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Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we look at three pieces from the magazine with the writers behind them.

I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's Executive Editor.

And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor.

On this week's episode, we'll be asking who broke Britain, we'll be discussing Burning Man,

and we'll be debating the hypocrisy of pet owners.

First up, in her cover piece for the magazine, the Spectator's economics editor, Kate Andrews,

writes that political short-termism has broken Britain. Kate joins us now alongside

Charles Wilkes, former number 10 advisor and senior fellow at the Institute for Government.

Kate, in your piece this week you talk about Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, being caught out in a hot mic situation when she was being interviewed about the school concrete crisis.

For those that need reminding, here's the clip.

Does anyone ever say, you know what, you've done a good job

because everyone else has sat on their ass and done nothing?

No signs of that, no?

Kate, what did you make of her response?

And did she need to apologize?

Well, look, I think she needed to apologize from an optics perspective.

But I think the bigger problem in what she said wasn't so much criticizing others. It was insisting that she herself was doing a great job. If you have the privilege of being in a leadership position in government and if things are going wrong, you take the heat, you take the responsibility, you don't insist that people pat you on the back.

Where I think she had more of a point is the bit that she actually apologized for, which is when she, I'm not going to use the language, our listeners have just heard it, but when she basically accused other people of not doing their jobs properly.

And I think she does have a point here because we've known for decades about this concrete scandal.

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