The Telegram Podcast

This week's Telegram is an interview with our most caustic – but also best-loved – Telegraph blogger: Lord Tebbit.

The Conservatives are leaving for their summer holidays in a sunny mood: with Labour in comic disarray, there's every chance that David Cameron will win a majority at the next general election. But do they deserve to. Yes, says Toby Young. No, says James Delingpole. Don't miss this lively exchange between two of the Telegraph's most opinionated bloggers, in which Delingpole's famed sarcasm meets Toby's rhetorical cunning. Both grapple with an increasingly tricky question: what is a Conservative anyway?

Ed Miliband's plan to weaken the link between Labour and the trade unions has divided his party. On this week's Telegram, Blairite Dan Hodges describes Miliband's radical move as the right response to disgraceful vote-buying in Falkirk. Left-winger Owen Jones fires back ferociously, defending union power and accusing Dan of wanting to surrender to Tory economic policies. This is a podcast that takes us to the heart of Labour's looming civil war.

Egypt's latest experiment with democracy came crashing to a halt on Wednesday night with a military coup. In this week's Telegram, leading Middle East commentator Shashank Joshi explains why President Morsi fell and says liberals who think the army has saved Egypt from Islamism are mistaken. Our defence editor Con Coughlin disagrees – the Muslim Brotherhood's rule was descending into wretched tyranny, he says.

Also, Telegraph consumer affairs editor Steve Hawkes has been tasting the lavish Christmas menus already unveiled by Waitrose and Marks & Spencer. Coupled with the huge profits of discount supermarkets, they provide yet more evidence of Britain's post-credit crunch "two-speed economy".

The Chancellor's Spending Review may have been politically significant, but in cutting £11.5 billion from the Government's managed expenditure, what did it achieve? Nothing, says an irate Peter Oborne. "Useful idiots" who are "economically illiterate" have got completely the wrong end of the stick. They don't seem to realise that everything is different nowEND ITALS. Mary Riddell counters will equal force. It's typical of Right-wingers, she says, to forget that these cuts will have a dramatic real-world effect, often on the poorest in society. Please be aware this podcast contains heated exchanges.

This week the Telegram focuses on the bloody civil war and asks: what did the G8 actually achieve?

This week's Telegram is a highly charged debate about America and security. Tim Stanley says the information released by Edward Snowden shows an Obama administration exercising "weird and creepy" control over its citizens. Dan Hodges says the libertarian Left and Right are in an "unholy alliance", trying to scare voters about legitimate security measures. Also, former Republican Senator Jim DeMint of the Heritage Foundation calls for the return of small-government conservatism to American discourse – the only way, he insists, that the GOP can hope to dislodge the Democrats from the White House.

Westminster has been hijacked by a narrow clique of toadying career politicians, says Tory MP Douglas Carswell in this week's Telegram. He wants to give voters the power to recall bad MPs – but Dave isn't interested in such radical reform. Our Whitehall expert Sue Cameron tells Douglas that he's being naive: there have always been bad people in Parliament. Also, Telegraph bloggers Jake Wallis Simons and Willard Foxton clash over what to do about child porn. The Government can do much more to block it, says Jake. No it can't, says Willard.

New analysis of the 2011 census makes horrible reading for the Churches – attendance down 15 per cent in a decade. Meanwhile, one in 10 young Britons is a Muslim. In this week's Telegram, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali says politically correct Christianity is partly to blame, while Damian Thompson argues that part of Islam's appeal is its ability to harness political anger.

Murder in Woolwich: was this gruesome beheading the work of serious jihadis or demented young men using Islam as an excuse for their psychotic fantasies? And will we see more incidents like this as religious extremism – and an anti-Muslim backlash – grows in our cities? This week's Telegram offers expert commentary from Shashank Joshi, one of the world's leading authorities on Islamic terrorism, our chief political commentator Peter Oborne, and Sunday Telegraph columnist Janet Daley.