The Owen Jones Podcast

Jeremy Corbyn hasn't been Labour leader for 3 years, and journalists are still screaming at him outside his house. Where do you see the powerful subjected to this relentless treatment? But on the day he is purged from the party he's been a member of his entire life, there is a wider lesson - this is about making an example, and purging anyone who believes in redistributing wealth from those at the top.

Jeremy Corbyn faces the boot from a party he's been a member of almost as long as Keir Starmer has been alive. Park whatever you think about Corbyn: after the 2019 election defeat, Starmer was singing his praises because he wanted to win Labour members' votes. This is part and parcel of a leadership defined by deceit and duplicitousness - and anyone who cares about honesty and democracy should object.

Oh boy, does Matt Hancock have a humiliation kink or something? Along with some of his Tory colleagues, he"s been stung by Led By Donkeys, who posed as a South Korean firm offering to purchase his services: and this man does not come cheap! But rather than just bash Hancock, as fun as that is, this latest episode is indicative of a political system which is totally broken.

So the French are not taking this lying down: the country is convulsed by mass protests after right-wing President Macron tried to drive up their pension age. Meanwhile our pension age has been hiked much higher, and our state pensions are much lower - but not a peep. Why aren't we kicking off, too? The truth is we do have a courageous history of fighting back - and if we want to avoid being screwed over, then maybe we should reclaim it.

Sunak really is a cheeky so and so: after months of promising to release his tax return, he finally did it when Boris Johnson was having his public meltdown, hoping noone would notice. It reveals an absurdly rich man paying a stupidly low percentage of tax - and personally benefiting from a tax cut he voted for. This just sums up how broken and ridiculous our tax system is.

This is excruciating beyond belief. Boris Johnson - the guy who repeatedly broke the lockdown rules he was in charge of imposing - today testified to MPs that, yes, he misled Parliament, but he didn't do so recklessly or deliberately. What a complete joke: his entire defence rests on him being irredeemably thick. There is a darker truth: not only is Johnson defined by his own crass selfishness, his trenchant belief that rules are for the little guy, not for him - but in so many ways his behaviour sums up our rotten Establishment.

It's 20 years since the invasion of Iraq opened the gates of hell - and the former UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has sensationally said Blair and Bush should be put on trial for war crimes in principle. Here's why this matters - and why trying to airbrush the calamity of Iraq will lead us to even more horror.

The right-wing media in this country has successfully long peddled a lie: that the BBC is somehow left-wing. Nothing could be further from the truth. The BBC has long promoted pro-Establishment coverage - but in the last few years, it's been Torified. Leaked emails and WhatsApps show how the Tories successfully pressured the BBC to do its bidding. In doing so, it may well be that the BBC has dug its own grave.

What if we told you socialism does exist - but only for rich people? The acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond has a new book - Poverty, by America - and it answers big questions. Why do we spend lots on dealing with poverty, but without solving it? How has poverty become a profitable industry? Why is it so expensive to be poor? And can we really abolish poverty?