Observations

One of the world's largest technology companies has made protecting elections a core part of its mission — but why does a tech giant care about democracy, and what exactly is it doing? In this episode, Lily Russell-Jones speaks with Dave Leichtman, Microsoft's Senior Director of Global Elections, about the company's work safeguarding democratic processes around the world. The conversation explores the threats facing modern elections, from foreign interference campaigns by state actors like Russia, China, and Iran, to the spread of AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation. Leichtman explains how Microsoft works with election officials and observers to enhance cybersecurity, combat phishing attacks, and block the generation of deepfakes during election periods. He discusses the company's AccountGuard programme, which protects political campaigns from hacking attempts, and its partnerships with organisations like Democracy Club in the UK and the National Association of State Election Directors in the US to ensure accurate election information reaches voters. The episode also examines the productive uses of AI in election administration — from translating voter materials to processing campaign expense reports — while addressing concerns about the technology's potential to undermine trust, displace workers, and erode critical thinking skills. Drawing on his experience observing elections in Zimbabwe with the Carter Center, Leichtman reflects on the importance of end-to-end transparency in democratic processes and the critical role of election observers as human rights defenders.

Lily Russell-Jones explores the government's plans to expand acceptable voter ID to include bank cards, a key part of wider electoral reforms announced in July. The episode features Professor Ed Fieldhouse from Manchester University, who discusses research from the British Election Study showing that around 5% of voters lack valid photo ID, and how this disproportionately affects younger, less affluent, and geographically disadvantaged groups. The conversation examines the balance between election security and voter access, with insights from Adam Diver, a veteran unable to vote at the last election, and Megan Fitzgerald from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, who provides an international perspective on voter identification requirements. From the impact on turnout to the state's responsibility to prevent disenfranchisement, this episode offers a comprehensive look at one of the UK's most debated electoral reforms.

Harassment and abuse directed at political candidates and elected representatives is on the rise — the Electoral Commission found that 70% of candidates experienced abuse or harassment at the 2024 general election. In this episode, Lily Russell-Jones explores the growing crisis and what's being done about it. She speaks first with Hannah Phillips of the Joe Cox Foundation, which campaigns for safer, more respectful political culture in the wake of the tragic murder of MP Jo Cox in 2016. Hannah discusses the many forms intimidation takes, from online threats to in-person harassment, and how it is deterring people — particularly women — from entering politics. Later, former MP Lisa Cameron, who served East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow from 2015 to 2024, shares her personal experience of threats during her time in Parliament and reflects on the government's proposed reforms, including plans to remove candidates' addresses from public records and introduce tougher sentences for those who harass electoral staff. Together, the conversations offer a clear-eyed look at a problem that threatens not only the safety of those in public life, but the openness and health of our democracy.

Twenty percent of voters cast their ballot by post at the 2024 general election, but is postal voting working as it should? In this episode, Lily Russell-Jones speaks with John Ault, Director of Democracy Volunteers, about the rising challenges facing postal voting in the UK—from missed deadlines and delayed deliveries to the particular struggles of overseas voters. Through Stephanie Carlton's story of being unable to vote despite applying on time, the conversation explores how administrative bottlenecks and an overstretched postal service are undermining democratic participation. John argues that while recent government reforms extend deadlines and allow emergency proxies, they don't address the fundamental problems with postal voting, including susceptibility to family voting and logistical failures. With only six percent of overseas voters in Australia successfully returning their ballots on time, should the UK be looking beyond postal votes to in-person alternatives—such as embassy voting and advance polling hubs? This episode examines whether convenience has come at the cost of reliability, and what it would take to truly enfranchise the 1.5 million Brits living abroad.

With dozens of English councils facing local government reorganisation, the government has given 63 authorities until 15 January to request a delay to May 2025 elections. In this episode, Lily Russell-Jones speaks with Peter Stanyon of the Association of Electoral Administrators about the unprecedented dilemma facing local democracy. Should elections proceed as planned, or should councils postpone to focus on reorganisation? The conversation explores the tension between democratic accountability and resource constraints, the Electoral Commission's strong objections to delays, and the real-world challenges facing electoral administrators caught in the middle. From the cost of democracy to concerns about councillors serving six-year terms without facing voters, this episode examines a critical moment for local governance in England.

In this After Dark special, host Joshua Paisley speaks with Professor Steve Fielding about the 1972 Oscar-winning film The Candidate, released just months before Richard Nixon's landslide victory over George McGovern. Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, a handsome young radical community lawyer picked to run an unwinnable California Senate race against an 18-year Republican incumbent—on the promise that since he can't win, he can say whatever he likes. Professor Fielding explains how the film reflects the fractious Democratic Party of 1972, moving left with candidates like Eugene McCarthy while Nixon peeled away white working-class Democrats on racial lines. McKay resembles Robert Kennedy and especially John V. Tunney, the real 36-year-old idealist who won California's Senate seat in 1970. The scriptwriter Jeremy Larner had worked for McCarthy, and director Michael Ritchie had worked on Tunney's campaign—they knew what they were depicting. The conversation explores McKay's journey from principle to product. At the start, asked about busing to integrate schools, he declares "I'm in favour of it." By the end, he says "we need to look into it." His campaign managers cut his hair, change his ties, edit his factory visits into dynamic clips while suppressing footage of angry Black women at a community hospital. The film shows the alienating reality of 1970s campaigning—the distorted shopping mall speech where he can't see or hear his audience, getting punched in a urinal, ticker tape parades—all still closer to real people than today's complete abstraction through screens. Professor Fielding reveals the real John V. Tunney lasted just one term before being swept out in 1976, predicting McKay would likely do the same—or quit in frustration, wondering "what am I here for?" The film's most depressing insight isn't that villains corrupt candidates, but that the process itself inevitably does. It ends with McKay's famous line after unexpectedly winning: "What do we do now?"—a question he can't answer because he's no longer the person he thought he was.

In this After Dark special, host John Ault speaks with Ursula Buchan, granddaughter of novelist John Buchan and author of the definitive biography Beyond the 39 Steps, about how elections shaped her grandfather's fiction. Before becoming famous for his spy thrillers, Buchan spent years as the prospective Conservative and Unionist candidate for Peebles and Selkirk, visiting every farmstead in the Scottish Borders and attending hundreds of village political meetings—experiences he would mine for his novels. The conversation explores the most famous election scene in British fiction: Richard Hannay's impromptu speech in The 39 Steps, where an innocent man on the run gets dragged onto a political platform and must improvise a rousing address. Ursula explains how Buchan used this device to satirise the Liberal candidate "Sir Harry" spouting aspirational nonsense about the German menace while Hannay knows there's a real spy ring operating—Buchan's way of suggesting Liberals were dangerously unworldly about what was coming in 1914. But The 39 Steps isn't Buchan's only election novel. In John McNab, three eminent men behaving badly hide out during a poaching adventure while attending a political meeting in a Masonic Hall packed with 2,000 people—where Buchan skewers both the witless Duke who introduces the speakers and the cabinet minister who spouts the same platitudes he's said a hundred times before. In Castle Gay, published in 1933, Buchan explores the rising threats of communism and fascism through another by-election, having recognised that these movements could manipulate "the plain man who now has a vote." Ursula reveals how Buchan understood media power long before most—writing press communiques from GHQ under Field Marshal Haig, serving as Lloyd George's Director of Information, and overseeing propaganda films including The Battle of the Somme. When Hitchcock adapted The 39 Steps in 1935, Buchan famously told British Gaumont directors it was "much better than the book"—understanding that film was a different medium requiring different storytelling, and that media could be harnessed for good or corrupted for ill. From political humbug to the power of newspapers, this episode explores how a man who never actually fought a general election became one of the great chroniclers of British democracy in fiction.

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In this After Dark special, host Joshua Paisley speaks with Professor Steven Fielding, a political historian at the University of Nottingham, about the 2006 BBC drama The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. Written by Sally Wainwright (who would go on to create Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack), the six-part series imagined what would happen if an ordinary Yorkshire superstore manager won a landslide election and became Prime Minister—on a platform of moving Parliament to Bradford and asking the people what should go in the Queen's Speech. The series aired in October 2006, just after Labour's 2005 victory on only 35% of the vote—when more people didn't vote at all than voted for Tony Blair. Professor Fielding explains how Ross Pritchard embodied the frustrations of that moment: the sense that left and right no longer meant anything, that Westminster was a bubble of middle-aged men speaking gobbledygook, and that politics could be simple if only someone honest would take charge. She promises never to lie, wins 54% of the vote, and forms a cabinet of women from all parties who somehow get along perfectly—a "benign feminist populist" who declares car-free Wednesdays and lets the people write government policy. But as Fielding reveals, UKIP saw something else in Mrs Pritchard. They set up a fake BBC page claiming "we are the real Ros Pritchard"—recognising that her populism, however well-meaning, tapped into the same frustrations that would fuel Brexit, austerity anger, and Nigel Farage's rise. While The Thick of It offered no solutions beyond satire, at least Wainwright tried to imagine answers—even if they were naïve. The series ended on a cliffhanger about her husband's money laundering scandal, never to get its second season. From Westminster bubbles to the danger of authenticity in an age of manufactured politicians, this episode asks whether we'd actually want the honest outsider we claim to crave—or whether Mrs Pritchard really was a feminist Donald Trump.

In this episode, host John Ault speaks with Chris Mullin, former Labour MP and author of A Very British Coup, about his 1982 novel that imagined what would happen if a radical socialist Prime Minister won a landslide—and the establishment decided to destroy him. Published when Tony Benn was in the ascendant and making the establishment nervous, Mullin created Harry Perkins: a Sheffield steel worker who wins power on promises to scrap nuclear weapons, leave NATO, and restore industries to public ownership. The conversation explores the real-world inspirations behind the fiction—from Mountbatten's whispered coup talks against Harold Wilson to Cecil King's attempt to install a "businessman's government," and General Sir Walter Walker assembling a private army in the 1970s. Mullin reveals how American diplomats took him to lunch to discuss the "threat" of Michael Foot, how MI5 agents infiltrated CND (exactly as his novel predicted), and how the BBC continued vetting journalists in Room 101 even after being exposed. When Channel 4 adapted the novel in 1988, Ray McAnally's brilliant portrayal made Harry Perkins briefly a cult figure—though the TV version ended with a car crash rather than Mullin's intended very British coup: no tanks in the streets, just gentlemen in clubs conspiring in Pall Mall. Mullin also discusses his sequel The Friends of Harry Perkins, his cameo as a vicar in the 2012 remake Secret State, and why today's Labour government is "no Harry Perkins"—trapped by tax pledges made to avoid falling into a Tory trap, running a country with a massive majority but only a third of the vote. From fictional coups to real establishment conspiracies, this is the story of a novel that caught the zeitgeist and gave us a phrase that entered political vocabulary: "a very British coup."

In 1988, Channel 4 aired A Very British Coup, a political drama that imagined what would happen if a radical socialist Prime Minister won a landslide—and the establishment decided to destroy him. Adapted from Chris Mullin's novel, the series follows Harry Perkins, a working-class Labour leader who promises to scrap nuclear weapons, leave NATO, and restore industries to public ownership. But the intelligence services, civil service, press, and foreign allies conspire to bring him down. In our forthcoming episode, we'll be joined by author Chris Mullin himself to discuss this BAFTA and Emmy-winning drama that remains one of the sharpest depictions of how unelected power can undermine democracy. What happens when the people vote for change and the system decides otherwise? Subscribe now so you don't miss it.

In this special episode, host Lily Russell-Jones explores one of the government's most controversial electoral reforms: lowering the voting age to 16. With Scotland and Wales already allowing younger voters in some elections, is this a positive step for democracy or a risky experiment? Eddie Barnes from the John Smith Centre at Glasgow University shares polling that reveals young people themselves are divided—48% support getting the vote, but 32% disagree and 20% aren't sure. The most common word 16-year-olds use to describe politics? "Confusing." Two-thirds say they don't feel prepared by schools to vote, and three-quarters of those unlikely to vote cite not knowing enough about politics as their reason. Psychologist Dr. Lynette Thompson explains the neuroscience: while 16-year-olds are cognitively capable of voting and there's little biological difference between 16 and 18, the adolescent brain's prefrontal cortex won't fully develop until the mid-20s. She distinguishes between "hot cognition" (impulsive decisions) and "cold cognition" (considered decisions like voting), but warns about social pressure, identity formation, and how 16-year-olds struggle more with fake news and are more influenced by peer pressure when forming political opinions. Finally, 17-year-old Alex Nurton from the UK Youth Parliament argues passionately that young people deserve a voice on issues like climate change that will affect their future far more than older voters. He calls for mandatory political education across the UK, pointing out that nothing fundamentally changes when you turn 18—yet policies consistently ignore 16 and 17-year-olds. From brain development to ballot boxes, this episode examines whether giving young people the vote will strengthen democracy or whether we're asking them to make decisions they're not yet equipped for.

In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with historian Taym Saleh about the 1924 general election—the autumn showdown that cemented Britain's two-party system and buried the Liberal Party as a national force. After three elections in just 23 months, Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives swept to a crushing 200-seat majority while Herbert Asquith lost his seat and the Liberals collapsed from 155 MPs to a mere 40. The conversation explores how Britain's first Labour government, formed almost by accident after Baldwin's disastrous 1923 tariff gamble, became trapped between proving its respectability and surviving without a majority. Saleh explains how Ramsay MacDonald's attempts to normalize relations with Soviet Russia and his handling of the Campbell Case—when prosecution was dropped against a communist journalist who urged soldiers not to fire on striking workers—fueled Conservative warnings about socialist subversion and constitutional threats. Then came the Zinoviev Letter: a forged document, supposedly from a senior Soviet official instructing British communists to infiltrate Labour, published by the Daily Mail days before the election. Though historians now know it was fabricated, likely by Russian émigrés in Berlin, it crystallized the campaign's fundamental question: was socialism un-British? But the real story isn't about dirty tricks—it's about how Baldwin's mastery of radio broadcasting, his soothing constitutional rhetoric, and his genius for understanding what voters wanted transformed Conservative politics. While the Liberals produced innovative proto-Keynesian economics, they fielded only 300 candidates. Labour lost power but won clarity: they were now the sole progressive force. This is the election that killed three-party politics and established the socialism versus anti-socialism dividing line that would define British politics for generations.

In this special episode recorded on location in The Hague, Joshua interviews Harry Bush about Democracy Volunteers' seventh observation mission to the Netherlands. Harry explains how Dutch elections work differently from the UK—the entire country acts as a single 150-seat constituency using proportional representation, with voters choosing both a party and a candidate from lists of up to 80 names. This creates ballot papers so massive that counting them used to take hours just to unfold, leading five municipalities to trial smaller designs. The conversation examines two key electoral integrity challenges: proxy voting, where 10% of Dutch votes are cast by someone else (voters can carry up to two additional polling cards on election day), and accessibility, which varies widely because voters can use any polling station in their municipality rather than being assigned to one. Despite these issues, Dutch elections achieve 80% turnout and demonstrate strong civic engagement, offering valuable lessons for democracies worldwide.

In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with historian Taym Saleh about the 1906 general election—the winter showdown that delivered the last great Liberal landslide and set the stage for the welfare state. After riding jingoistic euphoria to victory in 1900, the Conservative-Unionist coalition collapsed spectacularly, reduced from a 150-seat majority to a miserable rump of just 157 MPs. The conversation explores how Joseph Chamberlain's crusade for tariff reform and imperial preference tore the Conservatives apart. His two loaves of bread—one slightly smaller under protection—couldn't compete with Liberal warnings of the "dear loaf," horse meat sausages, and the hungry forties. Saleh explains how Prime Minister Balfour found himself trapped, unable to resolve his party's civil war without triggering an outright split, while the Liberals united around free trade, cheap bread, and opposition to "Chinese slavery" in South African mines. But the 1906 landslide contained the seeds of future upheaval. The Gladstone-MacDonald pact gave Labour its crucial breathing space, winning 29 seats that would grow to dominance after the First World War. The Irish Parliamentary Party's 83 seats positioned them as kingmakers for future crises. And the Liberal government's ambitious reforms—old age pensions, national insurance, the foundations of the welfare state—would trigger a constitutional crisis with the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, culminating in the 1911 Parliament Act that neutered the upper chamber forever. This is the election that killed Conservative dominance, launched the welfare state, and set Britain on course for the tumultuous politics of the early twentieth century.

In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with David Redvaldsen of the University of Agder in Norway about the 1929 general election—Britain's first truly universal suffrage election. After the 1928 Representation of the People Act finally granted women the vote on equal terms with men, millions of young women, the so-called flappers, went to the polls for the first time alongside a fully enfranchised working class. The conversation explores how this three-party contest became a battle of economic visions amid rising unemployment. Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives offered "Safety First"—no experiments, no risks. Lloyd George's revitalised Liberals promoted bold Keynesian proposals to conquer unemployment through public works and borrowing. Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party positioned itself as a respectable alternative, though without the flashy policies of their rivals. Despite Lloyd George's war chest, charisma, and imaginative proposals, the Liberals won just 59 seats while Labour became the largest party for the first time—though without a majority. Dr. Redvaldsen explains how this apparent Labour triumph became a poisoned chalice when the Great Depression struck months later, leading to the devastating split of 1931 and the end of the Liberals as a major force. From broccoli jokes to the collapse of three-party politics, this is the election that shaped Britain's two-party system—and destroyed the party that tried hardest to win it.

In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with Dr. Luke Blaxill about the extraordinary 1918 general election—the first after the Great War and the first under the Representation of the People Act, which tripled the electorate overnight. Held just six weeks after armistice amid demobilisation and the influenza pandemic, this was democracy's leap into the great unknown. The conversation explores the dramatic transformation of British politics through the controversial "coupon"—a simple piece of paper signed by Lloyd George and the Conservative leader that became a victory passport for coalition candidates. Dr. Blaxill explains how this khaki election, fought on punishing Germany and building the peace, split the Liberal Party in two, elevated Labour to official opposition status, and cemented Conservative dominance for decades to come. But the most revolutionary outcome came from Ireland, where Sinn Féin swept to power, winning 73 seats—47 of their MPs elected from prison. Their refusal to take their seats in Westminster and decision to form their own parliament in Dublin transformed an electoral mandate into a revolutionary moment that would reshape the union itself. From the mystery of who received the coupon to the first woman MP elected, this is the story of an election that ended Victorian politics and ushered in the democratic age—though nobody quite understood what that would mean until the pieces fell.

In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with Dr. Luke Blaxill, historian and Oxford college lecturer, about the 1832 general election that followed Britain's Great Reform Act. This wasn't just an election—it was a constitutional turning point that redrew the boundaries of British democracy itself. The conversation explores the turbulent lead-up to reform, from the July Revolution in France to widespread rioting in British streets, the burning of the Duke of Newcastle's castle, and 250 fatalities in Bristol alone. Dr. Blaxill explains how elite fears of revolutionary upheaval, combined with pressure from below, forced a reluctant aristocracy to open the franchise to middle-class men and grant representation to industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham for the first time. But the Reform Act was never meant to be generous. As Robert Peel warned, once the door was opened even slightly, it couldn't be closed again. The episode examines how this careful compromise sparked the development of modern party politics, unleashed working-class movements like Chartism, energised moral campaigns from slavery abolition to Irish repeal, and set Britain on an irreversible path toward universal suffrage. This is the story of the election that changed everything—even if it was meant to change as little as possible.

We are stepping into the world of satire with the classic BBC comedy Blackadder. In one of its sharpest episodes, 'Dish and Dishonesty' we're taken to the so-called Dunny-on-the-Wold by-election — a contest for a "rotten borough" so small it has only one voter… and even he's dead. Our guest for this episode will be none other than William Pitt the Younger, himself. Played by Simon Osborne in the Blackadder episode he will give his insights into the election and what went wrong for his part and whether he should have had a cunning plan! In true Blackadder fashion, Edmund Blackadder seizes the opportunity to parachute his servant Baldrick into Parliament, manipulating the rules of the system with ruthless cunning. What follows is a hilarious but biting parody of the unreformed British electoral system, showing just how absurd, and how open to abuse, those pocket boroughs really were before the great parliamentary reforms of the 19th century.

In this episode, Matt Davis interviews Lord David Alton about his extraordinary victory in the 1979 Liverpool Edge Hill by-election. At just 27 years old, Alton achieved one of the most stunning upsets in British electoral history, overturning a massive Labour majority in one of their safest seats during the Winter of Discontent. The conversation explores how a young Liberal teacher and councillor built a grassroots campaign that capitalised on voter anger at industrial chaos, uncollected refuse, and unburied dead in Liverpool's streets. Alton reveals the innovative community politics approach that connected him to local people, the role of local media in amplifying his message, and the dramatic final days when his victory helped seal the fate of Jim Callaghan's government. From dirty tricks involving the National Front to betting against 30-1 odds, and becoming both the youngest MP and the shortest-serving member in parliamentary history, this is the inside story of a by-election that proved no seat is truly safe when voters decide it's time for change.