The Edition: Elizabeth Day on the 'beautiful & ironic symmetry' of Reform vs Restore
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The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
For this week’s Edition, Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator's political editor Tim Shipman, the writer Guy Stagg and the author and host of How to Fail Elizabeth Day.
This week, the guests discuss whether Nigel Farage’s Reform UK can see off the threat from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. Restore Britain’s success may be modest and, so far, very online but that doesn’t mean they won’t hinder Farage’s effort to reach Number 10. If polls from the Makerfield by-election are anything to be believed, Restore could have a real impact. The battle for the tight is also having an impact across the political spectrum too – should Labour move further to the right to appeal to Reform and Restore's disgruntled voters, or should they simply ignore them? For Elizabeth Day, there is an ‘ironic and beautiful symmetry’ to the Reform versus Restore dynamic, which almost makes her nostalgic for the 'Tory boy' politics of post-Thatcher era.
Also this week: from Makerfield to Mandelson, the government has been busy this week responding to the latest tranche of messages released on Monday. Yet – were some missing? Tim discusses the missing messages of Starmer loyalist Darren Jones MP which he exclusively revealed in this week’s Spectator. How damaging is this for Labour? And how should we treat WhatsApp messages legally?
Plus, they discuss: the travel experiences that have shaped their lives, from Orthodox churches perched on Istanbul rooftops to the ‘most bombed hotel’ in Belfast; if collecting books is an acceptable form of hoarding; whether they would take frog poison; and finally, with the news that Nigel Farage may have been banned from Desert Island Discs, they reveal some of the items they would take with them.
Elizabeth Day’s latest book One of Us is out now and available in all good bookshops.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator is hiring. If you want to work on our brilliant podcasts and our agenda-setting YouTube videos, |
| 0:06.6 | go to spectator.com forward slash vacancies to find out more. |
| 0:15.1 | Hello and welcome to the edition from The Spectator. I'm Laura Prendergars, The Spectator's Executive Editor, |
| 0:22.3 | and the latest issue of the magazine has just gone to press. |
| 0:26.5 | To discuss what's in it, I'm joined now by our political editor, Tim Shipman, |
| 0:31.5 | the author and broadcaster Elizabeth Day, and the writer Guy Stagg. |
| 0:47.2 | This week's cover has the headline Rebellion, and in it, our deputy political editor James Hill looks at the increasing threat that Restore posed to reform. |
| 0:51.7 | So Tim, last week, we spent a further to time on this podcast talking about |
| 0:54.9 | Restor v Reform. But James has done a very kind of comprehensive look at what's going on and where |
| 0:59.6 | the battle lines are being done. No one knows more than James Hill about this area. It's worth reading. |
| 1:04.7 | One of the points that he makes is what Restore doing is essentially using Farage's playbook |
| 1:09.5 | against him. How is that going for them? |
| 1:12.2 | Well, I mean, it's not going amazingly for Restore, but it's going pretty badly for reform. |
| 1:18.4 | And this is the interesting thing. They're beginning to eat. They haven't quite eaten Nigel Farage's |
| 1:22.9 | lunch, but they're certainly beginning to nick some mini-cheddars from around the side |
| 1:27.6 | or nibble at the end of his banana. |
| 1:31.6 | He wishes. |
| 1:35.8 | I think, you know, what's going on here, you know, I remember interviewing Farage last year |
| 1:40.9 | and sort of I asked him about Zach Palanski of the Greens |
| 1:43.9 | and sort of said, he seems to be nicking your playbook. And he's like, yeah, I'm him about Zach Palanski of the Greens and sort of said, |
| 1:44.9 | he seems to be nicking your playbook. And he's like, yeah, I'm amazing, but he's nicked it before. |
| 1:48.6 | And now along has come Rupert Lowe, who had this colossal argument with Nigel Farage. And |
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