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Prospect today publishes an exclusive podcast interview with John Sawers, head of MI6 from 2009-2014. 

Sawers raises deep concerns over the security and intelligence consequences of Brexit. He says:  “My concern on the intelligence and security front is over the exchange of data. Data is now central to the way in which security services in particular monitor threats. Track people who might pose a threat to UK security—and the rules on exchange of data are going to be set in the EU and we won’t be round the table with our voice with our weight stressing the vital importance of these data exchanges to our national security.”
 On Theresa May, Sawers says: 

“I don’t think she’s a natural at engaging on these big political issues with foreign leaders.”   On Britain in the world: 
“We have made less impact in the world in the last ten years than we did in the 30 years before that.” Sawers goes on to discuss the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, Britain’s failure to intervene in Syria, Russian meddling in western elec

The immense political, constitutional and legal challenge posed by Brexit becomes clearer by the day. With talks now stepping up a gear and turning to the future relationship, Prospect Editor Tom Clark and Deputy Digital Editor Alex Dean sat down with representatives from either side of the debate. Gisela Stuart, the Labour politician who chaired Vote Leave, clashed with Ian Dunt, Remainer and editor of politics.co.uk. Prospect’s Executive Editor Jay Elwes spoke to polling extraordinaire John Curtice. Where does public opinion now stand on this defining issue of our times?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Prospect’s Editor, Tom Clark, spoke to the writer and academic Shahidha Bari about her recent essay on the problem of art made by terrible men. What should our attitude be to their work and does history give examples of how those views might change over time? Stephanie Boland, Digital Editor and Sameer Rahim, Arts and Books Editor were on hand to offer their insights, in the first in a new series of weekly podcasts from Prospect.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Not so long ago the web was on the quirky edges of life, but today it is at its heart. John Naughton started out as an enthusiast, but today he joins Tom Clark to explain why it has fallen prey to corporate capture and bred a new surveillance capitalism. James Ball explains how social media has been used to brainwash voters. Meanwhile, Samira Shackle comes back from a trip to Mosul, the Iraqi city until recently under IS control, and explains how blameless citizens there are today paying the price for having been unwilling appendages to the jihaddi killing machine.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Not long ago, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton said there was no more point in arguing with globalisation than the weather: it was an unstoppable wind of change. No longer. It has spun into reverse. Dani Rodrik joins Tom Clark and explains why good economics always made hyper-globalisation a dubious proposition. Meanwhile, Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky reappraises the record of one thoughtful globaliser: Gordon Brown. And feminist Lynne Segal takes on another sell from the economics profession: the “happiness industry."  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Britain’s business leaders are increasingly jittery about a “cliff edge” Brexit. But is leaving Europe necessarily a threat for UK PLC, rather than an opportunity? Economists Adam Posen and Diane Coyle join Tom Clark and give the low-down, both on the scale of the coming shock as they see it, and the pre-existing frailty of the low-productivity British economy. Meanwhile, Andrew Dickson has taken a trip to Bilbao and asks whether culture is the key to restarting an economy.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dutchman Joris Luyendijk imagined he was moving in with European cousins when he arrived in London; six years later he was cheering on Brexit. He tells Tom Clark how he learned to loathe England. At least Britain can laugh at itself—Sameer Rahim has been talking to our greatest living satirist, Armando Iannucci. All nations are defined by the stories they tell about themselves, and Daniella Peled reviews the work of the new Palestinian Museum in putting twists in the tale of a people without a land.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Prospect has a new podcast series starting this week, called How To Fix... - and we'd like to share it with our Headspace listeners. In the first episode, Steve Bloomfield was joined by Andrew Dilnot, Liz Kendall and Daniel Drepper to discuss social care—what's wrong with it, and how we could make it better. You can subscribe now to hear future episodes at: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/howtofix Show notes Here’s Andrew Dilnot’s report on Funding of Care and Support. webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/2013022…report/ Liz Kendall mentioned the Barker report. Here it is. www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/commi…l-care-england Here’s Daniel Drepper’s book on Amazon. www.amazon.de/Jeder-pflegt-allei…1740017/ref=sr_1_1 And if you’d prefer something in English, here’s a piece on Correctiv: correctiv.org/en/investigations/…-home-care-system/, the non-profit Daniel co-founded, that dealt with the same issue. In April 2015, Liz Kendall spoke to the Guardian about social care. www.theguardian.com/society/2015/ap…care

Just how much difference — or not — do the quirks of an individual make to the tide of history? In this month’s episode we welcome historian-turned-Cabinet minister Andrew Adonis, who claims every election is won by the more talented leader. We hear from Wittgenstein's biographer, Ray Monk, who argues that one of the greatest philosophical minds of the lot—Gottlob Frege—lived in a husk of a man. Finally, the globe-trotting journalist, Wendell Steavenson, who followed a refugee family from Syria to the US, describes the heartening signs that America’s open-armed tradition towards immigrants surviving the personality of Donald J Trump.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This month Tom Clark and guests chew over three simmering—or potential—culture wars. Immigration is often said to divide the "metropolitan elite" from "the masses", but Steve Bloomfield says that Canada proves that, done the right way, immigration can be popular. Jessica Abrahams fills us in on what's good, what's bad and what's complacent in fourth-wave feminism. And the Sun's Emily Andrews fills us in on how insiders fear that the change of the guards at Buckingham Palace that will bring in Charles III could bring down the institution at the pinnacle of British class: the monarchy.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alison Wolf, Paul Ormerod and Adam Tooze join Prospect Editor Tom Clark to discuss whether it’s a good thing that so many people go to university; why trust in experts has fallen so low; and how, 10 years on from the banking crisis, a new system of regulation has been quietly introduced under-the-radar. But how sustainable is it?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The malconents have, once again, wrought revenge on the know-it-alls, landing Britain with a hung parliament instead of the predicted Conservative landslide. Steve Richards sees election 2017 as one more instance of the worldwide trend for outsiders causing an upset at the expense of an establishment which has lost all legitimacy since the economic crisis of a decade ago. Rachel Sylvester says the campaign performed an X-ray on Theresa May’s political soul, and revealed a brittle character that was never strong nor stable. Meanwhile, David Berry looks back to the 1930s, when radicals took a break from politics to set up tennis clubs—and made with such success that they took gas fitters and machinists to the All England Club, in the Worker’s Wimbledon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nick Cohen, Matthew Parris and Meg Russell (Constitution Unit) join Tom Clark and a live audience to discuss where Theresa May’s surprise ballot will leave the government, the opposition and a divided country.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the ninth edition of Prospect's monthly podcast, Nick Cohen, Christine Ockrent and Geoffrey Wheatcroft join our editor, Tom Clark, to discuss the British and French elections, as well as the extraordinary resilience of the Tory party.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Simon Jenkins, Wendell Steavenson, and Paul Hilder join Tom Clark to discuss the fraying Union between England and Scotland, the reordering of London to favour the global elite, and the way that new digital campaigns are disrupting the old politics everywhere  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ross McKibbin, Nicholas Timmins and Lucky Wadham join Tom Clark to discuss the condition of Labour and its greatest creation, the NHS, as well as Marine Le Pen's run at the French Presidency.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Debate globalisation?” Tony Blair said a dozen years ago, “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer." Well, we’re debating it now all right, and economist George Magnus fears that it's set to spin into reverse—very possibly sinking us into a global trade war. Some unhappy dwellers on Planet Trump fear that real war could soon be on the agenda as well. Spies are better placed than most of us to assess the risks, and a host of them have been coming out of the shadows to speak to Prospect’s Executive Editor, Jay Elwes about how they’re getting on with the new White House regime. The way that Brexit Britain navigates these frightening waters will depend very much on the woman at the wheel—Theresa May. Anne Perkins of the Guardian has been digging into her early life to get a sense of what makes our prime minister tick.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Power to the people! As an ideal democracy has long reigned unchallenged, but could it fall out of fashion after the convulsions of Brexit and Trump? Certainly, Vladimir Putin's cyberwars raise new questions about its integrity. Journalist Luke Harding, who was expelled from Russia in 2011, explains how the Kremlin's campaign of democratic disruption abroad exports tricks long in use in its elections at home. He also relays his first-hand experience of Putin's spies, who left sex manuals by his martial bed! Freshly returned from Indonesia, "recovering epidemiologist" Elizabeth Pisani talks about the bottom-up culture that makes elections vibrant out there, and draws inspiration from the young Aids activists of the 1980s. They demonstrated how active democratic campaigning by ordinary people can change the direction of things. In the end, the health of democracy is bound to depend on the way its building blocks—that is, individual human beings—make decisions. The bad news, says economist John Kay, is that we

The only world order any of us can remember has been led by one super-power above all others, the United States. But the election of the intermittently isolationist Donald Trump—combined with the ongoing eclipse of American economic power by the Chinese continuing in the background—could mark the moment where the liberal rules of the game finally unravel. Certainly, that is the view of Francis Fukuyama, the political scientist who a generation ago proclaimed the victory of America’s liberal democratic after the Cold War as “the end of history." Today, however, he tells us that the democratic half of liberal democracy is now wreaking revenge on on the liberal part: Trump is merely an emblem of that. And Fukuyama fears that the consequences could in time prove to be just as big as the end of Communism. The historian Adam Tooze, agrees. He pinpoints the birth of the American Century to 1917—with the US entry into the First World War—and he argues that this year’s centenary will thus prove to be funereal marker.

All that is solid melts into air. It was one of Karl Marx’s most famous slogans, but the great Victorian might have been writing about 2016. Many a political death arrived suddenly, and famous names from Prince to David Bowie died literally too. The British people voted to crash out of the European Union, and now—the one thing all the wise heads agreed couldn’t happen has done. America has voted in President Donald Trump. Where are these unsettling times taking us, and what will the new president actually do? In the third episode of this monthly series, Prospect editor Tom Clark is joined by the esteemed American writer, Sam Tanenhaus who has followed Trump all year and explains why this most unprepared of leaders is looking as shocked as the rest of us; and, Diane Roberts, a literary critic and a commentator for National Public Radio warns that Trump’s arrival could set back the clock for women and minorities by half a century. The historian, Ruth Dudley-Edwards, gives her take on whether the effect of one