The Edition: Why Labour’s fate will be decided in the Strait of Hormuz
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
For this week’s Edition, Lara Prendergast is joined by The Spectator's John Power, feminist campaigner Julie Bindel and former adviser to Boris Johnson – and co-host of the In The Room podcast, Cleo Watson.
They explore the idea that the Strait of Hormuz, not Makerfield, will determine the fate of the current Labour government. Starmer may be facing a challenge to his authority from mayoral shapeshifter Andy Burnham, but neither the PM or the wannabe MP will be rewarded if grocery and energy prices continue to soar. How much can be done to insulate Britain from future pain? And do they trust Labour to do so?
Also this week: is Wes Streeting a better option than Burnham? Julie reveals her own run-ins with the now-backbench MP but concedes that Wes may be 'the least bad option’.
Plus: what can we learn from female political trailblazers of the past? Are there any merits to lists of the greatest books? And, following the release of series two of Rivals, Cleo reveals she was once asked to put together a list of the best orgasm scenes from Jilly Cooper’s novels...
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:27.4 | Hello and welcome to the edition from The Spectator. |
| 0:31.2 | I'm Lara Prendergast, the Spectator's executive editor, |
| 0:34.4 | and the latest issue of the magazine has just gone to press. To discuss what's in it, |
| 0:39.6 | I'm joined now by our assistant content editor, John Power, the writer and feminist campaigner Julie |
| 0:46.0 | Bindle, and the former advisor to Boris Johnson and co-host of the podcast in the room, Cleo Watson. |
| 0:57.6 | This week's cover has the headline, Dyer Straits. |
| 1:00.5 | And in it, John says that the fallout from the crisis in Hormuz is about to cause dire economic |
| 1:06.5 | circumstances for Britain. |
| 1:09.1 | So, John, your piece paints a fairly apocalyptic vision. And I wanted to |
| 1:12.8 | start by asking you where you think we are right now and where you think we'll be getting to |
| 1:16.9 | in a few months' time. Well, I think we were saying earlier, weren't we that it's panic stations. |
| 1:20.8 | And I think we really are now at panic stations. So there's two sort of consequences of the |
| 1:26.3 | homers being shut this long. The modelling that we were doing |
| 1:29.0 | in March and what Cobra was thinking about in terms of worst case scenario was that Hormers might be |
| 1:33.8 | shut by June. And lots of sort of modelling was done about that in terms of there being |
| 1:37.9 | shortages. So, you know, going into a shop, there's nothing carbonated. You can't get any fizzy |
| 1:42.3 | drinks. But also there might not be fresh meat because we need dry ice from CO2 in order to keep meat preserved. But the other |
| 1:48.7 | element of this, which is really, really bad, is inflation. Basically, the modelling we were |
| 1:53.5 | looking at again in April that the Bank of England was doing, but also some of the modelling |
... |
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