Payne's Politics Podcast
1) Trump trouble: Starmer's tricky start to 2026
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had wanted to kick off the new year with a strong domestic start, tackling the cost of living crisis head on, in the hopes of improving his dire poll ratings. Instead, ...Show More
2) Swamp Notes: Is the US economy really K-shaped?
Imagine a graph with one line going up over time. Below it, another line does just the opposite. It kind of looks like the letter K. On the FT's Swamp Notes podcast, Claire Jones and Rob Armstrong bre...Show More
3) Quizmas special: Political Fix’s 2025 nerd-out!
Can you name all the Labour frontbenchers who resigned or were sacked during the past year? Why was Peter Mandelson delayed from returning to the UK after being sacked as US ambassador? And who will b...Show More
4) Political Fix Live: Labour’s year in review
It’s been another turbulent year in politics. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced down rebellions from within his own party, overseen scandals and sackings, and delivered a constant barrage of bad n...Show More
5) Deals, donations and damage limitation
Sir Keir Starmer started the week with not one but two speeches defending his party’s Budget decisions in the wake of claims that chancellor Rachel Reeves had misled the public and fellow MPs about th...Show More
6) Bonus: What does the 2025 Budget mean for your money?
It’s been a rollercoaster week for both UK politics and our personal finances, with chancellor Rachel Reeves setting out tens of billions of pounds of tax rises in the Budget. But how will these new t...Show More
7) Budget bonanza: tax highs and growth lows
After months of speculation, predictions and U-turns, Rachel Reeves finally announced her Budget this week. And, symptomatic of the chaos this Budget has wrought, there was one final twist: the entire...Show More
8) Coming soon from Tech Tonic: Defying death
Investors are spending billions of dollars on novel ways to extend human life through inventive treatments, therapies, and even manipulating our genes. And increasingly, it seems as though anti-ageing...Show More
9) Boats and the Budget: the battlelines are drawn
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a tough set of measures overhauling immigration policy this week, in a bid to deter illegal boat crossings and tackle the thorny issue of asylum seekers that d...Show More
10) Is Starmer’s leadership on the line?
It has been a whirlwind week in Westminster with the BBC in crisis and a supposed challenge to the prime minister’s leadership. So, was there a putative coup from within Keir Starmer’s own cabinet? Is...Show More