What a difference a week makes… Andy Burnham is now number one in a field of one, and planning to move a chunk of No.10 to Manchester. How is Labour adjusting itself to the Age of Andy? Is there more to Burnhamism than just vibes? What about Burnhanomics? And do the people really want a General Election or can they just not face one? Plus: Forgetting all the inexplicable rabid anger about “worst PM ever!!”, was Keir Starmer actually a good Prime Minister or not? We run the rule over his record. ...
Jun 26, 2026•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 564
“We voted Brexit and all we got was this lousy podcast…” Ten years since the vote that sent Britain round the bend, could we finally break out of the trap of 2016? We’re joined by the Obi Wan Kenobi of Brexit bloggers Chris Grey to look into the enormity of Pandora’s Referendum. In a world so violently changed from 2016, is there hope for Britain to get back into the EU? Despite populism, are the stars aligning for the UK and the EU? And should anyone serious about reuniting Britain and the EU b...
Jun 23, 2026•44 min•Season 2Ep. 563
As we sadly file away that ‘ Keep Keir And Carry On ’ headline in the bottom drawer… Keir Starmer steps down and our panel look at what the Starmer era really means. Are we now in a world where petty politics will always trump service to country? Why was this decent, vaguely boring man so loathed in the country? Does this public bloodletting help or hinder Labour’s existential battle against Reform? And why can’t Britain hang on to its Prime Ministers? We’re joined by Chris Grey , the don of Bre...
Jun 22, 2026•41 min•Season 2Ep. 562
Our fast reaction to Burnham’s victory in Makefield with the don of political commentators Steve Richards of Rock & Roll Politics talking to Andrew Harrison … Andy Burnham is heading back to Westminster after his landslide victory and despite dire warnings of a Reform surge, it wasn’t even close. After an early-morning celebratory pint, is he now on a fast track for the keys to No. 10? Should Keir Starmer fight or throw in the towel? Is Burnham’s coronation now inevitable? How big a blow was...
Jun 19, 2026•30 min•Season 2Ep. 561
Surprise, surprise! The arson attacks on properties linked to Keir Starmer turn out to have been instigated by a Russian “diplomat” with a background in information warfare. Who’d have thought it? Has Vladimir Putin ’s shadow war finally crossed the line? Plus: Wes Streeting wants to scrap the ban on new fossil fuel production. The Greens are looking less green. The Lib Dems appear indifferent. And don’t get us started on Reform’s Richard Tice… So, is Ed Miliband the last true defender of net ze...
Jun 18, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 560
Labour surprises everyone with a ban on Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X for the under-16. Critics say the “Australia Plus” regime is riddled with contradictions. Will it work, is it fair or is it just Starmer trying to look tough ahead of the Makerfield by-election? Andrew Harrison puts Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson on the spot and then our panel dig into the detail. Plus, the defence row and the resignations of John Healey and ex-Armed Forces Minister Al Carns cont...
Jun 16, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 559
What’s more revolting? The racist pogrom against innocent families in Belfast? Or the way the far-right is again using a violent attack to claim that every immigrant – legal or illegal – is a threat to the country? Our panel looks at how indulging the “legitimate concerns” mindset leads to kids being burned out of their homes. Plus we answer your questions in our new monthly-ish But Your Emails special. And in the Extra Bit for Patreon people: do progressive protestors need to up their banner ga...
Jun 12, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 558
The BBC gets in early with its “ten years since the Brexit Referendum” jamboree with a “star”-studded retro-documentary, Brexit: A Very British Civil War from legendary film-maker Norma Percy. Our panel bravely retraumatise themselves by watching it. What do we learn that’s new? Who comes out of it worst: Cameron, Corbyn, Johnson, Seumas Milne, Gove, Osbourne or Cummings? Could anything have averted this catastrophe? And have any of these egotists and hobby-horsers learned a damn thing in the pa...
Jun 09, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 557
Farage and the far-right have been quick to seize on Henry Nowak’s horrific murder, ignoring pleas from the victim’s family for the killing not to be politicised. Instead the Reform leader decried “two-tier” policing and called for “pure, cold rage”. What does it all mean? Are we in for another summer of racially-triggered rioting? Plus: what would an Andy Burnham government actually look like? Can Manchesterism succeed where Starmerism stumbled? And in the Extra Bit… mantropreneurship irritant ...
Jun 05, 2026•57 min•Season 2Ep. 556
• One last chance to get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing – our tenth birthday offer ends Wednesday morning. If you’ve been telling yourself that Reform are only surging because people are unhappy with what the Government hasn’t delivered, the don of political research Sir John Curtice has bad news for you. New British Social Attitudes research shows it’s deeper than that: angry Reform voters are energised by divisive culture issues and won’t be easily persuaded back to either Labour or...
Jun 02, 2026•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 555
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing . What else does a beleaguered PM like Keir Starmer need but… unsolicited advice from Tony Blair ? In a new essay published by his think tank, the former PM calls on Labour to cosy up to Donald Trump and axe Ed Miliband’s net zero agenda or risk relegation from the “Premier League of nations”. Is Blair offering a genuine diagnosis or is he just dusting off the 1990s playbook? Plus, jobs tsar Alan Milburn’s bombshell repo...
May 29, 2026•56 min•Season 2Ep. 554
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Last chance to get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support. Nigel Farage’s latest defence of his “gift” from a crypto magnate: you wouldn’t know about it if I hadn’t been hacked by pesky Russians! (Although erm I forgot to tell the National Cyber Security Centre). Has he finally pushed his luck too far? Plus, the right-wing press and Reform are busting their guts to paint Andy Burnham as a carpetbagging, conviction-free shapeshifter who’s simultaneously a far-left...
May 27, 2026•51 min•Season 2Ep. 553
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing . And OGWN is nine years old! Today: A Labour candidate up against a local plumber in a North-Western by-election? It’s beginning to feel a lot like Groundhog Day. If Andy Burnham beats Reform’s Robert Kenyon in Makerfield his path to Number 10 gets a lot clearer. But has Burnham just walked into a Reform bear trap? Plus: Brexit is back , right on cue. Wes Streeting lobs a grenade into the Burnham campaign by raising the...
May 22, 2026•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 552
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Makerfield residents, wire up your letterboxes – the leaflets are coming… A month until Andy Burnham’s by-election, Reform is knocking. Can the King of the North hold them off – whoever their candidate may be? Has he done enough for his message to land? Plus: Is it time up for Ed Davey as leader of the Liberal Democrats? Several Essex councillors seem to think so. Comedian Rosie Holt weighs in on whether political satir...
May 19, 2026•57 min•Season 2Ep. 551
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing . Broadcasting from the middle of the Labour chaos vortex, we look how things stand after the Streeting-Starmer confrontation at No.10 – was it a 17-minute staring contest? – and whether the Health Secretary has the support within Labour to win… if he stands. And who is Wes Streeting anyway? What does he actually stand for? Our panel share their experiences of “the man you can’t libel, because he has no vices.” Plus: Zac...
May 14, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 550
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support – that’s 20% in total. Amid the rubble of last week’s elections, Keir Starmer announces he’s suddenly getting real and ready to win back voters. But is it all too little, too late – and after months of drift, will anyone believe him anyway? Plus, were the Reform and Green surges really as unstoppable as an overwrought media want us to believe? Friend of the pod and psephology don Rob Ford of Manchester University joins u...
May 11, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 549
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support – that’s 20% in total. Fast analysis with don of political commentators Steve Richards of Rock & Roll Politics talking to Andrew Harrison . Labour’s performance in the English Locals was terrible… but was it really as bad as Starmer feared? Does Farage’s bluster about “truly historic” results for Reform stand up to the data? Are the Greens becoming the party of “student England”? And the big one: Can Starmer hang on?...
May 08, 2026•29 min•Season 2Ep. 548
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. The Greens are on fire and Zack Polanski’s travails don’t seem to be hurting them much. How did they get here? Is Polanski-mania just Corbyn-mania without all the Labour baggage? And can you be a vehicle for popular rage and a credible party of government at the same time? Plus, is everything just online betting now? Or is it the new insider trading? With platforms like Polymarket enabling insiders to clean up on everyt...
May 07, 2026•58 min•Season 2Ep. 547
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Filler-faced, gilded mansions and utterly unhinged. Today’s mega-rich don't even pretend to be normal anymore. So what happened to the understated billionaire and is there any going back? Plus, are voters getting more fickle? Zoe picks the brain of the Economist's political data journalist Owen Winter on whether political promiscuity is the new normal. And Zack Polanski’s approval ratings plunged after a sharing post ab...
May 06, 2026•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 546
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Applauded by Congress, lauded by Trump and working his way through a spring-herbed ravioli on a golden plate? It was a tough gig for Charles. The King may have charmed the President but will his visit rescue US/UK relations from the geopolitical toilet? Plus, Starmer evades a Commons investigation into the Mandelson affair but is it really all over bar the shouting for the PM? Why a social media ban for under-16s might ...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 545
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support – that’s 20% in total. Another week, another assassination attempt… Will the latest attack on Trump change anything apart from making the crazy people crazier? And will he get his ballroom out of it? Plus, Reform announce plans to make the teaching of history more patriotic. On the curriculum: more Winston Churchill and Battle of Britain, less slave trade, even less Ireland and no Britain being anything other than brilli...
Apr 28, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 544
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support – that’s 20% in total. As the dust settles from the umpteenth Mandelsequel, where does Labour go from here? Is Starmer permanently damaged? And who would step into No.10: Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham, Al Carns, or someone else entirely from the political alphabet? And while opening ChatGPT has become as routine as morning coffee, millions are probably using it all wrong. So says special guest Jamie Bartlett , algorithm wh...
Apr 24, 2026•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 543
• Podmasters is 10 years old! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon support – that’s 20% in total. Oh Mandy… the scandal that won’t die is back (again). Can Keir Starmer style this one out or is his credibility finally shot? Plus, imagine if you wrote a hoax government report about how a secretive shadow government controls America and then everyone believed it. Even though you admitted it was false. And believed it so completely that they ended up destroying democracy. Nightmare, right? Author ...
Apr 21, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 542
• Join our OGWN vs Origin Story Tenth Birthday Podclash on Zoom on Thur 30 April. What happens if Reform actually wins? We dive into a darkly plausible near-future where Nigel Farage becomes PM and everything goes… about as well as you’d expect. It’s all gamed out in a new fact-based “non-fiction thriller”, What If Reform Wins? by our special guest, Times reporter Peter Chappell – from how Reform would tackle an ICE-style crackdown to the end of Net Zero and the return of Dominic Cummings. This ...
Apr 17, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 541
Good news for a change! Revolting far-right tinpot tyrant Viktor Orbán gets his marching orders in Hungary. Our panel talk about how it’s bad news for Putin, Trump and MattGPT and wonder where the JD Vance Reverse Midas Touch should be applied next. Elsewhere in the pod: Trump comes for the Pope. Why are his Christo-Nationalists getting Catholicism wrong? Is politics being taken over by egomaniacs? A(nother) heated debate about the pros and cons of space. And check out our new theme tune, good e...
Apr 14, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 540
Trump threatens the literal obliteration of an entire civilisation, then announces a ceasefire. So war crimes work, right? Er, not when you create the “Tehran Tollbooth” in the Strait and transform your enemy into potentially the Middle East’s richest, best-armed hostile power with a $90bn war and reconstruction chest. We examine possibly the biggest self-own in geopolitical history. Plus: Labour squares up to the Greens in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections. How do they fight Polanski with...
Apr 10, 2026•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 539
After nearly two years in the job, Keir Starmer isn’t just disliked or unpopular – he’s actually hated in much of the country. But why? How did this unprepossessing and fairly boring man become such a figure of loathing? Has hating politicians no matter who they are become the default position in British politics? Plus: Liz Truss (remember her?) is going to launch her own CPAC and save Britain, again. What is going through that, ahem, unusual mind? And should we maybe scoff less at the idea of a...
Apr 02, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 538
Capitalism: Where did it come from and what does it want? Is it falling to pieces or just reinventing itself to remain immortal, as it always has done? Is it about to enter a dark new digital era where it doesn’t even need people? What do we get wrong about it? Can we fix it? What even IS it? Sven Beckert is the author of the epic exploration of money-making, Capitalism: A Global History . He joins Andrew Harrison and Jonn Elledge for the unexpected, untold story of how profit made power. • Ques...
Mar 31, 2026•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 537
Trump promised America lower prices, cheaper gas, no more foreign wars and worldwide respect. Instead his Iran rampage has dynamited the world economy, skyrocketed oil prices, and bogged the US down in a worsening military quagmire – and no-one is coming to help. As MAGA squabbles over the future, has Trumpism been torpedo’d by the only person who could destroy it: Donald Trump? Plus, an economic tsunami is arriving from the Strait of Hormuz just when Rachel Reeves doesn’t need it. Is Britain re...
Mar 27, 2026•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 536
Is Farage faltering? Reform’s poll lead is slowly sliding, so much so that last week Farage administered a Trumpian punishment beating to pollsters YouGov in classic “shoot the messenger” style. Is Britain starting to see through Nigel’s chicanery – or is it all wishful thinking on our part? And how are Labour and the Tories dealing with not one but two insurgent parties: the Greens as well as Reform? Seth Thévoz and Rachel Cunliffe are joined by crossover guest Steve Richards of the Rock & ...
Mar 24, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 535
