Oh God, What Now?

How did a sweeping local elections vote for Remain parties become an instruction to “just get Brexit done”? What do those results mean for the EU Elections later this month? What will it take to stop the momentum of the Brexit Party? And what will happen if we don’t?ALEX SOBEL, the pro-People’s Vote Labour MP for Leeds North West, joins us to unpick the spin around a vote that saw both Labour and the Tories receive a bloody nose – and then try to explain it away. He gives us an idea of what Labour’s “all things to everyone” position looks like from the inside, spells out the red lines for Labour’s growing Confirmation Vote movement… and tells what Britain needs to do about the catastrophic issues we’re neglecting because of the endless, endless Brexit War. “Tommy Robinson? That’s a meeting of lactose with intolerance.”Presented by Ros Taylor with Alex Andreou and Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Sophie Black. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Labour’s NEC enrages members by pushing a Confirmatory Referendum into Never-Neverland and recommitting to “Soft” Brexit, we invite Guardian writer and Corbyn supporter RACHEL SHABI into the Remainiacs bunker for a candid discussion of Labour’s Brexit contortions. Why would voters back the party in the EU parliamentary election if that vote will only be transformed into a “vote for Brexit”? Is it time for Remainers to give up on Labour and vote for unequivocally Remain parties? And is there still time to get Labour to change?PLUS hear Alex read out the winner of our Donald Tusk Romantic Fiction Prize in a truly unprecedented moment in recorded audio. Better have that cold shower running… “If we take our foot off the pedal with Labour now, they have free rein to do whatever they want. So we can’t take that pressure off.”Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Sophie Black. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this week’s podcast: Why can’t the Remain parties get their acts together for the European Parliament elections, the most important vote on the EU since the Referendum? Historian ROBERT SAUNDERS joins us to explain what lessons we should have learned from the 1975 Referendum (Do YOU have a copy of ‘Common Market Reggae’? Top £ paid). If we’re going to “remain and reform” what exactly is that supposed to mean? And could we pull it off anyway? And we have a very special Remainiacs Live announcement… Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Ros Taylor and Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Elsie Bath. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week MATT FORDE – stand-up, ‘Mock The Week’ regular, creator of touring show ‘Brexit Through The Gift Shop’ and interviewer of political heavyweights on his podcast ‘The Political Party’ – joins us to get psephological for the upcoming EU Parliament elections. Should we embrace or fear a vote that Theresa May definitely doesn’t want? Can Remain parties co-ordinate, which side’s vote is most likely to split… and how does the D’Hondt system work anyway?Plus how can a fatally split Tory party fight EU elections AND a leadership campaign AND negotiate with Brussels AND get Labour onside when they can’t even do one thing at a time let alone four? Alex gets glued to a train by a passing Brexiter and turns up late. Matt’s terrifyingly accurate William Hague and Tony Blair voices. And how would our guest’s beloved Brian Clough have handled Brexit?“This is our chance to do a Ukip.” Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Naomi Smith and Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Alex Rees. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Theresa May bows to the inevitable and asks for a short delay to Brexit, we ask what it’ll mean when a merciful EU insists on rather a longer one. Do the hard Brexit headbangers have what it takes to bring her down or are the ERG now fatally split? Were the Lab-Con talks just about optics? What is “perfidious Albion” anyway? And when a Hansard survey says a great many Britons would be happy with a “strongman who breaks the rules”, do we really have to worry about Britain falling into the hands of our own Orbán, Bolsanaro or Trump? Our special guest this week is barrister and writer JAMIE SUSSKIND, author of the fascinating exploration of the digitally-dominated society we’ll all be living in. Listen and find out why, in the age of Big Data and AI, Brexit is the last thing you need to worry about. Hey, you didn’t come to this show to be cheered up now, did you? Presented by Ros Taylor with Nina Schick and Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Sophie Black. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production. Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform . You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanSupport us at our Patreon page – http://www.patreon.com/remainiacscasthttp://www.REMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. https://www.ampleplay.co.uk/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BONUS EPISODE: Here’s the audio from Sunday’s PodcastLive at The Light in London, where Dorian, Nina, Alex and Ros brought the RemainiacsLive experience to the special one-day festival of political podcasting. Have a listen to this special “raw and uncut” edition in which we look at the very latest in the May/Corbyn love-in/Blame Tennis tournament… ask whether anything can be done about Britain’s obsession with the War… and finally, fix Brexit in five minutes flat.It’s a rough’n’ready, live and uncut audio bonus. Enjoy! Thanks to the team at PodcastLive.com for inviting us to their event and providing audio facilities.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wonders will never cease. All her avenues exhausted, Theresa May reaches out to the only person who can help in her hour of need. And that would be… Jeremy Corbyn?This week we look at the minefield that is the Theresa-Jezza Love-in. Is compromise possible any longer in the snakepit of the Commons? Who will carry the can for Brexit if they pull it off? And what does this mean for Labour’s General Election plans and the future of the two parties? As luck would have it we recorded right before Emily Thornberry launched her People’s Vote challenge to Corbyn but what do you want from us? Absolute topicality?Also this week special guest TOM KIBASI of the Institute for Public Policy Research joins us for a cheerful – yes, cheerful! – view of Brexit from the progressive end of things. He tells us why the real radicalisation of the Conservative party isn’t anything to do with Brexit and says there was another big lie told during the Referendum: “People were told not to risk something they never had.”In a double whammy of left-of-centre optimism we talk to RUTGER BREGMAN, author of Utopia For Realists And How We Can Get There. Universal income, a 15-hour work week and the end of “bullshit jobs” sounds great, but how does it relate to Brexit? Oh, and we start with a tribute to the great Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark, on tour throughout Europe YES EUROPE later this year. Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Naomi Smith and Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Elsie Bath. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanPhotoshop by Stuart Harrison.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As MV3 turns out to be DOA we hotfoot it into febrile Soho to read the steaming entrails of the May Deal.What happens next? Does May have any blackmail left in her sack of off-brand tricks? What will happen at the EU Parent-Teacher meeting on April 10? Are we closer to Revoke or a People’s Vote? Michael Gove’s performative jogging, the political significance of Y-fronts, and the Magic 8 Ball that is a possible General Election. And how could Theresa May’s psychology finally scupper us?Naomi Smith has gin. Dorian Lynskey has Lem-Sip. Alex Andreou has the healthy glow of a man who’s been in Mykonos since February. Come on in, the recriminations are fine. #RevokeFifticle Thanks to Will Fitzpatrick and the Soho Radio crew for sorting out the studio at short notice.  Photoshop: Stuart Harrison See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The March. The Revoke petition. The Government that can’t govern and the amendment that put MPs in charge of Britain’s destiny at last. Was this the week that Brexiters lost control of Brexit? In that quiet moment before the Indicative Votes we welcome JOHN HARRIS – the Guardian’s wandering Brexit Britain correspondent – to work out where we are, what happens next, and what the unheard parts of Britain will make of the Brexit endgame. Plus: What Brexit will do to Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and skateboards from Bristol. The crap punk roots of the No Deal ultras. And why Labour keeps on fattening the pig for market day.“We live in the age of the right-wing anarchist. They just want to break things.”Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Naomi Smith and Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Sophie Black. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s a big one. TONY BLAIR, former Labour Prime Minister and now head of his Global Institute, talks to Dorian, Naomi and Ian about escape routes from the current Parliamentary chaos, how his own policies relate to the roots of Brexit, what a good Prime Minister would do under the catastrophic circumstances Theresa May has built for herself… and how this weekend’s march can sway the Government when the march against his own Iraq policy didn’t.It’s a fascinating conversation but a word of warning: it’s a bit of a boomy room. Watch your bass-bins, we’re tellin’ you.  “I regret not doing more in the Referendum. I kept out of it. But afterwards I thought this is such a terrible mistake that I’ve got to do everything I can to help stop it.”Presented by Dorian Lynskey with Naomi Smith and Ian Dunt. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Audio production is by Sophie Black. Remainiacs is a Podmasters production.Get every new episode of Remainiacs a whole day early when you back us on the Patreon crowdfunding platform. You’ll also get our monthly Ask Remainiacs special episode plus smart merchandise, an exclusive weekly column by our panel, and discounts on #RemainiacsLive tickets too. #OwnTheRemoanREMAINIACS.comGet your free download of our theme tune ‘Demon Is A Monster’ by Cornershop. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices