The Edition: Putin’s trap, the decline of shame & holiday rental hell
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
First: Putin has set a trap for Europe and Ukraine
‘Though you wouldn’t know from the smiles in the White House this week… a trap has been set by Vladimir Putin to split the United States from its European allies,’ warns Owen Matthews. The Russian President wants to make a deal with Donald Trump, but he ‘wants to make it on his own terms’. ‘Putin would like nothing more than for Europe to encourage Ukraine to fight on… and lose even more of their land’. But, as Owen writes, those who count themselves among the country’s friends must ask ‘whether it’s time to choose an unjust peace over a just but never-ending war’.
Have European leaders walked into Putin’s trap? Owen joins the podcast alongside Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times.
Next: Lionel Shriver, Toby Young & Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the decline of shame in society
A rise in brazen shoplifting, attempts to police public spaces and moralising over ‘Art’ – these are all topics touched on by columnists Lionel Shriver and Toby Young and Arts editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic in the magazine this week. Are these individual problems in their own right, or could they be symptomatic of wider failings in British society?
Lionel, Toby and Igor joined the podcast to try to make sense of why guilt and shame seem to have disappeared in modern Britain.
And finally: the hell of owning a holiday rental
William Cash writes in the magazine this week about the trials and tribulations of running a holiday let. He complains that the lines between hotels and holiday lets have become blurred, and people of all ages are now becoming guests from hell. He writes: ‘it has become increasingly evident that middle class families have no idea how to behave on holiday… basic guest decorum seems to belong to a different summer holiday age’.
So how did things get so bad? William joined the podcast alongside Spectator columnist Melissa Kite – who runs her own B&B in Ireland.
Plus: ahead of the long weekend, Mark Mason reveals who we can thank for bank holidays.
Hosted by William Moore and Lara Prendergast.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | At Philip Morris International, we're delivering a smoke-free future today. |
| 0:05.0 | Our mission is clear. |
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| 0:29.9 | Music Learn more at PMI.com slash progress. Hello and welcome to The Edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shared a little light on the thought process behind putting the world's |
| 0:38.3 | oldest weekly magazine to bed. I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor. |
| 0:44.3 | And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. On this week's podcast, how Putin |
| 0:49.3 | split the Western Alliance, why Britain's social contract is fraying, and the hell of owning a holiday rental. |
| 1:07.1 | First up, how Putin set a trap for Europe. On the surface, Vladimir Zelensky's meeting with Donald |
| 1:13.0 | Trump this week seemed to go off without a hitch. But, as Owen Matthews writes in his cover piece |
| 1:18.0 | this week, though you wouldn't know from the smiles around the White House table, a trap has been |
| 1:23.0 | set by Putin designed to split the United States from its European allies. The brutal truth, |
| 1:28.9 | Owen concludes, is that for the past three years, the Europeans have been lying to Ukraine and lying |
| 1:33.8 | to themselves. Owen joined the podcast to discuss, alongside Gideon Rackman from the Financial Times. |
| 1:39.9 | I started by asking Owen to explain the trap that's been set by Putin. |
| 1:53.2 | The reason why the meeting between European leaders and Zelensky and Trump went well is because they avoided talking about the actual real hard decisions. |
| 2:05.0 | Before we start to unpick what those are and go into the naysaying, let's emphasize that I think peace is closer now than it was before Trump started this process. |
| 2:12.4 | So I have to say, I have myself being quite occasionally guilty of being quite dismissive and rude about Trump's efforts. |
| 2:17.9 | But it's definitely better than it was before and the peace process has definitively started. So that's already quite a large positive sign. |
| 2:21.3 | That said, the issue is that despite the, I think, highly optimistic gloss that Trump and his non-Russia expert advisors have put on what they think Putin is saying or has said to them, |
| 2:37.1 | I think the reality is that Putin is going to make a whole raft of extremely challenging requests, |
... |
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