Breaking Britain: A Podcast about the Politics of a Disunited Kingdom

In this week's episode, we have been joined by Glen O'Hara to explore the escalating crisis facing the UK's public services. Over the past 18 months among public services from universities to healthcare the British state has been shaken by waves of strikes and infrastructure breakdowns whose effects have come to be acutely felt in everyday life. With his extensive research background on the history of British state institutions, Glen O'Hara helps us explore the wider social, economic and political dynamics that have brought Britain's public services close to breaking point.

As Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University, Glen O'Hara has published groundbreaking work on economic and social policy in Britain after the First World War. He is currently Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded programme 'Spaces of Hope: The Hidden Histories of Community-Led Planning in the UK' and writes regularly on current affairs and policy for The Guardian and The New European.

The background music is by Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.   

This week we've been joined by Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte to explore the impact the changing social position of LGBT voters has had on British politics. As discrimination from state institutions has eased and wider social acceptance has grown, people with LGBT backgrounds have gained more space to play an open and prominent role in British politics. With his research focus on how LGBT communities have influenced electoral politics across Europe, Stuart provides some fascinating insights into key social and political dynamics in contemporary British society.

As an Assistant Professor in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Southampton, Stuart published his first book, “VOX: The Rise of the Spanish Radical Right”, and is currently working on his second book project “Lavender Ballots: How queers vote and how to win them over”.

The background music is by Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.   

This week on the Breaking Britain podcast, we examine the economic dilemmas the UK faces in an increasingly competitive global landscape. Joining us is John Mills, who as a senior figure in the world of business and author exploring the global economy who has written extensively to make the case for Brexit as a potentially transformative economic project.

John Mills is founder and Chairman of JML, a consumer goods distribution company, which exports to more than 70 countries around the world. He is also an economist and author, noted for his writing on Brexit, the Labour Party and exchange rate policy. A lifelong Labour Party supporter, John has over the years played a prominent role in UK policy debates and was a  Co-Chair of Vote Leave and Chair of Labour Leave during the campaign over the UK's future in the EU in 2016. He was also national agent for the ‘No’ campaign during the 1975 Referendum on the UK joining the European Economic Community (EEC).

With his long experience of the challenges societies face at a time of accelerating globalisation, John Mills can help provide key insights into how UK governments can kickstart economic growth that has stagnated for too long.

The background music is 'Through the City' by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.  

As inflation, the legacies of the Covid-19 pandemic and state austerity cause lasting disruption to families across the UK, the importance of school meals in providing children with regular access to healthy food has become a matter of national debate. To explore what  political controversies over the provision of school meals can tell us about social change in the UK we've been joined by Heather Ellis, a historian at the University of Sheffield.

Together with Gary McCulloch at UCL and Gurpinder Singh Lalli at the University of Wolverhampton, Heather is leading an ESRC-funded project to investigate the policy and social history of the UK's school meal service. With this expertise, Heather can provide much-needed insight into the social impact and policy provision of school meals in the UK.

The background music is by Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.  

With opinion poll leads indicating that Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer is on a path to winning the next UK elections, the period in which the party and its leadership was at war with itself seems a distant memory. Yet the deep divisions that opened up inside Labour when it was led by Jeremy Corbyn until 2019 still echo in debates within the British Left today. To explore these divisions within the British Left and how they affected debates over foreign policy we have been joined by Oz Katerji, a journalist and activist who has witnessed these controversies firsthand. 

As an experienced journalist and writer, over the past decade Oz Katerji has covered conflicts on the ground from Syria to Ukraine. He has also been an active participant in the fraught debates surrounding the future of the British Left. With this extensive personal experience, Oz Katerji can help explore the internal conflicts that nearly split the Labour Party.

The background music is by Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.   

This week on the Breaking Britain podcast, we examine how the UK's central bank, the Bank of England, has responded to the crises that have threatened to overwhelm Britain's institutions and economy over the past decade. Joining us is Tony Yates, who has written extensively on the macroeconomic dimensions of Brexit and other major structural changes that have transformed the UK's relationship with the wider world.

With a distinguished career at the Bank of England, including as head of monetary policy strategy, Tony Yates has extensive experience of how crises affect the direction of monetary policy in the UK and EU. As a prominent academic and commentator he has continued to be an influential voice in debates surrounding the current state and future trajectory of the UK economy.

This week on the Breaking Britain podcast, we take a look at some of the parallels between political populism in the UK and states in Central and Eastern Europe. Joining us is Marcus How, who as an experienced analyst of rapidly changing states such as Austria, Hungary, Czechia or Poland has written extensively on the emergence of populist parties that have transformed the politics and geopolitics of Europe.

As Head of Analysis at VE Insight, Marcus How has developed fascinating insights into the impact that informal cliques can have on the risk environment in a state or region. Dynamics that are crucial to understanding politics in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Britain.

This third series of the Breaking Britain Podcast will take a closer look at  how the strategic challenges facing the UK interact with crisis and change around the European Union and its neighborhood. This week, we've invited Selim Koru to join us here at the European and International Studies Department at KCL to discuss the parallels and differences between populist politics in Turkey and populism in the UK and the EU. To understand how Turkish politics is intertwined with developments in the EU and UK, we've also explored how relations between Turkey and its European partners have evolved over the past decades.

As a scholar and commentator of Turkish politics, Selim Koru has regularly explored the power structures that have enabled President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to sustain his grip on the Turkish state for over two decades. Currently a researcher at the University of Nottingham, since 2011 Selim has also produced incisive analysis of key developments in Turkish politics at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey and the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
 

In November 2021, defence analysts began to notice a worrying build-up of Russian troops around Ukraine's borders. In the months that followed, this surge of troops has fuelled concerns that a Russian military invasion of Ukraine could be imminent from mid-February 2022 onwards. As frantic efforts unfolded to engage in negotiations with Russian diplomats and President Vladimir Putin along with moves to strengthen the Ukrainian military, debates have opened up in the US, UK, EU and Ukraine about how a long term pathway of de-escalation with a Russian state elite can be found.

This week, we have been joined by Anton Barbashin to discuss why relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated so badly, and examine how relations between both sides can be improved again. Now completing his PHD at the University of Glasgow, Anton is also the Editorial Director of Riddle Russia, a platform that provides some of the most incisive and thoughtful analysis of Russian politics and Russia's interactions with Europe and the wider world. As an observer and researcher studying Russia's development over the past decade, Anton is ideally placed to explore how Russia and the West have spiralled into the current moment of tension, and whether there might be a way out of it.

The background music is by Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.  

In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum that led to the UK's departure from the EU, many observers assumed that the Netherlands would be the next state most likely to seek a political rupture with its European allies and partners. Long seen by UK politicians and pundits as a state with a similar outlook to their own, the Netherlands also faced a longstanding challenge to its established post-1945 political order from competing populist movements. Yet as the wrangle between the UK and EU over their future relationship quickly became a messy process that is still not entirely resolved, the Netherlands remained deeply embedded in the political order of the EU system

To help us explore how Brexit, the rise of populist movements and other economic and political pressures facing Europe have affected the Netherlands, we have been joined this week by Caroline de Gruyter. As a journalist and scholar based in Brussels, Caroline de Gruyter is the European Affairs correspondent for NRC Handelsblad, one of the leading Dutch newspapers, and has written for many other major media outlets including Foreign Policy and De Standaard. Most recently, she has written a fascinating study of the impact of the Habsburg legacy on the European Union called 'Beter Wordt Het Niet: Een Reis Door de Europese Unie en het Habsburgse Rijk'. With such a broad perspective, Caroline de Gruyter provides nuanced insights into how the relationship between the Netherlands and European integration has evolved over the last decades.

The background music is Through the City by Crowander, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.