In this week's episode, Joe raises doubts about the Green Party's choice of candidate in the Manchester mayoralty - spurring wider questions about leadership on the left. After discussing the Green Party's proposals for internal democratic reform, your hosts zoom out to discuss politics' most significant wedge issue: immigration. Shanice opens by critiquing the left's go to arguments, proposing an alternative lens for viewing the critical yet divisive immigration debate.

READINGS

Joshua Virasami - A World Without Racism: Building Antiracist FuturesThe Productive State - A Framework for Manchesterism Margaret Kennedy - The Feast
Resonance FM - English Stitch

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for Ampersounds Productions.

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Jonas runs through Burnham’s big win in Makerfield and what it might mean for the Labour Party and the country, while Joe gives a deep cut on progressive alliances, assessing their history, viability and whether the Greens should sign up.

Live show

London 3rd July - Get Your Tickets

Readings

All in: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse

Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal

The Secret History Donna Tartt

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.
Edited by Marcus Berdaut for Ampersounds Productions.

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Shanice opens up the episode probing why the left’s response to the killing of Henry Nowak has been so lukewarm, whilst Joe gives us a deep dive into six months of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty, assessing what’s gone well and what challenges might arise for the young democratic socialist politician.

Live show:

London 3rd July - Get your tickets!

Readings

Patrick Radden Keefe - London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

H. V. Morton - In Search of England

Asad Haider - Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for Ampersounds Productions.

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This is an Ampersounds production.

Who is Andy Burnham? What is Manchesterism? Should the Greens be afraid of Labour's so-called soft left? Jonas, Joe and Shanice dissect the state of British politics after the local elections, and ask where next for the Left in a rapidly disintegrating two-party system.

This episode was recorded live at Norwich Transformed 2026.

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for Ampersounds Productions.

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This is an Ampersounds production.

In this week’s episode, Joe takes us on a tour through the recent local elections as we contemplate the end of the two-party system and the brewing Green insurgency. Then Shanice discusses two of this disintegrating system’s morbid symptoms: the rise of both antisemitism and moral panics about antisemitism, asking how the left fights both racism towards Jews and the instrumentalisation of Jewish identity by bad faith actors defending a broken political settlement.

Readings

Abram Leon - The Jewish Question

Hackney Green Party Manifesto

Callum Cant and Matthew Lee - The Future in our Past: The General Strike

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for ⁠⁠⁠Ampersounds Productions.⁠⁠⁠

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Jonas breaks down the latest shenanigans inside Your Party and the crew ask themselves how it got so bad. Whilst Joe offers some thoughts on what we do next, now that it seems the Jeremy Corbyn-led party has entered into a zombie state.

Readings

Anton Jäger - Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences

Laleh Khalili - Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy

Lotte L.S. - An Economy of Starlings

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for ⁠⁠Ampersounds Productions.⁠⁠

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Shanice opens us up by comparing the outwards-looking priorities of Zack Polanski’s Greens with their fraught neighbours in Your Party. Whilst Jonas uses the opportunity of the recent mass anti-racist Together march to deep dive into one of its central organisers: the Socialist Workers Party.

Readings

John Maynard Keynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

Red Mole Substack - Duncan Chapel

Comrade Delta - D K Renton

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for ⁠Ampersounds Productions.⁠

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This is an Ampersounds production.

Jonas takes us across the pond in this week's news section, analysing the French municipal elections and gleaning some insight from Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise. Whilst Shanice argues that the acceleration of US imperial decline also heralds the fracturing of Western military alliances and the emergence of new possibilities for anti-war politics.

Readings

Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century - Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Homeland Empire w/ Nikhil Pal Singh - Politics Theory Other

Love, Loneliness and AI: Where Should We Begin? Live with Esther Perel

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Hosted by Shanice McBean, Jonas Marvin and Joe Todd.

Edited by Marcus Berdaut for Ampersounds Productions.

Become a supporter: https://lifeoftheparty.uk/

Follow us on Instagram.

This is an Ampersounds production.