The US is no longer supporting Ukraine, and in response, the UK and Europe are rearming. Germany is taking off its hallowed ‘debt brake’ to allow it, while Keir Starmer is talking tough about the capabilities of the British armed forces. In a world still dominated by the American military, what does it matter? And […]

When we talk about politics – whether it’s the climate, the economy or constitutional reform – the thing that’s at stake is an idea of ‘the future’. These days, the idea of imminent societal or ecological breakdown necessarily means adopting the framing of the present as being a ‘state of emergency’. This is an obvious […]

What’s the point of the arts when the world is on fire? To follow the pipeline from creativity to activism and back again, Nadia Idle is joined by Amber Massie-Blomfield, former chief of theatre company Complicité and the author of Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create Better World. They discuss Dan Edelstyn […]

Lockdown was one of the defining experiences of our lives, but it was far from unique in history. Contagion and confinement are inextricably intertwined, from the plantation to the infirmary, the leper colony to the stay-at-home order. In The History of the World in 6 Plagues, Edna Bonhomme investigates how fear, power, race science and colonial violence […]

In 1996 Samuel Huntington published ‘The Clash of Civilizations’. At the time its hypothesis was counter-intuitive. Despite the supremacy of the United States after the Cold War, the ascent of globalisation would not lead to the end of history, but a return to distinctive and competing civilisations. Rather than homogeneity we would see a growing […]

Read any of the mainstream press at the moment and you’ll hear the same thing: unprecedented things are happening in America. But what if this sudden shift was an illusion? David Adler is co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, a group that brings together forces from across the progressive left. He tells Richard Hames that […]

For almost six centuries Europe has been at the centre of world affairs. While the days of Empire are long gone, over the last several decades the importance and comparative wealth of Europe has declined at an extraordinary pace. Indeed for many countries, from Britain to Germany and Greece, living standards have stagnated or even […]

This part two of our discussion about a new left party. You can listen to part 1 here: https://novaramedia.com/2025/01/30/time-for-a-new-left-party/ James Schneider, Jeremy Corbyn’s former Director of Comms, argues for a new party. But who would it speak to? Would it be democratic and in what ways? And what could it actually achieve in the volatile […]

“I’m literally a communist, you idiot”. For almost a decade Ash Sarkar has been one of Britain’s most prominent left wing political journalists. She first met Aaron Bastani in 2010, and was later invited on to the Novara FM podcast. It wasn’t long before she was calling Piers Morgan an idiot on morning TV. Now […]

Your death should be your own, as much as possible. That’s one of the principles behind the Assisted Dying Bill. It lets adults with less than 6 months to live end their lives. But disability campaigners fear that people who don’t want to die might be pressured to let themselves be killed. Ellen Clifford is […]