Boris and Tom also debate Charles Leclerc’s future, Max Verstappen’s place among the sport’s all-time greats, and Fernando Alonso’s remarkable determination to keep competing into his mid-forties despite Aston Martin’s difficult season.

No conversation is complete without a look to the future, and the pair then take a look at Formula One’s next generation, focusing on teenage sensation Kimi Antonelli and the changing landscape of driver development.

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From the Home Office’s shadowy Research, Information and Communications Unit to the way grieving families’ statements are used to shut down legitimate debate, Colin traces how Britain’s institutions are more concerned with managing public emotion than confronting uncomfortable truths.

Elon Musk recently said in an interview with The Economist that his “batting average” for predicting the future was “very high for a human”.

Coming from virtually anyone else on the planet, this would be an audacious act of self-aggrandising. Coming from someone who has almost single-handedly transformed the EV market, commercialised space travel and accelerated the AI revolution, it’s a modest claim.

However, even the best batters occasionally swing and miss, and on this occasion, I believe Musk missed.

He was clarifying a tweet he posted in 2024 in response to the unrest sparked by the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Pressed on whether he still stands by his prediction that ‘civil war is inevitable’ in a country that has seen rapid, large-scale immigration and the attendant problems that come with it, the first trillionaire told The Economist’s editor-in-chief that he does, with the added caveat that this was based “on current trends”.

As he explained to a visibly indignant Zanny Minton Beddoes, when a society like Britain imports a large group of people from overseas whose ideas and beliefs are incompatible with those of the West, at some point, there will be a “reckoning”.

Before Stasi Britain locks me up like Lucy Connolly, let me make one thing clear: violence is never the answer. But the idea that decent Britons have finally had enough of the status quo and have the courage to do something about it is a romantic fantasy, one that harks back to the days of Empire when we still ruled the waves and forged our own destiny.

I say “we” because, as Minton Beddoes was quick to remind Musk throughout the interview, Britain is “my country”, not his. Unlike The Economist’s editor, however, I invoke that fact not as a cudgel to beat Musk with, but to argue that his vision of Britain is not dystopian at all.

Implicit in Musk’s insistence that Britain will snap if it’s pushed too far is an assumption that there is courage still to be found in this sceptred isle.

This is not my experience at all. I see a nation utterly defeated. A population too pusillanimous to push back against the forces that seek to destroy it. A collective malady has set in, with symptoms ranging from resignation to blithe indifference.

With voters restive about immigration and Reform riding high in the polls, my assessment might appear at odds with the national mood, but scratch the surface and it’s the same old story.

In what calls to mind a famous observation made by the French philosopher and diplomat Joseph-Marie de Maistre, “Every nation gets the government it deserves”, British voters claim they want to save this country, then head down to the ballot box and commit an act of national self-harm.

Makerfield was merely the latest example of this. Presented with the choice of sticking two fingers up to the establishment or voting for a socialist who is part of it - and who had engineered the by-election to return to Parliament - voters plumped for the latter.

If Reform’s candidate, Robert Kenyon, had won the seat, the resulting chaos would have cemented the case for an early general election, which is sorely needed to turn this country around.

Instead, we now have a (slightly) more competent leftie running the country who promises to rewind the clock on 40 years of neoliberalism, “reindustrialise” the heartlands, offer sweeteners on energy bills and bus fares, and believes carers “should be the best paid people in society” - not those working in AI or other cutting-edge industries that could boost productivity growth and make Britain a competitive player on the world stage.

The best we can hope for now is to cling on to America like barnacles on a ship as it dukes it out with China for AI supremacy. Or not. In Burnham’s Britain, it’s all about good vibes, statist intervention and nostalgia.

Who cares about the big picture stuff, anyway? The same voters who Musk has so much faith in have just given Burnham a bounce: Labour have now overtaken Reform to lead a national poll for the first time in 16 months.

Let’s not forget that Britain got itself into this mess in the first place because these same voters couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed at the last general election. Our last dud of a prime minister only secured around 33.7 per cent of the vote – one of the lowest vote shares ever to produce an outright majority.

This supine quality long precedes the present moment, of course, and arguably found its most grotesque expression during the height of Covid, when tens of millions happily complied with the government’s onerous lockdown restrictions and grassed on their neighbours for flouting them.

As Peter Hitchens recently pointed out on an episode of Triggernometry, if No 10 had “decreed that everyone had a pink extension on their nose, people would have done it”.

This was around the time that the gormless do-gooders were sharing black squares on their social media profiles to show solidarity with a black man who was killed 4,000 miles away on the streets of Minneapolis.

At least there was Brexit. That once-in-a-generation revolt against the unaccountable elites. Alas, even here, the British can’t stay the course, with 57 per cent of Britons telling YouGov that it was wrong to leave the EU, including 23 per cent of Leave voters.

Equally depressing is a recent survey that found 50 per cent of young people in Britain would not fight for their country under any circumstances. My bet is that they wouldn’t even look up if the rockets rained down. Then again, for the reasons I stated above, can you blame them?

With immigration consistently ranking as the public’s top concern, surely this is the one issue the public would not roll over on. Sadly not. It turns out voters are willing to compromise if they see a notable improvement in other areas of their lives.

For example, Ipsos polling from last year found many Conservative voters who were defecting to Reform over immigration would return to their traditional party if it were performing well on the economy and the NHS.

In other words, while immigration may be driving voters into the arms of Reform, dissatisfaction with the Conservatives’ broader record is what keeps them there. Address those wider concerns, and anger over immigration might subside.

In his recent monologue, my colleague and veteran broadcaster Colin Brazier attributes Britain’s decline to a growing incuriosity about the world. We’ve grown lazy and, in the process, let our guard down, he argues. Our enemies, meanwhile, are growing ever more curious.

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For more defence and geopolitical analysis, alongside original reports and documentaries, follow and subscribe to Outpost on Substack, X, YouTube and Facebook.

Seb gives listeners an insider explanation on explains how the unit operates, and the intricacies of the counter-terrorism and national security, why Freedom of Information requests so often hit a wall.

The podcast explores how, increasingly, journalists, PR agencies and government departments can end up working together to manage political fall out by bending the truths we live by.

The conversation ranges from the 2014 Sun front page on Islamic State to family statements after recent killings, the response to Manchester Arena, Martin’s Law, social media regulation, and the wider collapse of trust in British institutions. They also discuss why big, archaic institutions in Britain …

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The podcast explores Labour’s long miscalculation over communal voting, and whether Britain risks importing the kind of entrenched bloc politics seen in Northern Ireland. They also discuss what this fragmentation could mean for the next general election, and what is being done to prevent further corruption.

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The old adage, ‘When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold’, has always felt more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than a statement of fact. For that reason, I tend to resist making transatlantic comparisons wherever possible.

However, the parallels between the left’s response to the murder of Charlie Kirk on a Utah campus and Ann Widdecombe’s murder in her Dartmoor home are impossible to ignore once you see them.

I will not speculate about Widdecombe’s case while the investigation is still ongoing. I will say, however, that Devon and Cornwall Police have delivered a masterclass in miscommunication: initially saying there was “nothing to suggest” the killing was politically motivated or linked to terrorism, before rearresting a 28-year-old suspect under the Terrorism Act the following day and later confirming that Widdecombe had been killed in a “targeted attack”. In an attempt to reassure the public and prevent speculation, the police appear to have achieved the exact opposite. They would have been much wiser to say nothing at all.

What I will call out is how quickly sections of the left jeered and spewed bile at a woman I regarded as both a friend and a colleague. The frenzied delight they took in the death of an old lady transported me back to the day the MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk was murdered.

Some people will balk at this comparison. It’s crass, inappropriate and too soon, they will say. And granted, it’s not perfect: one was an American figure, the other a British one; both were at very different stages of their lives and political careers. There was, too, some distance between Widdecombe and Kirk’s ally Donald Trump. She criticised Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and was unimpressed by his unedifying comments about the Pope earlier this year, among other things.

But in many ways, Widdecombe and Kirk were cut from the same cloth. Both had moral and political convictions deeply rooted in their Christian faith, which informed their thinking on a wide range of issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Both were alarmed by the decline of Christianity in the West and what they saw as a moral vacuum that was being increasingly filled by secular progressivism and the growing influence of Islam.

Above all else, Widdecombe and Kirk were fearless champions of free speech. They were strident in their views but unafraid to have them challenged, recognising that the best ideas ultimately prevail.

To this end, Kirk would robustly debate his left-wing opponents on university campuses across America. Likewise, Widdecombe would thrash it out in Britain’s once-venerable academic institutions (her unscripted Oxford Union speech opposing the motion “We Should Support No Platforming” is legendary).

These qualities put them both on a collision course with the #BeKind crowd, who are better described as #censorious, #thin-skinned and #vengeful. On 27 November 2016, Kirk tweeted an observation that would prove prophetic: “You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.”

Barely a nanosecond after the bullet struck Kirk’s neck, social media was flooded with videos of blue-haired lunatics jumping up and down with joy.

One user wrote: “I feel bad for the bullet”, while another declared: “Finally some good news. The killer stopped a Nazi.” This wasn’t just mollycoddled self-ID freaks furiously hitting their keyboards, but prominent left-wing columnists too.

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote on social media that she “refused to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is... not the same as violence”. She was later fired by the newspaper over her comments.

The speed with which this same crowd danced on Widdecombe’s grave last week was enough to induce whiplash.

The news had barely broken before social media descended into a cesspit of hate and sanctimony. “Good riddance,” one user wrote, while another posted: “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.”

Peter Tatchell led the baying mob by reeling off Ann’s rap sheet, which included her opposition to same-sex marriage, and calling her a “BIGOT”. He later deleted the tweet and apologised after the police confirmed they had launched a murder investigation into her death.

The Socialist Worker ran with the more sensitive headline, “Hurrah! Ann Widdecombe is strictly dead”, before deleting it after a severe backlash. Then there is Heather Herbert, a transgender employee of Aberdeen University and former Labour candidate, who is currently being investigated by the police after wishing Widdecombe suffered an “extremely painful death” while “handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony”.

The torrent of hate directed at a woman who, throughout her life, carried herself with the utmost dignity and extended that same dignity to even her fiercest critics, sickened me to the core.

It reminded me of an observation the late Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton made during an interview in which he said: “Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with leftwing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken.”

The attacks also completely misrepresented who Widdecombe was. She wasn’t in the least bit bigoted. Yes, she held views that were unfashionable in the modern era - a deeply held religious belief will do that. But she was also a social conservative who would update her views when necessary.

I have a personal anecdote that supports this. During my stint as opinion editor at GB News, Widdecombe would write a weekly column for me. We would speak on the phone every Monday to discuss the latest political developments that week and I’d give her a steer on what to write about.

Occasionally, the story would write itself. This was certainly the case last August when, speaking to the Times, Vanessa Frake, former prison governor and Reform’s newly appointed UK justice adviser, said that trans women should not automatically be removed from women’s prisons. This caused an uproar among Reform supporters, who feared their new political home had already become infected with wokeism.

Before Reform clarified its position, I asked Widdecombe, a former Prisons Minister in John Major’s Conservative government and spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s party, to offer her own views on the subject.

In her column that week, she wrote: “There is a very small number of trans people who have gone the whole hog. They look and sound exactly like the women they believe they have become, and they may have lived that way for years.

“We have a duty to ensure their safety too, and beyond all peradventure, they would not be safe in a male prison but liable to serious sexual assault.”

Her remarks whipped up a storm on both sides of the political divide, with Labour MP Jonathan Hinder even calling her “woke”.

But her position will not come as a surprise to anyone who knew Widdecombe well or had followed her career closely. Anyone who had will tell you she reasoned her way through any given situation and did not show blind allegiance to a tribe. In other words, a true contrarian.

The discussion also explores the growing risk of a wider regional crisis after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels declared an immediate naval blockade and “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia, raising the prospect of disruption at both of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

James and Tom assess the consequences for Britain, the United States and the wider world if the conflict grinds on, from rising energy and fertiliser prices to renewed inflation and the geopolitical opportunities it presents for China.

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Henry and Daniel discuss why South African wine has changed so dramatically in recent years, from the dull pub reds and insipid whites of old to some of the most exciting bottles now being made anywhere in the world. They explore the country’s new generation of winemakers, the rise of serious Chenin Blanc and Cinsault, and why South Africa offers such remarkable value compared with Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne.

Together they taste three wines: a textured Sauvignon Blanc from Hazendal, a fuller, food-friendly Pinot Noir rosé, and a sensational old-vine Cinsault from Darling. Expect sharp opinions, good stories, and plenty of enthusiasm for a country whose wines are firmly on the up.

The intersection of the past and present is where we find meaning.

This act of remembering was not a single evolutionary breakthrough but the product of natural selection refined over hundreds of millions of years.

And with memory came knowledge. It taught our earliest ancestors, for example, not to touch fire directly but to preserve it. Logging these associations between specific objects and pain stimuli not only ensured our survival as a species but spurred innovation.

Trauma works in a similar way to memory - but can have the opposite effect. Children, for example, can inherit the effects of trauma through the way they are raised, sending them spiralling into addiction and damaging relationships.

Research has also found an association between severe trauma and changes in how certain genes are regulated, which in turn can influence stress responses, immune function, and susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. These processes are collectively referred to as generational, or intergenerational, trauma.

This relationship between the past and present is essential to understanding the Nova Exhibition, an immersive and at times agonising commemoration of the brutal massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023.

As I walked through the installation, two events from my past came flooding back. Both have shaped how I think about that atrocity and the war that followed, as well as the threat posed to Jews and the West more generally.

One important caveat: I approach this as a non-Jew, which affords me certain insights while limiting others. I am nonetheless someone who has formed a deep connection with the Jewish community.

Back to the events in question. A couple of years before Hamas launched its land, sea and air assault on Israel, the national newspaper I was working for at the time assigned me to cover March of the Living UK, a five-day educational programme in Poland that brings people from around the world together on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, to march along the railway tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex during the Second World War.

Although it’s open to people of all faiths and backgrounds and features diverse international delegations, the majority of participants are Jewish. Thousands of Jewish teenagers, adults and Holocaust survivors from dozens of countries attend the event.

I’ve always felt a gravitational pull towards Jewish people - one that I’m convinced my family tree will one day explain - but it was in these concentration camps that I truly understood both the specificity and universality of the Jewish experience. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it’s not. On the contrary, both ideas must be held in one’s mind simultaneously.

The specificity relates to the unique persecution of a minority group over more than two millennia, culminating in its most demented expression: the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of six million European Jews by the Nazi regime.

As my tour group was composed mainly of young Jewish adults, I bore witness to the intergenerational trauma wrought by those events. Watching them confront the inhumanity inflicted on their ancestors changed me forever.

I looked at photographs and flickering projections of Jews who were their age before they were herded into cattle cars without ventilation, food or water and transported to the death camps. In the faces of my tour group, I saw those who had been brutalised before them. At that moment, the distance between past and present collapsed.

How could this happen? Could I have done something to prevent it? A million unanswerable questions swirled around my head.

I knew I needed to give the group space to grieve, but all I wanted to do was protect them. I had not thought much about the State of Israel before this trip, but it was in those moments that I realised the necessity of its creation.

As a journalist, you often find yourself facing ethical dilemmas. Should you remain an impartial observer? How close is too close to a subject? Such questions faded away as I sat with these young Jews, listened to their stories, and cried and laughed with them into the early hours of the morning.

I did not set out to forge lifelong friendships on a tour of Auschwitz. Yet after many birthdays, holidays and weddings together, that’s exactly what happened.

The trip also alerted me to universal truths about the human condition. The great Soviet author Vasily Grossman articulated this most powerfully in Life and Fate, writing: ‘Antisemitism is always a means rather than an end; it is a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved. It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures, and State systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of - I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.’

As Grossman conveyed, it starts with the Jews but does not end with them, which leads me to the second event that shaped my present: October 7, 2023.

I was editing the news desk on the paper that day. It was a fairly humdrum morning. France was still reeling from a week of riots following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, but the story hadn’t moved on. The pictures were dramatic so I led with it on the homepage.

Then reports started to come in of a skirmish along Israel’s southern border with Gaza. Heavy rocket fire reported. Worth monitoring, I thought, but not strong enough to splash as it’s a depressingly regular occurrence on Israeli soil. I got a reporter to break the initial line and positioned it somewhere down on the homepage.

Then, a trickle of images and videos on my newsfeed turned into a flood. It was hard to make sense of what I was seeing but a picture of chaos was emerging.

First came the bulldozer that tore open the border fence separating Israel and Gaza, then came armed Hamas terrorists on motorbikes. Fuzzy CCTV footage showed Israeli checkpoints overrun and cars riddled with bullets.

I immediately got to work, gathering as much information as I could. I updated the story with the pictures and developments as they came in but it was hard to keep up with the deluge. I hastily rearranged the homepage to make it the top story. Job done? Not even close.

Crowds were fanning out from a local dance festival held near Re’im, which sits around three miles from the Gaza border. Then the shooting started.

In the hours that followed, Hamas didn’t hide the details of their barbarism: it was captured in bodycam and home security footage as they rampaged through Israeli towns, villages, military bases, and the Nova Music Festival.

Two images from that weekend shift will haunt me forever. The limp naked body of 22-year-old Shani Louk lying face down motionless in the back of a pickup truck as Hamas terrorists sat on top of her. One waving his RPG in the air as onlookers cheered.

The other indelible image was that of 25-year-old Noa Argamani being violently dragged away on a motorcycle screaming, “Don’t kill me!” while her boyfriend was preyed upon.

I distinctly recall thinking at the time that these two images needed to feature in the splash on the homepage: the world had to be made aware of the evil that was visited upon Israel that day, the details of which would be exhaustively compiled in the months and years to come.

Yet denialism and condemnation of Israel were already in full swing by the time I logged off. I was witnessing the moral collapse of the West in real time. Over the next two years, I made it my mission to counter the false narratives peddled by an unholy alliance of antisemites, leftist idiots and Islamists.

I interviewed survivors of October 7, such as Kfir, who recalled firsthand the horrors that unfolded as he fled the Nova Music Festival and relatives of hostages such as Ayelet Svatitzky, a British-Israel mother-of-three whose two brothers were murdered by Hamas and whose 79-year-old mother was held captive in the tunnels under Gaza.

I obtained video evidence of Hamas looting a convoy of food aid trucks at the Rafah crossing, rebutting humanitarian organisations’ claim that Israel had let “only a trickle of aid” into Gaza since the war began - a baseless claim which then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy cited in his defence of suspending arms sales to Israel.

I denounced the BBC for livestreaming Bobby Vylan’s “death to the IDF” chant during his band’s Glastonbury performance and for having breached its editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times over its coverage of the war in Gaza.

I attended memorial events and rallies organised in response to the eruption of antisemitic violence on our streets. I called out politicians and the police for their inaction in the face of it.

I read everything I could about the region in an attempt to make sense of the moral confusion that had gripped the West. ‘Am I on the wrong side of history?’ I asked myself. I listened to arguments from the other side to identify potential inconsistencies or blindspots in my thinking.

Yet no amount of moral equivalence or collateral damage from Israel’s response changed my mind about who the bad guys were.

The more I reflected on it, however, my perspective started to shift on Hamas’ intentions. I kept returning to a statement the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations released within hours of the surprise attack.

“This is our 9/11,” Michael Herzog said - a comparison worth unpacking because it contains a deeper truth about the actions Hamas took that day.

I’ve devised a thought experiment to clarify his point. In the following description, tell me if I am describing a) September 11 or b) October 7.

Islamist terrorists shout “Allahu Akbar” to steel themselves for martyrdom before committing an act of cinematic violence on a democratic nation. The overwhelming military response this provokes from the democratic nation causes much of the Western world to turn on them. Jihadists then win the PR war because the West is held to a higher standard than a death cult and so any collateral damage is seen as disproportionate.

The fact that this description equally applies to both terror attacks indicates that Islamism is the most important variable here. This is not to minimise the role that antisemitism played on October 7. But there is a danger in viewing the actions Hamas took that day exclusively through this lens. When you realise what a sincere commitment to jihadism actually entails, it becomes clear that this isn’t just Israel’s fight but the entire Western world’s.

The denialism that emerged within hours of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust did, however, have a distinctly antisemitic flavour.

The scapegoating and gaslighting were entirely consistent with the persecution Jews have endured throughout history.

As my good friend and prolific columnist Brendan O’Neill wrote in his book After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, the MeToo movement’s slogan “Believe all women” somehow didn’t apply to Jews.

This is despite a comprehensive report documenting the systemic sexual and gender-based violence committed by Hamas on October 7.

Based on more than 10,000 visual assets and 430 testimonies, the report cites evidence of extreme bodily mutilation, including broken pelvises and shattered hip bones. Emergency responders also reported discovering nails driven into the thighs and groin areas of victims’ bodies.

What else explains this denial of basic human dignity other than antisemitism?

As I wandered through the Nova Exhibition, I wrestled with these questions, many of which remain unanswered. Yet the exhibition did not seek to resolve them. Instead, by recreating the atrocities of October 7 and honouring those who were murdered, it served as a powerful monument to remembrance.

Because memory is our strongest defence against those who seek to erase the past, to remember is itself an act of resistance.

Frost challenges the familiar claim that voters were misled in 2016, arguing instead that Brexit was always about Britain’s right to govern itself from Westminster rather than Brussels.

Frost warns that unless the Right makes the case for national independence again, Britain risks becoming a rule-taker without ever formally rejoining. Plus, Graham gives a preview of the July issue of The Critic, from the Home Office’s secretive messaging machine to politics, culture, music and more.

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Boris and Jack also explore the tactics, team dynamics and brutal mountain stages that could decide the race, as well as the Tour’s changing identity — from its French roots to its increasingly global, corporate future.

Their is also an inevitable question that still hangs over the sport as performance becomes more and more enhanced: can fans trust what they are watching?

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They ask whether Britain has become a zero-sum economy, why younger voters no longer feel capitalism is delivering for them, and whether any political party has a credible way out.

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He traces Auntie’s evolution from John Reith’s mission to give audiences what they “ought to have” to today’s battles over bias, BBC Verify, and Labour’s proposals to promote “trusted” news online.

Yet despite falling public trust and growing competition from streaming platforms, the BBC’s influence may be stronger than ever.

Colin unpacks this paradox before returning to the central question: does Britain still need a state-funded public broadcaster, or is it time to defund the BBC?