Alternatives to The Rest is Politics podcast

I’ve been listening to The Rest is Politics podcast for many years now. It’s still one of the most listened to podcasts in the UK.

However since the fall of the Conservative party in the UK, I’ve found the format struggles.

There are many reasons to dislike it, depending on your view it could be the 3 minutes of adverts at the start, the lack of transparency between what is the show and what is an advert, that they are constantly promoting their other stuff, the Trump Derangement Syndrome, that one half is a loudmouthed orchestrator of the Iraq war.

Whatever it is, there are alternatives out there, and some of them, I would argue are better.

What I’m listing as alternatives have central left leaning bias, that talks about UK centric news and politics, without banging on about Trump and Musk constantly.

Strong Message Here#

This is one of my favourite new discoveries. Presented by Helen Lewis a journalist, and Armando Iannucci a writer and satirist, you might recognise his works such as Veep and one of my favourite films Death of Stalin.

In each episode they chose a word or phrase that has been used in the last week, and discuss the usage of that and related words mostly in politics, but also in everyday life.

It’s always amusing and brings out the hypocrisy of language.

They seem to be starting to discuss what they did last week, which annoys me, but it’s short and usually quickly linked to their main subject.

And because it’s BBC it has no ads.

Page 94#

This is the podcast from the Private Eye magazine, which is typically considered a satirical paper, but you may have heard about the Horizon Scandal. Private Eye had been reporting on that for years.

The hosts are not very consistent, it usually has Ian Hislop on it, the stalwart of the great satirical panel show Have I got News for You for as long as I can remember. It also usually has Helen Lewis, mentioned above, and usually Andrew Hunter Murray, a writer for Private Eye, a question setter on the TV show QI, QI spin-off podcast No Such Thing as a Fish, and as well as other Private Eye journalists who pop in for a short interview about their subject.

Each show doesn’t really have a topic, and their focus is a mix of current events and longer running stuff that you probably haven’t heard of. It’s always entertaining and interesting.

Craziest of all it seems to barely have any ads.

Pod Save the UK#

You’ll likely have heard of this one, from the same people who do Pod Save the World and Pod Save America.

Personally not my favourite, I really like Nish, but I find Coco’s voice grating and the first 20 minutes of waffle about what they did last week annoying and irrelevant. I suppose some people might like that thing.

They also interview people in their main feed which I also find annoying. Some of them are certainly interesting, but for me it should be a separate feed and stick to news and politics in the main feed.

It’s also alarmist left leaning, rather than left centerist.

But maybe some people like that thing.