Crash Course With Michael Walker

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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I'll soon be moving to focus on the UK general election, but first this is a final look at a much bigger democratic contest: India's.

In episode 1 and 2 of my mini-series on India's election I looked at Modi's hindu nationalism and his approach to democracy. In this third and final episode I’m taking a look at India’s economy.

It's hard to overstate the significance of India's economic development. The country is home to 1.4 billion people and if as some hope it develops at the pace of its neighbour China, these are 1.4 billion people who can look forward to getting better jobs, whose children can expect decent educations, and who - in the main - can expect to gain all the privileges that come with entering the global middle class.

If India fails to achieve that growth - or only achieves the wrong kind of growth - it would mean hundreds of millions of people having those ambitions stunted.

Guest: Arjun Ramani, The Economist. 

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I've been wanting to get more ideological diversity and productive disagreement on Crash Course, and so I was pleased when Albie Amankona agreed to come on for an interview. Albie is a regular commentator on GB News, and vice chair of LGBT Conservatives. We discussed the council election results, how he became a conservative, the legacy of austerity, and whether he thinks his party is intentionally stoking a culture war.

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Given the local and mayoral elections in England and Wales I've taken a break from my India series to look at politics closer to home. In this episode I speak to George Eaton from the New Statesman about the nature of "Starmerism" and what Labour would do if - as seems very likely - they get into power at the next general election.

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India's elections are the world's largest. But in a context in which Modi's political opponents are subject to arbitrary arrest, can we really call the country a democracy?

LSE Anthropologist Alpa Shah thinks we shouldn't, and in her new book 'The Incarcerations' she explains how the arrest of 16 intellectuals and activists symbolises India's slide into authoritarianism, and even fascism.

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