From Trump to Corbyn: How Social Media Shapes Politics (Billy Bragg)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The singer, songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg thinks there’s a crisis of accountability in politics (23:51). To fix it, he says we need to reform the House of Lords (27:55) and redefine what liberty means in the age of social media (25:17).
A socialist and anti-racism campaigner who grew up in a community where the main employer was the local Ford car factory (3:35), Billy talks to Amol about class in modern Britain (15:47) and sets out the challenges facing democracy today (20:38).
He also argues that there’s a link between Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage (31:37), warns that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is in danger of losing the working class (31:14) and offers his advice to young musicians (39:12).
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* Email: radical@bbc.co.uk
Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Izzy Rowley. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Mike Regaard and Chris Ablakwa. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Hello, this is Radical with Amul Rajin, |
| 0:07.3 | conversations about the global trends changing the world today |
| 0:10.7 | and radical ideas for the future. |
| 0:14.1 | First of all, we're going to have to redefine what liberty means, mate. |
| 0:17.8 | People believe that freedom is the right to say whatever they want to say, |
| 0:20.6 | whenever they want to say it, to whoever they want to say it to, with no comeback. |
| 0:23.6 | It's just... |
| 0:24.6 | Is just... |
| 0:25.6 | Is just... |
| 0:26.6 | Do protest songs actually make a difference? |
| 0:29.6 | In this episode, a conversation with the singer, songwriter and political activist Billy Bragg about, well, lots of things, including class in modern Britain, the limits of free speech, a lack of accountability in politics, and what he thinks we should do about all this. I realised, naturally my hair went to the left. |
| 1:03.9 | And all these years I've been coming to the right and getting a weird flip. |
| 1:06.9 | A bit like your politics. |
| 1:08.0 | Hang on a second. |
| 1:28.3 | How old were you before you realised you've been combing your hair the wrong way for decades? Well, when was the lock during the, in my 60s? So for about 50, and you've been combing your hair for about 50 years. So for 50 years, you're combing your hair to the right when you should have been combing it to the... You should have been combing your hair in the direction of your politics. |
| 1:29.5 | That's right. That's right. |
| 1:30.7 | But you were maybe some deep Freudian urge to go against the brain. Because I dress left. You don't want to overdo it, do you? You're lopsided yourself. Do you actually dress left? Of course, yeah, don't you? What do you mean dress left? |
| 1:40.1 | You know. |
| 1:41.2 | Well, you put a meat and two veg. |
| 1:42.4 | What are you put, is this a new, am I breaking unknown ground here? |
| 1:45.4 | This is, this is, you put, is this a new, am I breaking unknown ground here? |
... |
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