The Edition: Britain’s guilty men, Labour’s reset & do people care about ICE more than Iran?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Who really runs Britain: the government, foreign courts or international lawyers? This question is at the heart of Michael Gove’s cover piece for the Spectator this week, analysing the role of those at the centre of Labour’s foreign policy. Attorney general Lord Hermer, national security adviser Jonathan Powell and internationally renowned barrister Philippe Sands may seek to uphold international law but is this approach outdated as we enter an era of hard power? For Gove, they are the three ‘guilty men’ who are undermining Britain’s national interest at the expense of a liberal international law that never really existed.
For this week’s Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by deputy editor Freddy Gray, columnist Douglas Murray and editor of the Spectator’s Life section Arabella Byrne.
The also discuss: whether Labour’s reset can really work ahead of next month’s by-election; how taking in so many disaffected Tories could backfire for Reform; why people care more about ICE in America than Iran – and if this proof that society has become conditioned; whether we should bemoan the demise of the landline; and finally, how parents should approach the issue of their children drinking.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, |
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| 0:35.1 | Hello and welcome to the edition from The Spectator. |
| 0:39.1 | I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor, |
| 0:42.4 | and the latest issue of the magazine has just gone to press. |
| 0:46.1 | To discuss what's in it, I'm joined now by our deputy editor |
| 0:49.5 | and the editor of our US edition, Freddie Gray, |
| 0:52.9 | our columnist, Douglas Murray, and the new editor of our life section, Freddie Gray, our columnist Douglas Murray, and the new editor of |
| 0:55.9 | our life section, Arabella Byrne. |
| 1:03.6 | This week's cover has the headline, The Guilty Men, and in it, our editor, Michael Gove, |
| 1:08.6 | looks at the three men in senior political positions, who he says are undermining Britain's national security. |
| 1:15.5 | Freddie, I thought I'd start by asking you to outline who these three men are. |
| 1:19.8 | Well, there's lots of guilty men in Britain, but we've put three of them on the cover. |
| 1:24.8 | Jonathan Powell, who's the national Security Advisor, and he's been |
| 1:28.5 | sort of involved in so much important stuff in British politics in the last couple of decades, |
| 1:34.5 | and he's not really highlighted, or his malevolence, not really highlighted enough, and Michael's done |
| 1:38.7 | a very good job of highlighting it here. The other two that we put on the cover are Lord Hermo, |
| 1:43.9 | who's the Attorney General, |
... |
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