This podcast is sponsored by Seller Plan from Berry Brothers and Rudd, collecting fine wines for future drinking.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator Podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman.

In recent days, Lionel Shriver has been in trouble.

Her criticism of the publishing industry's diversity drive

has led to her being marked as a racist and even dropped from a literary judging panel.

She argued that ethnic quotas harm rather than help diversity. So is she wrong? I talk to

Coleman Hughes, Lionel herself and Ash Sarkar. I'm not in opposition to diversity, which of course these days is tantamount to being against

world peace.

But it's just a question of how we get there and how quickly.

And I don't think that using a quota system is the best way to go about it.

As Robert Mueller's investigation continues, several dodgy links to Britain have surfaced that could bring down Trump.

But there are many other aspects to this.

Steele getting Sir Andrew Wood, former British ambassador in Moscow,

to put this document into the hands of Senator John McCain and then that being handed on to Comey.

Sir Richard Dealer,

former Chief of MI6, being consulted by a rather desperate steal about what to do and being told,

yes, the Americans have to know this. Credible reports we have of the head of GCHQ going to hand

intercept to the head of the CIA and so on and so on and so on.

And finally, in the age of Me Too, is sex becoming more sexy again precisely because

of social repression?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, authoritarianism is sexy, right?

...