The Edition: who's afraid of Keir Starmer?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
Who's afraid of Keir Starmer?
In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator's Editor Fraser Nelson says that without a Labour demon to point at the Tories stand little chance in the next election. He joins the podcast alongside journalist Paul Mason, to discuss why Keir Starmer is so hard to vilify (01:10).
Also this week:
In the magazine, The Spectator's newsletter editor Hannah Tomes exposes the social media campaign targeting young women, such as herself, to freeze and donate their eggs. She joins the podcast alongside Sophia Money-Coutts, host of the Freezing Time podcast, to consider whether it is right to market this as an altruistic undertaking (16:58).
And finally:
This week saw Prince Harry's bombshell memoir Spare hit the shelves. Novelist and critic Philip Hensher writes a scathing review for the magazine and is joined by Kara Kennedy, staff writer at the Spectator World, to go through the best – or perhaps the worst – details in the book (26:39).
Hosted by William Moore.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is sponsored by Can Accord Genuity Wealth Management, experienced wealth planners and investment managers who offer unwavering support in challenging times. |
| 0:10.0 | Visit can-dowealth.com for more information. Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator. |
| 0:24.7 | Each week we look at three pieces from the magazine with the writers behind them. |
| 0:29.2 | I'm William Moore, the Spectators Features Editor. |
| 0:32.4 | On this week's episode, I'll be discussing why it is impossible for the Tories to demonise |
| 0:37.3 | Kirstarmer, |
| 0:38.4 | talking about the social media push to get young women to freeze their eggs, |
| 0:43.1 | and going through the best or perhaps the worst bits in Prince Harry's tell-all-memoir spare. |
| 0:50.8 | First up, who's afraid of Kirstama? |
| 0:53.6 | In his cover piece for the magazine this week, the Spectator's editor, Fraser Nelson, |
| 0:58.0 | says that without a demon labour leader to point to, the Tories stand little chance at the next election. |
| 1:04.7 | He joins me now alongside journalist Paul Mason. |
| 1:08.6 | Fraser, to start with, you argue in your piece that the conservatives are going to |
| 1:12.8 | struggle to demonise Kirstearner at the next election. Why? Because I think the conservatives |
| 1:19.3 | have grown lazy on negative campaigning. Almost every single election, the main message is, |
| 1:25.2 | look at the other guys, aren't they crazy? Now, in Jeremy Corbyn's |
| 1:28.5 | case, I think they were right. I think the fear of Corbyn was the main driver of Tory votes. |
| 1:32.8 | That wasn't a fear exaggerated by the Tories. It didn't need to be. You're having Labour MPs |
| 1:37.6 | like Ian Austin say that even he was going to vote Tory because he thought Jeremy Corbyn was such a threat to the party. Now, my point being |
| 1:44.2 | that this wasn't a Tory spoon operation. But in the 2015 election, you had Ed Miliband and there |
| 1:50.1 | was a, the Tories were saying the coalition of chaos, if Miliband were to get in, this guy is a kind |
| 1:55.2 | red-ed socialist. And so it wasn't really about what conservatism can do, what conservatives can do. |
... |
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