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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose three pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Oscar Redmondson and on the podcast

this week. James Heel says the gloves are off as Labour's campaigning takes a bitter turn. Mary

Wakefield worries that she's raising a snowflake and Gus Carter tells us about the colourful history

of the green man. Up first, James Heel. When Rishi-Sunat became Tory leader, the party was

30 points behind Labour. That kind of deficit has historically been terminal for a political party.

But since then, inflation has slowed, the Northern Ireland Protocol has been resolved,

and a deportation deal with Albania meant small-bite arrivals fell for the first time on record.

That Labour lead has fallen

close to 15 points, one poll last weekend, but it as low as 11. A Keir-starmer defeat is now at least

conceivable. This is the context in which Labour has tried a new tactic, attacking the Prime

Minister personally. He is the Tory's greatest single weapons, says one shadow-county member. People

see him as quiet, reliable and even impressive,

even if they think his party is a smoldering wreck. Labor is singing to play dirty in the run-up to May's local election. Hence the adverts asking voters as they think adults committed to sexually

assaulting children should go to prison and claiming that Rishi Sunak doesn't. This was only the

first step in the new strategy. Attacking Sunak's rich Indian wife

was the second. It's all part of a broader attack plan, crime in week one, cost living in

week two, with health coming next. Inside Labor's headquarters at 1-60 Blackfires Road,

the mood is unrepentant, with the local elections being seen as a dry run for general next year.

As one Labour insider says, Nice doesn't win elections.

Michael Duger, who was a spokesman in Gordon Brown's number 10 before becoming an MP,

...