Jumping Off Points

On 5th December 2022, Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer announced a plan to abolish the House of Lords as part of a series of sweeping reforms aimed to decentralize Westminster power and lay the foundations of the Labour party’s platform for a future general election campaign.

Episode seven of Jumping Off Points examines what the House of Lords does, and sees hosts Timbah and Aidan debating Starmer’s plan to abolish it. 

On the 6th of September, Liz Truss became the prime minister of Great Britain. By the 25th of October, she had crashed the British economy, invoked the wrath of fellow MPs in Westminster, resigned and been replaced by Rishi Sunak. 

Episode six of Jumping Off Points examines the shadowy institutions capable of generating ideas so bad they can make a prime minister leave office after just six weeks: think tanks. 

In particular, the spotlight is on The Institute of Economic Affairs, whose fingerprints can be found on the spread of climate change denial, pro-Brexit talking points and anti-lockdown propaganda during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On 7 July, prime minister Boris Johnson announced his plan to resign from the job in early September. Since then the Tories have been in a race to the bottom to pick their new leader.

The fifth episode of Jumping Off Points sees Timbah and Aidan discussing the events that led up to the resignation, some highlights from the leadership contest so far and the prospects of the final two candidates. 

Links:

Martin Lundfall - Them's the breaks (jungle tune)

On 14th June, a Boeing 767, chartered at an estimated cost of £500,000, was scheduled to deport dozens of asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. It never left the runway, and was ultimately sent back to Spain with no passengers onboard. 

This episode of Jumping Off Points is about the UK government’s policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. We discuss events surrounding the policy’s troubled start, the fiscal impact it will have on the asylum system and whether it is likely to work. 

On 6 May 2022, local elections were held across the UK in which Boris Johnson’s Conservative party suffered heavy losses.

This episode of Jumping Off Points is dedicated to explaining what our local elections are, how a run of Tory scandals in recent weeks may have influenced voters, and what the results might mean for UK politics going forwards.

On 31 March, ITV News ran a story claiming that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was planning to abandon its pledge to ban LGBT+ conversion therapy. 

The second episode of Jumping Off Points explores the political fall-out from this revelation, examines the importance of a conversion therapy ban and delves into the murky world of culture war politics.

Links:

ITV report on leaked conservative U-turn document

ITV undercover investigation into church conversion therapy

In 2020, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee published a report which assessed the Russian threat to the UK in terms of cyber campaigns, disinformation and political influence. 

The first episode of Jumping Off Points explores how Boris Johnson responded to the findings, whether interference in the Brexit referendum was fully investigated, and what insights we can extract about the UK’s relationship with Russian influence in the aftermath of Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

Links:

• The Full Published Russia Report