It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast

Last week, Donald Trump won a historic second term as US president. This victory in the face of the chaos, the lies and the courts should be a wake up call for progressives across the world.  So what do progressives need to do to turn the dread we all feel at this result into something meaningful?To digest, dissect and discuss the results we’re joined by:Sky Gallegos, a Founding Partner at Hilltop Public Solutions, a political consulting firm based in DC that manages high-stakes, high-profile campaigns, builds coalitions and mobilizes grassroots advocates across the country.Frank Sharry, the founder of America’s Voice and a long-time advocate for immigration reform and democratic rights. He has been working on the Democratic campaign.Oliver Laughland, the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief and investigations correspondent, and presents Anywhere but Washington.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 the Indian ethnic group and the white British and Pakistani ethnic groups (11% and around 15% respectively). The South of England is considerably more wealthy than the North and this difference is growing – the difference in median individual wealth between the South-East (£263,000) and North-East (£79,000) more than doubled between July 2010 to June 2012, and April 2018 to March 2020.Wealth inequality distorts democratic political cultures, and causes a series of social and environmental harms. But polling shows that many of the consequences of inequality such as undermining economic growth or social cohesion or democracy are poorly understood by most people – and are not fully appreciated by decision-makers.So how do we bridge these gaps of knowledge and of wealth to move towards a more equal, more equitable society? The Fairness Foundation have launched a Wealth Gap Risk Register – an online evidence resource about the impacts of wealth inequality, how to reduce it and mitigate its impacts, and public attitudes to it.Click here to access the Wealth Gap Risk Register.To mark the launch, we hosted the chair of their Editorial Board, Will Hutton, and Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE, Dr Burchardt to dig into how wealth inequality spills over into democracy, social relations, economic security, a fair tax system, public services and so on – and how to tackle this. Report author Jack Jeffrey also joined the discussion.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 small feat – and it’s bloody complicated. But unless our systems and politicians give away power, there is something much nastier around the corner. We’re excited to welcome Sam onto the podcast on 8th October to talk about how to make the state capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.Sam is a Senior Fellow covering education at the Institute of Government and a former senior adviser on schools at the Department for Education.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 and tackling the climate crisis.To reflect on these challenges as Labour held its first conference in power for 15 years, we were be joined by:Adam Bienkov, political editor of Byline TimesHilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper magazineSupport the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 future might look like.Compass’ New Settlement project seeks to establish the guiding principles and building blocks of a Good Society that is much more equal, democratic and sustainable. To discuss how we can make this vision a reality, we were joined by:Willie Sullivan, Senior Director at the Electoral Reform SocietyFatima Ibrahim, Co-Executive Director of Green New Deal RisingSue Goss, writer and author of the Compass report A New Settlement: For a Better SocietyPriya Sanhi-Nicholas, Co-Executive Director at the Equality TrustSupport the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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-style multi-party politics struggling to break free from the straitjacket of our two-party system.Neal Lawson and Frances Foley from the Compass office were joined by journalist John Harris and Labour campaigner Laura Parker us to discuss how exactly things changed so dramatically from 2019, and what 2024 holds for progressives and our country.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 the authors of a brand new publication The Little Black Book of the Populist Right: What it is, why it’s on the march and how to stop itJon Bloomfield is a writer, environmental practitioner, and author of Our City: Migrants and the Making of Modern Birmingham. In the 1980s, Jon served on the editorial board of Marxism Today.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

On this special general Election issue of Its Bloody Complicated we are delighted tobe joined by Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty. We’ve admired Aditya’s writing and reporting for years and have been keen to gethim on. Aditya doesn’t just critique what’s wrong in terms of the economy, societyand politics – he actively goes out and finds places and examples where things arebeing done better – finding places for hope. But it was his article last week on thethreat poised by Nigel Farage that accelerated our desire to hear from him – in itAditya graphically illustrated how Farage and Reform UK set the tone of debate, nowprimarily on the issue of immigration, and then watch first the Tories then labourfollowing their direction. Farage may or may not win the seat of Clacton but he isalready winning the general election debate.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice. 

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 Cheshire West and Chester Councillor.Alison Lowe OBE is the West Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. She has been involved with local government for almost 30 years as a Labour councillor and as the Deputy Lord Mayor of Leeds in 2003-4. She is a well known campaigner on equal rights, and worked in the Third Sector for 30+ years, most recently as Chief Executive of Touchstone, a mental health charity specialising in working with people from different cultural backgrounds across West Yorkshire.Support the showEnjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.