It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast

This week on the Compass podcast we are joined by Helen Thompson, author of the book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, published by Oxford University Press. A chronicle of three recent politi…

After a year-plus on the job, having inherited a deeply divided country, Joe Biden and the Democrats are still facing multiple interlocking crises – from the war in Ukraine, to the ongoing impact of …

Orwell Youth Fellow Jessica Tunks joins Professor Donna Hall to discuss family, community, reimagining public services and her scorching essay 'Knifepoint'.

Donna Hall is Chair of New Local and of Bol…

Orwell Youth Fellow Rosaleen Tite Ahern joins Guardian journalist John Harris to discuss place; the successes, failures and hopes of social housing; and her brilliantly evocative essay 'Streets in th…

Jon Alexander, author of the new book Citizens, joins the podcast to tell us how can we start to think and act like Citizens, not Consumers. Joining Jon is conversation is author and political scient…

Chief Executive of Demos Polly Mackenzie joins It’s Bloody Complicated to look at what's gone wrong with our democracy and how we can fix it.

Polly builds on the insights from her series of papers for…

Tommy Sheppard MP joins It’s Bloody Complicated to discuss the future of the Scottish independence movement, the prospects of the SNP supporting a Labour government and his remarkable political life.

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Frances Foley goes behind the scenes of Labour–Liberal Democrat cooperation in the 1997 General Election with former Lib Dem Policy Director Duncan Brack, political commentator Peter Kellner, and Com…

We take a look at coalition governments – what they are, how they are formed, lessons from the new 'traffic light' coalition in Germany and why the UK’s progressive parties need to be thinking about …

Political commentators and Guardian journalists John Harris and Zoe Williams join us to break down the political year that was and look ahead to 2022.

From tackling the climate catastrophe to the stat…

Across the nations, regions, towns and cities of the UK, a new way of doing politics is emerging.

Far from the adversarial politics encouraged by Westminster’s first-past-the-post electoral system, po…

Author, journalist and political commentator Ece Temelkuran joins the podcast to talk about her new book Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now, faith vs. hope, the parallels between the UK's slide to…

On a special bonus episode of It’s Bloody Complicated, the Compass podcast, we welcome First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford MS.

Mark spoke to Compass Director Neal Lawson about progressive alliances…

83% of Labour members backed proportional representation. So did 80% of the membership’s representatives on the conference floor. But the Labour machine didn’t, and the motion to make PR party policy…

The election in Germany has seen progressives surge and conservatives suffer at the polls.

John Kampfner and Michèle Auga join It's Bloody Complicated to make sense of the SPD and Olaf Scholz's (relat…

Orwell Youth Fellow Tom Finlayson joins Labour MP Jon Cruddas to discuss impending environmental disaster, automation, AI and the future of work – themes brought vividly to life in Tom's dystopian sh…

In the face of global crises, how can communities attain better social, economic and environmental outcomes?

Joining It's Bloody Complicated are Henry Tam, editor of the new book Tomorrow’s Communitie…

In the second episode of The Future We Want, a new series from Compass and the Orwell Youth Prize, Orwell Youth Fellows Lauren DeBruin and Hugh Ludford join Andrew Simms to discuss climate, dystopia …

This episode of It's Bloody Complicated is brought to you from Labour Party Conference. At this year's conference, the Labour machine rejected the overwhelming wishes of party members, and the motion…

Compass and the Orwell Youth Prize have teamed up to bring you a special new series, The Future We Want.

In this first episode, Orwell Youth Fellow Manal Nadeem joins Dawn Butler MP for a discussion o…