COUNTER•POWER

Does June 2016 seem like only yesterday? Or does it seem like an eternity? Fives years on from the referendum hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams meet up with Laura Parker from the Another Europe National Committee to reflect on a period of dramatic change in UK politics. They uncover some small shoots of hope, despite all the problems we face, and lay out a strategy for the movement going forward from here. We also hear from some other members of the Another Europe National Committee with Zoe Gardner, Alex Fernandes, Julie Ward, and Shaista Aziz, offering their thoughts on five years of pain but also tremendous resistance.  
Producer: Luke Cooper Sound editor: Camilo Tirado 

The fight is on to replace Germany's centrist chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is stepping down after dominating the country's political scene for a decade and a half. With new elections scheduled for September will Germany embrace change, or choose the centrist status quo? To get a handle on Germany's next political chapter, hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams are joined by Franziska Heinisch, an activist with the Justice is Global Europe collective and author of the book, Wir haben keine Wahl / We Have No Choice, a manifesto against giving up, and Christos Katsioulis, a foreign policy analyst and director of the London office of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the political education foundation loosely aligned with the German social democracy. We pick their brains on where Germany is going after the Merkel era, what the big controversies are in the run to the September elections, and how hopeful they are on the prospects for progressive social change.  

The European Super League was dead almost on arrival. An uprising of fans, the football authorities and governments swiftly killed the project. It seemed to encapsulate everything that had gone wrong in a beautiful game where greed has long been king. In this podcast, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to David Kogan. The Premier League’s media rights advisor from 1998 to 2015, Kogan has been described as a ‘key architect of its financial success’. But away from big money football, David is also a figure in Labour politics. His 2019 book, Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party, chronicles the history of the party’s factional conflicts over its soul and direction. We pick his brains on whether the big money revolution in football has gone too far.    

In this podcast, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to ecological economist, Tim Jackson, about his new book, Post-Growth; Life After Capitalism. Every society in the world shares a fundamental cultural assumption about how our economies work: that growth is good. But what if this is running up against both its material and ecological limits? As capitalism in Western states struggles with the problem of low or stagnant growth do we need to rethink how we understand the economy and prioritise redistribution and ecological and social justice, over the drive to squeeze more and more juice out of the same orange? Politicians often don't like talking about post-growth but many argue that its an idea whose time has come. 
For more information on the ideas discussed on this podcast, check out these links: 

By now it should be clear. Coronavirus is a ‘strategic’, not episodic, crisis for human development in this century. It poses sweeping social and economic change to our societies – as we try to come to terms and deal with mounting ecological crises. To get a handle on what these changes might be, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper talk to economist James Meadway on what ‘building back better’ should look like. For more information on the issues discussed on today’s podcast, see James’ article on Open Democracy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/covid-19-here-stay-now-we-must-redesign-our-economies-around-it/

 Producer: Luke CooperEditor: Camilo Tirado

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 desperate to find a new scapegoat with threats to clampdown on asylum seekers and activist lawyers. To take stock of these changes, and shed light on the quiet struggles underway for human dignity, hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by Zoe Gardner, from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Alena Ivanova, from the Another Europe office and Right to Stay campaign. 

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 are joined by historian David Edgerton, a professor at Kings College London and author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. 
For more information on the ideas covered in the podcast see: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/01/brexit-bonfire-national-illusions-labour-alternative-future 

https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/David-Edgerton/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-the-British-Nation--A-Twentieth-Century-History/14131279 
Producer: Luke CooperSound editor: Ben Higgins Milner 

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 much more ambitious commitments we need? To answer this question and more hosts Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper are joined by Green Party co-leader, Sian Berry, to appraise the current state of the global climate emergency and what we need to do next. 

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 ranging discussion they talk about the current state of play with the talks, how the promises of the 2016 referendum fit with the reality of 'no deal', the contradictions of the UK view of 'sovereignty' and the implications of Brexit for the politics and economics of Northern Ireland. 

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 impact can we expect Biden to have, either domestically or on world politics, especially without control of the Senate? Nick Dearden, Zoe Williams and Luke Cooper meet up to make sense of it all and ponder the future of global democracy in a century of crisis.