Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards
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© Steve Richards / Podmasters 2020
Description
Based on his live one-man show Rock & Roll Politics, the broadcaster and author Steve Richards takes a weekly behind-the-scenes tour of UK politics and the media that shapes the way we view the epic political dramas. The future is ridiculously unpredictable and the past is so easy to misread. Subscribe to your weekly guide through seismic times.
351 Episodes
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1The Labour Party conference is in a febrile mood – there's much talk of leadership, and also of Farage. Can Starmer bring together those horrified by a Reform government? Or is he too unpopular, not least with those on the left?
Please subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events. https://www.patreon.com/RockNRollPolitics
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
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Who are the Liberal Democrats? The coalition years exposed a deep split between social democrats and free market liberals. Are those divisions healed? Is Ed Davey right to party play for laughs? Is he making the correct pitch in the current multi-party mayhem?
Tickets for Thursday's epic live show in the main concert hall at Kings Place are available here.
Please subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Predictably, Peter Mandelson's return to the centre of the political stage has ended in crisis. Mandelson's influence on Keir Starmer grew after Labour lost the Hartlepool by-election in the early days of Starmer's leadership. The fashionable narrative is that Starmer changed his strategy for the better after Hartlepool, but is that when the seeds were sown that have led to the current crisis around his leadership?
• Rock & Roll Politics is live in the main concert hall at Kings Place on Thursday September 25th at the end of the Labour Party Conference week! Tickets available here.
• Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Keir Starmer has kept more or less the same Cabinet but given most of them new jobs. Will it work as Reform UK soars in the polls?
Rock & Roll Politics is live in the main concert hall at Kings Place on Thursday September 25th at the end of the Labour Party Conference week! Tickets available here. https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/steve-richards-presents-rock-n-roll-politics-6/
My biography of Tony Blair is published this Thursday and is available here. https://www.waterstones.com/book/tony-blair/steve-richards/9781800754409
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events. A bonus podcast is coming soon! https://www.patreon.com/RockNRollPolitics
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
With Labour languishing in the polls, Keir Starmer has reshuffled his top team… yet again. His leadership has been punctuated by changes in senior personnel, so does that tell us more about him or them?
My book on Tony Blair is published next Thursday. You can pre-order it here.
Rock & Roll Politics is live at Kings Place on Thursday September 25th at the end of the Labour Party Conference week!
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Here’s a recording of the final show at this year’s festival, where there was a different show every day. The final one looked ahead via four political figures, but many other themes and characters were explored over the fourteen shows. It was great seeing so many of the co-operative in Edinburgh!
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The run of Rock & Roll Politics shows is in full swing, with host Steve Richards delivering a different show each day.
Here's an update for the co-operative on the various themes and the audience predictions, plus questions on the political drama being played out in Wales, and much more.
Rock & Roll Politics is live at the Edinburgh Festival right now, with a different show every day. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for live events, bonus podcasts and to get the regular podcast a day early and ad free.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Labour government has endured a traumatic first year on many fronts, but its opponents are in different ways extremely vulnerable. If its opponents cannot win next time Labour will secure a second term, yet the mood music suggests a government in near fatal trouble...
Rock & Roll Politics is live at the Edinburgh Festival with a different show each day. Tickets available here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events. https://www.patreon.com/RockNRollPolitics
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In a Question Time Special the Rock N Roll Politics co-operative reflects on the 'pause' of some rail electrification schemes, the degree to which the UK's independent nuclear deterrent is not independent, and what's wrong with digital ID cards?
RocknRoll Politics is live at the Edinburgh festival from this Sunday August 10th, with a different show every day. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for live events, bonus podcasts and to get the regular podcast a day early and ad free.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Keir Starmer drops everything to meet Trump on the President's golfing holiday, but to what end? Post-war Prime Ministers, with two exceptions, assume Britain has a special relationship with the US, only to discover that the US has different views... Some context (our favourite word) for the co-operative!
Rock & Roll Politics is live at the Edinburgh Festival from Sunday August 10th. Time to make sense of it all. Tickets available here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The rushed water privatisation after the 1987 election was one of several calamitous policies launched by Margaret Thatcher –with the consequences still being played out today. Yet Tory leaders, potential leaders, and even their Labour counterparts still pay homage to Thatcher. Why?
RocknRoll Politics is live at the Edinburgh festival from Sunday August 10th, with a different show every day. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for live events, bonus podcasts and to get the regular podcast a day early and ad free.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Number 10’s media strategy is fairly old-fashioned: the morning round for the broadcasters, interviews with the TV political editors and placing articles in right wing newspapers. Does any of this do them any good? And if not, what should they do instead? And this is partly an excuse to look at the wild media landscape!
Rock & Roll Politics is live at Kings Place this Thursday. There are only a few tickets left, and streaming tickets are available too. Get tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Normally media frenzies exaggerate the scale of a government crisis - a distorting frenzy that feeds on itself. But this time, has it played down the significance of recent days?
Rock & Roll Politics - The End of the Political Year Special is live at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Labour MPs flex their muscles, the government concedes, welfare reform is still in chaos and taxes will have to rise to pay for concessions. How has a landslide government landed on such rocky terrain just a year after its historic election victory?
Rock & Roll Politics - The End of the Political Year Special is live at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Not for the first time, a US military intervention triggers greater instability and many questions about what follows. It’s time for the co-operative to delve deep into the context and consequences!
To join our exclusive live Patreon event on Thursday, and also get bonus podcasts and the main podcasts a day early and ad free, subscribe to Patreon here.
Rock & Roll Politics - The End of the Political Year Special is live at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rachel Reeves’ spending review was a mixed bag, with some impossibly tight spending settlements combined with significant investment. But will voters make the connections between decisions at Westminster and their own lives, especially when conveyed through a hostile media?
• Rock & Roll Politics - The End of the Political Year Special is live at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sarah Vine, the journalist and former wife of Michael Gove, has written a book that partly chronicles their lives in the court of David Cameron and the Notting Hill Conservatives. In doing so she is the latest insider chronicler to shine light on the shallowness of the Cameron project, with dark consequences for the Conservative party and the country.
Rachel Reeves has a chance this week to reframe the government’s confused narrative. Will she take it? Plus brilliant questions and latest news of Rock & Roll Politics live at the Edinburgh Festival.
Rock & Roll Politics - The End of the Political Year Special is live at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Keir Starmer is an evasive leader but on one point he is clear: he is a pragmatist, has no time for ideology and there will be no ‘Starmerism’. But without strong ideological convictions can a leader flourish? Plus, brilliant questions from the Rock & Roll Politics co-operative.
Rock & Roll Politics is live in the main concert hall at Kings Place on July 17th.. The End of the Political Year Special. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
While researching the 1929 Labour government for a new book I found myself thinking repeatedly “this reminds me of now”. The yearning to follow economic orthodoxies of the past, the desire to be agents of ‘change’ while being fearful of change etc… and then I came across a Tony Blair interview from the 2001 election. This week, we look at the many lessons for now from a distant and another more recent Labour government.
Rock & Roll Politics is live in the main concert hall at Kings Place on July 17th... The End of the Political Year Special. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
I spoke to Michael Heseltine at the Cambridge Literary Festival about his remarkable career, how he would have changed the Tory party’s approach to Europe had he won the leadership contest in 1990, his reflections on Thatcher, his radical ideas if he were prime minister now… and much more.
The Cambridge Winter Festival is held on the 22nd and 23rd of November.
Rock & Roll Politics is live in the main concert hall at Kings Place on July 17th. Tickets here.
Subscribe to Patreon for bonus podcasts, the main podcast a day early and ad free… plus special exclusive live events.
Written and presented by Steve Richards.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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love the teme tune...what's it called and who plays it ? Great Podcast
My favourite podcast! Thank you Steve, great work
Steve still doesn't understand the difference between experts on real science and quack social sciences like economics. good show tho. no denying that.