The Edition: the real Brexit betrayal, bite-sized history & is being a bridesmaid brutal?
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The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agreement with the EU perpetuates the failure to understand Brexit’s opportunities, and that Labour ‘doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t exist to make the lives of the fortunate more favourable’.
Michael makes the argument that ‘the real Brexit betrayal’ is Labour’s failure to understand how Brexit can protect British jobs and industries and save our manufacturing sector. Historian of the Labour Party Dr Richard Johnson, a politics lecturer at Queen Mary University writes an accompanying piece arguing that Labour ‘needs to learn to love Brexit’.
Richard joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside Conservative peer Dan Hannan. Both Brexiteers, they disagree over the approach the government should take and what tools it should be using. (1:02)
Next: the big appeal of bite-sized history
Why are so many readers turning to short histories? The historian Alice Loxton writes in the magazine this week about the popularity of books with titles like ‘the shortest history of…’, ‘a brief history of…’ or ‘a little history of’. Some may argue these are designed to satisfy generations of distracted readers, but Alice defends them, saying ‘there is something liberating about how noncommittal they are’.
Should we embrace the ‘short history’? Alice, author of Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives, joined the podcast to discuss further alongside Professor Simon Heffer – himself the author of A Short History of Power. (24:40)
And finally: is being a bridesmaid ‘brutal’?
A Northern Irish bride chose to have 95 bridesmaids when she married earlier this month. While it might be understandable to not want to choose between friends, Sophia Money-Coutts writes in the magazine this week that, once chosen, the reality of being a bridesmaid is brutal. Sophia joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside the journalist Francesca Peacock. (36:22)
Hosted by William Moore and Gus Carter.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews. |
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| 0:16.6 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:38.6 | Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shared a little light on the thought process by inputting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. |
| 0:41.9 | I'm Gus Carter, the Spectator's Deputy Features Editor. |
| 0:44.8 | And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. |
| 0:49.8 | On this week's podcast, we ask, does Labor need to learn to love Brexit? |
| 0:52.9 | Why do bite-sized histories have big appeal and should we pity bridesmaids? |
| 1:01.9 | Michael Gove, our editor writes the cover piece this week, |
| 1:05.2 | looking at Kirstama's Brexit deal. |
| 1:08.0 | And he starts with quite a striking image in which he says, |
| 1:10.5 | Kirstama, John |
| 1:11.4 | MacDonald and Jeremy Corbyn's advisor, Seamus Mill, were all sat round a table, being upbraided |
| 1:17.4 | for failing to support Brexit for left-wing reasons. And Michael goes on to reveal that over |
| 1:23.9 | sandwiches and ginger beer, it's in fact him that is criticising them for failing to take |
| 1:28.6 | advantage of Brexit. We spoke to Dr Richard Johnson, who wrote the sidebar to Michael's |
| 1:34.7 | excellent piece, as well as Dan Hannan, the Tory peer and prominent Brexit campaigner. And I started |
| 1:40.9 | by asking Richard what he meant by saying Labor needs to learn to love Brexit. |
| 1:45.8 | Well, I think even the most fervent Brexiteers would admit that since we left in 2020, the public has not fallen in love with Brexit. |
| 1:54.6 | Even people who voted Leave are not happy. |
| 1:58.6 | Only one and four leave voters think that Brexit has been more of a success than a |
... |
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