Novara Media

Downstream: Zack Polanski Is Coming for Starmer and Farage

Support for the Green party in Britain has been steadily rising for the past few decades. However, few predicted that when Zack Polanski took office as Green party leader in September, membership would surge from 70,000 to 150,000 members in a matter of months. According to the latest polling, the party’s share of the vote has soared too: growing from 10 to 17 per cent. In front of a live audience at EartH Hackney, Zack tells the story of his first few months in office, and how the party’s plans from two months ago are already outdated. What are the core values, red lines and top priorities for the Greens in this new era? How broad a church will the Green party be? Is it a socialist party, or a party with socialists in it? And what exactly is their strategy to take on the floundering Labour party, as well as the looming threat of Reform?

Downstream: Ex-World Bank Insider on Western Decline & the Chinese World Order w/ Branko Milanovic

At Novara, we focus on the trends that are remaking the world and affecting our lives: technological development and automation, multipolarity, the demise of an American-led world order and the rise of China. On Downstream this week is a man whose work draws together all of these themes: former World Bank macroeconomist and leading expert on global inequality, Professor Branko Milanovic. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Branko answers all of Aaron’s burning questions about modern economic history and where things are heading. How significant is the rise of Asia today, compared to the seismic historic shift of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century? What was the cause of World War I, and why don’t mainstream accounts understand the real roots of it? Who are the new elite, and why is it so hard to break their hold on wealth? And how likely is a conflict between China & the USA?

Downstream: The Dark Truth About Starmer’s Rise to Power w/ Paul Holden

Investigative journalist Paul Holden has spent the last four years digging into the political machinations that brought Keir Starmer’s Labour Party into office – findings that propel his powerful 2025 book, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together and the Crisis of British Democracy [https://orbooks.com/catalog/the-fraud/]. He tells Ash Sarkar about the cache of leaked emails that revealed the secret dealings of Morgan McSweeney – an adviser who’s risen through the ranks to become perhaps the most powerful man in the Labour party – and explains how McSweeney’s faction, Labour Together, sabotaged the Corbyn project. Help us build people-powered media: https://novara.media/support

Downstream: Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ancient Roots w/ Serhii Plokhy

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then a very young political scientist, declared that history was over. He wrote a book with the same title just a couple of years later. The Cold War had finished, the USSR had collapsed, liberal democracy and market capitalism reigned supreme, and it wasn’t going to change. And yet in the last few years, the script has moved quite significantly. History has returned. Emblematic of that has been the conflict between Russia and Ukraine which began in 2022, although of course, you can date that back to 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. On Downstream this week is Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. He offers a deep history of Russia and Ukraine, the conflict, where it comes from, and where it sits within the broader sweep of collapsing empires. He’s also got a new book out, about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy: The Nuclear Age. They discuss what is driving Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, almost four years after it began. What does Putin’s stated aim of ‘de-Nazification’ really mean? What role does Russia’s nuclear arsenal play in determining the shape of the conflict? And, in an increasingly multipolar world where history has indeed come back, is nuclear proliferation within the next ten years likely?

Downstream: The West Misunderstands Iran w/ Vali Nasr

Iran has been in the news a lot in 2025. Over recent decades, it has been a variable in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. But during the Twelve Day War with Israel in June of this year, Iran very much took centre stage. People started asking questions, chief among them being: What does Iran really want? On Downstream this week is Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, and author of a new book, Iran’s Grand Strategy. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Nasr traces the roots of Iran’s foreign and domestic policy, from western imperialism through the revolution, and into the present day. What have been Iran’s failures and successes, domestically and beyond its borders, in the years since the revolution? Why does a country with no real military or economic base find itself enmeshed in so many conflicts overseas? Does Iran sincerely support the cause of Palestinian liberation? Why would it want nuclear capability? And as the revolutionary guard grows old, what will Iran do next?