The Bunker – News without the nonsense

As pandemic politics start to ebb away, Johnson’s ratings are down among the Tory faithful and his MPs are growing restive. Is this a time to pick a fight with Rishi Sunak? Plus, will Apple’s photo-scanning tech trap more than child abusers? Spain makes glorifying Franco a crime. And why do we let polls lead politics? Adam Payne, Westminster and Brexit reporter for PoliticsHome, is our guest.  “We have a Government which is absolutely obsessed with public opinion, and a PM obsessed with being popular ” – Adam Payne “The problem with polls is that the people who don’t answer them in the first place.” – Yasmeen Serhan “Liz Truss has this incredible ability to block out grim reality and tell everyone it’s all fine.” – Justin Quirk https://www.patreon.com/bunkercastPresented by Andrew Harrison with Yasmeen Serhan and Justin Quirk. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Produced by Andrew Harrison. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report could signal our last chance to stop the global climate running out of control. Will the world take it? Plus: vaccine passports continue to go round in circles. We try to talk about GCSE and A-level results without saying “grade inflation”. And Labour starts its traditional pre-conference programme of beating itself up. Alex Andreou flags up the big issues in the week ahead.  “In what world are The Telegraph defending working class northerners?”  “The person tipped to replace Sunak is – Lord help us – Liz Truss.”  “The reason we don't have enough HGV drivers is because we’ve spent six years sending them back home.” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recorded at 11pm on Saturday night and already our GB medals toll is out of date… At the end of the most controversial Olympics in almost a century, Financial Times Sports Editor MURAD AHMED calls us from Tokyo to lift the curtain on what it all means. Is the International Olympics Committee finally getting the message on athletes’ mental health and political commitments? Did the “Russian Olympic Committee” successfully pull a fast one on the anti-dopers? Is Britain’s commitment to medals all it seems? And did the Japanese people learn to love the games they wanted to cancel?https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast “The sport has been fantastic, but the pandemic has taken away the Olympics atmosphere” “People would wave at me on the bus thinking I was an athlete” “For me, Simone Biles choosing to focus on her mental health was the biggest moment of the games” “If you think you’ve been watching clean sport, then you haven’t watched the Olympics. This goes well beyond Russia” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Modi’s India to Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Erdogan’s Turkey, the far right is on the rise around the world. Are we really on the brink of resurgent fascism? And if so, how do we fight it? Political journalist Paul Mason tells Dorian Lynskey about his radical blueprint for defeating the extreme right, outlined in his new book How to Stop Fascism. Why is trust in democracy collapsing around the world, and can what progressives do to win it back? “People like Trump and Bolsonaro don’t want to play the globalisation game and they don’t want to play the democracy game either” “We’re not dealing with a tribute band to Nazism. We’re dealing with a new form of Nazism” “Fascism is always violent. It’s now become obsessed with ethnicity rather than nation” “One in five people serving jail for terrorism in the UK are from the far-right. Soon that could be one in two” “Very little is taught about how the Nazis came to power. That is something we need to get our head around” Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cameron and Osborne’s “Golden Era” of cosying up to China turned out to be a golden error, as Beijing dug deep into British life, politics, and technology. Investigative journalist Sam Dunning tells Arthur Snell how the Conservatives’ strings-free get-rich-quick strategy turned into a trap for British business and academia. While the Tories trumpet free speech on campus, students who want talk about the Uyghurs are being silenced at Jesus College Cambridge. Is it too late to curb China’s disturbing influence at the highest levels of British life? “For Osborne, the Golden Era was seen a problem-free get-rich-quick-scheme for Britain after the economic crash.”  “How can a Chinese student in the UK contest what’s happening in Hong Kong when Chinese ambassadors are attending university events?” “Huawei is creating surveillance in China that’s beyond Orwellian. Jesus College just received money from them to publish a paper on global governance.” “Even if Johnson did have a roadmap for our relations with China, he’d probably steer off and crash into a tree.” Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now that the pandemic may be abating, the Government decides that the best people to pay the bill are… those pesky, hard-up young people. Climate change and student activist Phoebe Hanson joins us to explain what it’s like to be mis-sold the student experience by universities that act like businesses but won’t treat you like a customer. Plus, how the planned changes to the Official Secrets Act will treat journalists like spies. And the truth behind those supply chain nightmares.  “It's hard to feel like part of your university when it is constantly working against you… ” – Phoebe Hanson “My lectures now are like glorified podcasts” – Phoebe Hanson “There’s a big difference between what young people think and what older people THINK they think.” – Phoebe Hanson https://www.patreon.com/bunkercastPresented by Andrew Harrison with Arthur Snell and Ahir Shah. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic . Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. Produced by Andrew Harrison. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Will bribes for Deliveroo and Uber be enough to persuade recalcitrant youth to get their jabs? Are we nearing herd immunity on COVID? Is Tony Blair to blame for food shortages because his university drive produced a generation of egghead boffins who can’t drive an HGV? And with thousands of kids catastrophically behind on their schooling, the Government has the solution: bring back Latin. Ros Taylor nobis narrat de septem praemisit.  “A Deliveroo voucher isn't going to turn a hardcore anti-vaxxer.”  “You should see Gavin Williamson's ratings. They are off the scale bad.” “The Government's Latin announcement is a bauble for fans of The History Boys.” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if you discovered that your Dad was living a double life, and really worked in the CIA? Does managing The Police prepare you for advising the Pentagon? From his chateau in France, maverick music manager Miles Copeland chats to Dorian Lynskey about his memoirs Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, moving from the Middle East and London, and how his record label IRS launched the careers of The Go-Gos, The Bangles, and R.E.M. “I already knew my Dad was in the CIA when I was fourteen years old.” “If you don't LIKE the music, how can you really sell it?” “When I heard Roxanne, I knew it was a song that would change our lives.” “Most bands think once they've made it, then they’ve made it. But what goes up must come down.” “There are many Iraqi women who preferred life under Saddam Hussein.” Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters ProductionSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The wrongful conviction of hundreds of subpostmasters for false accounting was so shocking that even Boris Johnson as called it one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in our history. Why did Post Office management cover up the truth about its flawed software, even after innocent people went to prison? As the Government sets aside £233m in interim compensation, criminal law expert Dr Hannah Quirk untangles a Kafkaesque nightmare that led innocent people to be ruined, jailed, shamed and pushed to suicide. Could anything stop something like this from happening again?https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast “Many innocent people pleaded guilty in the hope of avoiding prison.” “The Post Office knew there were flaws in its system. They hid that evidence from people they knew were wrongfully convicted.” “You can imagine the terror people felt of being imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.” “Somehow it didn’t occur to anyone that hundreds of corrupt subpostmasters were coming to light where previously there were none.” Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

COVID is a paradise of hindsight – a world of self-appointed experts who tell us what should have happened – and sometimes rewriting what did happen to suit themselves. But what about those people who could see what was going to happen? On March 10 2020, writer Tomas Pueyo posted an article called Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now – it made strong argument for rapid lockdowns at a time when Boris Johnson was still arguing that washing our hands was enough. 40 million views later, he joins Justin Quirk to discuss what he got right, what he got wrong – and where countries need to go next.  “Once you use the hammer, you can't use it over and over again.”  “Credentials are only one source of trustworthiness.”  “COVID has exposed how decision making in Western democracies is broken.” “You know the system is broken when every country failed.” “You can fulfil your needs for storytelling by watching Netflix.”  “The media's goal is to grab your attention, not to get your insights.” “There's more hours of work per word in a book, than a newspaper article.”  “The easiest thing is to remove the stimulus. If you don’t go on Facebook, you wouldn't fall into that black hole of content.” Presented by Justin Quirk. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices