Best of the Spectator

The soul suckers of private equity, Douglas Murray on Epstein and MAGA & are literary sequels ‘lazy’?

First up: how private equity is ruining Britain

Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children’s homes owned by PE has doubled in the last five years. This ‘gives capitalism a bad name’, he writes. Perhaps the most symbolic example is in the water industry, with water firms now squeezed for money and saddled with debt. British water firms now have a debt-to-equity ratio of 70%, compared to just 4% in 1991. Britain’s desperation for foreign money has, quite literally, left Britain ‘in the shit’. 

Gus joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside the journalist Megan Greenwell, author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream. (00:46)

Next: why is MAGA so incensed over Jeffrey Epstein?

Six years after he died, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is still haunting Donald Trump. Trump had vowed to release all files on various cases that attract conspiracy theorists – from JFK to Martin Luther King Jr. What makes the Epstein case different, as Douglas Murray writes in the magazine this week, is that the case was so recent and Epstein’s ties with the elites, many of whom are still in power. Trump appeared to backtrack on releasing files relating to Epstein, prompting ire from the MAGA world, and there is now mounting cross-party pressure to uncover who knew what. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, sent representatives home early for summer, and there is even talk of Ghislaine Maxwell testifying.  

Why is the Epstein scandal such a lightning rod for MAGA rage? Douglas Murray joined the Spectator to discuss. The full interview can be found on Spectator TV. (15:49)

And finally: are literary sequels ‘lazy’?

It’s ‘sod’s law’, says the Spectator’s literary editor Sam Leith, that when a friend’s book is due to be reviewed in the pages of the books section that you edit, the review will be bad. Mike Cormack reviews Men In Love by Irvine Welsh this week, calling the decision by Welsh to pen another sequel to Trainspotting ‘lazy’. At the Spectator this made us ponder whether this is true of all literary sequels, and what motivates authors to stick with characters and stories that they know.

Sam joined us to discuss further alongside Lucy Thynne, the Telegraph’s deputy literary editor. (33:59)

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Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.