Britain's migrant workers are living through a huge moment of change. The country's immigration system has now fundamentally changed after the exit from the European Union and vast numbers of migrants have left Britain during the Coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of the most vulnerable EU nationals risk falling through the cracks and losing their right to remain as the settled status deadline looms. Meanwhile, despite a historic new level of immigration control, the Tory government appear desperat...
Feb 27, 2021•42 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast As the four nations of the United Kingdom struggle to reconcile themselves to life outside the EU are we witnessing the gradual unravelling of the illusions and delusions that have dominated the traditional British political elite? Is this end of the "era of self-deception" the one positive aspect of Brexit? And, if the project itself is overwhelmingly English, what does this mean for the future of the union between the four nations? To answer these questions hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper a...
Feb 01, 2021•38 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast The Coronavirus pandemic can be seen as a huge ecological warning: a sign that our footprint on planet Earth is becoming terribly unsustainable. And while that crisis continues to - rightly - dominate global headlines it is still rarely seen as the environmental crisis that it is. In the year that the UK will host COP26, the annual global climate conference in Glasgow, and following Joe Biden's victory in the United States, we ask whether campaigners can turn this to our advantage, and get the m...
Jan 25, 2021•31 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast Will he do it? If Boris Johnson leads the UK to a no deal crash out from the transition period he'll surely be remembered as the most irresponsible prime minister in British history. His flag waving jingoism risks an economic and social disaster. Is it all a bluff? Will he climb down at the 11th hour? To find some answers hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queens University Belfast and senior fellow with UK in a Changing Europe. In a wide...
Dec 12, 2020•27 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast After what seemed like a lifetime, the final results are in: America has said "no more" to Donald Trump. Collectively the world breathed a sigh of relief as the results came in. But many questions still remain unanswered. How much damage can Trump do between now and his exit day, the 20th January next year? Will his racism and unfounded attacks on the democratic process prompt 'white riots' in America's streets? Where will the American radical right and Trump dynasty go next? And what kind of im...
Nov 15, 2020•40 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast We talk about authoritarianism a lot on this podcast and how it's resisted from below by grassroots movements. But we haven't yet broached what the principles are in how democratic states should operate in an increasingly dictatorial world order. In this podcast we talk to Mary Kaldor, emeritus professor of global governance at the London School of Economics, on what an ethical foreign policy should look like. Drawing on her experience advising the late Labour foreign secretary, Robin Cook, in t...
Oct 29, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast This definitely isn't normal is it? The world feels increasingly like a strange absurdist theatre we have all found our collective selves in. A new book tells the story of the last four years and how we got here. Hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by Will Davies, professor of political economy and co-director of the Goldsmiths Political Economy Research Centre. His new book offers a timeline and chronology from the Brexit referendum to the 2019 general election and is full of fascinat...
Oct 17, 2020•41 min•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast As American democracy faces the most troubling moment in its modern history, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to one of the world's leading experts on the far right about where it all went wrong. Cas Mudde is Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia he challenges the conventional wisdom that sees Trump as 'evil' and the Republican party as 'moderate'. Instead he explains how Trump is a symptom of the shift in American Republicanism towards the populist radical right...
Oct 07, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast It is no exaggeration to say that dark money is now a major factor in our politics - and the lack of transparency threatens the democratic process. The 2016 Brexit referendum was the pilot episode of a new global horror show: nationalistic politics fuelled by hidden global donors. In this episode hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams talk to Peter Geoghegan on his path-breaking new book, Democracy for Sale . In a jaw dropping discussion he explains how we still have no idea about the ultimate sourc...
Sep 11, 2020•38 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast Another Europe's Zoe Williams talks to Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, about his new book, Trade Secrets. They unravel the corporate agenda at the heart of modern trade policy and the terrible implications it has for our food standards, consumer rights and environmental protections. To get your copy of the book go to the Global Justice Now website ....
Sep 04, 2020•37 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast He made a fortune in the last financial crisis betting against a recovery. Now one-time City trader Gary Stevenson tells his jaw-dropping story. He won his job in a card game at one of the world's top universities and was the most profitable trader globally at Citigroup in 2011. But his maths-based predictions of currency movements hit upon a problem: global inequality was paralysing the economic future of the entire world. In this podcast, Gary tells hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper why the s...
Jul 30, 2020•42 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast Paul Mason and Christabel Cooper ... The Coronavirus crisis has turned on its head many assumptions about how politics works. It used to be taken for granted that the Tories want to make the state smaller, and the market bigger. But does that assumption still hold? And if not what is the nature of the new Toryism being formed through the course of the Coronavirus crisis? On this episode hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams are joined by journalist and author Paul Mason and data scientist and Labou...
Jul 07, 2020•40 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast The killing of George Floyd unleashed a huge global uprising. Black Lives Matter has become a global movement against racism and for social and political justice. In Britain and across Europe discussion of American politics can sometimes serve as a convenient way to avoid discussing the issues faced by people of colour on this side of the Atlantic. In this podcast we set out to challenge this tendency by politely pointing out that black lives often don't matter in Europe too. And mass movements ...
Jun 15, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast As Boris Johnson is set for a video conference negotiation with the EU next week, we look at the sorry state of his Brexit negotiations. Hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams are joined by Laura Bannister of the Trade Justice Movement and Christos Katsioulis, the director of the London office of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung to talk about the state of the Brexit negotiations. As the world is facing multiple, deeply serious crises, Brexit appears as an absurd distraction. But the results of the UK-EU tal...
Jun 12, 2020•27 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast We are at a pivot moment in history. The choices we make today could determine the fate of future generations. Coronavirus has been correctly recognised as a giant wake up call to the realities of a failing system. Without question huge opportunities exist to catalyse positive change. But what comes next might well be worse: a much more authoritarian system, with huge inequalities protected by the state and legitimised by political nationalism. In this podcast hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper ...
Jun 04, 2020•36 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast There aren't too many good news stories about. But here's a great one. A new model for financing sustainable development projects in a democratic and participatory way. Hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams talk to democratic finance geeks Bruce Davis and Mark Davis about type of debt they've developed for local councils. It's a whole new mission for local government to put itself at the heart of green sustainable investment. By raising money through local municipal bonds local councils can develop...
May 21, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast It seems some things don't change after all. A now familiar row has broken out in the Labour Party over the idea of patriotism and nationality. This has been a continuous theme of the party's travails in the post-Blair era. But as debates go it's pretty thin gruel: lots of angst but little in the way of ideas. In this episode we try to go a little deeper and lay out the pitfalls and power of patriotism as a way of doing politics. To shed light on these topics, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper ...
May 07, 2020•48 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast Increasingly it looks like there's a way of doing politics that suits the terrible ravages of capitalism in the twenty-first century. It's authoritarianism spliced with racism. And it rejects the international cooperation needed to put humanity back on the right footing. As the latest moment of this extended crisis grips the planet with the Covid-19 pandemic, hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams are joined by Cambridge scholar and author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance & British D...
Apr 30, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's quite simply the biggest peacetime crisis capitalism has ever faced. The entire global system has ground to a halt. In this moment of great danger and turmoil, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by economist Ann Pettifor, author of The Case for the Green New Deal, and Nick Dearden, regular on the show and director of Global Justice Now. They outline how behind the scenes central banks are undertaking a huge bailout of the financial system to keep it afloat. Will this repeat the m...
Apr 23, 2020•38 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast Italy was the first European country to be hit by the terrible coronavirus pandemic. This week hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by Andrea Pisauro, Italian leftist and neuroscientist based at the University of Oxford, and Laura Parker, former national coordinator of Momentum, to discuss what Europe and the world might learn from the country's brutal struggle with Covid-19. Laura joins the conversation from the Piedmont region, close to the epicentre of the outbreak in Italy, where sh...
Apr 09, 2020•31 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast Hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by NHS doctor Sonia Adesara and Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, to discuss the enormous challenges facing Britain's underfunded healthcare system. As public anger with the lack of testing and protective equipment for frontline staff mounts, but, at the same time, the extraordinary feat of building whole new field hospitals in a week is achieved, we take a balanced look at whether the NHS can pull through the most serious crisis in its h...
Apr 02, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Covid-19 is the most serious crisis human civilisation has faced since the Second World War. It’s a global emergency that will change every aspect of our society. Life will go on but not as we know it. In the first of a new series of podcasts, Coronavirus Lockdown , Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to economist James Meadway about the extraordinary economic impact of a virus that is closing down the global economy. How must the government respond? What will the capitalism that emerges from all ...
Mar 26, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the last of our Saving Europe From Itself series, Luke Cooper is joined by Carl Miller, research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos and author of The Death of the Gods: the New Global Power Grab. As the global pandemic is combined with an infodemic, a proliferation of fake or misleading viral news stories, Miller offers 7 rules for digital hygiene: to stay informed, stay educated and stay smart. For further material on issues covered in today's show check ...
Mar 14, 2020•38 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast The rise of the far right across Europe has given new life to the anti-feminist agenda. How do we stop the roll back and go on the offensive for a new agenda for a feminist Europe? On this podcast, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by a panel of guests in Berlin to discuss the state of women's rights in Europe and the need for new and intersectional feminist vision. Saboura Naqshband is an academic, activist and co-founder of the Berlin Muslim Feminists Collective, Daphne Büllesbach ...
Feb 24, 2020•36 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast It's been emotional. Nearly four years on from the referendum result and with Britain having decisively left the EU, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by Nick Dearden, from Global Justice Now, to look back on it all. We chart the highs and lows of the historic defeat. We look back on some all too optimistic interviews we did on the podcast with Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle and anti-Brexit campaigner Eloise Todd, and review the news archive for all the big turning points in the Brexi...
Feb 10, 2020•50 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast Brexit has been a rough ride for the people of Northern Ireland. Having never voted to Leave the EU it felt like a colonial act of English nationalism. But it also has created a new spirit of hope that the north of Ireland's deep sectarian divisions might be overcome. Whereas the English left were thrown into mourning the day after the general election, in Northern Ireland, much like Scotland, there was a different atmosphere. A historic breakthrough for the cross-community Alliance Party, winni...
Jan 21, 2020•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The second half of our podcast on Europe after 1989, with Andras Bozoki, Mary Kaldor, Alena Ivanova, and Quinsy Gario joining Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams.
Dec 29, 2019•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andras Bozoki, Mary Kaldor, Alena Ivanova, and Quinsy Gario join Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper to discuss the thirty year anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. As Europe looks ever more mired in nationalism, we ask: what's left of the hopes and dreams of the peaceful revolutions? How in retrospect do we understand the revolutions of 1989? And was there an alternative to the quick-fire turn to neoliberalism? We discuss this and more in a podcast that will be published in two parts. The even...
Dec 24, 2019•41 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast A landslide victory by the Conservative Party has extinguished the hope that Britain might yet stay inside the EU. So where next after the historic defeat? Hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams are joined by Michael Chessum from the Another Europe office to reflect on the anguish, agony and anger of the general election. They discuss the failure of the Labour Party to galvanise the country behind a radical, transformative vision of change, and the prospects for the left in the difficult and challen...
Dec 21, 2019•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast How about giving everyone a guaranteed basic income – a universal benefit to provide a basic foundation for our daily life? It is one of the most contested and controversial ideas of the modern age. But as the world of work transforms beyond recognition, is it only a matter of time before utopia becomes reality? Economist and financial journalist Stewart Lansley thinks so. He talks to hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper about the case for a UBI. The European Cultural Foundation supports this init...
Dec 08, 2019•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
