Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Isabel Hardman. This week, Boris Johnson decided to seek a general election, but will his gamble pay off?

Plus is trophy hunting really as immoral as Carrie Simmons says it is.

First, it's only the first week back from summer recess and

parliamentarians have already aged by years. The Prime Minister has suffered several defeats in

Parliament, first losing control of the order paper to MPs, then losing the Ben Bill in the

Commons, and the latest failing to trigger a general election on Wednesday night.

Number 10 will try again, but how risky is this gamble of a snap election?

I'm joined by James Forsythe, the pollster Joe Twyman, Director of Delta Poll, and Antoinette

Sanvach, one of the 21 Tory rebels who became independent MPs this week.

So let's start with you, Antoinette. What's this week being like?

Sad, really. I feel that the Conservative Party changed this week in a way that I don't recognise.

And although I have to say my colleagues have

been very kind and supportive. Were you expecting it to go the way it did? Yes, I was told I was

going to lose the whip, but I object to that in circumstances where the Prime Minister and a quarter of his cabinet voted

against Theresa May's deal and we could have been out on the 29th of March.

And he was part of the official vote leave campaign with Gove and others in the cabinet that made the commitment that the

European Communities Act would not be repealed until after Parliament saw the details of the

free trade agreement. So my votes this week upheld what vote leave promised. James, what is Boris Johnson up to? Why is he doing this? Because he wants to be

in power rather than just in office. His calculation essentially was this. It was over the summer.

They looked into every way that they could try and block or nullify this extension legislation.

Cabinet on Monday

take reason. I'll say, look, I've worked for every option and none of them works. You know,

...