The second part of David’s conversation with Robert Saunders marking the 40th anniversary of Neil Kinnock’s party conference speech attacking the Militant tendency takes the story up to the present and beyond. Was Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership contest of 2015 the revenge of the ‘Loony Left’? What’s the difference between Momentum and Militant? Which parts of the Labour Party pose the biggest threat to Keir Starmer today? And what lessons might events in Liverpool forty years ago have to teach the Democratic Party in 2025? Next time in Fixing Democracy: What’s Wrong with Referendums? Find out everything you need to know about PPF on our website https://www.ppfideas.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode in our occasional series with Robert Saunders to mark momentous events in British political history explores the lasting consequences of a speech delivered 40 years ago this week. Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s attack on Militant at his party’s annual conference in 1985 brought a long-running conflict out into the open. Who were Militant? Why did the speech have such an explosive impact? What did it mean for the past, present and future of the Labour Party? Next time: From Kinnock to Corbyn to Starmer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode on how to fix democracy David talks to political scientist Nic Cheeseman about how to stop governments rigging elections around the world, from Africa to the United States. How widespread is the problem? Has digital technology made it worse? What makes an election free and fair? And what are the chances that the next US presidential election will be a free and fair one? Tickets are available for the 3rd film in our PPF Films of Ideas season at the Regent Street Cinema in London on Thursday 9th October: join us for a screening of the biopic Rosa Luxemburg followed by a live recording of the podcast with Lea Ypi https://bit.ly/4mNzNCT Next Time: Now & Then with Robert Saunders on Neil Kinnock, Labour and Militant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David talks to Claudia Chwalisz, founder and CEO of Democracy Next, about how citizens’ assemblies could help fix what’s wrong with democracy. Where does the idea of a jury of citizens chosen at random to answer political questions come from? What are the kinds of contemporary questions it could help to settle? How does it work? And what would encourage politicians to listen to citizens’ assemblies rather than to their electorates? Out now on PPF+: The second half of David’s conversation with Hannah White in which they discuss how we could get better decision-making at the heart of government. Why do politicians find it so hard to address the biggest challenges that they face? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ today https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus The 2nd film in our autumn Films of Ideas season at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25th September: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V Tickets are also now available for a special recording of PPF Live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Wednesday 15th October: Who Rules The World? Trump, Tech and the Fight for the Future. David will be talking to writer, philosopher and ex-politician Bruno Maçães – plus a special guest to be announced – about where the power really lies. Get your tickets now https://bit.ly/4m2pZno Next Up in Fixing Democracy: How To Stop Election Rigging Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode David talks to Hannah White, Director of the Institute for Government, about legislatures in general and the British parliament in particular. Are law-making bodies really being sidelined by strongarm executives? What would enable parliaments to work better? How can they better fulfil their role of scrutinising what government does? And why oh why oh why has it taken forever to reform the House of Lords? Available from Saturday on PPF+: The second half of David’s conversation with Hannah White in which they discuss how we could get better decision-making at the heart of government. Why do politicians find it so hard to address the biggest challenges that they face? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus The 2nd film in our autumn film season at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25thSeptember: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V Next Up in Fixing Democracy: Citizens’ Assemblies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the first episode in a new series about the ideas that could help democracy work better David talks to David Klemperer of the Constitution Society about proportional representation. How did nineteenth-century advocates of PR think it could improve democratic representation? Why did PR get adopted in some places but not in others during the twentieth century? What are the advantages of proportional systems? And when will we get serious electoral reform in the UK? The 2nd film in our autumn season of Films of Ideas at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25th September: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now ⁠https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V⁠ Next Up in Fixing Democracy: Parliamentary Reform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David talks to Lea Ypi about her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined, which tells the story of her grandmother’s extraordinary life and in doing so uncovers the hidden history of mid-twentieth-century Europe. But it is also a book about the different philosophies of dignity and how those ideas can shape, make and break individual human lives. A conversation about death and displacement, identity and betrayal, secrecy and salvation.  Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi is out now – get it wherever you get your books. ⁠https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458930/indignity-by-ypi-lea/9780241661925⁠ The 2nd film in our autumn season of Films of Ideas at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25th September: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now ⁠https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V⁠ Next up, the start of a new series: Fixing Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is the first in a three-part conversation with philosopher and writer Lea Ypi about the idea of dignity and its role in the history of ideas and in the story of our lives. What is the difference between dignity and dignitas? How does our conception of dignity shape the ways that we think about death? And why is Kant so important for showing what the idea of dignity is capable of? Out tomorrow on PPF+: Part 2 of this conversation, in which David and Lea explore the role of dignity in human rights and in identity politics and ask how much it matters that our politics has become so undignified. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Lea Ypi’s new book is Indignity: A Life Reimagined – get it wherever you get your books. ⁠https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458930/indignity-by-ypi-lea/9780241661925⁠ Tickets are available now for a special recording of PPF Live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Wednesday 15th October: Who Rules The World? Trump, Tech and the Fight for the Future. David will be talking to writer, philosopher and ex-politician Bruno Macaes plus a special guest to be announced about where the power really lies. Get your tickets now ⁠https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/who-rules-the-world-trump-tech-and-the-fight-for-the-future⁠ Next time: Lea Ypi talks about her remarkable new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode some more highlights from the PPF+ archive of 35 bonus episodes and counting: here are a few more excerpts we think you might enjoy. In this episode you’ll hear David talking about In the Loop and the question of why politicians do and don’t resign; Robert Saunders on the legacy of Brexit for politics in 2025; Shannon Vallor on why AI is a vision not of the future but of the past; David on the appeal of High Noon for American presidents; and Alec Ryrie on the relationship between Calvinism, Puritanism and the rise and fall of apartheid South Africa. To get all these episodes along with the whole of our PPF+ archive, two new bonus episodes every month, plus ad-free listening and automatic sign up for our fortnightly newsletter, join PPF+ now. It’s £5 per month or £50 per year – and every subscription really helps support this podcast https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus If you would like to gift a PPF+ subscription to someone you know who is starting college or university or a new school or who you think might be interested in what we do for whatever reason, it’s easy: sign them up here https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts Next time in Politics on Trial: Hitler vs Weimar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s epic political trial is the one that should have been the end of Adolf Hitler but ended up being the making of him: his treason trial in 1924 for the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. How close did Hitler’s attempted coup come to succeeding? Why was he allowed to turn the court that tried him into a platform for his poisonous politics? What were the missed opportunities to silence him once and for all? Out now on PPF+: Part 2 of David’s conversation with Fintan O’Toole about the Easter Rising trials of 1916 – here they explore the treason trial of Sir Roger Casement and the question of what makes a traitor. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Tickets are still available for the first screening in our autumn Films of Ideas season at the Regent Street Cinema in London on 5th September: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope followed by a live recording of PPF with special guests Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, aka the best-selling husband-and-wife crime-writing due Nicci French. Get your tickets here https://bit.ly/4fOp2xx Next Up: Lea Ypi on Dignity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today it’s the first of two episodes with journalist and historian Fintan O’Toole about the trials that followed the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. What did the leaders of the rising hope to achieve, with or without German help? How and why did the British get it so wrong by court martialling the supposed ring leaders in secret? Were those trials anything more than kangaroo courts? And why are fourteen martyrs more potent than thousands of victims? Available from Saturday on PPF+: Part 2 of David’s conversation with Fintan O’Toole, where they explore the treason trial of Sir Roger Casement and the question of what makes a traitor. Plus, what part was played by George Bernard Shaw? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Tickets are still available for the first screening in our autumn film season at the Regent Street Cinema in London on 5th September: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope followed by a live recording of PPF with special guests Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, aka the best-selling husband-and-wife crime-writing duo Nicci French. Get your tickets here https://bit.ly/4fOp2xx Next Up: Hitler vs Weimar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is something a little bit different – it is nearly 18 months since we started PPF+ and there are now 34 bonus episodes waiting for you as soon as you sign up. It costs £5 per month or £50 per year and you will get two new bonus episodes every month along with ad-free listening, automatic sign-up to our newsletter and access to the whole archive. It’s easy and we would really value your support https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus In this episode you’ll hear some PPF+ highlights: David talking to Helen Thompson about Apocalypse Now, David exploring Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, unpicking the relationship between The Futurist Manifesto and fascism, reflecting on Claude Lanzmann’s epic Holocaust documentary Shoah and in conversation with historian Chris Clark about 1848 and the future of liberal politics. All these episodes and many more are available as soon as you sign up. If you would like to gift a 6-month or 12-month PPF+ subscription to someone you know who is starting college or university or a new school or who you think might be interested in what we do for whatever reason, it’s also easy: sign them up here https://ppf.supportingcast.fm/gifts Next time in Politics on Trial: Fintan O’Toole on The Trials of the Easter Rising 1916. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode in Politics on Trial is about the most famous trial in literature and one that never actually takes place. David talks to writer and literary scholar Ian Ellison about Franz Kafka’s The Trial, first published in 1925. What is the meaning of a book about a legal process that never happens? How was it inspired by Kafka’s failed love life? Why has it given rise to so many different understandings of what makes our world Kafkaesque? And how did a work of fiction that is full of weird and wonderful ideas get associated with mindless bureaucracy? If you’d like to get tickets for the first screening in our autumn film season at the Regent Street Cinema in London on 5th September – Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, followed by a live recording of PPF with the crime writers Nicci Gerard and Sean French – they are available now https://www.ppfideas.com/events Coming Next: a PPF+ Highlights Special Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today in Politics on Trial David tells the tale of the Dreyfus Affair that split France down the middle at the turn of the last century and revealed the grip of a whole host of conspiracy theories. Across a series of courts martial, libel trials, treason trials and parliamentary commissions, the story of a letter found in a wastebin turned into a saga about who really controlled the country. Was it the Jews? The Jesuits? The Freemasons? The army? The Germans? Or nobody at all? Why did Alfred Dreyfus find himself at the centre of it all? And what does all this madness tell us about the paranoid state of American politics today? Tickets are available now for our autumn film season at the Regent Street Cinema in London, starting on 5th September with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope followed by a live recording of PPF with special guests Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, aka the best-selling husband-and-wife crime-writing duo Nicci French. For tickets and details on all the films https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next Time in Politics on Trial: Anniversary Special: Kafka’s The Trial at 100 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode in Politics on Trial is about three trials that took place over two months in the late spring of 1895 that brought about the destruction of Oscar Wilde. Why did Wilde trigger his own doom by suing his nemesis Lord Queensbury for libel? What did he fail to understand about how he would come across in a courtroom? And how did the persecution of Wilde and his gay lifestyle reveal the hidden terrors of late Victorian England and its high society, up to and including the prime minister? Out now on PPF+: Part 2 of David’s latest conversation with Robert Saunders in which they talk about the past, present and future of the politics of unemployment. Can Labour ever again be the party of labour? Whose work is it anyway? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Tickets are now available for our autumn film season at the Regent Street Cinema in London, starting on 5th September with a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope followed by a live recording of PPF with special guests Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, aka the best-selling husband-and-wife crime-writing duo Nicci French. For tickets and details on all the films https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next time in Politics on Trial: Dreyfus vs the Conspiracy Theory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is the first in a new strand with the historian Robert Saunders looking at significant political anniversaries and their meaning for today. Summer 2025 is 70 years since the UK recorded its lowest ever unemployment rate in peacetime: just 1% (or 215,800 people) in July 1955. David and Robert explore the history of unemployment: how it’s been measured, what it means, why it matters and when it changes the course of political history. From Victorian trade unionism to the Thatcher revolution: who gets to decide on the value of work? Out now on PPF+: Part 2 of this conversation taking the story from the 1980s to the present, via New Labour, the financial crisis of 2008 and Covid. How has the meaning of work changed over that period? How has it got mixed up with the politics of immigration? And is the Labour Party still the party of labour? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time in Politics on Trial: Oscar Wilde vs the Philistines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For today’s episode in Politics on Trial it’s two trials for the price of one, which between them changed the course of British and Irish history. In 1889 the leading Irish politician Charles Parnell was cleared of any involvement in the notorious Phoenix Park murders by Irish republican terrorists seven years earlier. In 1890 Parnell was found to be the adulterer in a divorce case involving his mistress and her husband. That scandal destroyed him, permanently split the campaign for Irish self-government and upended Liberal politics in Britain. How did Parnell come to have such a hold on British and Irish politics? Why could he survive accusations of terrorism but not of adultery? And what does his fate reveal about the high-wire politics of a highly decorous and extremely dangerous age? For all the information about our autumn season of screenings and live recordings, 'Films of Ideas', and to book tickets, go to our website: https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next Time: Now and Then w/Robert Saunders: Whatever Happened to Full Employment? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s political trial is one of the most notorious in American history: eight men charged with and convicted of murder in 1886 for a terrorist outrage that none of them committed. A bomb had been thrown at the police during a workers’ rally in Chicago but this trial was not about punishing the person who threw it. Rather it was a witch hunt of the men and the movement that were thought to have inspired it. Anarchism was put on trial and condemned in the Haymarket case. Who promoted and who resisted the invasion of paranoia and conspiracy theories into an American courtroom? And was it anarchists or was it the forces of law and order that were ultimately responsible for Chicago’s descent into violence and retribution? For all the information about our autumn season of screenings and live recordings, 'Films of Ideas', and to book tickets, go to our website: https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next time in Politics on Trial: Charles Parnell vs the English Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s great political trial concerns the prosecution and execution of John Brown in 1859 for his raid on Harper’s Ferry in the attempt to free America’s slaves, an event that helped precipitate the American Civil War. It was also a trial that produced three of the greatest speeches in American history: by Brown himself, by Henry Thoreau and by Frederick Douglass, which between them constitute an indictment of slavery for the ages. How did one man’s unilateral declaration of war convulse an entire nation? And how did his trial confirm what was becoming increasingly clear: that a house divided against itself cannot stand? For all the information about our autumn season of screenings and live recordings, 'Films of Ideas', and to book tickets, go to our website: https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next time in Politics on Trial: The Haymarket Eight vs the Police Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For today’s epic political trial, David talks to American historian and PPF regular Gary Gerstle about the treason trial of Aaron Burr in 1807. Why was Burr not put on trial for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel? Was Burr really planning to invade Mexico or was it a set-up? Why was President Thomas Jefferson so determined to bring Burr down? Why was Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Marshall so determined to prevent that from happening? And why did being acquitted of treason still end Burr’s career once and for all? For all the information about our autumn season of screenings and live recordings, 'Films of Ideas', and to book tickets, go to our website: https://www.ppfideas.com/events Next time in Politics on Trial: John Brown vs Slavery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices