Jumping Off Points

For better or worse, Keir Starmer wants to take Labour forward by rekindling the politics of the party’s not so distant past. The opposition leader has been the first of Tony Blair's predecessors to talk openly about his admiration for the achievements of ‘New Labour’ at the turn of the millennium, and his zeal for business-minded policymaking with left-leaning social goals has made comparisons between the two virtually unavoidable.Episode 17 of Jumping Off Points assesses whether Starmer is following in Blair’s footsteps through an in-depth look at the policies, attitudes and goals of New Labour during Blair’s time in government.

Dubious representations of the working class, incomprehensible foreign policy, freedom of movement in pre-Brexit Britain; Love Actually is not only the finest Christmas-themed rom-com ever made, it is also a time capsule preserving Britain’s biggest political and cultural debates from the last twenty years.In episode 16 of Jumping Off Points, hosts Timbah and Aidan get into the festive spirit by - very tenuously - analysing the film’s positions and messages.

In the months of September and October, the UK was gripped by headlines about British prisons being on the brink of total collapse. It was widely reported that there were only 557 places left for newly sentenced prisoners, amidst other reports that terror suspect Daniel Khalife had successfully escaped from Wandsworth Prison.Episode 15 of Jumping Off Points sees hosts Timbah and Aidan investigating the historical causes of an expanding prison population and exploring the potential solutions for reducing it.

On the 17th August 2023, the Office for National Statistics published a report which showed that the number of babies born in England and Wales in 2022 was the lowest since 2002.Why is no-one having babies any more? What does this mean for the economy? Why do racists seem to be so bothered about this issue? Episode 14 of Jumping Off Points answers all these questions and more as hosts Aidan and Timbah discuss the many factors behind the falling birth rate, and how it’s connected to a white nationalist conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theorist, meteorologist, activist, and brother of the former leader of the Labour party: Piers Corbyn is many things, but he isn’t a talented politician. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop him from trying.Episode 13 of Jumping Off Points investigates Piers’ experience with publicity stunts, climate change denial, and electioneering to shine a light on the UK’s wildest political oddball.

Formerly an actor and a musician, now a Twitter-obsessed campaigner for conservative social values, Laurence Fox rarely misses an opportunity to position himself in the spotlight. Most recently, he announced that he is running to be an MP and then released a video of himself burning LGBT Pride flags.Episode 12 of Jumping Off Points examines the career, beliefs and political aspirations of one of the UK’s loudest culture warriors. 

On Friday 28 April, the Chairman of the BBC announced that he was resigning from the role after it was revealed that he had failed to declare his involvement in securing a loan of £800,000 for the prime minister at the time of his appointment, Boris Johnson.Episode 11 of Jumping Off Points examines the events that led to Richard Sharp’s resignation before opening up into a wider conversation about the BBC’s impartiality, its relationships with the British public and the Government, and the challenges it faces as a publicly funded broadcaster.

On Wednesday 15 March, Jeremy Hunt announced the Government’s Spring Budget. One of his spending commitments is encouraging the development of new technologies to tackle climate change. In light of this, the tenth episode of Jumping Off Points sees Timbah and Aidan assessing the nature and political distribution of climate scepticism, and scrutinising the Conservatives’ green policies from the past ten years.

At the beginning of February, US intelligence services identified a Chinese surveillance balloon, followed by a series of unidentified flying objects, which were all subsequently shot down in the airspace over North America. When asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for the airborn objects, General Glen VanHerck said "I haven't ruled out anything", leading to speculation about their potential otherworldly nature. Episode nine of Jumping Off Points takes a brief look at the UK’s defence capabilities in light of China’s surveillance attempts, before diving into the world of alien conspiracy theories, including crop circles, abductions, and flying spacecraft. 

Across the UK, union members from a broad cross-section of sectors including Healthcare, Education, Rail and the Postal Service have been striking for fairer pay and better working conditions. The wave of industrial action began in 2022 and continues to cause disruptions to services in the early months of 2023.Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government have introduced a new anti-strike bill to minimise the effect of this industrial action on public services. Episode 8 of Jumping Off Points examines the bill and digs into the arguments from both sides of the negotiation on public sector pay.

On 5th December 2022, Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer announced a plan to abolish the House of Lords as part of a series of sweeping reforms aimed to decentralize Westminster power and lay the foundations of the Labour party’s platform for a future general election campaign.Episode seven of Jumping Off Points examines what the House of Lords does, and sees hosts Timbah and Aidan debating Starmer’s plan to abolish it. 

On the 6th of September, Liz Truss became the prime minister of Great Britain. By the 25th of October, she had crashed the British economy, invoked the wrath of fellow MPs in Westminster, resigned and been replaced by Rishi Sunak. Episode six of Jumping Off Points examines the shadowy institutions capable of generating ideas so bad they can make a prime minister leave office after just six weeks: think tanks. In particular, the spotlight is on The Institute of Economic Affairs, whose fingerprints can be found on the spread of climate change denial, pro-Brexit talking points and anti-lockdown propaganda during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On 7 July, prime minister Boris Johnson announced his plan to resign from the job in early September. Since then the Tories have been in a race to the bottom to pick their new leader.The fifth episode of Jumping Off Points sees Timbah and Aidan discussing the events that led up to the resignation, some highlights from the leadership contest so far and the prospects of the final two candidates. Links:Martin Lundfall - Them's the breaks (jungle tune)

On 14th June, a Boeing 767, chartered at an estimated cost of £500,000, was scheduled to deport dozens of asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. It never left the runway, and was ultimately sent back to Spain with no passengers onboard. This episode of Jumping Off Points is about the UK government’s policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. We discuss events surrounding the policy’s troubled start, the fiscal impact it will have on the asylum system and whether it is likely to work. 

On 6 May 2022, local elections were held across the UK in which Boris Johnson’s Conservative party suffered heavy losses.This episode of Jumping Off Points is dedicated to explaining what our local elections are, how a run of Tory scandals in recent weeks may have influenced voters, and what the results might mean for UK politics going forwards.

On 31 March, ITV News ran a story claiming that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was planning to abandon its pledge to ban LGBT+ conversion therapy. The second episode of Jumping Off Points explores the political fall-out from this revelation, examines the importance of a conversion therapy ban and delves into the murky world of culture war politics.Links:ITV report on leaked conservative U-turn documentITV undercover investigation into church conversion therapy

In 2020, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee published a report which assessed the Russian threat to the UK in terms of cyber campaigns, disinformation and political influence. The first episode of Jumping Off Points explores how Boris Johnson responded to the findings, whether interference in the Brexit referendum was fully investigated, and what insights we can extract about the UK’s relationship with Russian influence in the aftermath of Putin’s attack on Ukraine.Links:The Full Published Russia Report