The Edition: Chinese spies, Vance’s rise & is French parenting supreme?

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The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

‘Here be dragons’ declares the Spectator’s cover story this week, as it looks at the continuing fallout over the collapse of the trial of two political aides accused of spying for China in Westminster. Tim Shipman reveals that – under the last Conservative government – a data hub was sold to the Chinese that included highly classified information; one source describes this to him as a ‘stratospheric clusterfuck’. Why do successive governments seem to struggle with UK-China relations? And, with many unanswered questions still remaining, what’s the truth over this case?

Host Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman, arts editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic and deputy editor Freddy Gray.

As well as the cover, they discuss: how J.D. Vance appears unstoppable in the (silent) race to be the next Republican nominee for president; whether French, or British, parenting is better; and why the art of costume design, like so many crafts, is in decline.

Plus: is Sheridan Westlake, the most important Tory you’ve never heard of, really the ‘cockroach of Westminster’?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

The Spectator is trialling new formats for this podcast, and we would very much welcome feedback via this email address: [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:50.6	Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shed a little light on the thought process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed.
0:53.9	I'm Lara Prendergast, the Spectator's executive editor. On this week's podcast, we look at
0:56.3	the truth about Chinese espionage in Britain. We ask whether anyone can stop J.D. Vance from being
1:01.7	the next US president, and we wonder why French parents are better at raising their children.
1:15.4	First up, the scandal of Beijing's spying laid bare.
1:21.1	The spectator's cover story this week looks at the spy scandal that exposes the confusion around UK policy towards China.
1:24.0	Our political editor Tim Shipman writes about how the trial of two political aides accused of spying for China collapsed, and he looks at the questions that remain for both the government and the Crown Prosecution Service.
1:36.3	And Tim's piece contains a number of revelations that raises questions for the previous Conservative government.
1:41.9	So who is at fault? And why do successive government seem to struggle
1:45.8	with the UK-China relationship? To discuss further, I was joined by the spectator's political
1:51.1	editor Tim Shipman, our deputy editor and editor of our US edition Freddie Gray and our arts editor,
1:57.6	Igor Turani Lalich.
2:05.4	This week's cover has the headline, Here Be Dragons.
2:10.0	24 hours ago, this actually wasn't going to be our cover, but the story seems to have grown in salience.
2:11.0	And so, Tim, we made the last minute decision to change it.
2:13.2	Could you talk about how this cover came about?
	...

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