The Spectator Podcast: Corbyn's big chance

"Jeremy Corbyn, Prime Minister. This used to be one of the Tories’ favourite lines. They thought that just to say it out loud was to expose its absurdity. The strategic debate within the Tory party was over whether to attack Corbyn himself, or to use him to contaminate the whole Labour brand. But Corbyn has transformed that brand, not damaged it. He has successfully fused together a Social Democratic party with a radical left one."

"Anyone forced to flee his or her country with a well-founded fear of persecution can claim asylum. An orphan under 18 has special rights. They receive the same benefits as a child taken into care. No one would begrudge a genuine child refugee these privileges. The problem is the system is open to abuse, and the latest terrorist attack in Parsons Green raises further questions. Ahmed Hassan is an 18-year-old unaccompanied asylum seeker who is alleged to have built the bomb in his foster parents’ kitchen."

"The world has gone whisky mad. In its annual report, a brokerage firm called Rare Whisky 101 shows that if you’d invested in a vertical (a series of bottlings from successive years) of Macallan 18-year old vintage whiskies in 2015, they would have cost you £19,000. At the end of last year they were worth £46,000, up 142 per cent. That makes Macallan a far better bet than first-growth claret. Much of the demand comes, inevitably, from China. Previously the Chinese were buying Macallan as gifts to facilitate business (i.e. bribes) but when the government cracked down, demand slackened. Now, according to Kristiane Sherry, of the specialist spirits website Master of Malt, China is ‘really coming back’ as a whisky-buying market. Sukhinder Singh from The Whisky Exchange told me that ‘now sadly all stock goes to Asia. I get emotional about this’."