Advertise on podcast: It's Bloody Complicated - A Compass Podcast

Immigration has become one of the political buzzwords of the 21st Century – which is a sad indictment of where our politics is at. The nationalist right have exploited the issue to stoke fears and division of a country whose essential services have been gutted, all while not being honest with people about the necessity of it from an economic perspective. Often, progressives can find themselves losing the argument on migration despite being the only ones not approaching it from a bad faith perspective. So what are the progressive answers on the immigration debate and how do we take it to the populist-right? Joining our Deputy Director Lena Swedlow on this are: Beth Gardiner-Smith (Associate Director for Democracy and Politics, IPPR)Tobias Phibbs (Future of the Left).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.

For this week’s episode, our Deputy Director Lena is joined by the Chief Executive of the Fairness Foundation, Will Snell. The title for the episode is that of Will’s new book which is out now, and this conversation gets into the weeds of the book’s argument and how it can help up bring about the good society. As Will writes, ‘This book aims to change people’s minds about fairness, to convince people that building a fairer society is not only a moral imperative but an urgent priority that is in everyone’s interests, and that it can be achieved with enough political and collective willpower. If you’re already on board, great – please use the arguments in it to persuade others. If you’re not, even better – hopefully you’ll find the arguments persuasive.‘ Use code TFN25 for 25% off 'The Fair Necessities' until end of 2026 (at https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/the-fair-necessities). For more info on the book: https://fairnessfoundation.com/the-fair-necessities  Fairness Foundation: https://fairnessfoundation.com/ Fairness Foundation Substack: https://www.faircomment.co.uk 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.

In a year of historic by-elections, October has brought us another. After Makerfield in May led directly to Andy Burnham returning to Parliament and becoming Prime Minister, so ousted PM Keir Starmer resigns his seat and gives the new Labour leader his first electoral test in the constituency of Holborn & St. Pancras. This central-north London seat had its Labour vote hold up fairly strongly back in May’s local elections when Starmer’s premiership – and Labour’s favourability with it – hit its nadir. Yet, despite this, Green Party leader Zack Polanski made the decision to stand as their candidate to once again make this anything but a regular by-election. It’s a head-to-head between Labour and the Greens. Amid a good turnaround for Labour in the polls, Burnham delivering a monumental leader’s speech at their Conference last week, and the Greens’ suffering as a consequence, the election is on a knife edge. Joining our executive team in Neal Lawson and Lena Swedlow to discuss all the fallout is: - Damian Lyons Lowe, Chief Executive of Survation - Faye Brown, Political Reporter at Sky News 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.

In 2024, Labour's manifesto explicitly ruled out any new licenses being granted for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. Since then, Donald Trump's war in Iran has brought about the biggest energy crisis seen in Britain since 1979. As a result, conversations have renewed about our ability to drill in the North Sea, produce our own energy resources and bring down one of the most significant drivers of the cost-of-living crisis. New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has, so far, been non-committal on this - but with decisions due on renewing operations in the Rosebank oil and gas field, and the Jackdaw gas field, respectively, the issue has once again reared its head. Joining our Deputy Director, Lena Swedlow, to discuss the politics of this is: - Dr. Ewan Gibbs, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow - Rosie Hampton, Principal Policy Advisor at Uplift. 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.

Last year’s Labour Party Conference felt like a moment in time. A Government that was already reaching historically unpopular levels just a year after entering office, a Prime Minister trying to solidify his position, and a certain Mayor of Greater Manchester being all the rage as he went between the fringe events and drinks receptions. Cut to a year later and, well, some things have changed. The Labour Party finds itself under new management and in a better position: regularly back on top of opinion polls, wresting the argument back from Reform and about to enter an autumn that will set the tone for the entire next political cycle. With the most highly anticipated return to Parliament, leader’s speech, Budget and beyond for quite a while now, Compass Director Neal Lawson is joined by Paula Barker, Member of Parliament for Liverpool Wavertree, and GUEST TBA, to discuss it. 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.

After their best ever election results in 2024, the Liberal Democrats found themselves on a precipice; a decade on from the end of the coalition, voters beginning to trust them again and a Labour government much more amenable to a liberal vision than the increasingly rightwards-tacking Tories. Two years after, and they regularly find themselves polling fifth – in what used to be a three-horse race. It is clear that not just the Liberal Democrats as a party but that Liberalism itself, as an ideology, needs some work. When populism on both ends of the political spectrum is appealing to an increasingly-polarised and crisis-ridden country, how does Liberalism show people it has the answers? This is what Roz Savage, Member of Parliament for the South Cotswolds and Chair of the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party, tackles in her new publication for Compass, ‘Liberalism Alive: A Liberal Vision for a Flourishing Britain’. And on this episode of It’s Bloody Complicated she sits down with Compass Director Neal Lawson to discuss it. 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 involvement of young people in politics has always been a contentious issue - are they ready? do they know enough? are we educating them properly? Often, young people's voices are erased from the conversation by those who think they know better. Here, our Media and Communications Officer Sam Mandi-Ghomi sits down with the Co-Presidents of Warwick Think Tank, a student society at the University of Warwick, to discuss youth engagement in politics. 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.

Andy Burnham's elevation to the office of Prime Minister came thick and fast on the back of a Labour Party desperate not to waste its first chance in government in 15 years. The promise, in order to not waste it, is Burnham's pledge to 'end 40 years of neoliberalism'. But what actually is that and how can it be done? Joining Compass Director Neal Lawson to figure that out is Clive Lewis (Member of Parliament for Norwich South), Sue Goss (coach, strategic advisor and facilitator to leadership teams in local government, the civil service and the health service), Alan Finlayson (Professor of Political and Social Theory, University of East Anglia), and Jeremy Gilbert (Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, University of East London). 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.

This week we're asking: Can Burnham Win on Water?  With public anger over sewage, rising bills and failing infrastructure showing no sign of going away, the debate over who owns our water has moved from the margins to the mainstream. This week Lena was joined by two expert guests to help us navigate the topic: Professor Ewan McGaughey, is a legal scholar at Kings College London and expert on public ownership. Cat Hobbs is founder and director of leading campaign group We Own It.  Listen to find out more about how water became one of the defining political issues of our time, what Andy Burnham's interventions mean, and whether public ownership is finally moving from a campaign to political reality. 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 Scott Trust is the parent company that owns The Guardian Media Group. In 2023, the Trust launched their ‘Legacies of Enslavement Programme’, formed to acknowledge that the founder of the Manchester Guardian, John Edward Taylor, and his backers profited from transatlantic enslavement through their business interests in cotton and sugar. Among them was Sir George Philips, co-owner of the Success plantation in Hanover, Jamaica. Links were also identified between Taylor’s family business and plantations in the Gullah Geechee region of the US Sea Islands. In response to the findings, the Scott Trust is funding a meaningful long-term programme of awareness-raising and restorative justice. Their goals are to: address their founders’ links to slavery in the US, and Sir George Philips’ role as an enslaver of people in Jamaica, through significant partnerships and programmes developed with local and national communities and organisations.support impactful initiatives to improve diversity in the news media sector, including within the Guardian.raise awareness of our findings, and of Manchester’s and Britain’s involvement with transatlantic slavery, and of the trade in enslaved Africans more broadly.To discuss the programme and get into wider conversations about how we, as progressive, reckon with the legacy of Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, we were joined by: Clive Lewis – Member of Parliament for Norwich South & guest host of the episodeEbony Riddell Bamber – Programme Director of the Legacies of Enslavement Programme. Ebony has more than 20 years’ experience in social justice policy and advocacy, with expertise across human rights, gender-based violence and community engagement. She has held senior roles in global advocacy coalitions, international NGOs such as Care International and Save the Children, and the UK public sector.Maya Wolfe-Robinson – Assistant Editor at The Guardian. Maya is the editorial lead for the Legacies of Enslavement programme, which include the Cotton Capital series and the Long Wave newsletter. A Guardian journalist since 2010, she was previously a correspondent covering the north of England and was an editor on the opinion desk.The original Cotton Capital investigation launched in 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cotton-capital Details of latest phase of Legacies programme: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/apr/21/guardian-owner-scott-trust-announces-plan-to-expand-legacies-of-enslavement-programme Article: "We asked what repairing the harm of enslavement would look like. This is what we found": https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-wave Long Wave newsletter: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-wave 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.

10 years on from the vote to leave the European Union, Lena is joined by Stella Creasy MP to discuss the impact of that decision, and what the future holds for our relationship with Europe. Plus: the staff team react to the resignation of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, and consider what a Burnham premiership could mean for progressives. 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’s probably not being dramatic to suggest that the 2026 Makerfield by-election could go down as the most influential Westminster by-election of all time. As Labour’s woes in government continue, sitting 8 points behind Reform in the polls, their candidate Andy Burnham made his intentions clear in intending to run to be the next leader (and Prime Minister). With his commitment to changing the political culture in the country, including electoral reform and a return to public ownership of water, Burnham's victory could bring about a new era of progressive politics in Britain (we’re not biased, honest). So, obviously, we had to put a star-studded lineup together to analyse the result. Joining Compass Director Neal Lawson to figure out just what has happened is: Kerry Postlewhite, Chair of Mainstream Labour’s Interim CouncilWill Stronge, Chief Executive of AutonomyAva-Santina Evans, Editor of PoliticsJOEAnouschka Rajah, Research and Analysis Manager at MoreinCommon UKSupport 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.

Perhaps the foremost crisis of the omnicrisis that is seeming to plague British politics these days is the cost of living. With inflation through the roof over the past decade due to a series of seismic economic shocks – some self-inflicted, most unforeseen – and wages stagnant, what do we do? At Compass, we pride ourselves on providing progressive solutions to all issues. But the economy remains the one area in which progressives are consistently seen as outliers, whose ideas are not only politically motivated but out and out incorrect. We know this isn’t true – but how do we show that? To discuss what progressives need to do on economic issues, Compass Director Neal Lawson is joined by: James Meadway, economist, co-director of Verdant, former advisor to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and former Chief Economist at the New Economics Foundation.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.

This month, something happened in British politics that would normally sound completely impossible. A Labour mayor appointed a Green council leader as her deputy. Not after a coalition deal, or an election without a clear winner, or because somebody lost a bet, but because they decided they might be able to govern better together than apart. In this episode, Lena talks to West of England Mayor Helen Goodwin and her Deputy Mayor Tony Dyer about how pluralism is working for them in practice.  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.

Neal Lawson is joined by Uffe Elbæk, Danish politician, former Minister of Culture, founder of The Alternative political party, and long-time friend of Compass. They discuss Uffe's new book Doubt, Hope, Action which is out now.  Podcast listeners get 10% Off & free UK shipping using code: DHA-COMPASS10 https://5mbooks.com/product/doubt-hope-action Valid til 30 June 2026 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.