Sam McPhail

Sam McPhail

Sam McPhail is The Spectator's Deputy Director of Research

Thursday

Sam McPhail

Bankrolled: Labour’s new paymasters

From our UK edition

36 min listen

In this week’s cover story, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes about Labour’s new paymasters – Keir Starmer’s party now receives more money from private donors than it does from trade unions. What do the new donors want, and what does Starmer want from them? Katy joins Will and Lara alongside the writer and Labour supporter Paul Mason. (01:00) Next up, Webb Keane, from the University of Michigan, and Scott Shapiro, from Yale, write in the magazine this week about the dawn of the godbots – you can now chat online to an artificial intelligence that pretends it’s god. Might people soon start outsourcing their ethics to a chatbot? We're joined by Webb and The Spectator’s commissioning editor Mary Wakefield.

Sam McPhail

Football fans’ loyalty no longer lies with clubs, but players

From our UK edition

The world’s top footballers now have a bigger following than the clubs they play for. Fans are beginning to support superstar players as they move around from club to club rather than sticking with a team – and this threatens the very foundations of the sport. Devotion to a team – for centuries a (largely) peaceful way of channelling our tribalism – is disappearing Streaming and social media are largely to blame. After Pelé signed for the New York Cosmos in the mid-1970s, only 40,000 US football enthusiasts would flock to the old Giants’ stadium. Earlier this month when Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami in Florida, the club’s co-owner David Beckham claimed that Messi’s unveiling had 3.5 billion views online.

Friday

Sam McPhail

What happened to Italian football?

From our UK edition

Neither Sandro Tonali nor AC Milan wanted to part ways. The young midfielder is from the outskirts of the city, has been a fan since boyhood and his dad’s an ultra. He wanted to become a Rossoneri icon like his hero Gennaro Gattuso. The top brass at Milan saw him as a future captain. Tonali was instrumental to the club winning Serie A ­– Italy’s top league – last year and reaching the European Champions League semi-final two months ago. Milan’s legendary manager from the 1990s, Fabio Capello, says Tonali is ‘the recipe to win’ and that he could have played in ‘the great Milan teams’ from 30 years ago.