Episodes
She'll deny it if you give her the chance... Let's rip up Theresa May's conference speech.
Published 10/12/18
Published 10/12/18
It was good, but is it good enough? Let’s rip up Jeremy Corbyn’s Conference Speech!
Published 10/01/18
Earlier in the summer the world looked on in horror as Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance border policy led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents. Audio recordings of crying infants and pictures of kids surrounded by border guards could hardly fail to move you. But do we have the moral high ground in the UK? The separation of children from their parents at the hands of the border system is something that goes on in the UK, but it’s much less well known. This...
Published 08/24/18
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.
Published 08/13/18
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...
Published 07/30/18
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...
Published 06/29/18
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...
Published 06/15/18
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...
Published 06/05/18
"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. 
Published 05/18/18
“What gets talked about is immigration and borders—what doesn't get talked about is people and people's lives" Gracie Bradley is an Advocacy Officer for Liberty, campaigning for human rights in the UK. She chats to Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE.COM, about where the Windrush Scandal fits into the Government's "Hostile environment" project.  Recorded 10am on Thursday 26th April 2018. 
Published 04/27/18
"Our kids are bearing the brunt of institutional racism and ultimately paying with their lives" Stafford Scott is a Race Advocacy Officer at The Monitoring Group, an anti-racist charity. He chats to Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE.COM, about the knife crime epidemic, the influence of social media on young people, and state racism.
Published 04/13/18
“We are paying to learn how to work in jobs that no longer pay” Students from all over the UK have joined the University strike in solidarity with their lecturers this year. Hear an oral history from those who have been protesting, hogging the picket lines and running the occupations at Universities around the country. Hosted by Simon Childs, VICE UK's Home Affairs Editor.
Published 03/30/18
So much has changed in far right politics. The British National Party have come and gone, the English Defence League have disappeared, and lord knows what's going on at UKIP. As part of Hate Island, our special investigation into the far-right, Simon Childs, VICE UK's Home Affairs Editor, is in conversation with journalist James Poulter, Broadly Editor Zing Tsing, and Henry Langston, VICE Producer. 
Published 03/16/18
Matt Myers has written an oral history of the 2010 student movement that cast off the cliche of an apathetic youth, embarrassed Nick Clegg, sacked the Tory HQ, but didn’t quite manage to stop tuition fees going up. Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE.com, discusses with Matt why the Iraq War and 2010 student movement is helpful lens to look at what’s going on today, particularly because a lot of people who were angry then are movers and shakers in the movement behind Corbyn now. 
Published 03/02/18
Most people didn’t hear Jeremy Corbyn’s foreign policy speech to the UN Assembly in December 2017. But basically it set out what you could call the Corbyn Doctrine on UK foreign policy for the Labour Party. Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE.COM, kicks off the first in our "Speeching" series. It’s all about corruption, solidarity and putting Britain on a level playing field with the rest of the world.
Published 02/16/18
Is Brexit a hangover from Blairism? Are we living through the political comedown after Tony's Britpop party? Richard Power Sayeed, author of the book "1997: The Future That Never Happened" chats with Simon Childs, Home Affairs Editor at VICE UK.
Published 02/02/18
It’s been a quiet year, with only one of the most surprising elections in living memory to distract us form Brexit, the Grenfell Tower Fire and the Westminster sex abuse scandal, to name just a few. Join the British Dream as we travel back 12 months, to a completely different political landscape where Theresa May was riding high in the polls and Jeremy Corbyn was far from the absolute boy.
Published 12/21/17
Join the British Dream to round off conference season with the podcast that the Prime Minister named her vision for the country after. We dive into the content of Theresa May's ill fated conference speech and find out that even if she delivered it properly, it would have sucked anyway. And a conversation with Solomon Hughes, journalist for VICE and Private Eye, who has spent years sniffing around political party get-togethers on the look out for corporate lobbyists and dodgy influence.
Published 10/06/17
With summer coming to an end and politics whirring back into gear, we’ll finally get some more Westminster podcast fodder soon, but for now we’re still focussing on trivial things like the end of the world. Tune in for an interview with a guy who sells nuclear bunkers, an update on Brexit, and we dissect the weird story of Activate – the so called Tory Momentum.
Published 09/18/17
As the summer recess sits uneasily with the potential of nuclear winter, Tories are writing confused think-pieces, while Corbyn is sticking to what he knows, heading off on another campaign tour. We ask what the Conservatives should do next, whether Moggmentum will give the Tories any impetus, and discus nuclear war – Good or Bad? We also head to the Manchester International Festival to hear about whether the youth vote rocked the election.
Published 08/14/17
Welcome back to the British Dream. A lot has changed since the election. Jeremy Corbyn is the Prime Minster, except he's not. Theresa May can't be leader, but somehow, technically, she is. Tory austerity is coming to an end, in the form of a £1 billion sop to Northern Ireland to keep the Tories in power. So who's really in charge here? Join us outside the VICE office for a big bag of cans as we try and sort through the mess, and talk to Simon Elmer from Architects for Social Housing about the...
Published 07/08/17
Well, that was weird. After an election result that Theresa May couldn’t have anticipated and Labour could hardly have hoped for, The British Dream is back to dissect a momentous night and look to a bumpy future.
Published 06/09/17
Could anyone really win at this election? While the election seems less of a foregone conclusion than it was, somehow it still feels like ultimately, we all lose. In the week of the election, the British Dream sets itself up as a hostage to fortune, and predicts who'll be in the least worst position on polling day. We promise eat shards of broken glass outside Parliament if we're wrong.
Published 06/05/17
As the big day gets closer, it feels like a very different election to the one we started talking about a few weeks ago. Theresa May, sweating like she’s taken a bad pill, Jeremy Corbyn looking like he’s mainlining Xanax – what’s changed? We try and suss it out, and interview Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party and consider why the biggest existential threat facing humanity isn’t a blip on the electoral map.
Published 06/02/17