Past Present Future

David talks to political theorist Alan Finlayson about what’s gone wrong with political speech and how it can be improved. Why do so many contemporary political arguments feel so sterile? What can we learn from the ancient art of rhetoric about how to do democratic politics better? Does the problem lie with the politicians or with the tools of communication at their disposal? And is good political speech something that all citizens should aspire to? Out now on PPF+: A bonus episode on Fixing Democracy with Nic Cheeseman exploring whether there should be quotas for female representation in democratic politics. It’s much more common than you might think. Why? Why only women? Who else deserves seeing more people like them in parliament? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ today https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Fixing Democracy Q&A coming up! Do send in your questions and suggestions on Fixing Democracy now: ⁠⁠https://www.ppfideas.com/contact⁠⁠ Next time: PPF Live Special: Prime Minister Farage? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode David talks to political historian David Klemperer about whether voting should be required by law and what might change if non-participation was no longer an option. Why have some countries made voting compulsory? What difference has it made? Can the people who think democracy has got nothing to offer them be made to think otherwise? Can the politicians who normally ignore the wishes of those people be forced to pay more attention? Available on Saturday on PPF+: A bonus episode on Fixing Democracy with Nic Cheeseman exploring whether there should be quotas for female representation in democratic politics. It’s much more common than you might think. Why? Why only women? Who else deserves to see more people like them in parliament? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ today ⁠https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus⁠ And send in your questions and suggestions on Fixing Democracy for David and David now: ⁠https://www.ppfideas.com/contact⁠ Tickets are available now for our live PPF recording at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on 15th October with Bruno Maçães and very special guest Sarah Wynn-Williams - 'Who Rules The World? Trump, Tech and the Fight for the Future'. Tickets are available now: https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/who-rules-the-world-trump-tech-and-the-fight-for-the-future Next Up in Fixing Democracy: Better Rhetoric Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode David talks to Alan Renwick from UCL’s Constitution Unit about the pros and cons of referendums. When does a democratic question need to be put direct to the people? Do some countries do it better than others? How can referendums be used to open up political debate? And how can we avoid a rerun of the pitfalls of the Brexit referendum? There are just a few tickets left for the 3rd film in our autumn film season at the Regent Street cinema on Thursday 9th October: a screening of Rosa Luxemburg, followed by a live recording of PPF with philosopher and writer Lea Ypi. We’d love to see you there https://bit.ly/4nDuKoY Next Up in Fixing Democracy: Compulsory Voting 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

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

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

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 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

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

Today’s epoch-making political trial concerns the interrogation, conviction and execution of Louis XVI at the heart of the French Revolution in 1792-3. For many at the time and since this event had powerful echoes of the trial and execution of Charles I - but in fact the trial of Louis was very different in almost every way. Why and how did Louis choose to defend himself? Was he condemned because he was a king or because he was no longer a king? Was the decision to send him to the guillotine really only decided by one vote out of more than seven hundred? And who won in the court of history? Out now on PPF+: Part 2 of David’s conversation with Alexander Douglas about the pitfalls of the search for identity, from Silicon Valley to ‘impostor syndrome’. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus 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: Aaron Burr vs the Constitution w/Gary Gerstle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices