The Edition: is Rishi ready for the rebels?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Survival plan: is Rishi ready for the rebels? Ever since his election, Rishi Sunak has been preparing for this weekend – where the most likely scenario is that dire local election results are slow-released, leaving him at a moment of maximum vulnerability. He has his defences ready against his regicidal party, says Katy Balls: the Rwanda plan, a welfare reform agenda and a 4p NI cut (with hints of 2p more to come). And while the rebels have a (published) agenda they do not – yet – have a candidate. Katy joins the podcast alongside Stephen Bush, associate editor of the Financial Times. (02:12)
Next: Lara and Gus take us through some of their favourite pieces from the magazine, including Damian Thompson's Life column, and Joel Golby’s notes on ⅓ pints.
Then: Everyone has heard of the ‘Essex Man’ that helped the Conservatives win in 1992, but what about the Hillingdon man? Journalist William Cook identifies a new swing voter in the magazine, the disgruntled Hillingdon man from sleepy Ruislip and the surrounding villages. He says that the reliably Tory voters of Hillingdon could change the habit of a lifetime and vote for Starmer. William joined the podcast to discuss. (15:46)
And finally: Mary Wakefield writes in defence of Victorian parenting in this week's magazine. She says that kids these days could benefit from some 'stiff upper lip' parenting and the resilience she learnt from her time at boarding school. She also warns against encouraging children to focus on their feelings and sending them to therapy. To debate, we were joined by Jean Twenge, author of the Generation Tech substack and the book Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future and The Spectator’s literary editor Sam Leith. (23:29)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and Gus Carter.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is the greatest magazine of English language. Subscribe today for just £12, |
| 0:05.0 | and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online to see for yourselves. Also, against my advice is editor, |
| 0:12.3 | we're giving away a free £20, John Lewis or Waitrose Voucher. Given that you're spending 12 quid, |
| 0:17.4 | you can do the maths. Go to spectator.com.com.uk forward slash voucher. But |
| 0:22.1 | don't hurry because this offer probably loses us money. |
| 0:32.3 | Hello and welcome to The Edition Podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shed a little |
| 0:37.3 | light on the thought |
| 0:38.2 | process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's |
| 0:43.8 | executive editor. And I'm Gus Carter, the Spectator's Deputy Features Editor. This week, we'll be |
| 0:49.0 | discussing Rishi's Survival Plan, we'll be charting the rise of Hillingdon Man and asking whether Victorian |
| 0:55.1 | parenting is the way forward. |
| 1:02.5 | So Gus, it's Wednesday afternoon, the magazine went to press at lunchtime today, and our cover |
| 1:07.3 | line is survival plan, is Rishi ready for the rebels? |
| 1:12.4 | How did this one come about? |
| 1:18.3 | Well, this one came about because the local elections followed a rather difficult time for us. |
| 1:24.0 | They're taking place tomorrow and we had a chat on Monday morning about whether or not it was worth doing a Scotland cover pegged to the fact that the first minister has just stepped |
| 1:28.8 | down and we decided that by Saturday when a lot of our readers get their magazine, it'll probably |
| 1:33.7 | be a bit late. So we came up with the idea of doing a piece on Rishi Sunak's Rearguard Action |
| 1:39.7 | against a potential plot from Tory Bat Ventures. And Lara, you actually had the particularly good idea of redoing a cover that we did in October |
| 1:50.1 | 2022. |
| 1:51.7 | Is Rishi Ready of him walking up the number 10 stairway? |
| 1:55.3 | And now on our cover, he's got a kind of barricade and a colander on his head and a broom, |
... |
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