Progress

My late husband’s insatiable appetite for ‘sticky willies’

Labour’s just deserts Sir: Last week’s leader hit the nail on the head (‘Desperate retreat’, 16 May). You have to wonder what is in the minds of the Labour party and specifically its potential new leaders Burnham, Rayner and Streeting. Their failure to read the room is what gave them the kicking they got at the local elections. Now they’re all expressing a wish to rejoin the EU, although Burnham will not apparently be campaigning on the issue in the forthcoming by-election. I bet he won’t! To bring an anti-Brexit, pro-EU agenda to an area dominated by Reform would be political suicide. Furthermore, if I were a constituent of Makerfield, I’d feel mightily annoyed that my vote was being used as a stepping stone in one person’s political career.

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.