'Marriage is the real rebellion’ argues Madeline Grant in the Spectator’s cover article this week. The Office for National Statistics predicts that by 2050 only 30 per cent of adults will be married. This amounts to a ‘relationship recession’ where singleness is ‘more in vogue now than it has been since the dissolution of the monastries’. With a rising division between the sexes, and many resorting to alternative relationships like polyamory, how can we defend marriage?

For this week’s Edition, host William Moore is joined by political editor Tim Shipman, assistant editor – and parliamentary sketchwriter – Madeline Grant and the Spectator’s diary writer this week, former Chancellor and Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng.

As well as the cover, they discuss: how Rachel Reeves benefited from the OBR Budget leak, whether through cock up or conspiracy; what they thought of Kemi Badenoch’s post-Budget performance; whether it is fair for Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds – in an interview with Tim – to say that ‘the architects of Brexit ran away'; and finally, how inevitable was the idea of ‘progress’ when thinking about Britain's Industrial Revolution.

Plus: Kwasi explains why he agrees with Tim that the Budget should be confined to the 19th Century.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 66: Joey Skaggs