podcasts

It has been a chaotic weekend in UK politics. First, Nadine Dorries resigned as an MP after her nomination for a peerage was rejected. Former prime minister Boris Johnson followed her out of the Commons hours later with another ally, Nigel Adams, quitting on Saturday. 

If that wasn't enough, former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and faced questions from police in Scotland as part of their investigation into the SNP's finances. She denies all allegations and insisted on her innocence in a strongly worded statement. 

Charlotte Henry and Emma Burnell discuss it all in this special episode.

This month Emma and Steve discuss the show that has had the political world more obsessed than with anything since The West Wing - Succession. 

This tale of a family battling over the future of a media empire has obvious real-world parallels. But should we care as much as we do?

This week, co-hosts Charlotte Henry and Emma Burnell discuss Sir Keir Starmer's latest intervention on Brexit. He wrote an opinion piece for the Express laying out his position, but did it actually contain anything new? Meanwhile, Boris Johnson continues to toy with the Covid inquiry and the government over submitting his WhatsApp messages and notebooks from the pandemic. The show ends with a brief discussion about the allegations made against Labour MP Geraint Davies.

Boris Johnson continues to cast a long shadow over the Conservative Party. He is now under investigation for alleged lockdown rule-breaking at Chequers, something he denies. His allies are furious and threatening to trigger by-elections. Over in the US Ron Desantis is officially in the race to be the Republican presidential nominee. Co-hosts Charlotte Henry and Emma Burnell also discuss the ongoing debate over immigration statistics.

This month, Emma and Steve look at Brassed Off. It's a film about a colliery band, about music and community. It's also an explicitly anti-Tory film set 10 years after the Miners Strike and one year before the Tories were swept out of office by the 1997 Labour election landslide. 

Charlotte Henry and Emma Burnell discuss the National Conservative Conference, which was held in London this week. Various Tory MPs and ministers took the stage, including the home secretary Suella Braverman and levelling up secretary Michael Gove. Despite many of the speakers saying some deeply troubling things, there has been no sanction against the MPs and ministers who joined the event.

Elsewhere, Rishi Sunak may be facing a number of by-elections, as Boris Johnson looks set to appoint a number of MPs to the House of Lords. Helpful.

Charlotte Henry and Emma Burnell are back together to discuss all the fallout from the local elections. Can the Conservatives recover from such a terrible set of results? Are Labour on course for Government? And why are we talking about coalitions? 

They also look ahead to the ongoing ping pong between the House of Lords and House of Commons over migration legislation, following an intervention from the Archbishop of Canterbury.