The Prospect Interview

This month, our writers are mulling over questions of identity: Sheila regrets her lifelong habit of judging people by appearances while sex-worker and author Tilly Lawless considers the solidarity that exists between sex-workers and trans-women. OCD sufferer Sarah Collins feels destabilised by her recent birthday, while Anglican Priest Alice Goodman is forced into a new role by her health: that of a hospital patient. 

The United States has been ravaged by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and a few months ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that a similar disaster might be coming for Europe. Is he right? Freelance journalist Ella Glover joins Prospect’s deputy editor Ellen Halliday to discuss who is really at risk from nitazenes—a category of synthetic opioids linked to an increasing numbers of deaths in Britain—and how prepared the UK is to protect them.

The local elections went very badly for the Tories and pretty well for Labour—but what can the results really tell us about the upcoming general election? Prospect columnist and pollster Peter Kellner joins deputy editor Ellen Halliday to explain why Sunak is overselling the odds of a hung parliament, why Sadiq Khan underperformed in London and why Reform could still be the Conservatives’ biggest headache. Read Peter’s latest column here.

Polls suggest Labour is set to win the next general election—but if it does, it will face governing in dismal economic circumstances. What would it take for Labour to transform the country, despite the apparent lack of money available to government? Perhaps more importantly, what should the animating moral principle of a potential new Labour government be? And is Keir Starmer prepared to be bold in pursuit of a vision—or will he be timid?Will Hutton, economist, columnist and author of new book This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain joins Ellen Halliday on the podcast.

Author, politician and former member of the Israeli Knesset Avraham Burg joins Ellen Halliday to discuss political leadership in Israel and the influence that extremist voices are having on Netanyahu. Burg argues Israelis must push for the change in leadership needed for the nation to pursue a more peaceful path. 

Last year three councils in England went bust, and the BBC political research unit has reported that one in five councils have warned of effective bankruptcy in five years, unless there is reform. Contributing editor Tom Clark joins Ellen Halliday to unpick the deficit in local government funding, and to the chart the sorry course of Birmingham, a city that was once the cradle of municipal governance, which is now run by a bankrupt council that is forced to make unprecedented cuts.

Prospect contributing editor Isabel Hilton is joined by Margot Wallström, a former Swedish foreign affairs minister and head of the High-Level Working Group on the Environmental Consequences of the War in Ukraine. They discuss the environmental damage Russia’s war has caused in Chernobyl and across the country. Also on the podcast, climate scientist Gavin Schmidt discusses the worrying news that climate models can’t explain 2023’s historic temperature high.

Author and journalist Phil Tinline joins Ellen Halliday on the podcast to discuss the threat Trump poses to US democracy and the cross-partisan movement of lawyers, activists and politicians fighting to safeguard it.