Lara Brown

Lara Brown

Lara Brown is The Spectator's Commissioning Editor 

Thursday

Lara Brown

Labour has watered down guidance on child transition

Wilson is said to have claimed that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. Not for the civil servants tasked with producing guidance for schools attempting to support gender-questioning children. On Thursday, seven years after the government first promised statutory advice, we got another draft document for consultation. The delay might not be so egregious were it not for the fact that the last consultation on this issue opened in December 2023 (and closed in March 2024 without a whisper from officials about next steps). Since then, teachers have been navigating the safeguarding issues raised in the Cass Review without any legal direction.

Wednesday

Lara Brown

‘Yes, it’s that bad’: inside Oxford’s Saïd Business School

How do you get into the University of Oxford? It is a question asked by thousands of young people every year. In Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers (1973), Charles Highway discovers that the key is to feign socialism and memorise a few book reviews. It turns out there is an even better ruse: the Saïd Business School. Saïd has, at best, a dubious origin story. In 1996 the project was forced through at Oxford’s Congregation, the university’s legislative body, despite concerns that naming a school after Wafic Saïd, known for his role as a ‘fixer’ in the al-Yamamah arms deal, in return for £20 million might not do wonders for the university’s reputation. Its first director departed before completing a single term.

Friday

Lara Brown

AI will bring down Keir Starmer – if Peter Mandelson doesn’t first

43 min listen

Is Britain ready for Artificial Intelligence? Well, bluntly, 'no'; that's the verdict if you read several pieces in this week's Spectator – from Tim Shipman, Ross Clark and Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley – focused on how Britain is uniquely ill-placed to take advantage of the next industrial revolution. Tim Shipman's cover piece focuses on how the Labour government is approaching AI – there are some positives but, overall, Britain's creaky bureaucracy is blocking progress. To discuss this week's Edition, features editor William Moore is joined by political editor Tim Shipman, commissioning editor Lara Brown and the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine. Are you a tech-optimist or part of the 'analogue resistance' that Sarah professes to head?

AI will bring down Keir Starmer – if Peter Mandelson doesn’t first

Friday

Lara Brown

Trump’s Arctic madness, political treachery & banning social media

45 min listen

Another week, another foreign policy crisis – this time over Greenland. America's European allies watched as Trump increased the tension over the Arctic territory, only to announce he 'won't use force' in a set-piece speech in Davos. For the Spectator's cover this week, Paul Wood examines the strategic role of the Arctic, both against Russia and China and from nuclear energy to the space race. With a deal supposedly done between Denmark and the US, is there method in Trump's madness? For this week’s Edition, host William Moore is joined by deputy editor Freddy Gray, online commissioning editor Lara Brown and broadcaster Miriam Cates.

Wednesday

Lara Brown

The Chinese takeover of Britain’s public schools

Roedean is now known as ‘Beijing High’. Cheltenham Ladies’ College is ‘Hong Kong College’. In the country’s most elite boarding schools, pupils say that they are one of just a handful of English children. Others note that Chinese has become the dominant language in hallways and dormitories. Many English parents can no longer afford a boarding school education for their children. And the pressure of recently introduced VAT on fees, as well as above-inflation rises year on year, means the number able to cough up will dwindle further. By contrast, China and Hong Kong’s growing economy and cultural obsession with education provides a surfeit of parents with the cash needed to secure the educational prospects of their children.

Wednesday

Lara Brown

Debate: is 2026 Kemi’s year?

16 min listen

Regular listeners will remember back in May we recorded a podcast debating whether Kemi Badenoch was the right fit for Tory leader. At that point in time the Conservatives were falling in the polls and she was facing allegations of laziness and a lack of a political vision. Spool forward to the end of the year and she is in her strongest position ever. She looks more assured in PMQs, her conference speech was a hit and her media game is much improved. But is she actually getting better, or is Starmer getting worse? And will this modest bump in fortunes translate to success at the local elections? James Heale speaks to Paul Goodman, Lara Brown and William Atkinson. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Lara Brown

Sandie Peggie and a chilling step backwards for women’s rights

A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many thought this sort of madness was over, but the findings of Sandie Peggie’s tribunal against the NHS confirm that the battle is not won. This year will be remembered as one in which women’s rights took a step forward. The Supreme Court judgment confirmed what we’ve always known to be true: ‘sex’ means sex. It cannot be altered by a piece of paper. It seemed that sanity had been restored. But sometimes we forget just how fast defeat can be snapped from the jaws of victory. The results of Sandie Peggie’s case against NHS Fife serve as a stark reminder. Many have hailed the tribunal as a victory.

Monday

Lara Brown

Nicotine pouches: solution or smokescreen?

29 min listen

There has been a renewed focus on tobacco and nicotine products across Europe. Just as countries seek to speed up the process to a smoke-free future, through measures like generational smoking bans and increased regulations on packaging and advertising, there has been a sharp increase in young people using alternative nicotine products like vapes and pouches. Philip Morris International (PMI) expects to see two-thirds of its revenue come from smoke-free products by 2030 – including its product, Zyn. Dr Moira Gilchrist, chief communications officer at PMI, and Charlie Weimers MEP, a member of the Swedish Democrats, join The Spectator’s Lara Brown to talk about how nicotine pouches can help the transition away from tobacco to a smoke-free future.

Friday

Lara Brown

Lara Brown, James Heale, Sam Olsen & Toby Young

19 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Lara Brown reports on how young women are saying ’no’ to marriage; James Heale takes us through the history of the Budgets via drink; Sam Olsen reviews Ruthless by Edmond Smith and looks at Britain’s history of innovation and exploitation; and, Toby Young questions the burdensome regulation over Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Lara Brown

Are you too cool for marriage?

The term ‘spinster’ doesn’t seem to scare young women like it once might have. In fact, it is rarely heard nowadays. Instead, women are declaring themselves ‘alpha singles’ and eschewing dating altogether. Influencers are keeping their relationships quiet, for fear that simply posting photos of a new amour can lead to an exodus of followers. Vogue has declared boyfriends to be unfashionable. Women, it seems, are swapping engagement rings for solo travel, matcha lattes and nights spent at home with an LED face mask. Is marriage suddenly uncool? There are certainly plenty of women pushing this idea. Elle McNamara, a beauty influencer who goes by the name ‘Bambi Does Beauty’, posts advice videos on Instagram and TikTok aimed at other women.

Tuesday

Lara Brown

Are refugees really worth £266,000 each to the UK economy?

Refugees could contribute £266,000 each to the UK economy: that’s the claim made by the Together with Refugees coalition and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union in a report that says ‘fair and humane changes to the asylum system’ could benefit Britain. Unfortunately, something isn’t quite adding up. Spectator Verify has investigated, and we’ve found that not only is the £266,000 figure highly dubious, but that it’s reasonable to believe the policies proposed could have a significant net cost to the economy. The report makes no secret of the fact its proposals are extremely expensive The report, ‘Welcoming growth: the economic case for a fair and humane asylum system’, proposes four measures, three of which could be ruinously expensive.

Thursday

Lara Brown

BBC in crisis, the Wes Streeting plot & why ‘flakes’ are the worst

36 min listen

Can the BBC be fixed? After revelations of bias from a leaked dossier, subsequent resignations and threats of legal action from the US President, the future of the corporation is the subject of this week’s cover piece. Host William Moore is joined by The Spectator’s commissioning editor, Lara Brown, arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and regular contributor, Melanie McDonagh. They also discuss the drama of this week’s Westminster coup plot, and Melanie’s new book about why Catholicism attracted unlikely converts throughout the twentieth century. Plus: what’s the most bizarre excuse a friend has used to back out of a social engagement?

Lara Brown

Revealed: the bias of the BBC News app

The most influential person in British media is not Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere – it’s the editor who pushes out the BBC News app alerts. While many people gave up watching BBC News years ago, the corporation still dominates how millions receive their news, thanks to the app. Last year, it overtook Apple News to become Britain’s most-visited news app. Whoever controls those push notifications has the power to make the phones of the app’s 14.2 million users buzz with notifications several times a day, providing a constant stream of news updates and reaching a far larger audience than that of any television news bulletin, newspaper or magazine. Stories that flatter progressive orthodoxies are amplified; those that challenge them are sidelined So how is this power used?

Thursday

Lara Brown

Labour has surrendered to the quangocracy

After 16 months of this Labour government, it’s easy to catalogue the litany of bad decisions made by ministers. The disastrous budget that caused an uptick in unemployment. The tax imposed on family farms passed down through generations. Or the Education Secretary’s latest attempts to sabotage decades of successful policy.  Yet often overlooked, are the pains that Labour have gone to in the last year to ensure they aren’t making decisions at all. One aide famously said of the Prime Minister: ‘Keir’s not driving the train. He thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR.

Thursday

Lara Brown

Why Jess Phillips can’t confront the reality of grooming gangs

In May 2015, the newly elected MP for Birmingham Yardley gave her maiden speech in the House of Commons. Jess Phillips vowed to improve Britain’s ‘response to victims of domestic and sexual violence and abuse in all its forms’. In the years since, Phillips has certainly made a lot of noise about discrimination and sexual abuse. She has attacked select committees for not having enough female chairs; threatened to resign from the Labour party over its response to sexual harassment allegations against her colleagues; and, annually, read out the names in Parliament of every woman killed by a man in the previous 12 months.

Thursday

Lara Brown

Left-wing Ultras, Reform intellectuals & capitalist sex robots

38 min listen

‘The Ultras’ are the subject of The Spectator’s cover story this week – this is the new Islamo-socialist alliance that has appeared on the left of British politics. Several independent MPs, elected amidst outrage over the war in Gaza, have gone on to back the new party created by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The grouping has got off to a rocky start but – as Angus Colwell and Max Jeffery write – there are expectations that they could pick up dozens of seats across the country. Can the hard-left coalition hold? Host Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale, commissioning editor Lara Brown and Angus Colwell – who also writes the Spectator’s new morning newsletter Spectator Daily.

Lara Brown

‘Trump isn’t easy’: Piers Morgan on his friends – and foes

When I meet Piers Morgan, he warns me he’s glued to the ‘moment in history’ happening on his TV screens that morning. He is watching Hamas release the remaining Israeli hostages as part of the peace deal negotiated by his old friend Donald Trump. The two have known each other for 17 years, first meeting when Morgan appeared in – and won – Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice in 2008. He tells me that Trump’s final words to him on the show were: ‘Piers, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re almost certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody… You’re the Celebrity Apprentice.

Friday

Lara Brown

Is the grooming gang inquiry headed for a whitewash?

Keir Starmer did not want to hold an inquiry into grooming gangs.  He did everything that he could to ignore the rape and torture of children which has scarred towns across England. Louise Casey’s audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse was almost certainly commissioned to get him out of a tough spot and get calls for an inquiry out of the papers.  It was only after Labour were left with absolutely no choice in the matter, damned by the scale of abuse documented in Casey’s report, that an inquiry was finally commissioned.  It should therefore be no surprise that before the inquiry has even begun, it is being undermined.

Tuesday

Lara Brown

Why people are falling in love with chatbots

From our US edition

Jason, 45, has been divorced twice. He’d always struggled with relationships. In despair, he consulted ChatGPT. At first, it was useful for exploring ideas. Over time, their conversations deepened. He named the bot Jennifer Anne Roberts. They began to discuss “philosophy, regrets, old wounds.” Before he knew it, Jason was in love. Many women have turned to chatbots after experiencing repeated disappointment with real men Jason isn’t alone. He’s part of a growing group of people swapping real-world relationships for chatbots. The social media platform Reddit now features a community entitled MyBoyfriendIsAI, with around 20,000 members. On it, people discuss the superiority of AI relationships.

chatbots

Thursday

Lara Brown

Kemi’s fightback, the cult of Thatcher & debunking British myths

40 min listen

The Spectator’s cover story this week is an interview with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch ahead of the Tory party conference. Reflecting on the criticism she received for being seen as slow on policy announcements, she says that the position the Conservatives were in was ‘more perilous than people realise’ and compares herself to the CEO of an ailing firm. Can Kemi turn it around for the Tories? Host William Moore is joined by the Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman – who interviewed Kemi – alongside commissioning editor Lara Brown, and academic and author Philip Hensher. They discuss whether the ‘cult of Thatcher’ needs to die, Tim says he's more Disraeli and Bismarck to Lara's Pitt and Philip reveals what once got him sacked from the House of Commons.