Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast.

This week we look at Boris Johnson's Do or Die Brexit. Will the UK and the EU reach a compromise deal before the 31st of October?

Plus, we discuss whether museums should care where their donations come from,

and finally we ask, would you eat a roasted insect? In the first full week of his premiership,

Boris Johnson has increased no-deal spending, toward the United Kingdom to demonstrate his

dedication to the Union, and gathered his no-deal war cabinet for its first meetings. But even if the EU

believed that Johnson is serious in his no-deal threat, it might still not budge on the backstop,

or so James Forsyth argues in this week's cover piece. Katie Balls, our deputy political editor,

speaks to James on the podcast together with Agatha Gostinska Jakuboska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European

Reform who joins us from Brussels.

James, tell us about the game of chicken that Boris Johnson appears to be playing with the EU.

I think Boris Johnson is playing multiple games of chicken at the moment.

The first one, before he can even get to play a game and chicken with the EU,

he has to succeed in playing a game and chicken with his own Parliament. He essentially has to

show that when Parliament returns in September for that pre-party conference short session

of a couple of weeks, that he can get through that period without Parliament, either bringing him down

in a vote of no confidence, or successfully managing to find a way to bind his hands and force the

government to request an extension to try and avoid a no-deal Brexit. If he can do that, he believes,

and he really does believe this, he believes that if he can turn up and say to the EU,

look, I am serious about no deal, getting my country ready for this, are you prepared to

compromise to avoid no deal? He thinks that in that instance, the EU will say, okay, let's

talk about this, let's find a way to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

...