The Hated and the Dead

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician and longtime leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), now the Netherlands' largest political party, following a surprise victory in the country's November election. 

Wilders has made a name for himself across Europe as the continent’s most outspoken anti-Islam politician. Marine Le Pen might be more powerful and more widely known, but her rhetoric pails in comparison to that of Wilders, who has faced charges in court on incitement against Muslims, and who has lived under permanent police protection since 2004.

When right wing populist insurgencies succeed in troubled countries- Argentina, Israel, or Italy- most people aren’t surprised. But the Netherlands? Really? The Netherlands is about as similar to the UK as you can get. Whether you’re uplifted or deflated by Wilders’ success, you can’t discount it as insignificant.

My guest today is a return guest to the podcast; he is Guus Valk. Guus is the political editor of Dutch newspaper NRC, and was also my guest for an episode we recorded in August last year, about Pim Fortuyn, a figure who shares much in common with Wilders.

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Hun Sen is the longest-serving prime minister in Cambodian history, having led the country from 1998 until August this year.

Hun has a complex legacy; he has ruled with a rod of iron, showing little mercy towards his political opponents. But as my guest today says, he is also the man who has taken Cambodia from the years of Pol Pot to the ambiguous modernity of the present. The Cambodia of 2023 juxtaposes rural backwardness with newly booming urban centres populated with an emerging middle class who are increasingly detached from their country counterparts.

This mixture of authoritarianism and capitalism has become a major theme of global politics in the last ten years, one of the reasons for which is the arrival, or re-arrival, of China onto the world stage. With the world becoming less democratic, Hun Sen may resemble the future of politics for many parts of the globe.

My guest today is Sebastian Strangio. Sebastian is the Southeast Asia editor at the Diplomat, a current affairs magazine focusing on the Asia-Pacific Region. He is also the author of Cambodia: From Pol Pot to Hun Sen and Beyond, and In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century, which I would highly recommend. 

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Vytautas Landsbergis led the modern Lithuanian independence movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Lithuania became the first of the fifteen Soviet Republics to declare independence from Moscow. This was a remarkably plucky move from such a small nation, but it changed the course of world history; two years later, Lithuania was an independent country, and the Soviet Union no longer existed.

Thirty years later, Lithuania is once again looking east at a Russia probably intent on swallowing up the Baltics again. Lithuania is a strong democracy, and is probably more steadfast and serious about its democracy than many other countries in the West. And there’s probably good reason for this; it knows democracy has maintenance costs, and it knows what it costs to leave democracy fall into disrepair. 

My guest today is Elisabeth Braw. Elisabeth is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on deterrence against emerging forms of aggression. She is also an Associate Fellow at the European Leadership Network, and writes for Foreign Policy and Politico Europe. She also has a book coming out in February called Goodbye Globalisation. 

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Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been the President of Egypt since 2014. 

Egypt perennially struggles economically and politically, with high inflation, widespread youth unemployment and military dictatorship. In fact, Egypt has been under military dictatorship for nearly seventy uninterrupted years- nearly, because after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, democratically elected Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, came to power. But he was soon deposed in a military coup in 2013. The man who took his place was Sisi, today's subject.

But as you’re about to hear, Sisi’s Egypt is far from stable, his continued leadership far from assured. He walks a constant tightrope, lurching from one crisis to another, painfully aware that among his three immediate predecessors as President, one was assassinated, another forced to resign, and the third imprisoned, later dying behind bars. 

My guest today is Amy Hawthorne. Amy is a Middle East specialist who has formally worked with the US State Department, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Project in Middle East Democracy. As well as Sisi’s leadership style and background, we discuss the 2011 Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s dire economic situation, and Egypt’s perspective on the War in Gaza.

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Joe Biden has been President of the United States since 2021. However, this episode, unlike most others in this series, isn’t biographical; rather, what my guest and I examine today, are the prospects for Joe Biden’s re-election as US President next year, almost exactly one year out from the 2024 presidential election.

On the surface of it, Joe Biden’s polling numbers aren’t appealing. 538, America’s king of polling companies, puts his approval rating at 38%. My guest today, though, holds little-to-no regard for polling as a way of forecasting election outcomes. That guest is Allan Lichtman, and in the early 1980s, he devised a comprehensive model for predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. This model, the 13 Keys to the White House, offers the reader 13 questions provoking answers of either true or false.

But here’s the thing - the true or false questions mostly pertain to the performance of the president in office rather than the two campaigns, hence the general disregard for polling. The questions relate to matters such as foreign policy, economic management, internal party unity and scandal. If you place faith in the 13 Keys model, it shows you that Biden’s poor approval rating has not yet stymied his campaign for re-election, and that a second term for the 46th President is still very much in play. 

So today, Allan and I go through the 13 Keys and assess how the President is lining up against them. 

DISCLAIMER: Allan hasn’t made his prediction for the 2024 election yet, and any assumptions made in this podcast about the way some keys might turn out in the future are all my assumptions. This is another way of saying that not all of the 13 true/false questions can be answered just yet. But some can, and they provide important insights into Joe Biden’s performance as US president thus far.

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Alex Jones is an American political commentator, new media personality, and conspiracy theorist.

Conspiracy theory- which we will here define as attributing the occurrence of events or phenomena to sinister or secret organisations- infects all parts of the political spectrum and exists across the World. However, to a certain portion of the American right, conspiracy theory does not merely influence their thinking; it is their thinking. Any government programme or action is interpreted as an insidious attempt by a secret cabal of bureaucrats to enhance their own power.

Jones’ pronouncements- most notoriously his claims that the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting were paid actors- are so strange and extreme that they serve as a way of allowing people to push conspiracy theory to the far-right, and of allowing people to claim that their own views are based in truth and objectivity. Any suggestion of government conspiracy at all is now pilloried as crazy and fringe.

But where does this leave us when the Government, and the establishment media, does act dishonestly, as they do from time to time? Clearly, we cannot live in a society where the public almost by default does not trust anything the government tells it. But nor can we live in a society where the public blithely accepts everything authority figures do or say, either. We all have a responsibility to examine information critically, and this is important whether it comes from Alex Jones or Emily Maitlis, Tucker Carlson or Chris Cuomo.

My guest today is Elizabeth Williamson. Elizabeth is a features writer for the New York Times who has covered Jones extensively, especially in relation to his legal troubles surrounding the Sandy Hook School shooting. As well as taking about Jones, we discuss the importance of conspiracy theory to the American far right, the rise of fringe movements in the country since the 1990s, and how the mainstream media can begin to regain the trust it has lost.

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Today’s podcast looks at one of the most important and intricate stories in recent American history; the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the run up to, and aftermath of, the 2016 Presidential Election. The episode's subject, Robert Mueller, was the FBI Director before the election, but became infamous for his role as Special Counsel to the US Department of Justice, for which he investigated alleged collusion between the campaign of Donald Trump and actors linked to the Russian state.

Mueller's role in the 2016 election and the Trump presidency symbolises a consensus around the security services and law enforcement which the US is rapidly losing- a poll from January 2023 conducted by APM Research found that 51% of Republicans believe the FBI is biased against Donald Trump, and 43% of Gen Z - those born after 1997 - believe the FBI is biased against the left. Of course, trust has to be earned, and the history of the FBI hasn’t always inspired such feeling. But just as you shouldn’t blindly trust an institution, you also shouldn’t not trust it as a default position either. If American democracy is to survive, its people have to be willing to find a medium between these two positions.

My guest today is Devlin Barrett. Devlin is a reporter at The Washington Post, whose work focuses on the FBI, the US Department of Justice, and US law enforcement. He is also the author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election, which focuses on the time period we discuss today.

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At the heart of Australia’s security policy lies a crucial question; should Australia, a country situated thousands of kilometres away from the Asian landmass, defend itself by casting out on the Pacific Ocean and pushing militarily towards Asia? As is often said, attack is the best form of defence…

This is certainly the view taken by the signatories of AUKUS- a 2021 security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, under the terms of which Australia will contribute heavily to the United States’ fleet of nuclear submarines- with the strong implication that these submarines will be used to counter growing Chinese military influence in the Indo-Pacific.

Today's guest sees this offensive strategy and unrealistic and mistaken. Instead, he suggests that Australia should take advantage of its geographic isolation and focus on defending its own shores; assume China will come to Australia one day, and build sufficient military capacity to deter their aggression in the meantime. He is, therefore, one of Australia’s AUKUS Skeptics, the namesake for today’s episode.

That guest is Sam Roggeveen, Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Programme, and author of a new book called The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace. The Echidna Strategy is the name Sam gives to his preferred conception of Australian security. 

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Gabriele D'Annunzio was an Italian writer, journalist and poet who wrote himself irrevocably into history in 1919. In the chaotic aftermath of World War One, D'Annunzio led a small band of irregular Italian forces to the Free City of Rijeka (Italian name Fiume), and seized it in the name of Italian irredentism.

D'Annunzio proclaimed the Free City to be the new Italian Regency of Carnario, with himself as Comandante and Duce. My guest’s stories about what happened in The Regency of Carnaro during its short existence make Anthony Burgess' descriptions of London in A Clockwork Orange sound gentile, with sex, drugs and a glorification of violence impossible to ignore.

Though the Regency quickly fell apart, D'Annunzio's bombastic political style rolled the pitch for the fascist takeover of Italy in 1922, with Benito Mussolini proclaiming D'Annunzio "The John the Baptist of Italian fascism".

My guest today is Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Lucy is a British historian who has written books about a variety of different historical figures, including Cleopatra, Sir Francis Drake, Achilles, and our subject today. Her book on Gabriele D’Annunzio is The Pike, for which Lucy won the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, and the Costa Book Award.

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Hugo Chávez was the President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. 

Despite attempts to harness Venezuela’s enormous oil revenues for the public good, Chávez left behind a country riddled with economic problems and with little to show for the President’s claim to build socialism in the 21st century. Billions of dollars in oil revenues were hoovered up by corrupt elites. Promises of new hospitals, schools and roads went undelivered. 16,000 Venezuelans were murdered each year under Chávez’s leadership- the equivalent of nearly 35,000 murders happening in the UK every single year. Venezuela now has the highest rate of inflation in any country in the World, and many millions of Venezuelans have fled the country. 

Was another path possible? Given America’s distaste for socialism on the American continent, is the noteworthy thing about Chávez not what his project did or did not deliver, but that it got off the ground at all? Has the so-called Monroe Doctrine rendered a moderate approach to left politics in Latin America totally impossible? These are the fundamental questions my guest and I grapple with in today’s conversation. 

That guest is Phil Gunson. Phil is a British journalist and the Andes Senior Project Manager at the International Crisis Group, and has lived in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, since the start of the Chávez presidency nearly 25 years ago. 

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Ariel Sharon served as prime minister of Israel between 2001 and 2006. As a politician and military leader, Sharon always courted controversy. He frequently ignored the orders of his superiors in an attempt to push further into Arab territory and as a politician infamously visited Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount, sparking riots and terror attacks. Most notoriously of all, he was found responsible for the 1982 Massacre at Sabra and Shatila, where thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims were slaughtered by Lebanese Christians in territory controlled by Israeli forces.

This might lead one to conclude that Sharon the politician is the recipient of unconditional praise by the Israeli hard right. But in the highly polarised environment of 2023, this isn’t the case; as prime minister, a post Sharon held between 2001 and 2006, he presided over Israel’s disengagement from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, something which angered the so called “Settlers”- Jews who live in lands occupied after the Six Day War of 1967.

My guest today is Einat Wilf. Einat is an Israeli politician and author who served as a member of the Knesset- Israel’s Parliament- from 2010 until 2013. She also served as a foreign policy advisor to another Israeli prime minister and President, Shimon Peres, and in this capacity encountered Sharon in the final years of his political career. 

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Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States between 2009 and 2017. For early Gen Zers like me, he was the most recognisable politician of our childhood. For those who voted for him, and for many others around the World, his message of Hope and Change was a vessel for their aspirations; aspirations which, amid the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, had been dealt a serious blow. 

But for all Obama’s mesmerising campaigning in 2008, two facts remain stubbornly true about his presidency. One; Obama was never as popular inside America as he was in internationally. And secondly, the polarisation that has come to define American politics since the 1990s reached new heights during Obama’s two terms in the White House.

This is intriguing, as Obama’s presidency was not nearly as distinguished or notable as his campaign, or the man himself. Obama was a centrist liberal president, but not a progressive one. So why, after such a conventional presidency, was the backlash to the Obama presidency quite so ferocious? And what does the backlash tell us about the state of American politics?

My guest today is Peter Baker. Peter is the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times, and he also worked as a reporter for the Washington Post for 20 years. He has seen the presidency close up under five occupants of the White House, so it’s fair to say he was a fitting guest for the podcast’s 100th episode. 

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Yoon Suk Yeol has been the President of South Korea since May 2022. A public prosecutor until two years ago, Yoon won the Presidency on a knife-edge, having thrown in his lot with the "New Right", a pro-American, capitalist faction which rails against the cultural liberalism espoused by Korean progressives. 

His election suggests a degree of cultural polarisation, but debates over economic policy since Yoon took office has been relatively narrow and non-polarised. This is perhaps an indication that the country's democracy, amid a looming demographic crisis, is in fact fairly stable.

My guest today is Jack Greenberg. Jack is a Global Korea Scholar at the National Institute for International Education, Korea University. In a wide ranging interview, we discussed: the end of the South Korean dictatorship in 1987, the pervasiveness of corruption in the country today, the effect North Korean proximity has had on the South’s politics, South Korean’s obsessive relationship to education and work, and the country’s prospects in the medium term. 

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Erich Mielke was the head of East Germany's Ministry of State Security- also known as The Stasi- from 1957 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 

Given the Stasi has a reputation as perhaps the most meticulous secret police service in history, Mielke, hardened by the communist underworld of Weimar Germany, the Spanish Civil War and a Second World War labour camp, certainly has a lot to answer for. 

Mielke, and the Stasi, were the product of the creation of an inorganic, unnatural unit in East Germany. A communist country unloved and unwanted by its international protector, the Soviet Union, East Germany was not a country anybody in it had envisaged before it emerged onto the World map in 1949. It is impossible to separate the Stasi's influence from this challenging origin story.

My guest for today’s episode is Katja Hoyer. Katja is a German historian, journalist and writer who was born in East Germany and was a young child when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989. She is the author of two books: Blood and Iron, which examines the 1871-1918 German Empire, and, pertinent to this conversation, Beyond the Wall, which was released this year and sheds new light on life in East Germany.

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Mohamed bin Zayed has been the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since 2014, and the federation's President since 2022. 

Bin Zayed, or MbZ, has presided over a massive centralisation of power into the hands of the Abu Dhabi elite, and particularly his ruling family, the al-Nahyans. This has helped to construct an image of the UAE as being orderly, stable and dependable for global powers.

However, this image hides a dreadful human rights record in the UAE, characterised by coercion, harassment, renunciation of citizenship, and torture. In addition, the UAE have used these methods of repression against foreigners. One such person is my guest today. 

He is Matthew Hedges. Matthew is a British academic and author of Reinventing the Sheikhdom, which details the methods by which Mohamed bin Zayed has brought the state under his control. In May 2018, whilst researching the book, Matthew was prevented from boarding his flight at Abu Dhabi International, detained, and subjected to torture for the next six months. His story is horrifying, but fascinating, and reveals a great deal about the UK-UAE relationship. 

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Golda Meir served as prime minister of Israel from 1969 until 1974. Taking control of her country during a period of euphoria after the 1967 Six Day War, Meir was a member of Israel's founding generation. 

However, Israel's sense of infallibility was shattered after a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria, in what became the Yom Kippur War. Though Israel defeated its Arab neighbours for the third time in 25 years, Meir was quickly accused of complacency and unpreparedness, and resigned in near disgrace just 8 months after the conflict in 1974. 

But is this fair? Did Yom Kippur, as well as Meir’s political style, which quickly became outdated after she left office, invalidate her earlier achievements? Today’s episode seeks to shed light on this and more.

My guest today is Blake Flayton. Blake is a columnist with the Jewish Journal, an independent newspaper serving the Jewish community of Los Angeles. As well as Golda Meir’s career, we discuss the fraught founding of Israel in 1948, and the prospects for the Israeli left, which in recent years has lost ground to an even greater extent than the left in European countries

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Hafizullah Amin was the communist leader of Afghanistan for three ill-fated months in 1979. The end of his time in power- also the end of his life- marked the start of Afghanistan's descent into a forty year war. So disastrous was Amin's time in power that my guest considers him possibly the worst man in modern Afghan history. 

Amin reveals that most things in politics, and in war, are not inevitable. Countries end up the way they are, often due to choices, but also due to happenstance; as you’re about to hear, Amin was very lucky to even reach 50th birthday, even though it would be his last. Amin’s luck turned out to be Afghanistan’s deep misfortune. 

My guest today is Stephan Jensen. Stephan was an officer in the Norwegian Army, and in that capacity served in Mali and Afghanistan. He is currently writing a book on Afghanistan, titled The Triumph of Chaos: A History of the War in Afghanistan 1978-2021, which will be released next year. As well as Amin’s life, we delve into the Afghanistan Amin left behind, and whether the country will ever recover the relatively benign government it had before 1978. 

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Kais Saied has been the President of Tunisia since 2019. Just a few short years ago, Saied was a constitutional law professor, and Tunisia was seen as the only success story of the uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Now, Tunisia is slipping back into autocracy.

Why didn’t Tunisia’s flirtation with democracy work? Should we be surprised it didn’t work? What lessons do the last twelve years hold for other countries- and indeed, for future generations of Tunisians? These are the questions my guest and I grapple with today.

My guest today is Sarah Yerkes. Sarah has extensive experience studying and working in Tunisia, having worked as a Foreign Affairs Officer and Policy Planner at the US State Department. Now, Sarah is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  

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The Arctic Five are the five countries with coastlines on the Arctic Ocean. They are: Canada, Russia, Norway; through Alaska, The United States; and through Greenland, Denmark.

This collection of five countries we will use as a bridge to discussing the geopolitics of one of the world’s least visited, least talked about and least understood regions. Due to its remoteness and its emptiness, the Arctic is an object in World affairs; that is to say, it is a region that has things done to it, rather than doing things or deciding things, itself.

This passivity is deeply unfortunate, given that the future of normal life on Planet Earth depends so completely on the future of a relatively normal climate in the Arctic.

My guest today is Dr Becca Pincus. Becca is the Director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center, and conducts regular research on the behaviour of the Arctic States. We discuss the effects of and solutions to climate change in the Arctic, the extent of climate scepticism in today’s Republican Party, the ability for the smaller Arctic countries to affect policy change, and why Donald Trump wanted to buy Greenland off Denmark. 

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In a special episode of the podcast, I speak to three former guests about the divergent fortunes and trajectories of the governments in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia. 

In Turkey, Erdogan is emboldened following an election victory unexpected in some quarters; in Saudi Arabia, MBS is cautiously reforming the country's domestic and foreign policy in a bid to extend its longevity; in Russia, Vladimir Putin's regime is seemingly on the verge of collapse. 

My guests for this episode are: Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, Steven A. Cook; New York Times reporter and author of Blood and Oil, Justin Scheck; and Associate Fellow on the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme, John Lough.

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Rauf Denktash was the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from 1983 until 2005.

Given its crucial geopolitical position in the Eastern Med, Cyprus has been contested by different powers for centuries. In the modern day, this contestation occurs between Greece and Turkey, something compounded by the fact that Greeks and Turks both lived on the island and make up the Island’s two largest ethnic groups. In 1974, following a Greek-backed coup on the island, Turkey annexed the Northern half of Cyprus, and established the Republic over which Denktash presided for more than two decades.

Like Kosovo for Serbia, Cyprus poses a cautionary tale for nationalists, teaching them that they shouldn’t fixate on a piece of land that they will never be able to fully control. The Cyprus that Denktash believed in only ever existed in his mind, as he found out in 2003, when he opened the gates between Turkish and Greek Cyprus. To his astonishment, the people he had expected to throw themselves at one another in another episode of sectarian violence merely looked at one another, and carried on.

My guest today met Denktash many times, and is a true authority on Cyprus, having lived there for many years. He is James Ker-Lindsay, a visiting professor at LSEE, a London School of Economics research centre on South Eastern Europe. James also has a popular eponymous YouTube channel with over 100k subscribers, where he discusses various international conflicts and disputes. He is also due to move back to Cyprus very soon. 

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Khorloogiin Choibalsan was the leader of Communist Mongolia from 1939 until 1952. Known as "The Stalin of the Steppe", his life changed in 1933 when he agreed to become Stalin's lackey under the threat of execution for supposed collusion with Japanese spies.

This led Choibalsan to execute three percent of the Mongolian population in Purges commensurate with Stalin's. His career offers a fascinating insight into the character of Stalin, and also poses an interesting question as to how small countries such as Mongolia often have to settle for partial independence, if they wish to be free at all.

My guest today is Christopher P. Atwood. Chris is a professor of Mongolian and Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania, and has spent is career studying the Mongolian language and history. He also recently translated The Secret History of the Mongols, a semi-mythical account of the life of Genghis Khan, and the oldest surviving work in the Mongolian language. 

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James Callaghan was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1976 and 1979. He is also the only person to have held the UK's four Great Offices of State: Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister. 

This episode is the next in the "Rather Less Horrible" Series, where my guest and I discuss politicians less unpleasant than most of the others on the podcast, but whose careers still hold important lessons. 

Callaghan's time in power is a lesson in collective leadership; having kept his Labour Government together in a time of high inflation, low growth and strikes. Rishi Sunak, who faces similar challenges, would do well to take note of this prime minister somewhat forgotten in modern British politics. 

My guest today is a particularly special one given our subject; she is James Callaghan’s daughter, Baroness Margaret Jay. Margaret had a unique perspective on her father’s long political career, and also later served as a minister in the Tony Blair government. 

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Amfilohije Radović was Metropolitan- a high ranking position in the Orthodox Church- of Montenegro and the Littoral from 1990 until his death in 2020. 

Amfilohije was a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which also wields considerable influence in Montenegro. Serbia and Montenegro were joined in federation until 2006, when Montenegro voted to become an independent country. 

He was one of the key figures in a cultural conflict intrinsic to Montenegrin politics: should the country be a loyal ally of the Government in Belgrade, perhaps ruled by it directly, or should it govern its own affairs? 

Amfilohije was never coy about expressing his own opinions on this matter, and in 2019 led nationwide protests which saw the country elect a pro-Serb government the next year. Montenegro might be in NATO, it might be negotiating to join the EU, and it might have a veneer of a pro-Western place, but its place in the Western fold is by no means guaranteed. 

My guest today is Ljubomir Filipović. Ljubomir is a Montenegrin political scientist who focuses on foreign influence and information integrity. He is frequently invited onto global media channels to discuss developments in the Western Balkans, and works with the Atlantic Council of Montenegro and the McCain Institute. 

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Muhammadu Buhari served as the President of Nigeria between 2015 and 2023, having left office three weeks ago. Buhari is a longstanding character in Nigerian politics, having run for President five times, and led the country as a military dictator in the 1980s. 

The administration of Nigeria is made almost impossible by the intertwined issues of ethnic, linguistic and religious division, corruption, terrorism, poverty and population pressures. By the standards of Nigerian politicians, Buhari came to power with relatively good intentions to reform the state, and did not engage in the corrupt activity that ensnared so many others. 

But did he succeed? Given the challenges facing any Nigerian politics, was success, however defined, possible at all? That is the question at the heart of today's episode. 

My guest today is Ufuoma Egbamuno. Ufuoma is a Nigerian journalist who currently leads the Nigeria Info newsroom. He reports and tweets (@foskolo) on a wide range of subjects outside politics, including popular culture and sport. 

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Dragan Čović is one of the most powerful politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Bosnia's political system, the most complicated anywhere in the World, is designed to give the country's three ethnic groups- Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats- equal representation in government. This sounds reasonable- until one considers that Croats only make up 15% of the population. Čović is the man who has, for over twenty years, manipulated the political system to extract benefits for the Croats. 

My guest today would wager that the Bosnian Croats, who are Catholic, are much more powerful than the Muslim Bosniaks, who represent half of the country’s population. Worse still, he sees Čović, and the Bosnian Croats, as an instrument by which the Western powers keep Christians in charge of one of the only Muslim majority countries in Europe. 

My guest today is Reuf Bajrović. Reuf is the Vice President of the US-Europe Alliance in Washington D.C, and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was also the Bosnian Minister for Energy, Mining and Industry in 2015. 

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Christopher Hitchens was an Anglo-American writer, journalist, literary critic and essayist.

Not a thinker who one can characterise easily, the one thing linking all Hitchens’ writing and his utterances- he was a formidable debater- was his opposition to totalitarian thought. This often sparked controversy- especially his views on Islam and his support for the War in Iraq- but for all the descriptions of him as a shallow contrarian, the authenticity of his opposition to totalitarian ideologies cannot be denied.

My guest today is Alex O’Connor. Alex is the founder of the Cosmic Skeptic YouTube channel and associated blog and podcast, where discusses issues principally related to ethics and religion. As well as Hitchens' life and work, we discuss the future of religion in Britain and the wider Western World. 

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Józef Piłsudski was the founding father of modern day Poland, and the country’s most significant political figure from its formation in 1918 until his death in 1935.

Initially a committed democrat who wished to see a Poland free for ethnic minorities to live in, Piłsudski eventually decided that his fellow Poles were not enlightened enough to accept his vision of a free and multi-ethnic Poland, and ruled effectively by decree after 1926.

But Piłsudski’s story is much more than a simple case of fledgling democrat turned dictator; indeed, his leadership of Poland reveals the centrality of the country to developments in Europe throughout the interwar period. All people know of Interwar Poland is its invasion by the Nazis in 1939, but there is much more to it than that.

My guest today is Joshua D. Zimmerman. Joshua is an associate professor at Yeshiva University in New York, where he holds the Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History. He is also the author of Jozef Pilsudski: Founding Father of Modern Poland. 

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Robert Muldoon served as prime minister of New Zealand from 1975 to 1984. His direct, bullying style of leadership, which he claimed represented “government of the ordinary bloke”, made waves across the world, and is reminiscent of the tactics of modern demagogues like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.

Muldoon also represented a New Zealand still intertwined with Britain, its former imperial master, and closed off to the rest of the World. That New Zealand has since largely died, and the country has become more liberal, more open and more culturally at ease with itself. In this sense, Muldoon’s story might tell us much about the changing Commonwealth, and whether the Crown abroad, on the weekend of the Coronation of a new monarch, has a future.

My guest today is Bernard Hickey. Bernard is an independent New Zealand journalist and political commentator, he has a very informative and wide-ranging Substack newsletter called The Kaka, which I recommend to you all.

The Hated and the Dead now has its own website. Please do share the website with as many people as you can, and post it to your social media feeds. 

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Pablo Iglesias was the Second Deputy Prime Minister of Spain from 2020 until 2021. For the first time, my guest and I take a look at a figure from Europe’s modern left: Iglesias was the leader and co-founder of anti-austerity party Podemos- "we can" in Spanish.

Although Podemos and Iglesias did not topple the Socialist Party and sweep to power as Syriza did in Greece, they have entered government alongside them, and to some extent have been successful in shifting Spain’s economic policy leftward. Iglesias, whose rather petty infighting and sniping quickly alienated many Spaniards from him, has now left politics.

However, Podemos remains crucial to understanding how Europe’s politics has changed since 2008. The melding together of unbridled economic and social liberalism, which seemed hyper-dominant in 90s and 2000s, has been replaced with a politics both more left-wing and more right-wing than what preceded it.

My guest for today is Michael Reid. Michael is a senior editor at the Economist, where he writes on matters mostly related to Latin America but also to Spain. He is also the author of a new book Spain: The Trials & Triumphs of a Modern European Country. 

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Francisco Macías Nguema was the 1st President of Equatorial Guinea from 1968 until his execution in 1979. His wooden public appearances, punctuated by rambling and spasmodic outbursts, often explained away as kookiness, were in fact suggestions of something else: that Macías was completely mad. 

Suffering from hallucinations and paranoia, Macías’ fear of assassination led him to murder perhaps as much as a third of the population of Equatorial Guinea. Some of the anecdotes my guest tells about Macías in the conversation you’re about to hear are totally unbelievable.

My guest today is the journalist and author Paul Kenyon. Paul is the author of several books including Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa. Dictatorland contains one chapter dedicated to the plight of Equatorial Guinea, but more widely tells the story of various African countries in the first generation after independence, and how so many fell into dictatorship and kleptocracy. 

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Rafael Trujillo was Generalissimo of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. The violence deployed by his regime was extraordinary, with Trujillo’s men murdering an estimated 30,000 Haitians in a matter of weeks in 1937, not to mention thousands of Dominicans across three decades, in what my guest today describes as the violence of the Trujillo plantation.

Trujillo’s story, and indeed the story of the Dominican Republic, can be read as a story of domination, perhaps suffocation, by the United States. The image of the United States as the Great Satan in the World, which can only do wrong, is a simplistic and misleading one, but it isn’t difficult to see where it comes from if you read about the Caribbean and Latin America.

My guest today is Junot Diaz. Junot is a Dominican-American author, who has written multiple novels including The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008. He is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his insights on the experience of growing up Dominican in the United States are fascinating. 

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Helmut Kohl served as Chancellor of West Germany between 1982 and 1990, and as Chancellor of Germany between 1990 and 1998. The story of German reunification, which Kohl presided over, is the focus of today's episode.

In thirty years, Kohl’s West Germany, divided and incomplete, has become the powerhouse of Europe, rebuilding Eastern Europe after the Fall of Communism and becoming master of the Euro. But despite this, Germany has also become more internally polarised, more unequal, and more anxious about its place in the World.

In this sense, Germany is a sort of microcosm for the entire Western Alliance; it has become larger than ever before, but also more fractious, and less self-confident than it was before.

My guest for this conversation is Kristina Spohr. Kristina is a Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, and is the author of several books, including Post Wall Post Square, which details the building of the post-Cold War World in the crucial years between 1989 and 1992. 

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador, referred to hereafter as AMLO, has been President of Mexico since 2018. AMLO's redistributive, pro-development populism has proven highly attractive in a country which seems perennially stuck between the rich world and the poor one, with the President promising to instigate the Fourth Great Transformation in Mexican history.

How has that gone? Underwhelmingly might capture it. Mexico today is not a disaster society by any means, but AMLO hasn’t really vanquished the idea that Mexicans remain in between the rich world and the poor world at all. Whilst hardworking, there is a great naivety about AMLO’s policies which perhaps brings his judgement into question. He also retains a highly simplistic view of how democracy works; namely that if he doesn’t get his way, he tries to blow the system up.

My guest for this conversation is Chris Sabatini. Chris is a Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House in London. Chris has recently finished editing a new book, Reclaiming Human Rights in a Changing World Order. As well as AMLO, Chris and I discussed the Drug War, and US attitudes towards Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to introduce Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. 

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20 years on from the Iraq War, we look at Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq from 1979 until 2003. 

The 2003 Invasion, and the lead up to it, represents how poorly figures at the top of government can understand their counterparts and the countries they lead. The US did not understand Iraq well at all; but an important second part to that statement that is often glossed over is that Saddam really didn’t understand the US, either. If he had, he, or his regime, might still be in charge of Iraq today. 

I hope that this episode gives people a better sense of what Iraq is like 20 years on from the War- a part of the story often not considered enough- and a clearer picture of where US foreign policy lies today. The US is still haunted by Iraq, and in this sense, the Iraq War cannot be seen as separate or removed from the World we live in today; on the contrary, the global power dynamics of 2023 were forged there.

My guest for this conversation is Shadi Hamid. Shadi is senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute. He has also written various books about the Middle East, including The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea, which was released in October. Shadi’s perspective on what happened after 2003 is nuanced in a debate which has been severely lacking that quality, and may challenge those of you with particularly negative feelings towards the War in Iraq. 

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Andrej Babiš is the Czech Republic's richest man, and served as prime minister from 2017 until 2021. He was also the losing candidate in this year's presidential election, which to some extent ended up being one of those contests known for the person who lost it, rather than who won. 

Babiš’s premiership, far from the runaway modernising success he promised, was dominated by scandals focused on alleged conflicts of interest. To some, he also signified a dilution of the Czech Republic's support for Western institutions.

Babiš was no longer prime minister by the time the War in Ukraine started last year, but Putin’s invasion cast a long shadow over February’s presidential election. Babiš, forced to pander to voters by promoting causes it wasn’t clear he believed in, promised a less-than-steadfast support for Ukraine, with many claiming his presidency would constitute the Czech Republic being a bridge between East and West. 

My guest for this conversation is Jan Molaček. Jan is the Editor of Denik N, which is the Czech Republic’s first crowdfunded digital newspaper. He also works on Radiozurnal, the biggest radio station in his country. 

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Rupert Murdoch is the most famous media mogul of the last fifty years. Australian by birth but American by citizenship, he owns The Sun, the now defunct News of the World, the New York Post, Twentieth Century Fox and the Wall Street Journal.

Amid the rise of social media, the vice-like grip that he once had over celebrity gossip and media through print seems to have diminished. His reputation in the UK was nearly destroyed following the phone hacking scandal in 2011, and for left-wing opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, he remains lucifer in the flesh.

My guest for this conversation is Peter Jukes. Peter has had a long career in journalism, and is the author of three different books about Murdoch, including The Rise and Fall of the House of Murdoch. He is also the editor of Byline Times, a monthly newspaper that focuses on investigative journalism, seeking to expose the nefarious activities of the rich and powerful. 

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Edward VIII reigned as King of the United Kingdom for 325 days in 1936. He is the only British monarch to voluntarily renounce the throne, a decision which eventually led to the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

The reason why 1936 was a year of three Kings was Edward’s infatuation with American socialite Wallis Simpson. Among royal observers, Edward VIII has become a shorthand for a monarchy in crisis, and for dereliction of duty. But is this fair? Was Edward badly treated? Would it have been a good thing for Britain to keep hold of a King who manifestly didn’t want to do the job?

My guest today is the journalist and writer Anna Pasternak. Anna has devoted much of her working life to writing about the British Royal Family, and is the author of The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson, and the controversial Princess in Love, which documented Princess Diana’s affair with James Hewitt. She also writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard. 

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There is little about the Western Balkans that its inhabitants agree on. Land, language, religion and belonging are all contested between Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians and Albanians, who live beside one another, next to borders they don’t always recognise. One such group is the Kosovo Serbs; a largely Orthodox Christian group who live in Kosovo but identify with and are loyal to Serbia, often putting them at odds with the Albanian Muslim majority. 

For centuries, the Serbs have seen Kosovo as their homeland, and see the replacement- their word, not mine- of Serbs in the region by Albanian Muslims as an example of a regional- and since the wars of the 1990s, international- conspiracy against Serbia. It is the Kosovo Serbs, their beliefs and grievances, that are the subject of today’s conversation.

My guest for this conversation is Bojan Elek, a researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank dedicated to covering goings-on in the Western Balkans. Bojan himself is Serb but was born in Kosovo, so his insights on this minority group not always treated well by their Albanian neighbours were fascinating to hear. 

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Anwar Sadat was the President of Egypt between 1970 and his assassination in 1981. Sadat changed Egypt utterly during his time in power, recognising Israel and aligning with the US following the anti-colonial rule of Nasser.

The about-turns made by Sadat during his 11-year presidency make him one of the post-1945 World’s most controversial figures, and he ultimately paid for his cosying up to Israel with his life. But did his actions make Egypt more stable and more prosperous? This is the question at the heart of today's episode.

My guest for today’s conversation is Steven Cook. Steven is a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he contributes regularly to publications such as Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He is also the author of many books, including False Dawn: Protest, Democracy and Violence in the New Middle East, released in 2017. 

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Charles Haughey served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland three times between 1979 and 1992.  His career, saddled by accusations of helping the IRA, extraordinary financial irregularities and infidelity would make Donald Trump flush an even darker orange.

Like Boris Johnson, Haughey is a demonstration that charm, wit and immense intelligence count for little in politics without strong moral and ethical foundations.

My guest for this conversation is Gary Murphy. Gary is associate professor of government and Head of the School of Law at Dublin City University. In 2014, he was asked by Haughey’s son Sean to write a biography of his father- the result was Gary’s 2021 book, simply titled Haughey. 

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Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the leader of Pakistan from 1971 until 1977. Zulfikar took power in Pakistan at one of the lowest points in its history; the secession of East Pakistan in 1971, now Bangladesh, had called into question the basic concept on which Pakistan had been founded that the Muslim peoples of South Asia should live in one country. 

Bhutto, a Western educated leftist, sought to reinvigorate his bruised Islamic country by uniting it around socialism. The fact that he only ruled Pakistan for five and a half years should probably give you an idea as to how this went, with his government struggling to sidestep the powerful influences of the military and the tribal kinships. The result was a coup in 1977, Bhutto’s execution two years later, and 12 years of military rule. 

My guest for this conversation is Raza Rumi, a Pakistani journalist and public policy analyst based in the United States. Our conversation about Bhutto, encapsulating India, East Pakistan, the army and the kinships builds to a central question: can anyone govern Pakistan? 

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Nursultan Nazarbayev served as President of Kazakhstan from 1991 until 2019. He remained a backseat driver until last year, when Kazakhstan’s biggest protests in decades finally put an end to Nazarbayev’s 35-year rule.

Nazarbayev oversaw his country’s transition to independence and capitalism, and established strong relations with the United States and China. Temporarily at least, he established some semblance of order over a country many denied was coherent enough to survive, given that ethnic Russians actually outnumbered Kazakhs at the country’s founding.

On the other hand, Nazarbayev had a record in elections most dictators can only dream of, winning his last election with 98% of the vote, and jailing and murdering opposition figures with increasing passion as his rule progressed. He also maintained close relations with Russia, a friendship that has now come under unprecedented strain following Russia’s invasion of another one of its neighbours.

My guest for this episode is Joanna Lillis. Joanna is a British journalist who has lived in Kazakhstan since 2005, and writes principally for The Economist and Eurasianet. Joanna is also the author of recently published Dark Shadows, which examines Kazakhstan’s independent history. 

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Kim Campbell served as prime minister of Canada for just 132 days in 1993, when she led her Progressive Conservative Party to catastrophic defeat in an election; the governing party won just two seats at the 1993 election. 

Campbell's premiership bears some superficial resemblances with that of Liz Truss time in charge of the UK, and the British Conservatives seem set for a terrible election defeat at the next election here. What can they learn from Campbell's experience?

My guest for today's episode is Daniel Beland, a political scientist who works at McGill University in Montreal. 

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Thaksin Shinawatra served as prime minister of Thailand from 2001 until 2006. For a while, Thaksin looked to be the future of Thai politics during the final years of the ageing King Rama IX. However, the military, seeing Thaksin as a threat to the future of the monarchy, instigated a coup against Thaksin’s government in September 2006.

Whilst Thailand’s civilian government is technically able to govern without interference from the monarchy, Thai politics actually resembles a constant tussle between the monarchy, backed up by the army, and the civilian government. Thaksin is probably the most significant figure on the civilian government side of that equation during the 21st century so far.

Whilst the story of a democratically elected leader overthrown by the military usually sees that leader painted in a heroic light, Thaksin was a complex and imperfect character, embroiling himself in scandals related to his former business career. Though living in self-imposed exile in Dubai, he still towers over Thailand’s political system 17 years after being deposed, suggesting a self-importance often observed among politicians. It’s not hard to conclude it might be time for Thaksin to leave Thai politics be. Whether he does or not, Thai politics looks set for a turbulent future, amid the unpopular reign of a new King, and the most fervent anti-monarchy protests the country has ever seen.

Few people are better placed to speak to all this than my guest today. Pavin Chachavalpongpun (@PavinKyoto) is a Thai academic who wrote a book about Thaksin, Reinventing Thailand: Thaksin and his Foreign Policy. He is also something of a marked man in the eyes of the Thai monarchy, having been the victim of a home invasion in his apartment in 2019, during which he was attacked by a supporter of the monarchy. As well as Thaksin’s career and legacy, we discuss Thailand’s experience of colonisation, or lack thereof, and whether this has actually turned out to be to the country's advantage. 

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Juan Perón served as the President of Argentina between 1946 and 1955, and again for nine months just before his death in 1974. Despite dying nearly half a century ago, he still largely defines Argentine political discourse, and even many policy debates still revolve around whether single policies are sufficiently "peronist".

This bizarre state of affairs is made stranger still by Perón's distinctly mixed record as leader, presiding over a considerable fall in Argentina's economic prospects. The question of why this is the case is the central topic of today's episode.

My guest for this conversation is Jill Hedges, who works as Deputy Director of Analysis at Oxford Analytica, a geopolitical advisory firm. Jill is the author of various books about Argentina, including Juan Perón: The Life of the People’s Colonel. 

In this wide ranging conversation, we also discuss the importance of the military in Argentine politics, the truth about Argentina’s harbouring of members of the European far-right after World War II, and the central role of football in Argentine culture. 

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In an end-of-year special, I invited back three of my guests from 2022 to discuss new developments in their areas of interest: the COVID protests in China (Aaron Friedberg), the Scholz chancellorship in Germany (Oliver Moody), and the new ceasefire in Ethiopia (Martin Plaut).

Out of these discussions emerges a common thread that the World is in a state of real flux heading into the New Year. The prospect of the USA, China and Russia simultaneously struggling likely means fewer conflict resolutions, longer downturns and higher prices. With recession hammering developed and developing economies, and inflation throwing question marks over the extent of Western resolve in Ukraine, the instability of recent years seems unlikely to subside in 2023. 

In other words... good luck!

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Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1964.

Unexpectedly coming to power after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev inherited a country victorious in World War II and possibly on the road to world domination, but which had also been ripped apart by decades of terror and purges. Khrushchev, in an act of immense political courage, derided Stalinism and closed many of Stalin’s labour camps, undeniably making the Soviet Union a more tolerable place to live. Whilst the 1950s saw technological advances and foreign policy successes, Khrushchev’s detractors, always uneasy about destalinisation, gained greater traction as Khrushchev’s policies lost momentum in the early 60s, and they successfully deposed him in 1964. 

This fate puts Khrushchev in the company of a number of Russian leaders who also attempted to reform the state they inherited, but lost control of the situation and lost power. Granted, Khrushchev didn’t meet the same fate as the reformist Tsar Alexander II, who was assassinated in 1881, but his time in charge of the Soviet Union is generally regarded a truncated failure. In a time when a reactionary Russian leader is faltering, Khrushchev’s cautious reforming instincts might well resurface in modern Russia quite soon. That future reformer, be they young or old, close to Putin or unknown to him entirely, must learn the lessons of Khrushchev’s leadership, if he or she- probably he, if Russian leaders are anything to go by- is to be successful. 

My guest for this conversation is Alex Kokcharov, a London-based Risk analyst who covers events related to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. We discussed Khrushchev’s sidestepping of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s- a fine achievement, considering the calibre of some of those who did not manage to do this- his experiences organising the Russian war effort at Stalingrad and Kursk, and whether Khrushchev’s approach to politics, more contemplative and compromising than his predecessor- prepared him well for his time at the top of the Soviet hierarchy. 

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Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian nationalist leader who served as his country's first independent President from 1991 until 1992. Under him, Georgia became a hellish place, ripped apart by civil war, organised crime and militia violence.

Sadly, Gamsakhurdia cannot be acquitted in all of this as a placeholder- his commitment to an ethnically homogenous Georgia, in a part of the world anything but, was always going to lead to problems. Gamsakhurdia’s own life ended in a Tblisi bunker in 1993, probably by suicide, and is a rather sordid reflection of how Georgia’s own utopian dream for its future died on its feet in the early 1990s.

Listening to my guest today, Gamsakhurdia reminded me of two former subjects on this podcast, the Welsh nationalist leader Saunders Lewis, and the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom also had a no-holds-barred and blunt approach to nationalism. Thankfully, the country has taken a different and cannier path to self-government since, and is a relative success story among the post-Soviet states.

My guest for this conversation today is Tom de Waal. Tom is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, and is one of the leading authorities on the Caucasus region. I would highly recommend is book The Caucasus: An Introduction, to anyone looking to read up on this amazing and enigmatic part of our continent. As well as Gamsakhurdia’s life, Tom and I discussed the bizarre interplay between Stalinism and Georgian nationalism, Georgia’s place in Europe, and how a country and a region so far away from the capitals of diplomacy has forged relations with the great World powers. 

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Paul Kagame has been President of Rwanda since 2000. He can be blamed more than any other person for the unsatisfactory way in which the 1994 Rwandan Genocide has been remembered, both inside Rwanda and across the World. 

Kagame has centralised power around himself, painting himself as the man who stopped the terrible events of 1994 in their tracks, and telling Rwandans that only he can bring stability to a country that in most of our lifetimes tore itself apart in the worst way imaginable. 

As my guest today tells us, this is not only fatuous, but worse, the West believes Kagame. Kagame is seen as a reliable ally of the governments in Washington and London. The West has chosen not to delve into the conflicting narratives surrounding the genocide, and lazily believes the one that suits its interests best: that Kagame, whilst a little rough around the edges, is a consummate stabilitocrat. He wouldn’t hurt a fly; a person perhaps, but as long as he doesn’t present problems for them, they’re willing to turn the other cheek. 

My guest for today’s conversation is Michela Wrong, a British journalist and author who focuses on Africa, previously working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times. Her recent book, Do Not Disturb, details the terrible lengths to which Kagame has gone to remain in power.  

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George Orwell is perhaps the most important journalist and writer of political fiction of the twentieth century. Though he only lived to 47, dying of tuberculosis in 1950, he did more in half a century than most would in three of four lifetimes. Reluctantly signing up, and then ceasing to be, an imperial officer in Burma, voluntarily entering destitution in Paris, and fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was never afraid to stare suffering and desperation right in the face. 

He was also never one to run with a crowd; of all Orwell’s firmly held beliefs, in anti-imperialism, in freedom from oppression and opposition to totalitarianism, none were more important to him than the freedom to think for yourself. This has made him many enemies on the left, a place Orwell called home. The brilliant thing about Orwell as a political thinker is that most of the attacks levied at him, and the devices used to deploy them, resemble the sort of attacks directed towards the enemies of the totalitarian regime in 1984, his most read and celebrated novel. 

But in a world free from Soviet domination- which Orwell devoted the last years of his life to criticising- what relevance does he hold? Had he lived a longer life, what would he have become? What would he think today? These are the central questions discussed in today’s show. 

My guest for today is David Osland (@david__osland). David is an unabashed left-winger, and a journalist, who writes primarily for the website LabourHub. 

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Leonard Leo is an American legal activist who has done more than any other person to shift the United States Supreme Court to the political right. Pivotal in the selection and confirmation of all six conservative judges currently sitting on the Court, Leo could be seen as ground zero for the Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has jeopardised abortion rights in the US. 

The Supreme Court, whose role it is to ensure that legislation passed by Congress is constitutional, is increasingly becoming the final word in US political life. Therefore, the liberal-conservative balance of the nine judges sitting on it is, other than control of the White House, the most visceral and important litmus test for which side is winning America's so-called culture war, or as comedian Bill Maher recently put it, the “Cold Civil War”.

My guest for this conversation is Ken Vogel, who writes for the New York Times, and primarily investigates the influence of big money in his country’s politics. He is the author of a recent exposé of Leonard Leo, which you can read online. 

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Sepp Blatter served President of FIFA, football's international governing body, between 1998 and 2015. To mark the beginning of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, my guest and I take a look at his time in charge of the world's most popular sport. 

The irony of the Qatar decision is that Blatter didn’t actually want the World Cup to go there; instead, he lost control of the corruption that had infested world football governance for decades prior.  

Amid some of the other things currently going on in the world, many might claim that focusing on something as trivial as a football tournament is unimportant. But I'm not so sure; there is, for example, something rather fitting about millions of Brits shivering in their freezing homes due to soaring energy bills, watching football matches played and attended by the wealthiest people in the world. And despite the constant attempts to make football a more accepting sport for gay fans and players, the current world cup and the one before it have been hosted by two of the most intolerant countries one could hope to find. On the contrary, then, the Qatar story isn’t a distraction from the worst things happening in the world today, but a reflection of them.

 My guest for this episode is Martyn Ziegler, who is the Chief Sports Reporter for the Times and Sunday Times, and is the author of a recent article exposing the Qatar World Cup bid for that publication. As well as Blatter’s career, we discuss the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in world football, the potential for future tournaments to be hosted by unpleasant regimes,  whether there is too much football played today, and, on a lighter note, who Martyn thinks will win the World Cup in Qatar.

Angela Merkel served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 until 2021. This impressive tenure makes her the second longest-serving Chancellor since the Second World War.

Merkel’s time in power was characterised by a series of major crises. Over Merkel’s sixteen years as Chancellor, the World became a much scarier and more unstable place. This conversation deals mainly with Merkel’s handling of four crises: the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis, and the relationship with two troublesome world powers, Russia and China. 

Whilst she steered Germany through this period, many have criticised Merkel for merely attempting to manage crises rather than solve them. To give Merkel her due, broadly managing crises, as the Germans have done, is better than broadly failing to manage them, as her British and American counterparts did. This conversation isn’t supposed to make you love or hate Merkel, but to make up your own mind. In truth, she probably isn’t deserving of such strong emotions in either direction.

My guest for this conversation is Oliver Moody. Oliver is the Berlin correspondent for the Times, and I’d encourage you all to read his analysis of what still is by far the most important country in the European Union. As well as Merkel’s handling of the four crises, we discuss Germany’s democratic future, and whether the country’s immediate political future will be as stable as its recent past.  

The Kaczyński Brothers, Lech and Jarosław, have exerted considerable influence over the politics of Poland for more than twenty years. Lech served as President from 2005 until his death in a plane crash in 2010, and Jarosław served as prime minister in 2006 and still leads the Law and Justice party (PiS in Polish) to this day.

As my guest today explains, the plane crash of 2010 which claimed Lech's life was much more than a personal tragedy, precipitating a polarisation of Polish politics and the election of a new Law and Justice government in 2015. But this government was a much more conservative iteration of the Kaczyńskis’ government that had taken power ten years earlier. Since 2015, Law and Justice has co-opted the Polish media, attempted to restrict abortion rights, and used increasingly hardline rhetoric on LGBT issues.

Other countries that have experienced similar political phenomena in recent years have often languished in economic stagnation high unemployment in the years prior. But the interesting thing about Poland is it hasn’t stagnated since the Fall of Communism; on the contrary, it has flourished, even seeing handsome economic growth in 2008. Poland, then, is a case study of cultural, rather than economic dislocation.

My guest today is Stanley Bill, who is the Director of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He also founded the news site Notes from Poland, which examines issues within contemporary Polish politics and society. Notes from Poland also has its own podcast, and this interview will be going out on that platform, too.

Ali Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, and previously served as President in the 1980s. This podcast is released at what appears to be a moment of mounting crisis for the Islamic regime, with protests across the country going into their seventh consecutive week. 

Domestically, Khamenei's time as leader has been characterised on the one hand by consolidation of the regime after the Iran-Iraq War, but also by passionate disagreements in civil society over how puritanical Iranian religious doctrine should be. The presidency has changed hands from stalwart conservatives like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to reformer Hassan Rouhani, and back again in 2021 to hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. 

With each change has come a greater fracturing of Iranian society, and a slow drip-drip of protests. Khamenei, at 83, is still at the helm, and has recently spoken out against the protests and reaffirmed his support for President Raisi. The question of these protests is: will they be different to former demonstrations, lasting the course, and perhaps precipitating a change of regime? I generally believe that those who have knowledge don’t predict, and those who predict have no knowledge, but it’s nonetheless interesting to speculate on Iran’s future. 

Joining me to discuss Khamenei and Iran is Borzou Daragahi (@borzou), an Iranian-American journalist who works as an international correspondent for the Independent. Borzou is a member of Iran’s Gen Xers, who came of age in the Ayatollah’s tumultuous first decade in power. His comparisons of his generation and the current generation, who are much less squeamish about protesting against the regime, were great to listen to. 

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Sweden Democrats are the first far-right party in Sweden’s parliament. Unlike Britain's UKIP or Spain's Vox, both of which split off from mainstream conservative parties, the Sweden Democrats’ origins in fascism and the fringes of Swedish political thinking is well-documented. 

First entering parliament in 2010, Sweden Democrats, led by the bespectacled Jimmie Akesson, now support a right-wing government propelled to power after many years of riots and shootings in the country’s cities. The party has increased its vote share at every election since the 1990s, something which has coincided, and in part been caused by, an increase in mass immigration, especially Islamic immigration. 

The Sweden that emerges from the conversation today is plagued by political extremism and anxiety. Where does this leave Sweden’s reputation for tolerance and liberalism? Was this merely an illusion? Did it ever exist in the first place? This is the central theme of today’s podcast.

My guest today is the journalist Anders Lindberg, who is political editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, or Evening Paper. As well as the Sweden Democrats, we discuss Sweden’s approach to handling the 2015 migrant crisis, the country’s welfare model, and whether Sweden will see a liberal approach to immigration again. 

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Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, and I’ve yet to cover any single person who has exerted a bigger effect on the world we live in today than him. When he died in August this year, the outpouring of grief for the 91-year-old in the West was immense; he was heralded as the man who ended the Cold War, and, through his signing of a 1987 nuclear treaty with Ronald Reagan, as the man who brought the world back from the brink of total destruction. 

However, Gorbachev’s legacy would lead you to the conclusion that the greater an impact a person leaves on the world, the less the world agrees on what exactly it is they left behind. Because for all the praise Gorbachev garnered in the West, those who lead Russia today see a very different legacy. Gorbachev wasn’t just the last leader of the Soviet Union; he was the last leader of an economic and military superpower. When the Soviet Union fell, Russia, the heart of that empire, lost 25% of its territory in three years. The 1990s was horrendous for ordinary Russians, with GDP per capita in the country more than halving across the decade. The degree to which this economic emasculation can be blamed on Gorbachev, who left power in 1991, is debateable, but there’s little doubting he lit the fuse under the disintegration of the Soviet Empire.

Fast forward thirty years to the present, and democracy in Russia is dead, and an orthodox Christian nationalist regime is waging the worst war in Europe since 1945. The doomsday clock, which indicates how close the world is to nuclear war, is now closer to midnight (i.e. total destruction) than at any time during the Cold War. Gorbachev’s legacy, in other words, is complicated, but you can’t overlook him if you want to understand the mess we’re in today. 

The person I’ve chosen to talk to about Gorbachev is someone who has spent his adult life looking at Russia and watching the slow-motion disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, John Lough worked as a NATO representative in Moscow, and worked as an international advisor to Russian oil company TNK-BP from 2003 until 2008. He is now an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and the Senior Vice President at global risk advisory firm Highgate. 

As well as Gorbachev’s career, we discuss the air of inevitability surrounding the Soviet Union’s collapse, the emergence of right-wing nationalism in Russia, and whether the so-called “unipolar moment”- the period after the Cold War, where the United States seemed completely untouchable- was really a good thing for its foreign policy. 

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Isaias Afwerki, usually known as Isaias, is Eritrea’s only ever President, having served in the role since 1993. After rising through the ranks of Eritrea’s liberation movement during a thirty-year war for independence against Ethiopia, Isaias has instituted a colossal centralisation of power around himself; Eritrea has no free newspapers, no constitution, no parliament; it doesn’t even have a formal budget. The country also has one of the strictest systems of conscription in the world. 

 Though this state of affairs is very unpleasant to the ordinary Eritreans wo have to live  with it every day, the international community would probably be happy leaving Isaias be if he left the world alone. But this isn’t what Isaias has done. Since 1993, Isaias has involved Eritrea in wars in Sudan, Somalia, the DRC and most significantly Ethiopia, where, since 2020, the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments have been waging war against the Tigrayans. This war is the deadliest war the world has seen this decade so far, and Isaias, who hates the Tigrayans, is largely to blame for it. Never more than Isaias has my guest and I discussed a single person so singularly to blame for so much harm. 

My guest today is Martin Plaut. Martin is a journalist specialising in the Horn of Africa region, he worked as a BBC news journalist for nearly thirty years and currently works for Chatham House. Along with Sarah Vaughan, he is the lead author on an upcoming book, Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War, due to be released in February 2023. As well as the War in Tigray, we discuss Eritrea’s colonial history, the country’s long struggle for independence, and the implications of being governed not just by one group of people for thirty years, but by a single individual. 

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Hassan al-Turabi is arguably the most important figure in Sudan's independent history.  Whilst never technically leading the Northeast African country, he influenced successive Sudanese regimes, and was frequently referred to as the “power behind the throne” in the first ten years of the leadership of Omar al-Bashir.

Turabi’s role in slowly imposing Sharia Law on the Sudanese people and instigating the 1989 coup that brought Bashir to power also made him one of the most successful Islamist politicians in the Muslim world. 

Bashir’s time in power was a terrible thirty years for Sudan, with the country experiencing two brutal civil wars, and ultimately the division of the country between north and south in 2011. Even though Turabi left the stage before this, his role in the initial 1989 coup means at least some blame must be apportioned to him, making him a worthy and interesting candidate for the podcast. His own philosophy also invites questions about the role Islamism plays across North Africa and the Middle East.

My guest today is Willow Berridge, a lecturer in history at the University of Newcastle. Willow has written extensively on Sudanese history and Islamism, and her 2015 book Hassan al-Turabi: Islamist Politcs and Democracy in Sudan, documents our subject’s life and influence. We discuss the origins of Islamism in Sudan, Turabi’s desire to stay hidden from view, and whether this helped him or hindered him, his relationship with Osama bin Laden, who lived in Sudan for a period in the 1990s, and much more. 

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Viktor Orban has been prime minister of Hungary since 2010, and previously served in that role from 1998 until 2002. In that first stint as Hungarian leader, Orban passed without comment in European Union circles, but his second premiership has seen him come up against the EU on issues related to the rule of law, LGBT rights, and the 2015 migrant crisis. 

Orban is now fully fledged right-wing populist, but unlike other people who fit that description, sees himself as the international poster boy for this type of politics, making him Hungary’s most divisive export. Hungary’s future looks, in many ways, very bleak- it has a flatlining economy, largely due to falling population, something likely to lead to scarcity and rising prices in the long run. It is not helped by the fact that Orban is hoping his party, which has little novel or innovative to say about Hungary’s economic situation, will stay in power until 2060. 

Could Orban happen here? Hungary, a nation only thirty years free from communism, and suffering from endemic corruption and economic stagnation, was fertile ground for the right-wing politics of Orban. What about countries like Britain, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, which have much longer traditions of democracy and the rule of law? 

My guest today is Viktoria Serdült. Viktoria is an author at Visegrad Insight, a media site that focuses on Hungary and its Central European neighbours, as well as HVG, Hungary’s leading economic and political weekly. We discuss the seeds of Orban’s rise in the fall of Hungarian communism, his manipulation of the media, his government’s family planning policy, the chasm in social attitudes that exists across the European continent, and the 2015 migrant crisis. 

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Lula da Silva is a candidate for the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Election, taking place today. He previously served as President of Brazil between 2003 and 2010. On the face of it, his achievements as President are hard to criticise, whatever your political leanings. On the one hand, he oversaw a massive increase in the Brazilian median income. On the other, he slowed the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. By 2010, many saw Brazil as one of the 21st century’s foremost rising stars. 

However, the decade after Lula left office, the 2010s, was a disaster for Brazil. The commodity boom that underpinned Brazil’s economic expansion under Lula turned to bust after the 2008 financial crisis, and Lula’s chosen successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office in 2016. The decade closed with the election of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, who has accelerated the Amazon’s decline, and talks sympathetically of the country’s military dictatorship of the 1960s and 70s. How much was Lula to blame for this unravelling? The answer: it’s complicated. 

My guest today is the Brazilian journalist Adriana Carranca, who writes for various publications including the New York Times, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. Much of Adriana’s work centres on the Middle East, but she also keeps a keen eye on the politics of her own country and has a nuanced view of this election. 

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There have been demands for greater autonomy for Scotland within the UK since the country joined the Union in 1707, but it was only in 1997- 25 years ago this month- that Scotland finally got its own parliament. 

1997 was the culmination of a long struggle for self-government led by a group of people in Scotland, some left-wing, others right, many non-descript. These people, the devolutionists, are the subject of today’s episode. Whilst few can, in and of itself, criticise any group’s desire for self-government, the matter of devolution- that is to say, the giving of powers- to parliaments in Scotland and Wales, has proven highly controversial. 

Many British commentators argue that the granting of a Parliament to the Scots, far from satisfying demands for self-government, merely gave them a taste for it, leading inevitably to calls for total separation from the UK. Whether that’s true is up for debate, but there is little doubt that many people in England have grown tired of the Scots, and are now for the first time contemplating English independence. 

My guest for this conversation is a man who can truly describe himself as a devolutionist. Lord Jack McConnell served as the First Minister of Scotland- the position now held by Nicola Sturgeon- from 2001 until 2007. Jack is the first former head of government I have had on the podcast, and it was brilliant to speak to him about his own experiences running Scotland in the early days of the parliament. We discuss the flourishing of the modern Scottish, as opposed to British, identity; the government of Margaret Thatcher as a catalyst for change, the complex interplay between Brexit and Scottish independence, the future of Jack’s Labour Party in Scotland, and much more. 

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Xi Jinping, the world's most powerful man, seemed like a good fit for the 50th episode of the podcast. Thank you to all of you who have stuck by the Hated and the Dead for its first half-century; there's plenty more to come. 

Xi has been President of the People's Republic of China since 2012. In a few weeks time, he is set to embark on an unprecedented third term as China's leader, which will make him China's most powerful leader since Mao- if he isn't already. 

It is Xi’s international profile, especially his relationship with the United States, that is the focus of the conversation you’re about to hear. There is an important story to be told about Xi’s misdemeanours inside China- Xinjiang, surveillance, party purges and Tibet all spring to mind- but these are issues for another episode. On the world stage, Xi’s time in power- he took over in 2012- has taken place against the backdrop of a China that has continued to grow in stature and importance. 

At the same time, however, China’s relationship with the US has noticeably soured. The symbiotic US-China relationship of the 2000s has given way to a trade war, a tech war, and escalating military tensions between the world’s two most powerful countries. It’s entirely plausible that relations between the US and China are now so frosty, that Xi himself, always forthright in his intention to make the 21st century a Chinese one, doesn’t matter very much anymore, and that America and China are now on a collision course no matter their leaders- though the exact nature of that collision is still unclear. 

My guest today is the American political scientist, Aaron Friedberg. Aaron is the Co-Director of the Center for International Security Studies at Princeton University, and recently released the book Getting China Wrong, which details missteps in US foreign policy towards China. He also worked as an advisor to former US Vice President Dick Cheney. 

We discuss Xi’s rise through the Chinese Communist Party, the nature of his beliefs about power and ideology, the nature of the US and China’s falling out, to put it euphemistically, and whether perversely, that falling out might result in the two countries becoming, not more different, but more similar. 

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Jacinda Ardern has been prime minister of New Zealand since 2017. Ardern is a good example of how an affable, anodyne politician can pursue highly divisive and polarising policies. Ardern’s premiership has been defined by her response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst New Zealand’s initial response to the pandemic in 2020 was praised across the world, and saw Ardern win a landslide election victory, the two years hence have seen New Zealand slowly creep up the death rate table. 

The Ardern government has also been scolded by voters for a slow vaccine roll out and images of expatriates being unable to come home to visit dying relatives. Partly as a result, Ardern is now the least popular she has ever been, and her party, the Labour party, is now odds on to lose the next election in a year’s time.  However, Ardern is still the recipient of uncritical levels of praise in the foreign media, and a healthy democracy is predicated upon us as citizens looking beyond favourable headlines, and judging politicians on results, not on our own biases. 

I should say from the outset that I do not hate Ardern by any means, and this conversation is not designed to make you hate her, either; rather, it is supposed to be an objective look at a prime minister many New Zealanders have clearly fallen out of love with. 

My guest today is David Farrar, who is a pollster and political commentator. David is the founder of Kiwiblog, one of the largest political blogs in New Zealand. We discuss Ardern’s rise in the Labour Party, her domestic agenda, of course, her response to Covid, and what the future holds for her struggling government. 

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Tsai Ing-wen has been President of Taiwan since 2016. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party, Tsai is in effect the leader of liberal Taiwan, with her party broadly promoting the idea of Taiwanese identity. In doing so, she faces two opponents. Domestically, she faces the Kuomintang, or KMT, which seeks to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. Tsai also of course faces mainland China, known as the People’s Republic, which also seeks to reintegrate Taiwan into its authoritarian state. 

This puts Tsai in a difficult position, as was recently seen when a visit to Taiwan by Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi led to China conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Anyone interested in world politics in 2022 needs to know about events in Taiwan. 

My guest for this conversation today is Brian Hioe, editor of New Bloom magazine, an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific that was founded after the pro-democracy Sunflower Movement. As well as Tsai’s career, we discuss the Taiwanese identity, the quality of democracy in Taiwan, and whether the KMT is acting as a trojan horse for Beijing. 

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Alberto Fujimori fue presidente del Peru entre 1990 y 2000. Aunque casi todos los comentaristas políticos describen Fujimori como un president de la derecha, su campana de 1990 fue más ecléctico que ideológico. Sin embargo, no se puede negar que Fujimori adoptó una perspectiva derechista para solucionar los problemas económicas y sociales que sufrió Peru durante los años ochenta, y es esta perspectiva- el fujimorismo- que le ha dado a Fujimori su mala fama entre la izquierda peruana. 

Mi invitado para esta conversación es el politólogo peruano José Alejandro Godoy. José acaba de escribir un libro sobre Fujimori, Los Herederos de Fujimori. Discutimos la importancia de la herencia japonesa de Fujimori, su presidencia, y la popularidad duradera del fujimorismo. 

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Davíð Oddsson served as prime minister of Iceland between 1991 and 2004. However, Oddsson wasn't just prime minister; he also served as Mayor of Reykjavik, Governor of Iceland’s Central Bank, and as the editor of Iceland’s biggest newspaper. 

Whilst he didn’t serve in these positions at the same time, there was a clear attempt by Oddsson, over a period of many decades, to get his friends and allies into positions of influence. He privatised the banks from parliament, his friends took control of them, and he then let the banks do whatever they wanted as Central Banker. The issue is that letting the banks do “whatever they wanted”, ended up nearly destroying Iceland’s economy; in 2008, Iceland was engulfed in one of the worst financial crises in the world. 

My guest today is Icelandic investigative journalist Helgi Seljan. Helgi is an editor at independent media outlet Stundin, and uncovered revelations surrounding the Panama Papers in 2016. As well as Oddsson’s career, we discuss the importance of fish to Iceland, Icelandic politics’ ugly underbelly, and why Iceland has never joined the EU, and whether it should. 

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Mahathir Mohamad served as prime minister of Malaysia between 1981 and 2003, and again between 2018 and 2020. Today’s episode in part examines the implications of being governed by the very old; Mahathir was 93 when he returned to power in 2018. 

Ethnic tensions are intrinsic to Malaysian history and politics. A mix between Malays, Chinese and Indians, the majority Malay population, reeling after years of partly real and partly perceived suppression by the other groups, rallied around Mahathir, who promised to construct a country run by and for Malays. This had mixed results, but few can dispute Mahathir didn’t give it a good go; he served as prime minister for twenty-two years, staying in power by locking in the Malay vote for five elections in a row. 

My guest today is James Chin, professor of Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania. James has written extensively on Malaysian politics, and his outlook for Malaysia’s future is mixed; whilst he is encouraged by the increasing pluralism at the top of Malaysian politics since 2018, he is also concerned by the pervasive influence of Islamism. We discuss these issues, as well as the implications of having a country so defined by ethnic division. 

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Populist Pim Fortuyn cannibalised the 2002 Dutch general election with flamboyant campaigning and hostility to Islamic immigration. Nine days before the election, he was assassinated by a left-wing animal rights activist. In a country with a political culture as gentle as the Netherlands, Fortuyn’s murder sent shockwaves through the country. 

Fortuyn is an important figure because he represents the transition between two political eras; from the immediate post-Cold-War era of prosperity at home and peace abroad, to the post-9/11 politics of the twenty-first century, defined first and foremost by identity, insecurity and polarisation. He was a politician from the future; people just didn’t know it.

My guest for this conversation today is the journalist Guus Valk (@apjvalk), the political editor of Dutch newspaper NRC. Guus recently released a six-part Dutch language podcast about Fortuyn, so it’s great to get his insights on him in English.  As well as discussing Pim, Guus and I discussed the surprisingly common political journey from far left to anti-Islam right taken among Fortuyn’s contemporaries, and the shapeshifting nature of the modern European far right. 

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Aung San Suu Kyi became one of the most recognisable people in the world in the 1990s and 2000s during long periods under house arrest in her native Myanmar. Released in 2010, her image as an icon of democracy, resilience and human rights has been tainted by her apparent ambivalence towards the military-sponsored ethnic cleansing (some say genocide) of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority.

My guest today is Dr Ronan Lee (@Ronan_Lee), research fellow at the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. Ronan is the author of Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide: Identity History and Hate Speech, which was released last year. We discuss Aung San Suu Kyi’s early life as a member of the Myanmar elite, her time under house arrest, her response to the Rohingya genocide, and the complex nature of her personal politics and her legacy. 

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Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 until 2015. A brilliant and ruthless Leader of the Opposition, Abbott's blunt and confrontational style fell flat as prime minister. After just two years in charge, Abbott was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull, leaving office as the most unpopular Australian PM of modern times.

Abbott’s brief premiership represents part of what today’s guest calls the “Italy with Crocodiles” period- Australia had six prime ministers in eight years, but all the while remained one of the best governed countries in the world. At a time when the UK is selecting its third prime minister in six years, the UK would do well to learn from the Australian experience, especially because Britain, unlike Australia, cannot point to stellar governance or administration from top to bottom. As such, this episode is as much about the wider Italy with Crocodiles period as it is about Abbott, and as much about our near future here in Britain as it is about Australia’s recent past.

My guest today is Helen Dale (tweets @_HelenDale). Helen is the author of several novels, including the award-winning The Hand that Signed the Paper, and also worked as Chief of Staff and legal advisor to Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm at the time of Tony Abbott’s premiership. She has also written for the Telegraph and the Spectator, as well as daily newspaper the Australian. 

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Urho Kekkonen served as President of Finland between 1956 and 1982. Kekkonen towered over the Finnish political system, creating a complex system whereby he co-opted his potential adversaries into an ever-larger coalition, such that at election time, he was safe from serious political opposition.

Early on in his political career, Kekkonen decided that faced with a much larger much stronger neighbour, Finland’s best hope was to give the Soviet Union just enough control over Finland that the Soviets wouldn’t lose their temper with them.  As you’re about to hear, this had mixed results, but succeeded in its principal aim of maintaining Finland’s de facto independence. My guest today points out that Finland cannot have a bad relationship with Russia; their proximity to each other makes this utterly out of the question.

My guest today is Finnish historian Henrik Meinander, who is a professor at the University of Helsinki. Henrik’s English-language book, A History of Finland, was released in 2011 and updated in 2019. As well as discussing Kekkonen’s life and politics, I asked Henrik what he thought of Finland joining NATO, and whether he really thought the Finns are the happiest people in the world, as they’re often designated. 

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Nikola Gruevski served as the prime minister of North Macedonia between 2006 and 2016. Gruevski became prime minister on a wave of anti-elite sentiment in a country that was only 15 years old. Whilst initially pro-Western in outlook, Gruevski, and his right-wing party VMRO, became increasingly irritated by the Western powers’ ambivalence towards Macedonia, and began making not-so-furtive gestures towards Russia. At home, this was accompanied by cronyism and authoritarianism. Gruevski was chased out of his homeland in 2018, and now resides in Hungary, under the protection of Viktor Orban. 

The reason I have decided to release this episode alongside the Assad episode is that both Syria and North Macedonia are examples of countries neglected by the West. Just as President Obama arguably left the the Syrian people in the lurch by failing to respond to the so-called red-line of chemical weapons, the EU have indisputably failed North Macedonia by making the country jump through hoops towards EU membership, only to repeatedly palm the Macedonians off. 

Of course, these actions have had much worse consequences for Syria than for North Macedonia, but nevertheless have caused great resentment within North Macedonia towards the European project, and the stocks of politicians like Nikola Gruevski have risen accordingly. 

My guest for this episode is Vlora Reçica (@vlorarechica), who works as a researcher at Macedonian think tank Institute for Democracy (@IDSCS_Skopje). Vlora and her colleagues have recently released a research paper called the Populist Citizen: Why Citizens support populist leaders and policies in North Macedonia. 

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Bashar al-Assad has been President of Syria since 2000. His time in power has been overshadowed by a dreadful civil war that started in Syria in 2011 and is still ongoing.  Bashar has attracted both the ire and the support of various international powers, with the Western alliance putting increasing pressure on regime to make concessions to the Opposition, but Vladimir Putin’s Russia seeking to gain leverage in the Middle East by keeping Assad in place. In doing so, Putin was successful; Assad is still in power in Syria, though his regime is a shadow of its former self. 

You’ll notice that this is one of two episodes I’ve put out this weekend, the other being on North Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski. The reason I have decided to pair these episodes is because they show, in different ways and with different results, the consequences of the West neglecting people on the edges of their sphere on influence. 

Whilst this neglect has had visibly worse effects for Syria than for North Macedonia, there are clear similarities in the way the Western alliance looked at Syria in the first half of the last decade, and the way in which the EU is taking North Macedonia for fools, so please do listen to that one, too. 

My guest thinks it could have; he is Jihad Yazigi (@jihadyazigi), Editor in Chief of the Syria Report, and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

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Leonid Brezhnev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. Cautious and ideologically vacuous, Brezhnev remains a mystery, despite a lengthy rule. Under him, the Soviet Union descended into corruption and economic stagnation, and paved the way for the era of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev. Arguably, the Brezhnev era represented the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. However, others have interpreted the Brezhnev "stagnation" as a moment of stability in a country that was rarely stable, leading to interesting questions as to how different these two phenomena really are. 

My guest for this conversation is Susanne Schattenberg, professor of contemporary history and director of the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen in Germany. Her book, Brezhnev: Making of a Statesman, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021. We discuss Brezhnev’s ascent towards the pinnacle of Soviet power, his questionable commitment to the Bolshevik cause, and whether his cautious approach to leadership has been emulated by Russian leaders hence, principally Vladimir Putin. 

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Warlord-turned-politician Charles Taylor served as President of Liberia from 1997 until his resignation in 2003.  While on trial for war crimes in the Hague, the court heard of Taylor forcing his soldiers to practice cannibalism on their enemies, among other heinous crimes- an attitude towards violence encapsulated in his 1997 campaign slogan, “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I’ll vote for him.”

Taylor’s story tells us a lot about the mechanics of violence and coercion during both war and peace, and his effect on Liberia, a country still reeling from his reign of terror but also showing signs of moving on, has to be understood with these mechanics in mind. 

My guest for today is Dr Christine Cheng (@cheng_christine), senior lecturer in international relations at King’s College London. Christine has a keen interest in Liberia, a country with a fascinating history, and her 2019 book “Extralegal groups in post conflict Liberia: How trade makes the state” won the Conflict Research Society’s Annual Prize. She also comments on international affairs for the BBC, the Wall Street Journal and Al-Jazeera. 

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Kurt Waldheim served as President of Austria from 1986 until 1992. During the presidential campaign of 1986, revelations about Waldheim's service for the Nazis in Greece and Yugoslavia came to light, with Waldheim eventually admitting he had previously downplayed his actions in the Second World War. The Waldheim Affair triggered a period of collective reflection in Austria on the country's past, and demonstrated the differences between how Germany and Austria remembered the crimes of the Nazis. 

My guest for this conversation is Ruth Wodak, Emeritus Distinguished Professor in Discourse studies at Lancaster University and Professor in Linguistics at the University of Vienna. 

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John F. Kennedy served as President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. An impressive and courageous record as president demonstrates Kennedy's unmistakable personal fortitude, but his legacy has been tarnished by his lack of faithfulness to his wife Jackie, and evidence he slept with women linked to the mafia and America's enemies abroad. 

My guest for this conversation is Stephen F. Knott, professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island. He has written nine books, and his next one, Coming to Terms with John F Kennedy, comes out this September. Stephen spent a time in his youth working at the John F Kennedy Library in Boston, a place where he met John’s wife Jackie Kennedy, but also saw first-hand the arrogance so often ascribed to members of the Kennedy family. 

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Slobodan Milosevic served as the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 until 2000, and as Serbian President within Yugoslavia for six years prior. While most political leaders avoid war at all cost, Milosevic managed to embroil his country in four armed conflicts. Worse still, he lost all of them. In spite of this, Milosevic stayed in power long past his sell-by date, demonstrating a very interesting set of political skills. 

My guest for this conversation is Igor Bandovic (@IgorBandovic), Director of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, and the President of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. We discuss the shaky history of Yugoslavia, the rise of Serbian nationalism inside a country supposed to contain it, and the effectiveness of Western involvement in a part of the world where NATO troops have now been stationed for over twenty years. 

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Justin Trudeau has been Canada's prime minister since 2015. The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin has become an international icon for feminists and progressives, whilst his polished and stage-managed governing style has generated scores of critics inside Canada. 

On the face of it, Trudeau might not appear as unpleasant as many of the other characters I have studied on this podcast, and that’s because, to a great extent, he’s not. He hasn’t started wars that have killed thousands of innocent civilians, or shut down liberty and democracy in his country. 

However, politics is a comparative discipline, and in Canada's relatively gentle political culture, Trudeau has been unusually controversial, and I wanted this conversation to be an attempt to uncover why. 

My guest for this conversation is Andrew Coyne (@acoyne), columnist at the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper. 

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Richard Nixon served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until his resignation in 1974. Elected to America’s highest office in the tumultuous 1968 presidential election, Nixon’s presidency is one of the most contradictory in the country’s history. Progressive reformer or reactionary racist? Peace frog or warmonger? Fiery populist or isolated introvert? In short, you can make a case for him being all of these things at once.

Nixon’s life is a lesson in resilience and perseverance; Nixon was no quitter, and had a public life spanning from the 1950s until his death in 1994. Remarkably, Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s 2016 presidential ticket was the first successful Republican ticket not to include either Richard Nixon or a member of the Bush family since 1928, which tells you something about Nixon’s staying power. 

My guest for this conversation is Lilly Goren (@gorenlj on Twitter), professor of political science at Carroll University in Wisconsin. Lilly’s next book, about the politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is coming out later this year. 

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Aleksandar Vucic has been President of Serbia since 2017. An illiberal democrat and a populist, Vucic has mixed intimidation of opposition media at home with an intriguing foreign policy. The latter has translated into a fascinating balancing act between the EU, Russia and China. Re-elected in a landslide in April 2022, Vucic's presidency shows few signs of ending anytime soon. 

My guest for this conversation is Vuk Vuksanovic, researcher at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, and is also an Associate at LSE Ideas (@v_vuksanovic on Twitter).

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Imran Khan served as prime minister of Pakistan from 2018 until 2022. Removed in a controversial no confidence vote on April 10th of this year, Khan is now touring Pakistan trying to stir up support for his political career- but the all-powerful military might well have other ideas.

My guest for this conversation is Declan Walsh (@declanwalsh on Twitter), Chief Africa correspondent for the New York Times. Declan used to cover Pakistani politics for the Guardian, but was kicked out of Pakistan in 2013, which he has written about in his 2020 book The Nine Lives of Pakistan. 

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Iain Macleod was a British Conservative politician who served as Colonial Secretary from 1959 until 1961, and Chancellor of the Exchequer for just one month in 1970, before his sudden death. Widely regarded as the cleverest Tory of his generation, questions remain as to whether he might have kept the troubled Heath government on course, had he lived. 

My guest for this conversation is former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, who led the Tories into the 2005 general election against Tony Blair's Labour. 

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Mohammed bin Salman has been Crown Prince (heir to the throne) of Saudi Arabia since 2017.  As de facto leader of the country, he has enacted a series of liberalising social reforms that have had positive effects for Saudi women and young people. However, he has also centralised massive political power around himself, leading to many unpleasant moments, including the murder of Royal court figure turned journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. MBS is undoubtedly a ruthless leader, but one big question remains- can the West afford to stand up to him?

My guest for this conversation was Justin Scheck (@ScheckWSJ on Twitter), reporter for the Wall Street Journal and co-author, along with Bradley Hope, of Blood and Oil, which was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award in 2020. 

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Tony Benn served as member of parliament for both Bristol South East and Chesterfield, in a parliamentary career that lasted from 1950 until 2001. Benn's transformation from technocrat in the 1960s to left-wing iconoclast in the 1980s is one of the most important in the history of the Labour Party. 

Benn proved a major source of inspiration for Jeremy Corbyn, but has become a hate figure for those in Labour closer to the centre ground of British politics, who regarded him as an electoral landmine. 

My guest for this conversation is Tom Clark, contributing editor at Prospect Magazine and senior fellow at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. 

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Solomon Mujuru served as head of the Zimbabwean Defence Forces from 1981 until 1992, having been one of the most important figures in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence in the 1970s. A brilliant military leader, his fiery relationship with President Robert Mugabe has been the subject of much speculation, especially in the light of Mujuru's mysterious death in 2011.

My guest for this episode is Miles Tendi (@MilesTendi on Twitter), author and associate professor in African Politics at the University of Oxford. He has written a biography of Mujuru, The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe. 

I had a bad cold when I was recording the opening of this podcast, so I apologise for the even lower voice than usual...

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Eamon de Valera served as Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) four times, and as Irish President between 1959 and 1973. The most significant figure in the independent country's century-long history, de Valera was a key figure in securing and moulding Irish independence for six decades. His long public life has led to a popular image of de Valera as austere, pious, and as representing the economic and cultural stagnation that gripped Ireland for much of the 20th century. 

My guest for this episode is Diarmaid Ferriter, lecturer in Irish history at University College Dublin. 

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Jacob Zuma served as President of South Africa from 2009 until 2018. A hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, Zuma's time in power is remembered for corruption and self-indulgence- the rural complex he built for himself reportedly cost nearly $25 million. 

My guest today is Alec Russell, former News Editor of the Financial Times, and currently the Editor of FT Weekend (@AlecuRussell on Twitter). Alec spent many years reporting from South Africa, and interviewed Zuma on a number of occasions. We discuss Zuma’s role in the anti-apartheid struggle, his disastrous presidency, the evolution of the African National Congress from a protest movement to a party of power, and the complex political legacy of apartheid in modern day South Africa. 

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In a first, my guest and I examine a group of people, rather than one single politician. Adventure Capitalists are a loosely connected group of libertarian-leaning businessmen, dedicated to creating "exit projects". These projects are private polities outside the control of the constitutions and laws of traditional nation states, meaning that the adventure capitalists become the kings (or queens) of their own domains. These projects may be found on land, out to sea, in space, or online. The activities of super-rich Americans such as Jeffrey Epstein makes the leaders of these exit projects deserving of much greater scrutiny than they receive at present. My guest for this episode was Raymond B. Craib, historian at Cornell University in New York state (@raycraib on Twitter). 

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Margaret Thatcher served as UK prime minister between 1979 and 1990. Arguably the most divisive British politician ever, her reputation as a beacon of controversy and dogmatism precedes her. Thatcher, however, serves as an example of a politician whose reputation is so controversial that it has become very difficult to make an objective assessment of her time in office. My guest for this conversation is Lord Peter Lilley, who served in the cabinets of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. 

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Tony Blair served as prime minister of the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2007. The first Labour prime minister in 18 years, Blair took Labour away from its left-wing roots towards a less ideological position focused on winning elections. Whilst successful in this aim (Labour won three general elections in a row), Blair is now deeply unpopular among the British public, and Labour has not won an election since he left. Why (and when) Blair's popularity took such a drubbing is the central investigation of today's episode. My guest is Jon Cruddas, who worked for Blair in the late 1990s before becoming member of parliament for Dagenham and Rainham in 2001. 

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Sheikh Hasina has been the prime minister of Bangladesh since 2009. Her early credentials as a pioneer of democracy have been tainted by election fraud, and a spate of extrajudicial killings and torture. My guest for this episode was Tasneem Khalil (@tasneem on Twitter), a Bangladeshi journalist who was forced to leave his country after being imprisoned by the Bangladeshi authorities in 2007. He is Editor in Chief of Netra News.

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After successful careers in bodybuilding and Hollywood, Arnold Schwarzenegger served as Governor of California from 2003 until 2011. His reputation as a moderate Republican, in a party that has moved far to the right since, makes Schwarzenegger  an interesting character to study- as does his surprisingly serious governing style. My guest for this one was Seth Masket of the University of Denver (@smotus on Twitter- one of the best Twitter handles going).

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Saunders Lewis was a Welsh writer and the founder of Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. His reactionary, anti-socialist views put him at odds with the all-conquering socialist movement in the South Wales of the 1930s, and indeed with the centre-left Plaid Cymru of today. My guest for this conversation was T Robin Chapman, senior lecturer in Welsh Studies at Aberystwyth University.

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Lee Kuan Yew served as prime minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990. A  calculating control freak, Lee's rule was highly authoritarian, and left a mark on Singapore that has, so far at least, proved indelible. My guest for this was author and historian PJ Thum, founder of pro-democracy group New Naratif (@NewNaratif on Twitter). 

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Dwight Eisenhower served as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, and as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. Whilst his presidency is often ranked highly among presidential experts, other scholars have pointed out Eisenhower's mixed record on civil rights, his overthrowing of democratic governments abroad and his "tip-toeing" into Vietnam as reasons why his presidency might be deserving of greater scrutiny. My guest and I discuss all this and more; she is Julia Azari, presidential scholar, author of Delivering the People's Message, and podcaster at Politics in Question (which is great!). She tweets @julia_azari 

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Hamid Karzai served as President of Afghanistan from 2001 until 2014. Karzai's presidency spanned the lion's share of the 20 year-long US-led intervention in Afghanistan. Though Karzai often frustrated American leadership, my guest today claims that the Americans made many mistakes in their dealings with Karzai. That guest would know, too; he is Ronald Neumann, who served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 until 2007 under President George W. Bush.  He is a friend of Karzai's, and he is the now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington, D.C. (@acadofdiplomacy on Twitter).

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Eric Zemmour is a French journalist and independent candidate for the French presidency. April's presidential election looks to be a race exclusively between right-wing candidates such as Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Valerie Pecresse. None, however, are as right-wing as Zemmour, who looks poised to bring the already simmering tensions between the French state and French Muslims to new heights, regardless of whether he is elected or not. My guest for this conversation is Aurelien Mondon, lecturer in politics at the University of Bath and author of Reactionary Democracy (@aurelmondon on Twitter).

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Newt Gingrich served as Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US Congress from 1995 until 1998. In turning the Republican Party into a more organised conservative formation, many blame Gingrich for having caused the dysfunction, polarisation and ill-feeling that defines American politics today. My guest for this episode is Matthew Green of the Catholic University of America (@mattngreen on Twitter). Matthew is writing a book on Gingrich, The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur, due to be published in July. 

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Michael Foot was the leader of the Labour Party from 1980 until 1983. Though he led the party to one of the worst electoral defeats in its history, he was a brilliant orator, and is still adored by many left-wing Brits today. My guest for this conversation is Neil Kinnock, the man who succeeded Foot as Labour leader in 1983. We discuss Foot's conversion to socialism, the disastrous 1983 election, and Kinnock's indirect role in delivering the US presidency for Joe Biden. 

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Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from 1902 until Spain became a Republic in 1931. A hubristic and deluded leader, he presided over his country's collapse into political polarisation and Civil War. The Spain of then, with unresponsive political elites and burgeoning hard left and hard right political movements and subcultures, is chillingly similar to many Western countries today. My guest for this conversation was Francisco  "Paco" Romero Salvado of the University of Bristol. 

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Suharto led Indonesia between 1967 and 1998. Nicknamed 'The Smiling General', Suharto was a wily and calculating military leader, but with a ferocity and ambivalence towards violence unmatched by any previous subject on the podcast; it is estimated that over one million Indonesians died in the 1965-66 killings that brought Suharto to power. That said, Suharto's development projects caused massive economic growth in his country, to the point where Indonesia was a relatively wealthy country by the 1990s. This makes his legacy highly complex. My guest for this one was Tom Pepinsky of Cornell University in New York (@TomPepinsky on Twitter) 

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Rodrigo Duterte has been president of the Philippines since 2016. He is a divisive figure both domestically and internationally, having irritated the US and international human rights groups for his (very) hardline attitude towards drugs. Having announced his retirement from politics, he has also set up one of the strangest elections I've ever seen, currently being fought between Duterte's daughter, the son of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, boxing legend Manny Pacquiao, and Duterte's vice president, Leni Robredo. Some things you just can't make up. My guest for this episode is Philippines expert and principal lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, Tom Smith (@tomtheacademic on Twitter).

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Neil Kinnock served as a leader of the UK Labour Party between 1983 and 1992. The longest-serving leader of the Opposition in British history, Kinnock never served as prime minister. Whilst less divisive than many of my other subjects, Kinnock was one of the most important leaders of the 1980s, one of the most polarised decades in recent British political history; some studies actually show that British politics was more polarised then than it is now. My guest for this episode is Lord Peter Hain, former member of parliament for Neath (Labour, 1991-2005) and former colleague of Kinnock's. 

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In this very short episode, I give you a quick update on the podcast, and explain a slightly unorthodox upcoming episode... enjoy!

Alexander Lukashenko has been the president of the Eastern European country of Belarus since 1994. Since 2020, he has come under increasing pressure from Western powers to resign, after he refused to accept his defeat in that year's national elections. However, Vladimir Putin's influence in Belarus casts a longer shadow than the 5'6" Russian president does in real life, and Lukashenko's rule has so far endured. My guest for this episode is John Sweeney (@johnsweeneyroar on Twitter), formerly of the BBC programmes Newsnight and Panorama, and currently the host of the podcast Hunting Ghislaine.

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Boris Yeltsin served as President of the Russian Federation from 1991 until 1999. Yeltsin's political career spans the decline and fall of the Soviet Union,  the end of the Cold War, and Russia's difficult transition to capitalism and democracy in the 1990s. Though initially very popular in Russia, his approval rating reached single digits by the time of his resignation, which led the way for the authoritarian presidency of Vladimir Putin. My guest for this episode is Dr Marc Berenson of the Russia Institute at King's College London. 

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Muammar Gaddafi was the "Brotherly Leader" of Libya from 1969 until 2011. Few figures in Middle Eastern politics court as much controversy as the highly eccentric Gaddafi, with his idiosyncratic style having been parodied by actors, and mimicked by other politicians. Gaddafi's long rule can be seen as an agonising decline from popular anti-imperialist "saviour" of Libyans in the 1970s to cruel and isolated despot murdered by his own people in 2011.  My guest for this conversation is Tim Niblock, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, and one of Europe's foremost voices on Libyan and Middle Eastern politics; he also met Gaddafi during the late 1990s.

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Antonio Salazar was the leader of Portugal from 1932 until 1968. Though a conservative dictator, Salazar was suspicious of the populist and fascist tactics used by contemporaries Hitler and Mussolini, instead opting to build a highly effective non-political state. The relatively benign dictatorship that Salazar created, together with the instability of the democracy that has taken its place, means his legacy is hotly disputed within Portugal. My guest for this conversation is Professor Tom Gallagher, professor emeritus at the University of Bradford and author of Salazar: the dictator who refused to die. Find him on Twitter: @cultfree54

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been the leader of the Turkish Republic since 2003, either as prime minister or president. Erdoğan's erratic tendencies have made him one of the most talked-about leaders in the world, and a headache for the US, the EU, and NATO. However, it is within his own country where Erdoğan's leadership is most polarising, with his Islamist outlook cutting against the traditionally secular Turkish Republic. My guest for this conversation is Times journalist and author of Erdoğan Rising, Hannah Lucinda Smith (@hannahluci on Twitter).

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Indira Gandhi served as prime minister of India twice between 1966 and her assassination in 1984. Gandhi is best remembered for the Emergency (1975-1977), a period during which she effectively suspended Indian democracy. My guest for this conversation is Dr Vernon Hewitt, formerly of the University of Bristol, who wrote his PhD on the Emergency. 

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Silvio Berlusconi served as Italian prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011. Love him or loathe him, his political skill cannot be denied. In an era of populism, his often dangerous tactics also need to be recognised and understood. My guest for this conversation is Professor John Foot of the University of Bristol (@Footymac on Twitter). 

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