TALKING POLITICS

Helen and David talk about what four years of Trump - and of talking (and talking) about Trump - have meant for their thinking about America and about democratic politics. Is it possible to give a balanced picture of Trump's presidency? Have the last four years followed a pattern or has it just been chaos? What is the likely legacy of Trump's extraordinary level of global fame? Plus we discuss whether 2020 marks the beginning of the 'short' twenty-first century and what that means for Trump's place in it. Talking Points: Will historians see 2020 as the start of the ‘short’ 21st century? - If so, Trump belongs to the interregnum. He’s not a dramatic break.  - Certainly there are continuities, for example, in the Middle East. But there are also discontinuities with China and Iran. - Is the pandemic a fundamental watershed?   Is American power in decline?  - In some ways, the US is more powerful this decade than it was the decade before. - The US has a strong domestic energy supply again. - The Fed is still an international lender of last resort. - One of the consequences of the pandemic was that in March the Fed effectively extended an indirect dollar credit line in principle to China.  - The story about rising Chinese power is not straightforwardly at American expense.  - The domestic political turmoil in the US is going to be consequential to the American-Chinese strategic competition. The Republican party got what they wanted out of a Trump presidency, the courts. - In that sense, 2020 could be another watershed year: pre-Barrett and post-Barrett. - Although history of the court suggests that partisan affiliations don’t always predict outcomes. - Since the late 1960s/early 1970s, American politics has become judicialized.  - The crucial point is the intense politicization of these decisions. Trump invokes huge depths of revulsion in many Americans. Trying to stand back and look at his presidency historically can seem like moral indifference. - The narrative about Trump as a singular evil is the lens through which many people have lived their lives in the past four years. - This narrative takes a pretty distorted view of the American past as well as the state of the republic before Trump. - Trump seems incapable of understanding the distinction between the president as head of state and the president as head of government. - Geopolitically, the Trump presidency has made a difference, especially in relation to China. Mentioned in this Episode: - Our post-election episode from 2016 - Our last episode with Gary Gerstle - Our last episode with Sarah Churchwell - Our most recent crossover with 538 - David’s review of David Cameron’s memoirs Further Learning: - Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century - David reviews Fear: Trump in the White House - Helen on Trump and the Persian Gulf And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We talk to Peter Geoghegan of openDemocracy and Jennifer Cobbe of the Trust and Technology Initiative about Cambridge Analytica, money, power and what is and isn't corrupting our democracy. How easy is it to buy influence in British politics? Did Cambridge Analytica break the rules or show just how little difference the rules make anyway? Who has the power to take on Facebook? Plus we discuss why the British government's failure to handle the pandemic tells us a lot about the corrosive effects of cronyism.  https://www.petergeoghegan.com/books/ Talking Points: The ICO report on Cambridge Analytica largely concluded that their tactics were not unusual. - Of course, we can take issue with the fact these practices are so widespread.  - One of the reasons Cambridge Analytica was such a scandal was that people didn’t realise they could be targeted in this way. - Cambridge Analytica and organizations like it can do is seed misinformation into a wider ecosystem. They take advantage of the lack of regulation. - Sowing misinformation doesn’t require sophisticated skills; it’s easy. The conversation about micro-targeting often centers on Cambridge Analytica, but we need to look at the structures that make these practices so easy and so potent. - Facebook makes all of this really easy to do. Why were we so complacent?  - When we think about the influence of money in politics, it’s easy to imagine nefarious people throwing around big sums, but at least in the UK a small amount can go a long way when people have the right connections. This is cronyism. The pandemic has made the tech giants unthinkably wealthy. - At the same time, they’ve changed the way that money affects politics. - Could Trump have won without Facebook and Twitter? - The tech companies do not need to lobby politicians in the traditional sense because they are simply that powerful. Governments are dependent on these technologies, as we all are. - Can we think about the tech companies as the technical infrastructure of society? - Right now, these companies have a huge amount of discretion.  Cronyism has been a prominent feature of the UK Government’s COVID response. - There is a strain in a certain school of political thought that the state isn’t good for much. When politicians who believe that are in charge, it can be self-fulfilling. - A hollowed out state creates space for more cronyism. - The civil service has become a punching bag. This could have a long tail.  Does the system that needs reform have the capacity to generate the necessary reforms? - When it comes to tech, the biggest problem is ideological. - It’s hard to get politicians to agree that changing micro-targeting is necessary because they all use it. - Politicians do not want to change a system that has benefitted them even if they can recognize its flaws.  - Can you build a coalition that would force them to do so?  Mentioned in this Episode: - The UK Information Commissioner's Office report on Cambridge Analytica - Peter’s book, Democracy for Sale - Jennifer’s recent piece in the Guardian - TP talks to Jennifer and John Naughton about Facebook - Langdon Winner, ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’ - Open Democracy on Andrew Gilligan’s role in the COVID response Further Learning: - Jennifer on ‘Rethinking Digital Platforms for the post-COVID-19 era’ - The TP Guide to… being a civil servant - TP talks to Shoshana Zuboff about surveillance capitalism And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David talks to the historian Sarah Churchwell about how well America's political institutions have withstood the stress of the last four years. Have we seen the limits of presidential power or have we discovered how easy it is to trash those limits? Are constitutional checks and balances still intact? Is it really Mitch McConnell who is putting American democracy under stress? Plus we talk about what will be needed to restore the social contract and the perils of political humility. Talking Points: Many of the founding institutions in political life have been put under stress during the Trump administration.  - Trump has said a lot, but he hasn’t done much. We’ll have a better sense of the extent of the damage after the election. - Trump’s behaviour often gets more outlandish as the constraints on his power become more visible. The power of the U.S. executive has been growing, certainly since 9/11. - Both Bush and Obama strengthened the executive presidency.  - Some have argued that Trump’s incompetence precludes authoritarianism. Strong men have to be strong. - But from an institutional standpoint, the Trump presidency has revealed that the American system is vulnerable to strongmen leaders. Because congressional Republicans have sanctioned his behaviour, Trump has not been as constrained as he might have been. - The other institutional check that often flies under the radar is states rights. - The electoral system is bound up in local state power. Every state has a series of strong, legally required actions that go into certifying vote counts. - So far, states rights has been the most effective check on Trump’s power. We focus on Trump, but the lasting legacy of the Trump presidency may be elsewhere. - If the lasting legacy of Trump is in the judiciary branch, it won’t be because he created a Trumpian judiciary.  - In this sense, Trump is the enabler of Mitch McConnell rather than the other way around. - McConnell’s agenda is about obstructing the Democrats and consolidating Republican power.  Trump has not been able to totalize authoritarian control.  - Certain aspects of liberalism have gotten stronger during the Trump administration. - There can be an authoritarian regime without an authoritarian state. Mentioned in this Episode: - Sarah on impeachment for Talking Politics American Histories - Sarah on TP on American fascism - Kimberly Jones, ‘How Can We Win’  - Ross Douthat, ‘There Will Be No Trump Coup’  Further Learning: - The 538 U.S. presidential election forecast  - Sarah on American Fascism for NYBooks - What is originalism? - The precedent, and perils of court packing in the NYTimes - More on court packing at the state level  And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we come back to Brexit and ask whether Boris Johnson has a good way out of the current negotiations with the EU over a trade deal. First we talk with Kenneth Armstrong, Professor of European Law, about the thinking and the reality behind the government's Internal Market Bill. Then David, Helen and Chris Brooke explore the politics of success and failure in the negotiations. Can the Union survive? Does the government have a coherent strategy? And how much trouble is Johnson really in? Talking Points: Is the Internal Market Bill just a negotiating tactic, or is it a genuine safeguard for a future world in which there is no trade deal?  - The government is worried that the wording of the Northern Ireland Protocol risks the possibility of the EU overreaching in its interpretation in ways that would make it more difficult for the UK to pursue its own state aid policy, for example. - The government is now saying that it would only invoke these provisions if the EU acts in ‘bad faith.’ - The problem with that argument is that the agreements already have their own safeguard mechanisms. Why do you need a domestic legal mechanism? - The substance of the Internal Market Bill is also getting serious pushback from the devolved authorities. The EU has launched infringement proceedings against the UK.  - It’s a structured process with different phases.  - The imperative is to try to seek a resolution without needing to take the action before the Court of Justice. - The Commission’s argument is that the UK is acting on bad faith.  - In the transition period, the UK is effectively treated as a member state. What happens when the UK is fully outside of the transition period?  - For now at least, all this political theatre isn’t immediately derailing the process of getting an agreement on a future relationship. The ultimate obstacles to a deal are existential: the UK wants to guarantee respect for its autonomy, so does the EU. - The EU’s great fear is that the model of a social market economy that it has been building among its member states would be threatened if the UK could engage in regulatory competition or distorted subsidies with the EU. - That’s why the level playing field rules and state aid are so important for the EU.  - There’s also the geopolitical question: the consequences for both sides of not reaching a deal would be significant. Johnson gave his conference speech and he barely mentioned Brexit. - The stakes of the ongoing negotiations are as high as they were a year ago, but the political heat—at least for now—has gone out of it. - Johnson hopes that if you can get through the next few years and stabilize the Union from the present threats then it will be possible to put the Union on more solid constitutional groundings. - This is a politics of crisis. There’s not a clear strategic vision. The pandemic has made the politics of devolution even more complicated because it’s created a de facto English government, which is the UK parliament. - The more the Scottish government, the Northern Irish government and the Welsh government disagree about what the rules should be, the more the fact that there is an English government comes to the surface. - This becomes an electoral issue too. Is Johnson on his way out? - His track record may be a liability where the Union is concerned. There may be better people to lead the Conservative party on the Scottish question. - Making a deal with the EU could hurt him with the Spartans of the European Research Group. - Johnson’s health could also be an issue; that’s why he’s determined to show that he doesn’t have long-COVID. Mentioned in this Episode: - Johnson’s virtual Conference speech Further Learning:  - Is the UK Government serious about breaking international law, and risking a trade war with the EU? - Kenneth on the European Commission and the Internal Market Bill - More on th...

David talks to Helen Thompson and Gary Gerstle about the historical precedents for US presidents losing office after a singleterm. It doesn't happen very often, but it could be about to happen again! Can Trump use the powers of incumbency to prevent it? Can Biden use Trump's growing chaos to seal his fate? Plus we talk about the fall-out from the first presidential debate and we ask how the politics of the Supreme Court might intersect with a contested election result. Talking Points: One-term presidents are rare in American history. - Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush are the only presidents in the last 100 years who have lost reelection bids. - When you take out third party challengers, you’re left with Hoover and Carter, two presidents who both failed to handle a significant national disaster. The Hoover and Carter cases came at turning points in presidential cycles. - 1932 and 1980 signify profound shifts in political order: from Republican to Democrat, and then from Democrat to Republican.  - There is not a clear dominant party right now.  - You would expect a one-term presidency to be more likely when there isn’t a dominant party.   In the Carter case, incumbency was perhaps a disadvantage.  - He faced a difficult economic situation as well as the Iranian hostage crisis.  - Both Carter and Hoover got hit by an economic crisis for which the country was not prepared, for which there were no ideal or quick solutions.   There’s never been a Supreme Court justice appointed and confirmed so quickly or so close to an election. - The Republican party thinks their future lies with controlling the courts. - McConnell’s strategy might actually harm Trump in the elections; they are determined to do this even, potentially, at the cost of the presidency. - If Barrett said she would recuse herself from ruling on the election, McConnell wouldn’t care, but Trump would.  The debate may have been unedifying, but it clarified what was at stake. - Biden did not make a positive case for himself; his pitch was that he is not Trump. - The overriding impression of the debate was chaos. - Trump’s attempt to frame Biden as a creature of the left fell short.  - Trump made the presidency look cheap. The aversion factor matters: which of the candidates do most people find unacceptable?  - But Trump also dragged Biden into the chaos. - What would happen if a Conservative court legitimated a Biden victory?  Mentioned in this Episode:  - The US Presidential Debate Further Learning: - ‘Hating on Herbert Hoover,’ from The New Yorker - What happened with Merrick Garland?  - Six takeaways from the presidential debate from The New York Times - Who won the debate? From 538 - Frederick Wilmot-Smith in the LRB on the US Supreme Court - Highlights from Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate Questionnaire  - Do presidential debates matter? And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David and Helen talk to the philosopher Michael Sandel about the damage that the idea of rewarding people on merit has done to education, democracy and public life. Why is it wrong to try to match the best students to the best universities? What is credentialism and how has it warped the way work is rewarded? Whatever happened to the idea of the common good? Plus we discuss America's sense of itself as God's chosen nation in the age of Obama and Trump. Talking Points: Places like Stanford and Harvard have more than 40,000 applicants for 2,000 places. Most of these applicants are qualified. - Michael thinks that universities should admit students based on a lottery. - The meritocratic way of thinking about success and social recognition has produced and intensified an epidemic of credentialism.   - Should elite universities function as arbiters of opportunity? - Even going to university hasn’t delivered what people expected.  - How do we translate what we can see is socially and morally wrong about our society into a different way of economically living? For decades, we have been told that the solution to inequality is individual upward mobility through higher education. - The ‘rhetoric of rising’ has run its course. - How do we affirm and renew the dignity of work? What kind of jobs has the shift towards credentialism encouraged? - There’s a concentration around law and finance, as well as public sector or public administration jobs. - The financialism of the economy is an important part of this story. - The divide between winners and losers has deepend. - It’s not just inequality: the people on top believe that their success is their own doing. - Michael thinks that the sense of elites looking down on the less credentialed has fueled the anger and resentment that authoritarian populists have exploited. - Could automation displace credentialism? The money people make, or the recognition they receive, is not a measure of their contribution to the common good. - It’s easy to outsource this kind of moral judgment to markets, but Michael thinks that’s a mistake. - Can we reconfigure the economy to bring about a better alignment between the contributions people make and the rewards and recognition they receive? - The pandemic has revealed the importance of jobs that are hugely undervalued, particularly forms of human care.  There has been a structural, material transformation in Western economies since the 1980s that has gone hand and hand with the rise of credentialism and financialisation. - Industrial manufacturing employment has gone overseas. - We are nostalgic about an age that no longer exists, including the role of trade unions, which had power in part because they could disrupt the economy through strikes. What happened to the nation as a source of identity and belonging? - The United States is a providential nation; the same forces of meritocracy can be at work at the national level. - Is it possible to challenge the sense of providence in American democracy? Mentioned in this Episode: - Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit - Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again Further Learning: - Michael in the Guardian: ‘The populist backlash has been a revolt against the tyranny of merit’ - Michael in the NYTimes: ‘Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable form of prejudice’ - Michael on why economics needs a moral dimension - Our episode with Oliver Bullough on tax havens, money-laundering and corruption - Our History of Ideas episode on Tocqueville And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A Sunday extra with the novelist Robert Harris to talk about the V2 campaign of terror against London during WWII and the parallels with today. Plus we discuss the big questions of counterfactual history - could Hitler really have won the war? - and we ask whether Boris Johnson is anything like his political heroes, Cicero and Churchill.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David talks to the American historian Jill Lepore about the damage new technology can do to democracy, from the 1960s to the present. Who first tried to manipulate the minds of the electorate? Where did the money come from? What happened when the same technology was applied to fighting the Vietnam War? Plus we discuss US presidential elections from 1960 to 2020: do the machines really decide who is going to win, and if he does win this time, what might Joe Biden be able to do about it? Talking Points The Simulmatics Corporation was one of the first data analytics companies founded in 1959. - They were collecting personal data, coming up with mathematical models for human behavior, making predictions, and selling that as a service. - They got their big break in the 1960 election.  Advertising was basically invented to defend corporations against muckraking journalists. - It became something else as modern consumer society emerged. - Eventually, some of the ad agencies began working for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the party of big business, so it’s nor surprising that they’ve always had a leg up in political advertising. Was the Simulmatics Corporation for real? - Their insights were not particularly startling. - The Simulmatics Corporations were liberals who were trying to convince the Democratic Party to take a stronger position on civil rights by telling them that black voters could make a difference in the election. - There’s something kind of creepy about the whole thing: a bunch of mid-century, white, liberal men building a machine to try to understand people of color and women. - A tight election is good for huxters. There’s a huge, enabling industry of journalism to oversell this kind of technology. There’s a big gap between how we understand politics should work in the physical world and the mysteriousness and anarchy of the digital world. - Democracies are bad at reforming themselves because the winners are not incentivized to do it.  - The monopoly today is the monopoly of the means of doing politics.  - The pandemic makes it worse. We are now more wedded to our devices and it is harder to conduct campaigns outside of them. Mentioned in this Episode: - Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future  - Jill’s podcast, ‘The Last Archive: Who Killed Truth?’ - Sue Halpern on the Trump campaign’s mobile app Further Learning:  - Jill in The New Yorker, ‘How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future’ - Our last episode with Jill on the American Nation - Jia Tolentino for the BBC, ‘The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams’ - Evan Osnos’ profile of Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker - Talking Politics American Histories on Monopoly and Muckraking And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we talk about the politics of incompetence: when does it matter and when can politicians get away with it. Have repeated u-turns during the pandemic damaged the government? Has Nicola Sturgeon had a better crisis than Boris Johnson or is it just competence theatre? Is the government's incompetence going to be enough to get Keir Starmer into Downing Street? With Helen Thompson, Chris Brooke and Chris Bickerton. Talking Points: Competence: does it matter?  - What kinds of incompetence are likely to do this government the most harm? - There have been a lot of u-turns in the policy and rules around COVID. - Are these u-turns or is the government improvising in an unprecedented situation? - The u-turns that do the most harm are those that are seen as a breach of trust. The important context for u-turns in British politics is Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Conference. - Her predecessor, Ted Heath, did not stick to the manifesto line in government. - She actually was making a u-turn in macroeconomic policy, but she had concluded that voters saw pragmatic chopping and changing as incompetence. - The difficulty for Johnson is that there’s a general perception that the government isn’t entirely on top of things. The competence issue comes back to the surface. The internal market bill is being published and it will apparently renege on some aspects of the withdrawal act. - Being perceived as seeing yourself above international law is a risk for any government. - In the context of Brexit, this is the consequence of how boxed in the Johnson government was when it came into power. COVID has revealed big differences between Westminster and the devolved governments. - Sturgeon in particular has pitched her government as more competent than the Johnson government. - Critics of the SNP say that this is theatre.  - But the handling of the pandemic may well feed into the SNP’s pitch heading into what appears to be an increasingly imminent referendum, which they are increasingly confident of winning. - But it’s not just the pandemic; it’s also the whole Brexit process. Can Starmer use competence as a lever? Can you win power through competence? - The opposition is not in a great place to set the agenda. A number of very important decisions will be made in the next year or so that change the political situation. - Don’t underestimate the power of the Conservatives to replace Johnson. - Many of Johnson’s ministers are creatures of his politics. - What’s interesting about Sunak is that he doesn’t quite fit that template. Mentioned in this Episode: - Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Conference (‘the lady’s not for turning’) - Scottish support for independence rises in the pandemic - Who is Boris Johnson? Further Learning:  - More on the Internal Market Bill - The Guardian’s view on the Internal Market Bill - More on coronavirus and devolution - How coronavirus strengthened Scottish independence from the Economist - Who is Rishi Sunak? And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David talks to economist and author Noreena Hertz about loneliness and its impact on all our lives. How does the experience of loneliness shape contemporary democracy? What kind of politics could make us feel more connected? Can technology bring us together or is it driving us further apart? Plus we discuss the consequences of the pandemic for the future of work and the possibility of building a better world. Loneliness has been rising among young people over recent years: 3 in 5 18-34 year olds feel lonely often or sometimes; nearly a half of 10-15 year olds. - Lockdown has likely exacerbated these numbers. - So much of the interaction between young people is online; parents can’t see the exclusion. Loneliness is political as well as personal, social as well as economic. - Exclusion and marginalisation are also forms of loneliness. - Can loneliness bridge generational divides? - In the pandemic, we are all sharing a negative experience—will this produce solidarity or divisions?  What solutions do politicians provide for solidarity? - In recent times, the left hasn’t provided a strong alternative notion of solidarity. - The diminishment of trade unions and workplace solidarity play a part here as well.  - What politician will speak for the lonely? Democracy produces certain kinds of visibility and excludes others. What would it look like to be more open to the lonely? - There is a skillset associated with inclusive democracy that we are in danger of losing. - There are inspiring examples of participatory democracy on the local level. - In a lonely world, representative democracy filters out the lonely. If loneliness is the problem, and human beings are increasingly socially inept, the machines might step in. - In Japan, robot-human interaction is widespread, especially among the elderly. - What will increasingly intelligent robots do to our relationships with each other? Mentioned in this Episode: - Noreena’s book, The Lonely Century: Coming Together in a World that's Pulling Apart - Noreena on ‘Generation K’ - The Camden Citizens’ Assembly on the climate crisis Further Learning: - The New York Times on how to manage loneliness - Solitary citizens: the politics of loneliness - More on robotic eldercare in Japan - Our episode with Yuval Harari And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We revisit our interview with the economist Thomas Piketty recorded the week Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency and David and Helen ask what we have learned since. Where does Macron fit on the left/right political spectrum? What has his cult of personality done to French politics? And are we anywhere nearer knowing how to tackle the problem of inequality? The last in our series of updates from the Talking Politics archive. Show Notes: Why isn’t inequality having a more primary effect on our politics?  - Are ethnic and nationalist divisions trumping class divisions? Piketty’s research shows that nothing is pre-ordained, but it often takes a crisis to reorient politics. - In the 20th century, war plays this role. If you take war out of it, what happens? - Can democracies deal with inequality without a crisis?  - Is there a democratic path to redress inequality?  Macron relatively quickly became a politician of the centre-right. - This shouldn’t have been a surprise.  - What was harder to anticipate was the nature of the opposition, in particular, the Gilets Jaunes. - Macron has become more preoccupied with the geopolitical than reforming the Eurozone. - It’s easy to forget how contingent Macron’s rise was. Macron’s rise blew apart the French party system.  - The failings predated Macron, but he did inject something much more personalized into French politics. - Macron created a movement that could win a majority in the French legislature.  - During lockdown, however, he lost his absolute majority in the lower house because various people on the left defected. The larger story about economic choices, especially macroeconomic choices, being taken out of the hands of democratic politics took a particular shape in France. - Can we see Macron’s rise as an answer to France’s problems in the euro? Has COVID moved Europe any closer to answering questions about what engenders solidarity? - Piketty has been an advocate of quite radical institutional reforms towards a more centralised European project. - Clearly the crisis has changed notions about common European borrowing.  - If you have debt, what kind of political solidarity sustains that debt?  - For there to be meaningful solidarity where debt is concerned, you need to see meaningful taxes. So far, this has not happened. - Nor has there been any institutional reform in the last few months. That part of the Piketty project seems as far off as ever. Mentioned in this Episode:  - Capital in the Twenty-First Century  - Last week’s episode with Lucia and Hans Further Learning:  - Piketty’s most recent book, Capital and Ideology - Will coronavirus lead to fairer societies? Thomas Piketty explores the prospect for The Guardian - An interview with Piketty in The Nation about the virus and his latest book - Thomas Piketty Goes Global, in The New Yorker - A synopsis of Piketty’s Capital  And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we look at the big changes in European politics during the crisis and ask who has managed to turn it around. Is Italy now a model for crisis management? Has there been a reorientation in German politics under Merkel? Can the EU rescue fund really rescue the European project? Plus we discuss the long-term implications of big state politics for the future of Europe. With Helen Thompson, Lucia Rubinelli and Hans Kundnani. Talking Points: Over the summer, life—including political life—in Italy resumed some normalcy. - There will be regional and local elections, as well as a constitutional referendum, at the end of September. - The government now seems to be on firmer ground. This has to do with the recovery fund, and the fact that the two main parties in the coalition have decided to run together. - The Five Star movement had previously said it would never run with another party. It is becoming a more establishment party. Salvini’s comeback has slowed down.  - Salvini has made several mistakes over COVID. - The League runs the region that suffered the most during the COVID crisis. The president of that region, who is close to Salvini, is now embroiled in a corruption scandal that has to do with the process of buying PPE. Italy has stabilized the situation domestically by excluding those who are most radical about the euro and by getting ECB and wider EU external support for Italy’s debt. - In Germany, there is a sense that Merkel has moved quite radically on debt mutualization in the Eurozone.  - But there’s some misunderstanding about what the recovery fund does: it doesn’t deal with the pre-2020 macro imbalances in the Eurozone.  During the negotiations in March, Conte was hard on the EU. But once it was negotiated, the tone switched completely.  - The debate over the conditions of accepting money from the EU is almost completely focused on whether Italy should apply to the European Stability Mechanism.  - This doesn’t seem to translate to the recovery fund, which is surprising. - Five Star can criticize Europe in one regard, while accepting everything else. - But unhappiness with conditionality always reasserts itself in Italian politics because of Italy’s debt position and Eurozone fiscal rules. There is too much focus on Merkel.  - Merkel has embodied a broad consensus in German politics that has existed for the last 15 years. She tends to go with the flow of German public opinion. - The shift in Germany that led to the recovery fund is an example of this: she shifted because she saw public opinion shifting. - The big questions are: who will be Merkel’s successor? And who will be the junior partner in the coalition that successor leads? In both Italy and Germany, there appears to be a doubling down on grand coalition politics. - In Italy’s case, this has involved co-opting a previous anti-establishment party. In fact, Five Star is now the senior partner. - In Germany, it’s more about keeping out anti-establishment parties. There is a danger that the EU constrains countries from making the kind of shift toward state intervention that European governments currently want to make due to COVID. - This could become a problem down the line. - If EU countries were unanimous about this shift, you could imagine a remaking of the EU, but the old divides will almost certainly come back. Mentioned in this Episode:  - Our most recent episode with Lucia - Our March episode with Lucia - The New York Times article on how Italy turned its corona crisis around Further Learning:  - More on the EU recovery fund - Who will replace Merkel? - More on Olaf Scholz - Our most recent episode with Adam Tooze and Shahin Vallee And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See

This week two conversations with the feminist theorist and writer Judith Butler: one recorded the week Trump won the presidency in 2016 and one recorded a few days ago, as his presidency (just maybe) approaches its end. We reflect on what has changed over the last four years, what has stayed the same, and whether our worst fears were realised. Plus Judith tells us what she sees when she sees Biden and what she hopes might come next. Two linked conversations about misogyny, racism, representation, empowerment, hope, rage, and the damage one man can do to democracy. Further Learning:  - Judith Butler: on COVID-19, the politics of non-violence, necropolitics, and social inequality - Judith Butler for the LRB on Trump’s death drive - ‘Judith Butler wants us to reshape our rage,’ from The New Yorker  - Judith on performativity and Black Lives Matter - Gender Trouble, Judith Butler - Precarious Life, Judith Butler - The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week David and Helen talk with the historian David Kynaston about his diary of the 2016-17 season in football and in politics, when a lot happened both to the world and to his beloved Aldershot FC. It's a conversation about loyalty, identity and belonging, and about what sorts of change we can tolerate and what we can't. Plus Helen reflects on her life as a West Ham fan. Talking Points: For David Kynaston, football is about identity. - We all have our personal myths. - Continuity of space, even colours, is also important. Football in Britain has derived a lot of meaning from the relationship between club and place. - The continuity between location and fan base broke at some point in the 1990s, maybe earlier.  - And then there are questions of ownership, management. For David Kynaston, football is rooted in place; politics is not. - Small and medium sized towns feel ‘left behind’; these places have also been left behind in the football sense.  - But anger about the inequalities or the premier league doesn’t have a lot of political purchase.  What is the relationship between the planning period of the 50s and 60s and Brexit voters? - People who lived through that maybe had reasons to distrust people telling them what was best. - There was also a coarsening of popular culture, led by Murdoch and the Sun. Mentioned in this Episode: - David Kynaston’s new book, Shots in the Dark - Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time - Colin Shindler’s books on Manchester United and Manchester City - Our post-Trump episode  - David Goodhart on somewheres and anywheres - Liverpool’s vote and Sun readership - The Financial Times editorial on Trump and Portland Further Learning: - Helen on West Ham - Helen on coronavirus and the Premier League And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David and Helen talk with Diane Coyle about what the pandemic has revealed about the changing nature of work. Who is doing more of it? Who is still getting paid for it? Which jobs are not coming back? Plus we explore the impact of the digital revolution on how we get rewarded for what we do and we ask whether the big tech firms can continue to hoover up so many of the rewards. Is Jeff Bezos really worth it? Talking Points:  Since the post-war era, unpaid work in the home doesn’t get measured in formal economic statistics. - At the time, people argued it would be too hard to measure. - When women went out to work in the paid workforce, the market started growing. - The digital revolution brought a lot of things we paid for back into the home, for example, online banking. The pandemic has exacerbated existing social patterns and trends. - Women are more likely to have been laid off and furloughed. The hardest hit sectors, such as hospitality and retail, employ more women.  - All working parents have been hit hard. - In a self-inflicted recession, the service sector has been hit hardest (instead of manufacturing). - Key workers are not our best paid workers. Those who can work from home are, broadly speaking, more well off. Official economic statistics are analytical and statistical constructs.  - If we ran surveys about what households are doing, we would have measures of these things.  - You can’t devise good policies about social care or pensions about understanding who is doing what.  - The statistics we have were created in relation to a particular mode of economic management: Keynesian demand management.  - We no longer think that’s a sufficient way of thinking about economic activity, or the more human issues around economic activity.    The financial market economy today bears little relationship to the real productive economy. - This is essentially because central banks have (intentionally or not) propped up markets with asset purchases. - We will see a continuation of the trend since 2008 of greater asset inequality.   What has the pandemic done to people’s economic psychology? - Fear might make recovery harder.  - Certain sectors like hospitality and entertainment depend on people moving from one place to another and gathering in close proximity. - People’s expectations from the government may also have changed.   Information technologies have become part of our fundamental economic infrastructure and often these markets are dominated by only one corporation. - After 2008, large companies like Amazon that weren’t making profit at the time still had access to huge amounts of cheap credit and could engage in share buybacks.  - The end of people’s ability to physically go shopping has been a huge boon to Amazon in particular. Online retail doesn’t suffer like the high street. - Right now, Amazon is seen to be providing a vital service. Does this make it less likely that policymakers will take it on?   There may still be a shock coming, especially when the furlough scheme winds down. - Is it too late to save the brick and mortar economy? - If we are moving towards a more digital economy, we’ll have to rethink taxes too. Will the pandemic take us back to an earlier version of the digital economy? Will we go back to living further apart?  - There’s a limit to how much you can do online.  - The shift towards urban centers took off in the 90s, before the tech revolution. It’s probably more about the shift away from manufacturing towards service-sector economies. Mentioned in this Episode:  - Diane’s article in the New York Times, ‘Why did it take a pandemic to show how much unpaid work women do?’ - Our last episode with Diane - The Economics Observatory: questions and answers about coronavirus and the UK economy Further Learning: - TP American Histories on mon...