The Edition: Reform’s camp following, masculine rage & why do people make up languages?

Best of the Spectator

First: Reform is naff – and that’s why people like it

Gareth Roberts warns this week that ‘the Overton window is shifting’ but in a very unexpected way. Nigel Farage is ahead in the polls – not only because his party is ‘bracingly right-wing’, but ‘because Reform is camp’. Farage offers what Britain wants: ‘a cheeky, up-yours, never-mind-the-knockers revolt against our agonisingly earnest political masters’.

‘From Farage on down,’ Roberts argues, ‘there is a glorious kind of naffness’ to Reform: daytime-TV aesthetics, ‘bargain-basement’ celebrities and big-breasted local councillors. ‘The progressive activists thought they could win the culture war simply by saying they had won it’, but ‘the John Bulls and Greasy Joans are stirring again’. Roberts loves how ‘the current excitement over flag-raising’ is the ‘conniptions’ it gives to ‘the FBPE crowd’. Of course, for Farage, planning for government ‘really cannot be a pantomime affair’. But ‘in these grim times’ we ‘need the romping Reform’. Gareth joins the podcast to make his case for Carry On Reform.

Next: the ‘she’ consumed by masculine rage

Lionel Shriver reacts to the latest school shooting in America. The perpetrator was widely reported in the media with the pronouns ‘she/her’ which, Lionel argues, is not just an issue around politeness. This glosses over the fact that the shooter was biologically male, adding to the majority of cases of school shootings that are conducting by men. By pandering to this incoherence of the reality of the situation, it doesn’t help society to uncover the reasons behind the issue.

Lionel joined the podcast alongside the Spectator’s US editor Freddy Gray. Freddy points out how this shooting is just one example of how younger people can be transfixed by the very darkest sides of the internet.

And finally: why people make up languages

Constructed language expert Dr Bettina Beinhoff and author and historian Peter Parker join the podcast to talk about ‘made-up’ languages. Why do humans construct languages outside of their every-day speech? Most people will have heard of Klingon or Elvish, used in books and film, but what about Polari – the subversive language used by groups of LGBT people decades ago – or the Potato language – which writer Melanie Ferbreach says her parents used to hide their conversations from her. Listeners may be impressed to hear Lara's own attempt at 'eggy-peggy'...

Plus: with a special introduction from our political editor, Tim Shipman interviews shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick – is he trying to outflank Farage?

Hosted by William Moore and Lara Prendergast.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

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