It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast

The UK is remarkably unequal. The richest 1% of Britons hold more wealth than 70 % of us combined . Wealth inequality is gendered, racialised, and extremely regional. Men have an average private pension wealth of £83,879 more than women, a gap of 90% . People in the black Caribbean, Bangladeshi and black African ethnic groups have more net debt (31%, 38% and 44% respectively) than individuals in t...

In his recent book, Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It, Sam Freedman lays out why people matter, but systems matter more. Having a run of incompetent, corrupt leaders is a problem. But our problems run deeper – and we will get nowhere until we fix our systems. It’s not enough to change who sits in Westminster and Whitehall – we have change the whole system. The change we need is no...

The 2024 general election result brought a welcome relief to British politics after 14 wasted years of Tory misrule. At last, some better people and ideas are at the helm. But, just a few months in, the challenges facing this new government are already beginning to pile up. Labour will need to be bold if it has any hope of rebuilding our crumbling public services, restoring trust in our democracy...

The 2024 general election result brings a welcome relief to UK politics. But now, we find ourselves at a crossroads: things are either going to get very much worse or very much better. There is no middle way. Neither the state, nor business, nor civil society can go it alone and bring about a better world – we have to do it together. That means having a clear, shared vision of what this positive f...

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On the 4th July people across the country went to the polls for a long overdue, and bloody complicated, General Election. Labour ended up with a mammoth majority and the Tories were left with just 121 seats. But beyond the headline figures, there was a huge amount going on beneath the surface. This election produced one of the most disproportionate results we have ever seen, revealing a European-s...

With Labour far ahead in the polls our attention turns to where the opposition from the Left will come from. We need to look no further than Nigel Farage and Reform UK – who could use the parliamentary base of Clacton to enact a shift to national populism of the kind we are now seeing in Italy, France and Germany. To discuss the very real threat of the Right we were joined on the podcast by one of...

On this special general Election issue of Its Bloody Complicated we are delighted to be joined by Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty.  We’ve admired Aditya’s writing and reporting for years and have been keen to get him on. Aditya doesn’t just critique what’s wrong in terms of the economy, society and politics – he actively goes out and finds places and examples where things are being done bet...

On Tuesday, 14th May we were joined by Ben Walker and Alison Lowe to analyse the campaigns and the results of the 2024 local elections, and reflect where we are coming up to a general election. Ben Walker is a senior data journalist at the New Statesman and writes extensively about elections and UK public opinion. He is the co-founder of poll aggregator Britain Elects, and since 2023 is also a Che...

Over the last few years, the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform our society has become increasingly apparent. This comes with incredible opportunities – AI could help deepen our democracy and enable our politics to get closer to citizens to represent them more effectively – but is also fraught with risk. How can we take advantage of these opportunities while preventing AI from...

It was a watershed moment in October 2022 when the Labour Party conference overwhelmingly voted to include in its manifesto a commitment to change the voting system to proportional representation after the next election. Just the year before, despite mass support in the membership, the motion failed because the affiliated Trade Unions opposed the motion. To discuss this historic shift, what the ch...

Support for Scottish independence is still strong but the SNP are clearly in a weaker position, institutionally, reputationally, and ideologically. They have become mired in scandal, their hegemonic grip on politics north of the border looks to be loosening, and yet the constitutional questions about who governs Scotland and how remain relevant and live. Labour’s position has clearly strengthened...

Citizens’ assemblies represent an alternative way of doing politics: a randomly selected group of citizens are convened to reason collectively, to consider evidence and to have discussions which should arrive at complex, nuanced decisions for the long term. As such, they’ve been called ‘democracy under good conditions’. They have been credited with tackling some of the toughest political and ethic...

First Past the Post might block smaller parties from gaining representation at Westminster, but on this episode of It’s Bloody Complicated, we discussed how in spite of this they can still wield substantial influence and contribute meaningfully to our national political discourse. We were joined by: Gina Miller , True and Fair Party Catherine Mayer , Women’s Equality Party Support the show Enjoyed...

Progressives face a dilemma; we want a change of government but know the country needs a big change of direction. In an essay published for the journal Renewal, Neal has set out the case for what he calls a Radical Pragmatic Left, i.e., a Left that recognises both the need to reconnect with voters and defeat the Tories but critically has a plan to transform the country within the context of the Po...

In 2017, South West Surrey Compass organised and slashed Jeremy Hunt’s majority taking it from the 7th safest Tory-held seat to the 121st. In 2019, they took control of a local council. In 2023, they sued the government. In the beginning of a an election year, we brought old Compass friends Paul Follows and Steve Williams onto It’s Bloody Complicated to talk about their journey, lessons, and plans...

The mainstream press in Britain has been in a state of managed decline for much of the 21st century. Once massive news outlets have suffered massive staff reductions as they have struggled to adapt to a digital age. But over the last few years, green shoots of growth have emerged. From the national level with publications like Byline Times and Novara Media to the regional level with the Manchester...

As another year comes to a close, we were excited to welcome Ayesha Hazarika and Andrew Grice to It’s Bloody Complicated to round up another year in politics. Ayesha Hazarika is a broadcaster, journalist and political commentator, and former political adviser to senior Labour Party politicians. Andrew Grice is a political columnist for The Independent, having been its political editor from 1998 to...

According to the Right to Roam campaign, 92% of the UK’s countryside and 97% of its rivers are not available to the vast majority of the public. For Episode 96 of It’s Bloody Complicated, we’ll be discussing land ownership and the Commons, and why democratising and sharing control of our land, rivers and seas could slash inequality and help calm political instability in this country. We were joine...

Climate chaos is looming. The question of how to protect and preserve our planet for future generations is a conversation that’s not just timely, but absolutely essential. That’s why, for Episode 95 of It’s Bloody Complicated, we were joined by Areeba Hamid, co-Director of Greenpeace. When she took up the role last October, Areeba became the first woman of colour and first migrant to lead Greenpea...

After Labour came to power in 1997, Clare Short served as the UK’s first cabinet-level Secretary of State for International Development, a post she would go on to hold for six years. In this role, she secured large increases in the British government’s overseas aid budget and persuaded then-chancellor Gordon Brown to write off the debts to Britain of Africa’s poorest countries. A famously independ...

Labour faces a huge challenge at the next election: first to win power, then to use it to change our country for the better. The polls suggest it will clear the first hurdle, but what of the second? The challenges our county faces have never been greater. We need a bold and reforming progressive government to rebuild our crumbling public services, restore trust in our democracy and tackle the clim...

In 1993, New Zealanders voted to replace First Past the Post with a proportional voting system. 30 years on, we discussed how this all-important electoral overhaul came about with two special guests: Max Rashbrooke , a New Zealand based writer on democracy and economic inequality And Danna Glendining , a New Zealand Green Party activist and MMP advocate We discussed the challenges and difficulties...

On this episode, we brought together an expert panel to discuss the threat of the far-right to democracy and how progressives are fighting for change. Nick Lowles , Hope Not Hate chief executive Hannah Rose , Hate and Extremism Analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue And Luke Cooper , author of Authoritarian Contagion: The Global Threat to Democracy. With the far right marching steadily in...

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. If you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. But, to Oliver Burkeman, that’s no reason for despair.  Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals was a smash hit from author and journalist Oliver Burkeman. On 25th July, he’ll join us on It’s Bloody Complicated to talk time, reality, the delusions we hold about productivity,...