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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud with me, Lyndon Ken Cairn.

Each week we choose our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask our writers to read them aloud.

Coming up on the podcast this week, Katie Balls discusses the SNP's annual conference and asks,

what will it take to hold the party together if things get much tougher over the next 12 months?

Christina Lamb goes to Ukraine, only to be told that she's at the wrong war as events unfold

rapidly in the Middle East. And Sam Leith chats to the man who heads up the tiny publishing

house that regularly churns out Nobel Prize winners. First, it's Katie Balls.

The SNP Party Conference in Aberdeen this week wasn't the nationalist jamboree activists had hoped for.

Even though Tim Zayuice's first conference as party leader, several of his MSPs stayed away,

and the main hall was half empty most of the time.

The key word was flat, says one attendee.

It was Nicola Sturgeon, Yusuf's predecessor, who attracted the most excitement when she made a cameo appearance on Monday. The former

First Minister had to deny she was the Liz Truss of the SMP, a reference to the former Prime

Minister's attempts to upstage Rishi Sunak. You got to hand it to her for the hubris, said one unimpressed nationalist.

Elise Yusuf has won praise for his handling of the events unfolding in Israel and Palestine.

The first minister, whose in-laws are trapped in Gaza, met with the mother of a victim of the

Hamas attack and emphasised his support for Scotland's Jewish community, but none of this

changes the fundamentals facing his party. In the past month, the SMP has lost the Ravaglen

and Hamilton by-election to Labour, and one SMP MP has defected to the Scottish Conservatives.

...