plaudits for his role, which, of course, he's |
| 1:45.7 | been bigging up, but still will go on to that in a moment, in the peace process in the Middle |
| 1:49.8 | East. But he's returned from sunning himself in Shamel Sheikh to the cauldron of the Commons |
... |
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