The Political Dispatch

How Brexit Happened Part 2: A Tale of Two Campaigns

In part two of our three-part series marking ten years since the Brexit referendum, Tom and Sidd return to their old stomping ground, Cardiff's School of Journalism, Media and Culture, to interview their former lecturer Dr Mike Berry, Director of the MA in Political Communication.
Mike traces why immigration became the issue that swallowed every other debate during the campaign, and how decades of media coverage left voters with a skewed picture of the EU long before the official campaign began. He explains the thinking behind "Take Back Control," one of the most effective political slogans in modern British history, and why Remain's rational, economics-led case struggled to compete with it. The conversation also turns to where things stand a decade on, and whether the same result would happen if the vote were held again today.
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Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

How Brexit Happened Part 1: The Road to Vote Leave

In the first of a three-part series marking ten years since the Brexit referendum, Tom, Lily and Sidd sit down with Dr Nicholas Startin, Associate Professor of International Relations at John Cabot University in Rome, to trace the long history of British Euroscepticism.
Nick takes the story back to Charles de Gaulle's two vetoes of British membership, the UK's eventual entry in 1973, and the referendum that followed just two years later. He revisits Margaret Thatcher's 1988 Bruges speech, often cited as the starting gun for modern Euroscepticism, and asks whether that reading really holds up. From there, the conversation moves through John Major's "bastards," the Maastricht rebellion, and the slow-burn rise of Farage, UKIP and the Brexit Party.
Nick also looks back on his own 2015 paper, written when almost no one else in his field was willing to predict a Leave vote, and closes by asking whether, with Gen Z overwhelmingly pro-European, Britain could ever find its way back into the EU.
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To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

All the Presidents Men at 50

To celebrate fifty years of All the President's Men, Tom sits down with Professor Jon Lewis, University Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at Oregon State University, who has been teaching and writing about Hollywood for over forty years.
Jon traces Alan Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy from Klute through The Parallax View to All the President's Men, explaining what made that era of New Hollywood so obsessed with surveillance, institutional rot and the fragility of truth. He also reflects on what it was like to live through Watergate as a young man, and what was genuinely lost when the blockbuster era arrived and Hollywood stopped asking hard questions.
Then Steven Renderos, Executive Director of Media Justice, brings the conversation into the present. The journalism, he argues, is still happening, the Panama Papers, the Pegasus Project, ProPublica's reporting on Clarence Thomas. What's broken isn't the press. It's the institutional willingness to act on what journalists find. And with Jeff Bezos, a key Donald Trump ally, now owning the same Washington Post that Katharine Graham used to back Woodward and Bernstein at enormous personal risk, the contrast could not be starker.
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UK Election Special: Plaid Make History, the SNP Hold Steady and Reform Storm Across the Nations

Sidd and Tom analyse Parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland, and local elections in England. 
Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales) have become the largest party in Wales, followed by Reform in second place and Welsh Labour a distant third. 
The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) have won a 5th straight parliamentary election but are well short of a majority. 
Reform have made big gains in Scotland and have also stormed across English councils winning 14 in total and gaining close to 1,500 councillors. 
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For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Reform

Over a million children in England have an Education, Health and Care Plan. Councils are projected to hold £6 billion in SEND deficits by the end of this year. And a system designed to protect the most vulnerable children has become, for many families, an exhausting legal battle just to access basic support.
In this episode, Tom sits down with Caitlin Webb, chief reporter at the Local Government Chronicle, to examine the UK's SEND crisis and whether the government's long-awaited reforms can fix a system that has been breaking for over a decade.
They explore the legal weight of Education, Health and Care Plans and why so many families have come to rely on them not as a support tool but as a last resort. Caitlin unpacks the financial pressures bearing down on local authorities, the rise of private equity in specialist education, and the difficult question of whether proposed reforms will genuinely improve outcomes for children or simply remove the protections parents depend on most.
The episode closes with two voices that bring the statistics to life. Troy Njenje-Mbanga, who has lived experience of SEND, reflects on what it means to be neurodivergent in a system not designed for you. Eden Byrne speaks about her experience of caring for her brother with SEND, and what society still gets wrong about disability.
Further reading from Caitlin Webb at the Local Government Chronicle:
SEND reforms — key issues for the Schools White Paper: https://www.lgcplus.com/services/children/send-reforms-key-issues-for-schools-white-paper-19-02-2026/
Will SEND finally be sent in the right direction?: https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/lgc-briefing/will-send-finally-been-sent-in-the-right-direction-23-02-2026/
No guarantee SEND reforms will reduce EHCPs: https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/empowering-communities/no-guarantee-send-reforms-will-reduce-ehcps-15-04-2026/
Listen to related episodes:
The Forgotten Generation with Troy Njenje-Mbanga: https://theforgottengenerationpodcast.podbean.com/
Sports For All with Eden Byrne: https://sportsforallpodcast.podbean.com/
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

Iran and the Cost of Living

A war in the Middle East. A closed shipping lane. And a chain of consequences that stretches from Irish petrol stations to South Korean chip makers, and from British supermarket shelves to the price of your next laptop.
In this episode, Tom, Sidd and Lily trace the true cost of the war with Iran — for the Iranian people, for the world economy, and your everday life.
The episode starts with mass protests brutally suppressed by the Iranian regime, Trump's promise that "help is on its way," the coordinated US-Israeli strikes on 28 February, the assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the single most important shipping lane in the world. They examine why, despite weeks of bombardment and repeated claims of victory, the regime remains intact and the Strait remains shut.
From there the team maps the ripple effects: fuel protests that have brought Ireland to the edge of political crisis, a fertiliser shortage threatening the spring planting season across the northern hemisphere, a semiconductor supply crunch that could outlast the war itself, and a UK government quietly planning for food shortages by summer.
Running beneath all of it, China, quietly filling every vacuum the war creates.
Listen to related episodes:
The origins of the Iranian war: https://thepoliticaldispatch.podbean.com/e/irans-reckoning-counter-revolution/
The unravelling of the world order: https://thepoliticaldispatch.podbean.com/e/if-we-are-not-at-the-table/
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

All Change in Wales

In this episode of The Political Dispatch, Tom, Sidd and Lily turn their attention to Wales, ahead of what many are calling the most consequential Senedd election since devolution began in 1999.
For listeners joining from outside the UK, the team starts from the beginning — where Wales is, what shapes it, and why a country of three million people with a language older than most nations on earth has only had its own parliament since the turn of the millennium. It's a story of industrial extraction, cultural resilience, and a referendum won by the slimmest of margins.
From there, the team walk through the sweeping changes coming on 7 May: a bigger parliament, a brand new voting system, and sixteen new constituencies, before mapping out a political landscape that would have been unimaginable even five years ago. 
Sidd draws a striking comparison between Welsh Labour's decline and the fall of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party after fifty years of unbroken rule, asking whether dominant parties ever truly die. The team profiles all six main parties and looks beyond the election itself to the bigger questions Wales is asking about its democratic future.
If you're in Wales and not yet registered to vote, you can do so here: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
Voter registration closes at 23:59 on 20th April 2026. 
Find out more about the parties featured in this episode:
Plaid Cymru: https://www.partyof.wales/
Reform Wales: https://www.reformparty.uk/view-pdf/welsh-manifesto
Welsh Labour: https://www.welshlabour.wales/manifesto-2026/
Welsh Greens: https://wales.greenparty.org.uk/
Welsh Liberal Democrats: https://www.libdems.wales/
Welsh Conservatives: https://www.conservatives.wales/
Key dates for the 2026 Senedd election: https://research.senedd.wales/research-articles/what-are-the-key-dates-for-the-2026-senedd-election/
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

Iran's Reckoning: Counter Revolution

In this episode of The Political Dispatch, Tom, Sidd and Lily dive into what may be the most significant moment in Iranian politics since 1979, the nationwide protests that erupted in late December 2025 and the brutal crackdown that followed.
From the closure of Tehran's Grand Bazaar to coordinated demonstrations across all 31 provinces, the team traces how economic grievances over a collapsing currency and runaway inflation rapidly transformed into open calls for regime change. They explore the striking evolution of protest slogans, from demands for economic relief to chants of "Pahlavi will return", and what that shift reveals about the shrinking space for reform within the Islamic Republic.
Tom and Sidd place these events in historical context, drawing comparisons to the 1979 revolution, the 2009 Green Movement, and the 2022 Woman Life Freedom protests, while examining the key differences that make this moment distinct. They also unpack the complex geopolitical dynamics at play, Trump's threats, Israel's June 2025 strikes, China's economic lifeline, and Russia's quiet mediation, before laying out three possible scenarios for what comes next.
As always, the team urges listeners to stay informed but stay sceptical in an information environment shaped by regime propaganda, opposition messaging, and competing geopolitical agendas.
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

The Politics of Music

In this episode of The Political Dispatch, Tom, Lily, and Sidd begin with two recent events from the world’s biggest stages and trace them to a much older story about music and politics.
From Billie Eilish’s speech at the Grammys to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, the team explores how musicians are using their cultural influence to make political statements about identity, injustice, and power. Placing these moments in historical context, they explore a longer tradition of musicians shaping politics: from Billie Holiday and Nina Simone to anti-apartheid anthems and protest music under authoritarian regimes.
Along the way, the team considers what role music plays in politics, why musicians provoke such strong reactions, and how it all fits into today's political landscape.
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the change. Media Network.

If We're Not at the Table, We're on the Menu

In this episode of The Political Dispatch, Tom and Sidd explore a pivotal moment in global politics: the unraveling of the post-Cold War international order. 
Drawing on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s powerful speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he invoked Czech dissident Václav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless”, they examine what happens when nations can no longer sustain the lie they’ve been living within.
This episode marks the beginning of what Tom and Sidd anticipate will be many discussions in 2026 about the changing world order. 
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To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati.
For more information about the show, please find Be the change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork.
Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the change. Media Network.