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Best of the Spectator

The Edition: Rishi Sunak’s election gamble

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News, News Commentary, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.3826 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s a bumper edition of The Edition this week. After Rishi Suank called a surprise – and perhaps misguided – snap election just a couple of hours after our press deadline, we had to frantically come up with a new digital cover. To take us through a breathless day in Westminster and the fallout of Rishi’s botched announcement, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls joins the podcast. (01:35)

Next: Our print magazine leads on the electric car bust. Ross Clark runs through all the issues facing electric cars today – from China flooding the market with discounted EVs to Rishi Sunak dropping the unrealistic target of banning new petrol car sales by 2030. ‘Could the outlook suddenly improve for British EVs?’ asks Ross. ‘It’s hard to see how.’ Already, car-makers from Aston Martin to Fiat are delaying or scaling back their EV plans. Ross joins the podcast alongside Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver, to ask whether the great EV revolution is over. (07:35)

Then: Matthew Parris writes his column this week on the myths around ultra-processed foods. These are foods which are engineered to be hyper-palatable and typically include many preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, artificial colours, flavours etc. Such additives are considered to be detrimental to our health, but Matthew says we shouldn’t be worried. He joined the podcast along with Dr Christoffer Van Tulleken, associate professor at UCL and author of the bestselling book Ultra-Processed People. (19:33)

And finally: why is the government making it harder to get an au pair? This is the question which Philip Womack asks in The Spectator. He says that the government’s new childcare plans are pricing regular dual income families out of the traditional agreement between family and au pair. He is joined by the journalist Lucy Denyer. (39:45)

Hosted by William Moore and Gus Carter. 

Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

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

Transcript

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0:00.0

If you enjoyed the Spectator's podcast, why not subscribe to the magazine as well?

0:04.2

You can get 12 weeks of The Spectator for just £12, plus a free £20 £10,000 or weight raise voucher

0:10.6

if you go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

0:14.7

This is a podcast-only deal, and we hope you take us up on it.

0:28.8

Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator,

0:32.4

where each week we shed a little light on the thought process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed.

0:36.0

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

0:38.4

And I'm Gus Carter, the Spectator's Deputy Features Editor. This week, Rishi's summer

0:43.1

election gamble, the great electric vehicle bust, the truth about ultra-processed foods, and why

0:48.6

the opair industry could collapse. We've got a bumper edition with four different items rather than our usual three,

0:59.9

and that's because since the magazine went to print... Rather big news. Yeah, rather big news,

1:04.7

yeah, exactly. We're speaking on Thursday morning, and we have rather unusual position of having

1:09.7

essentially two cover features depending on how you're

1:12.5

reading the magazine. You're getting the print version. You've got Ross Clark's piece about how the

1:17.5

electric vehicle revolution is failing. But if you're getting the magazine digitally, we have a new

1:22.9

cover piece by Katie Balls about Rishi's surprise and some would say quite bizarre decision to call a

1:29.7

snap election for the summer. So Katie Balls, our political editor, joins us now to talk about

1:34.5

that process. Katie, it's the morning after the night before. We went to press yesterday afternoon.

1:40.6

Since then, we've put together a new digital cover.

1:44.6

Can you tell us what happened?

1:46.5

Yeah, well, we had a slight nightmare for being completely honest

1:49.5

because Downing Street decided to call an election,

...

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