Quite right!: was Cameron wrong about China?

Best of the Spectator

Listeners on the Best of Spectator playlist can enjoy a section of the latest episode of Quite right! but for the full thing please seek out the Quite right! channel. Just search ‘Quite right!’ wherever you are listening now.

This week on Quite right! Michael and Maddie turn their sights to Westminster’s latest espionage scandal – and the collapse of the case to prosecute two men accused of spying for China. Was the case dropped out of incompetence, or out of fear of offending Beijing? As Michael puts it, ‘Either we’re not being told the truth, or this is a government of staggering incompetence.’

They also unpick the growing row over Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s National Security Adviser, and his alleged role in shelving the case. What does his re-emergence, along with Peter Mandelson and other ‘Sith Lords of Blairism’, tell us about the return of New Labour’s old moral compromises?

Elsewhere, Donald Trump’s surprise Gaza peace deal has upended diplomatic expectations and ushered in a new style of negotiation – the ‘Manhattan real estate’ approach – which has succeeded where the UN’s moralising failed. Is it Trump’s world and we’re all living in it?

Finally: The Traitors. Maddie confesses she’s never watched an episode, but would Michael be a traitor or a faithful? What does the show reveal about the darker truths of human nature? And which politicians would make the perfect traitors?

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