It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast

On this very special edition of It’s Bloody Complicated, we're joined by Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich South; academic and advocate for human rights Francesca Klug; and political theorist Stuart White to celebrate the launch of Belonging, Place and the Nation, Compass’s new report into nationalism and patriotism.

Should we try to confront the Right with our own, more progressive, patriotism and nationalism? Or should we abandon these terms and instead try to build something else?

In Belonging, Place and the Nation, Clive and Francesca explore what it means to belong, in a wide-ranging conversation with Frances Foley on race, identity and the telling of British history, while Stuart considers the possibility of a democratic English patriotism in the republican political tradition. They touch on all this and more in a wide-ranging conversation that doesn't shy away from the difficult questions.
Discussed in the show:
Belonging, Place and the Nation
Radical Republicanism by Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi and Stuart White (eds.)

It's Bloody Complicated has moved to fortnightly calls, and is recorded every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 6pm GMT. Become a Compass member to join our live recordings and put your questions to our guests: https://action.compassonline.org.uk/podcast

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Enjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?
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You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.

Orwell Youth Fellows Jamie See and Noah Robinson meet poet Tishani Doshi to explore protest, poetry and performance.
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet, novelist, dancer and journalist.
The episode begins with Jamie and Noah reading their poems.
Read 'A Love Symphony to the World' by Jamie See (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-youth-prize/2018-youth-prize/runners-orwell-youth-prize-2020/jamiesee/)
Read 'Here There Are No People' by Noah Robinson (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-youth-prize/2018-youth-prize/runners-orwell-youth-prize-2020/noahrobinson/)
The Future We Want is a new podcast series from the Orwell Youth Prize and Compass. We've matched the Orwell Youth Fellows from 2020 with figures from politics, media and political writing.
The Orwell Youth Prize is an annual programme for students aged 12–18 culminating in a writing prize. The prize and programme introduce young people to the power of political language, and provoke them to think critically about the world around them.
Compass' regular podcast, It's Bloody Complicated, is recorded every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Become a Compass member to join our live recordings and put your questions to our guests: https://action.compassonline.org.uk/podcast

Support the show (https://www.compassonline.org.uk/podcast/)

Support the show

Enjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?
Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!
You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.

The UK is remarkably unequal.

The richest 1% of Britons hold more wealth than 70 % of us combined.

Wealth inequality is gendered, racialised, and extremely regional. Men have an average private pension wealth of £83,879 more than women, a gap of 90%. People in the black Caribbean, Bangladeshi and black African ethnic groups have more net debt (31%, 38% and 44% respectively) than individuals in the Indian ethnic group and the white British and Pakistani ethnic groups (11% and around 15% respectively). The South of England is considerably more wealthy than the North and this difference is growing – the difference in median individual wealth between the South-East (£263,000) and North-East (£79,000) more than doubled between July 2010 to June 2012, and April 2018 to March 2020.

Wealth inequality distorts democratic political cultures, and causes a series of social and environmental harms. But polling shows that many of the consequences of inequality such as undermining economic growth or social cohesion or democracy are poorly understood by most people – and are not fully appreciated by decision-makers.

So how do we bridge these gaps of knowledge and of wealth to move towards a more equal, more equitable society?

The Fairness Foundation have launched a Wealth Gap Risk Register – an online evidence resource about the impacts of wealth inequality, how to reduce it and mitigate its impacts, and public attitudes to it.

Click here to access the Wealth Gap Risk Register.

To mark the launch, we hosted the chair of their Editorial Board, Will Hutton, and Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the LSE, Dr Burchardt to dig into how wealth inequality spills over into democracy, social relations, economic security, a fair tax system, public services and so on – and how to tackle this. Report author Jack Jeffrey also joined the discussion.

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Enjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?
Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!
You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.

John Denham joined It's Bloody Complicated to talk nation, identity and patriotism.
Is there such a thing as ‘progressive patriotism’? And against the backdrop of Brexit and a potential second Scottish independence referendum, is it finally time for progressives to talk about England?

John Denham is Professor and Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton, and co-founder of the English Labour Network. He was the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen, and served as a minister for ten years in the 1997–2010 Labour government.

It's Bloody Complicated is recorded every second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Become a Compass member to join our live recordings and put your questions to our guests: https://action.compassonline.org.uk/podcast

Support the show (https://www.compassonline.org.uk/podcast/)

Support the show

Enjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?
Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!
You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.

It was a watershed moment in October 2022 when the Labour Party conference overwhelmingly voted to include in its manifesto a commitment to change the voting system to proportional representation after the next election. Just the year before, despite mass support in the membership, the motion failed because the affiliated Trade Unions opposed the motion.

To discuss this historic shift, what the changing the voting systems means to the trade union movement, and where next, we’re excited to be joined by Lynn Henderson and Nancy Platts.

• Lynn is the chair of the Electoral Reform Society and also chairs Politics for the Many – the trade union campaign for electoral reform. In her day job she is a senior national officer at the Public and Commercial Services Union, the UK’s largest trade union for government workers. She is also a Trustee of the Jimmy Reid Foundation, a think tank for radical political thinking, based in Scotland.
• Nancy Platts is a Consultant at Campaign Collective – a social enterprise which works with not-for-profits and other campaigners, providing high quality marketing, communications advice and PR support, and is the co-ordinator of Politics for the Many.

Support the show

Enjoyed the podcast and want to be a live audience member at our next episode? Want to have the chance in raising questions to the panelist?
Support our work and be a part of the Compass community. Become a member!
You can find us on Twitter at @CompassOffice.