Crash Course With Michael Walker

Most of my episodes on renting have been somewhat depressing. This conversation with Ben Twomey wasn't. That's because Labour have introduced a Renters Rights Bill which - though far from perfect - could do a lot to limit the insecurity currently experienced by private renters in Britain. Ben explained what's in the bill, what's missing, and what campaigners can do to encourage this Labour government to go further for renters.

Guest: Ben Twomey, Generation Rent

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Britain's prisons were already dangerously full before the summer far-right riots. Will jailing hundreds of those rioters push the prison system over the edge? To answer that question I spoke to a fascinating guest. Ian Acheson is a former prison governor and author of the new book "Screwed: Britain's Prisons Crisis and How To Escape It"

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Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have promised that economic growth will be their number one priority. But - unwilling to spend any money - they're betting they can make this happening with costless reforms. Can planning reform deliver the goods and get Britain growing?

Guest: Jonn Elledge

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With a new government in power I'm moving from a focus on politics to one on policy, and the first topic I'm choosing for a deep is prisons. What's the extent of the crisis Labour have inherited, and how might they go about resolving it?

Guest: Cassia Rowland, Institute for Government.

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Elections in France on Sunday threw up a surprising result. Against all expectations the far-right were pushed into third place, and the left-wing New Popular Front finished with the largest number of seats. But what future faces France remains unclear.

Guest: David Broder, Europe Editor at Jacobin.

Editor: Liam Thorne

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My episode last week with Jeremy Gilbert got a very positive response - so I thought I’d do another episode on Labour Party history.

Chris Mullin was a key figure on the Labour left in the 1980s, but by 1994 he backed Tony Blair as Labour leader - and ended up taking a role as a junior minister in his governments.

In this episode I ask Chris about that transition, and we also discuss Chris’s prolific career as a journalist and writer…

Chris has written four novels, included “A Very British Coup. He’s also published four volumes of diaries, a memoir, and an expose of the miscarriage of judgement suffered by the Birmingham Six - who were falsely convicted of bombing by the IRA.

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If you believe the polls, Starmer's Labour are heading for a landslide even bigger than Blair's in 1997. But that landslide, if it comes, will not be caused by any overwhelming positivity about either Starmer or Labour. Does that make the election of 2024 fundamentally different to the election of 1997? And, what consequences will that have for Starmer and Labour in government, and for Britain's left.

Guest: Jeremy Gilbert.

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When most commentators discuss the Tory collapse at this election they point to three things: Boris Johnson's partygate, Liz Truss's mini-budget, and Rishi Sunak's political ineptitude. My guest on this episode has a longer term explanation for Tory collapse, and he put his money where his mouth is - publishing a book on Tory decline immediately after Boris Johnson won his stomping 2019 majority. I spoke to Phil Burton-Cartledge about how he saw the Tories days were numbered before the rest of us.

Guest: Phil Burton-Cartledge, senior lecturer in sociology at Derby University and author of 'The Party's Over: The Rise and Fall of the Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak'

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