The Long View

The general election of 2024, the Scottish, Welsh and local elections of May 2026 and the by-election in Makerfield show that the UK is now firmly in an era of multi-party politics. That has led to renewed calls, from across the political spectrum, for a change to the first-past-the-post electoral system that is used to elect MPs at Westminster.
Jonathan Freedland and guests compare the political landscape now to 1884, when the Proportional Representation Society was founded by a campaigning Liberal MP called John Lubbock, a man who kept a pet wasp and taught his poodle how to read. They also revisit the highly-contested 1918 Representation of the People Act, which enfranchised women for the first time - and almost included proportional representation too.
Guests: Dr Robert Saunders, reader in modern British history at Queen Mary, University of London; Lucy Fisher, Whitehall Editor of the Financial Times and host of their Political Fix podcast. Reader: Ben Crowe.
Producer: Tim Bano

What does raising a Union Jack or drawing a flag of St George on a street sign signify? As flags appear across England and now Wales, Jonathan Freedland and his guests look back to a street gathering in 1780 which also used flags to get a message across. Organisers of "Operation Raise the Colours" say it's about promoting patriotism and is non-partisan but the appearance of flags on mini-roundabouts, motorway bridges and lamposts has been met by opposition from anti-racist groups and by differing responses from some local authorities. Eleanor Lawson is a BBC News reporter in the West Midlands where flags began appearing earlier in August. Ian Haywood is Emeritus Professor in English at the University of Roehampton and he has studied the initially peaceful protest and petition which became known as the Gordon Riots. The reader is Django Bevan.
Produced by Jayne Egerton

The Netflix series, Adolescence, which featured a boy who killed a female classmate, provoked widespread debate about the causes of his crime and the possible influence of the online 'manosphere'. Jonathan Freedland takes a long view of the way in which new media has been implicated in male violence. 19th century, cheap sensational fiction, in the form of the Penny Dreadful, was often blamed for juvenile delinquency, rape and even murder. In the 20th century, cinema, the first true mass medium, was held to blur the line between fantasy and reality, encouraging young men to emulate what they saw on the screen. But is this too simplistic a view and what's the historical evidence? With Chas Critcher, Emeritus Professor of Communications at Sheffield Hallam University and Judith Rowbotham, Visiting Professor in the Law Department at the University of Plymouth.
Producer: Jayne Egerton

As Donald Trump raises a 25% levy on all imports of steel and aluminium into the USA, as well as other tariffs on trade with friends and competitors alike, Jonathan Freedland looks back to the Corn Laws, measures introduced to protect British farmers and land owners from competition following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The Corn Laws and the campaign to repeal them transformed British politics and economics. How do events then compare to Donald Trump's policies and actions today?
With:
Professor Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow in History at St Peter's College, Oxford
Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Producer: Luke Mulhall

Following the recent floods in Valencia, Jonathan Freedland looks at the politics of natural disasters, with
CHRIS COURTNEY - Associate Professor in Modern Chinese History at Durham University and author of The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood
LEAH PATTEM – Madrid based freelance journalist specialising in politics, migration and community stories
The readers are Ian Dunnett and Samuel James
Producer: Jayne Egerton