The Bunker – Your daily news Deep Dive

It’s a classic Alien vs Predator scenario as disgruntled supervillain Dominic Cummings resurfaces with the receipts on Johnson’s squalid behaviour over lockdown, leaks and the No.11 flat. What will go down worse for the embattled Prime Minister? The news that he’d rather see “bodies piled high in their thousands” than a third lockdown, or Carrie’s taste in gold wallpaper? Alex Andreou is here to start your week. 

• “Cummings won’t release snippets. He’ll want to make his committee appearance big box office.”
• “The message is, Don’t go after me, mate. I know where all the bodies are buried.”
• “Johnson’s glove puppet turned around and bit him in the face.”

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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From Cameron to cabinet, the Greensill Capital scandal has spiralled into corruption chaos. But now numerous instances of shady practice are joining hands. Special guests Cynthia O’Murchú and Andy Bounds who cover Greensill and more for the Financial Times join us to connect the dots between Greensill, Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG/Liberty Steel empire and the surprise approval of a new deep coal mine in Cumbria. What’s really going on and how do we fix it? 

• “The transparency rules don’t work. Where are you supposed to log a private drink with Matt Hancock?” – Cynthia O’Murchú
• “We call it the Private Eye test. Would you want to see this in the paper?” – Andy Bounds
• “I’ve lost count of how many inquiries there have been into Greensill’s connections with government.” – Cynthia O’Murchú
• “Cameron wasn’t shy about Greensill. He touted them as the future of Government finance. But his involvement has become tawdry.” – Andy Bounds
• “Transparency rules didn’t reveal these meetings, it was the ABSENCE of transparency.” – Cynthia O’Murchú 
• “If a Civil Servant is already working for a private company when they leave government, they don’t have to declare the new job. That is gobsmacking.” – Alex Andreou

Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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The Perseverance Rover is bringing us stunningly detailed images of Mars, but do we really need to go there? Are we anywhere nearer proof of life on other worlds? And is Elon Musk’s dream of a million-person Mars base by the end of the century feasible – or desirable? Alok Jha, The Economist’s Science Correspondent and host of The Jab podcast talks space-sceptic Ros Taylor through the pros and cons of Martian exploration, and ponders whether interstellar objects are proof of extraterrestrial tech. 

• “If you’re interested in life on earth, you should be interested in life in Mars.” 
• “We’ve never sent an astronaut to Mars, let alone a million people.”
• “Before COVID, we didn’t think you could develop a vaccine in twelve months. It shows what you can do with willpower and money.” 
• “We’ve never had people sitting in a tin can to Mars for six months before. Would they just destroy one another?”
• “If there are one million planets in the universe, that’s a lot of opportunities for life to start.” 

Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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THIS PODCAST WAS RECORDED BEFORE CHELSEA AND MAN CITY LEFT THE COMPETITION: English football clubs triggered shockwaves of revulsion at the weekend when they announced their plans to join a €4bn breakaway ‘Super League’. Is the plan starting to crack, and can English football be saved? The man who broke the story, Chief Sports Reporter for The Times Martyn Ziegler, tells Andrew Harrison how a greed-fuelled vanity project came about, why the owners are unwise to discount “legacy fans”, and if there’s anything fans can do to stop it.  

• “This has gone beyond sabre rattling, this is civil war”
• “These owners simply don’t care about the tradition and community that surrounds their football clubs”
• “There is no doubt that the clubs have been taken aback by the reaction from fans, the media and even politicians”
• “The Premier League’s success is built on the fact that Leicester can win the title, and ‘Super League’ clubs can have a bad season”
• “In 30 years of reporting on sport I have never known the Government behave like this towards football”

Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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The Greensill scandal continues to leak dodginess like a busted fridge. Is lobbying really the issue, or is it really about the corrupt Old Boys’ Network? Joe Biden withdraws US troops from Afghanistan after 20 years: what does it mean? And we look at the new Carey Mulligan movie Promising Young Woman, an intense and provocative rape revenge fantasy, and what it says about Hollywood after #MeToo. David Aaronovitch of The Times is this week’s special guest 

• “People love a story of sex sleaze, but the thing is, they won’t always condemn the perpetrator for it.” – David Aaronovitch
• “ACOBA isn’t just toothless, it’s gumless and mouthless too.” – Arthur Snell
• “The problem with sleaze is that it’s easy to end up painting it on ALL politicians.” – David Aaronovitch
• “If you have to keep affirming that you’re a nice guy, you’re probably not.” – Yasmeen Serhan on Promising Young Woman
• “Why should withdrawing troops somehow mean ‘the end of America’s longest war’? The troops might be gone but the war isn’t.” – David Aaronvitch

Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Yasmeen Serhan and Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic . Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production

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As the sleaze scandal spreads, will the rising tide of corruption start lapping at Boris Johnson’s feet? Beer Garden Britain thinks COVID is done but as cases rise alarmingly in India and Brazil, will we need to think again? Alexei Navalny faces death in prison for opposing Putin. And will that revolting European Super League actually kill football? Naomi Smith is here to start your week. 

• “We need to stop calling this chumocracy, and start calling it corruption.”
• “The football terraces could be somewhere we can begin to win the culture war.”
• “Johnson is the master of Teflon. He’s deflected this onto the mandarins.”

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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When there’s a “heated debate” about racism on Good Morning Britain, you’ll often see Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, tussling with Toby Young and Nigel Farage and bringing uncomfortable arguments about white supremacy into Middle England’s living rooms. What does he get from it? He talks to Jude Rogers about the Sewell Report, his book The New Age Of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule The World and the value of being the “bad black guy who gets invited on TV to wind up the Daily Mail.” 

• “This is the most diverse cabinet, yet racist government of my lifetime.”
• “I can say things on Good Morning Britain that I can’t say in The Guardian.”
• “The reason why people love the Monarchy and the British Empire is that they don’t really understand what it is.”
• “The problem isn’t that black people don’t trust the police. The problem is the police.”
• “A culture war is going to happen whether I’m on TV or not.”
• “Diversity doesn’t mean that racism is over. The British Empire couldn’t have functioned without countless black and brown people helping to administer it.” 

Presented by Jude Rogers. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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What kind of person crashes a £3.6bn business, shattering the life savings of 400,000 people? When Britain’s most famous fund manager Neil Woodford went down in flames in 2019 it was a personal humiliation for a “rock star investor” that the City thought was infallible. Owen Walker, the FT’s European Banking Correspondent and author of Built On A Lie: The Rise And Fall Of Neil Woodford And The Fate Of Middle England’s Money tells Andrew Harrison how Woodford’s arrogance lost his clients millions – and asks whether the City has learned any lessons from the debacle.

• “This was a guy who could get the biggest CEOs to do his bidding”
• “Journalists loved Woodford. They could create stories around him. And yes, they’re to blame for hyping him up”
• “When Woodford rang up, even major CEOs would take a seat and prepare for a rollicking”

Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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The English public school is one of the country’s strangest and often most sinister institutions. James Scudamore, author of the moving and gripping novel of memory, friendship and abuse English Monsters, talks to Arthur Snell about his own experience with the mad and petty regime of the English boarding school. How did this culture spread the “profound damage” of men who’d seen true horror in war down to generations of pupils? And why do public schools produce an emotionally damaged elite? 

• “There’s a special toxicity in that closed world of elitism and privilege.”
• “That blend of extremely rigid rules and the psychopathy of the punishments… it’s incredible that these things were still going on as late as the 80s.” 
• “One thing you have to do to survive is to completely shut down your empathy. And another is to fall into extreme flippancy.”

Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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The pubs are back! Can the Great British Public drink the county back to economic health? Plus, did the deeply strange Prince Philip memorial weekend give us any pointers to the future fate of the Monarchy? Should we give up hoping for ‘normal’ politics to come back? And why shouldn’t there be a black James Bond? 

• “AstraZeneca? I’d have taken a North Korean vaccine if they offered me.” – Justin Quirk
• “Brits treat the Royal Family as both superhuman and somehow subhuman too.” – Alex Andreou
• “If there’s one thing that Labour hates, it’s Labour.” – Marie le Conte

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison with Alex Andreou, Marie le Conte and Justin Quirk. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic  and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production

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