The Interview

Stephen Sackur speaks to Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party. For the foreseeable future British politics is going to be dominated by one issue - Brexit. What will our future relationship with the EU look like and how will it affect Britain's political and economic future? (Photo: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), 2015, London. Credit: Rob Stothard/Gett...

Stephen Sackur speaks to Nick Clegg, former UK Deputy Prime Minister. Elected Politicians tend to lose their grip on power and prestige with brutal speed. For Five years Nick Clegg was Britain's Deputy Prime minister, the Liberal Democrat who entered a coalition with the conservatives and gave his party its first real taste of power in generations. And then came the 2015 general election. His part...

Remember the pro-democracy umbrella protests in Hong Kong a couple of years ago? They ended up as something of a damp squib, but the young leaders of the movement haven’t disappeared. Nathan Law has just won a seat in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and he's at the head of a so-called localist movement demanding a referendum on self-determination for the territory. Will Beijing try to silence Nath...

Dubbed the biggest rogue trader in British history, Kweku Adoboli ran up $2.3bn of losses for the Swiss bank UBS. He has spent four years in prison for fraud and now faces possible deportation from Britain back to Ghana. He maintains he was not motivated by greed but that the system put unbearable pressures on him to make big returns. He warns that the culture of the banking industry has not chang...

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Ed Balls, former Labour MP and UK cabinet minister. When elected politicians are booted out by the voters there's no safety net to soften their fall. And Ed Balls has the bruises to prove it. He was one of the key players of the UK Labour Party's era of political dominance under those partners and rivals Blair and Brown. He was a formidable political operator wh...

For years Poland has been the poster child of the European Union but not anymore. Its new government has made sweeping changes to its constitution and laws, changes that Brussels says are a threat to Poland's democracy. In return Poland has said its economy is too dependent on foreigners. Is his country set on turning inwards and away from the European Union? (Photo: Pawel Szalamacha at the annual...

Sarah Montague speaks to United States Senator Lindsey Graham about American foreign policy and why he thinks Donald Trump is not fit to be president. (Photo: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gives a speech where he announced his candidacy for US President, 1 June, 2015. Credit: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

Shaun Ley speaks to Andriy Kobolyev, CEO of Ukaine’s Naftogaz. Ukraine is a country at war with itself, and not just because of separatists in the east. Corruption is endemic, especially in state industries. Andriy Kobolyev, CEO of state-run energy company Naftogaz is trying to clean it up. He wants to make gas more expensive, because massive subsidies discourage investment and encourage waste. Bu...

Sarah Montague speaks to Sara Khan, director and co-founder of Inspire. Kadiza Sultana was 16 when she ran away from her home in London to join the so-called Islamic State group in Syria. Her family have heard reports that she is dead - killed in a Russian air-strike. It's hard enough to understand why young men join IS, it's harder still to see what attracts women. Sara Khan is at the forefront o...

Stephen Sackur talks to one of Britain's leading brain surgeons, Henry Marsh. Imagine you are a patient, about to undergo brain surgery. If it goes well it will save your life; if it goes wrong you could end up paralysed or dead. Of course you want to believe your surgeon is infallible, a superhero - but he is not; he is all too human just like you. That simple truth emerges from the extraordinari...

HARDtalk’s Shaun Ley speaks to former UK Labour politician Derek Hatton. In the blue corner, a formidable woman Prime Minister with an enviable opinion poll lead; in the red corner, a left-wing leader of the opposition seen by many on his own side as unelectable. It's how things look today as they did in the mid-1980s when Derek Hatton was the poster boy of Britain's far left. Confronting Prime Mi...

HARDtalk’s Shaun Ley speaks to Majak D’Agoôt, former deputy Defence Minister of South Sudan. It took half a century of civil war to give South Sudan its independence. Just five years later, leading figures from the independence struggle are calling for the UN to take charge. Majak D’Agoôt fought in the war of independence, became deputy minister of defence, but was sacked by the President and is n...

Stephen Sackur talks to the British surgeon David Nott who has spent decades working in conflict zones, including Syria. Amid the appalling toll of civilian death in Syria the loss of hundreds of doctors and medical staff stands out as an especially grievous loss. Many have been bombed in their clinics and hospitals. Now he is focused on training doctors to work in conflict conditions; but does Sy...

In the public mind, Dame Diana Rigg will forever be linked with performances which were almost a sideshow in her long career. Her roles as Mrs Peel in The Avengers and as Bond girl Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service attracted huge attention, but it’s in the theatre that she's won critical acclaim and a host of awards. Now she has an iconic role in the hit series Game of Thrones -...

Stephen Sackur talks to the influential contrarian economist, Steve Keen. It's a good time to be an economist who swims against the tide of conventional wisdom. After all the last decade has seen classical economics take a beating: the great financial crash wasn't supposed to happen, nor was the prolonged eurozone stagnation. Now the liberal economic consensus tells us that Brexit will be a disast...

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur talks to Al Sharpton, the veteran, often controversial, civil rights campaigner. One of the bleaker themes of Barack Obama's presidency has been the crisis in relations between black America and the criminal justice system. We've seen unarmed black men shot dead by the police and officers gunned down in what appear to be acts of vengeance. A new movement Black Lives Matte...

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur talks to veteran US diplomat and now foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, Nicholas Burns. To put it mildly the Washington foreign policy making establishment doesn't like Donald Trump. But are there reasons to worry about Hillary Clinton's foreign policy vision ? Is she an unreconstructed military interventionist ? Is the Clinton world view out of step with Ame...

French newspapers will no longer publish pictures of the perpetrators of jihadist atrocities - in an effort to ensure they're neither glorified, nor humanised. HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur speaks to a journalist who sees his mission differently. Norwegian Paul Refsdal has spent thirty years filming up close and personal from inside militant groups around the world, often at great personal risk - he w...

Stephen Sackur speaks to Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal. When Ashraf Ghani became president of Afghanistan two years ago he talked of new diplomatic cooperation with Pakistan, aimed at ending the war with the Taliban. As so often before hopes have been dashed. The war goes on, relations between Kabul and Islamabad have soured and the Afghan people still live with a dysfunctio...

Stephen Sackur talks to Babatunde Fashola, Nigeria's Minister for Power, Works and Housing. Will his country ever realise its full potential?

Zeinab Badawi speaks to Sabrina de Sousa, an ex-CIA spy who faces extradition from Portugal to Italy to serve a prison sentence for her alleged role in a CIA extraordinary rendition case when an Egyptian terror suspect was seized in Milan 13 years ago. She denies involvement. Last year she visited Portugal against official advice and was detained by the authorities there. She is awaiting extraditi...

Zeinab Badawi speaks to Shahbaz Taseer, Pakistani businessman, recently released by the Taliban after nearly five years of captivity, during which he endured constant torture. He is the son of the former governor of Punjab who was assassinated in 2011 for his opposition to tough blasphemy laws. Has the vision of a tolerant, secular Pakistan been lost? (Photo: Shahbaz Taseer in the Hardtalk studio)

Stephen Sackur talks to the film and TV producer Tony Garnett . Watching TV is something pretty much all of us do for news, sport and entertainment, but how much of what we stare at on the box do we actually remember? His subjects of homelessness, illegal abortion, police corruption point to his radicalism - he uncovered dark corners of British life. How much of his motivation came from the dark c...

Zeinab Badawi speaks to Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister. The attempted coup in Turkey may have been crushed but has it exposed weaknesses in the hold in power of President Erdogan? Around 15,000 personnel from the military, police, judiciary and civil service have either been arrested or relieved from duty. Is President Erdogan, the target of the coup, too polarising a figure for Tur...

Venezuela's economy is in meltdown. It's shrinking faster than any other country in the world. Inflation is at nearly 500% and most people say they can no longer afford to buy enough food. Maria Corina Machado has led street protests and is calling on all Venezuelans - including the military - to force President Maduro to resign. He is accusing her of plotting a coup.