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Welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman. On this week's episode, we'll be examining Twitter's mob mentality, getting to the heart of PTSD

and looking at how Russia is preparing for this year's World Cup. First up, at the end of 2017,

it would have been hard to guess that the name on everyone's lips during the sunrise days of the new year

would be Toby Young. But thanks to a government's appointment and a series of ill-advised tweets,

his brief stint at the office for students has dominated the news cycle.

In the magazine this week, Laura Prendergast writes about how our digital footprints could come back to bite us, while Rod Liddle laments the rise of trial by Twitter.

To debate this issue, I'm joined by spiked editor Brendan O'Neill and the Guardian's Dawn Foster.

Brendan, what do you think the row over Toby Young's tweets has told us about where we are in terms of the social media climate now? I think it's incredibly ugly, sensorious, shrill, crazy.

You know, my first, my starting point is I don't understand why people tweet. I cannot

fathom it. I can, I think the idea of having a gadget in your hand that allows you to

express your thoughts with very little mediation between having the thought and expressing it

strikes me as possibly mankind's worst invention. So, so in a sense, Toby Young, the solution to

what he said is that he should not have been on Twitter

if he's the kind of person who can't really prevent himself from saying certain things.

But having said that, the reaction has just been completely and utterly hysterical and destructive

and quite Stalinist as well.

I think one of the problems with the British left is that it's never quite shaken off their Stalinist as well. I think one of the problems with the British left is

it's never quite shaken off their Stalinist tendencies, which is this desire to expel undesirables,

to punish misspeakers, to throw out of public life, anyone who disagrees with them or who is

too colourful or too awkward or too edgy. So I think this is

an indictment first of Twitter culture more broadly, which invites you actively to say things

...