The British Dream

She'll deny it if you give her the chance... Let's rip up Theresa May's conference speech.

It was good, but is it good enough? Let’s rip up Jeremy Corbyn’s Conference Speech!

Are we seeing the normalisation of fascism? There's a disturbing pattern of politicians making extreme statements, columnists writing apologia for racism, and far-right figures taking to the airwaves for soft interviews with sycophantic journalists.On the British Dream this week, Simon Childs chats to Hussein Kesvani about what to make of this new reality, and look at how far-right ideology related to mainstream conservatism and gullible journalism.

Remember in the spring when Ireland voted to legalise abortion? People in Northern Ireland do. They remember how everyone looked to Northern Ireland – with its exceptionally harsh abortion laws – and wondered if they would take a similar step.Northern Irish women took to the streets demanding their rights with banners reading “the North Is next”. With the Conservative government being propped up by the anti-abortion Democratic Unionist Party, it felt like the pressure might even topple Theresa May’s government. Then the news cycle moved on, as ever. But today we’re going back there and asking, ‘what happened with that?’Goretti Horgan is Policy Director at ARK, a social policy hub started by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast Ulster University. She’s an activist and she gave The British Dream podcast the lowdown on the fight for women's rights in Northern Ireland.

Grime has gone from a music genre that the police tried to snuff out, to one of Britain’s most in demand cultural exports, all the while maintaining its anti-establishment edge. We spoke to Dan Hancox, author of Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime, about why the genre sounds like a riot that’s about to happen, its adversarial relationship with the state, and its roots in a London taken over by luxury flats and privatised public space. We also chatted about the moral panic currently surrounding Drill and knife crime, and asked whether violent music leads to violence.

When the British people voted to “take back control” and leave the EU, you have to wonder if they were doing so looking forward to passing references to technocratic policy detail filtered through a Westminster melodrama, a sort of Tory Battle Royale played out by Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and Anna Soubry, with people’s opinions wielded as a weapon to shut down debate. But here we are. As Brexit shudders on, We spoke to Dr Marina Prentoulis, from Another Europe Is Possible, about the politics, the press and the possibilities. 

In April an obscure, sub-cultural, iconoclastic, left-wing Jewish group called Jewdas made tabloid news by inviting Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to a Seder, in which a beetroot was held aloft as attendees shouted "F**k capitalism". In the context of an anti-Semitism scandal that is dogging the Labour party, this was interpreted as further evidence that Corbyn wasn't taking the problem seriously. Somehow, Jewdas themselves ended up being accused of anti-Semitism. We spoke to two members of Jewdas about being front-page news, where left-wing anti-Semitism comes from, and wether things are getting better or worse.

"It was disturbing for us to see young people targeted in this kind of way"Silkie Carlo is a Director at Big Brother Watch, an independent non-profit organisation leading the protection of privacy and civil liberties in the UK. She chats to Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE.COM, about how scary the police’s use facial recognition technology is.