In this episode of The Critic Show, Tom and Chris discuss Samuel Rubinstein’s review of Sir Lenny Henry’s new book The Big Payback, which calls for Britain to pay £18.62 trillion in reparations in penance for its colonial legacy.

Whilst economically absurd, and historically myopic, ideas like these are rapidly gaining credibility in the western world, and within the British Labour party in particular, in thrall to the politics of celebrity.

With the Chagos handover baked in, are proposals like this, though economically ruinous, inevitable?

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For decades, Nigel Farage was the ultimate political outsider, yet, after a year of topping the polls by some margin, it is slowly dawning on Westminster that, for the first time in a century, he might break the two-party system.

How has he been able to do this? And why are the political currents of the mid-twenty twenties so different from the waters that UKIP swam in a decade before?

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Has western policy-making been broken by AI? Andrew Orlowski thinks so. The writer and journalist believes that our governing elites have become obsessed by artificial intelligence and Large Language Models in particular, yet, he argues, these technologies have singularly failed to live up to their promise.

Orlowski explains how the techno-utilitarian impulse behind this obsession also has much deeper roots, and many its advocates are entwined in a modern day cult of twisted morality.

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The creaking edifice of British politics, without urgent intervention, is about to come crashing down. But enough about the Labour party, the Palace of Westminster is in a state of disrepair, and the cost of restoration is projected in the multiple billions. Why? And why can’t we seem to get architecture right in this country anymore?

To answer this, and so much more, Tom is joined this week by Nicholas Boys Smith, founder of Create Streets, the design practice, town-builder and think tank, campaigning to bring beauty and liveability back to our built environment.

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Whilst the high culture of classical art and music has often been associated with conservatism, there has, nevertheless, been a slow decline of culture on the right. Nearly every single great cultural institution is effectively owned and operated by the left, and rightist attempts to create art and institutions of their own have been somewhat underwhelm…

This week, Chris Bayliss and Poppy Coburn discuss Britain’s new command economy, and why the free market is anything but.

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Chris Bayliss and Tom Jones if Britain’s punishment system is really that broken, and if our authorities are giving up on crime and punishment

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Fleur Meston and Poppy Coburn talk about how much the Overton Window has shifted in the last year, and how the continuing political rhetorical war around immigration proves the radical right are anything but.

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It’s the season of goodwill, and in the first of our new Critic Show Graham Stewart joins Tom Jones to discuss the editorial themes of the Critic’s double bumper festive issue, as well as the New Critic essay and the debut piece on the decline and fall of the British Army.

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Hello, and welcome to The Critic Show.

Let’s not bother burying the lede. Britain’s best in-print periodical and online comment engine is re-launching our podcast — and this time you’ll be able to see us, as well as listen.

Today we’ve released the first 4 episodes, which you can watch here. In these first episodes, regular Critics Chris Bayliss, Poppy Coburn, Fleur Meston and I discuss anarcho-tyranny, how the Overton window has shifted on immigration in the last year and whether Britain’s economy is fake. There’s also an episode with Critic editor Graham Stewart and I, where we discuss the Christmas double issue, the new Critic Essay and the debut piece by Ben Barry, on the decline and fall of the British Army. After that you’ll be able to join us every Monday. You can find it here on Outpost - and for full access to the exclusive bonus episodes, subscribe now.

Does the world need another podcast? I get it. It must feel like every magazine has a podcast. It must feel like every 25-75 year-old man with a passing interest in culture and politics — and a lingering sense of frustration in life — has a podcast.

Well, forget all that. It’s like watching St Paul’s being built and asking Christopher Wren if London hasn’t got enough churches. It’s like watching Shakespeare draft Hamlet and asking if the world really needs another play about moody teenagers. It’s like hearing Beethoven preparing his Ninth and asking if he doesn’t think there are already enough symphonies.

Produced in partnership with Outpost Studios, this won’t be another chummy centrist political podcast — the kind Ben Sixsmith hates — that regurgitates the week’s news. Britain’s podcast market is saturated with the offerings of centrist hacks endlessly rehashing whatever has come up in Westminster that week, with no attempt to get under the skin of any story.

Rather than chase the news cycle, we’re going to do what The Critic does best — leading sacred cows to slaughter. We’ll have satire rather than sanctimoniousness, punchy commentary rather than ponderous blather and, crucially, The Critic Show won’t be hosted by a man who made the case for invading Iraq or Lewis Goodall.

Instead it will be hosted by me, Tom Jones, frequent contributor to these most august pages and owner of both the best hair and the best Donald Trump impression in journalism. I hope you’ll join me, as well as all the other varied and talented Critic contributors who will appear on the podcast, as we dig the scalpel of our analysis into the flesh of world events.

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