Outside the system
Author: Hardeep Matharu
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And Now for Something Real
There was a sentiment Andy Burnham kept returning to when I interviewed him last July at Byline Festival.
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‘We’re Trying to Normalise Changing One’s Mind’
Rich Logis was as deep into MAGA as a Trump supporter can be. Until he left. He speaks to Hardeep Matharu about the organisation he has created to help others exit the ‘extremist group’ – and to repent
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The Two Professors and a ‘War on Ideas’
The different stories of the Cambridge academics Jason Arday and James Orr reveal the wider cultural and ideological forces at work around hierarchies and structural power. Hardeep Matharu reports
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‘You Want to Love His Music. Without Thinking That This Guy Raped Kids Year After Year’
After the phenomenal success of the Michael Jackson biopic this year, Hardeep Matharu sat down with Dan Reed, the director of ‘Leaving Neverland’ – which documented sexual abuse allegations against the late singer – to explore how he feels seeing the icon’s continued success, the cult of the ‘cultural god’, and telling complicated truths
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The Two Professors and a ‘War On Ideas’
The different stories of the Cambridge academics Jason Arday and James Orr reveal the wider cultural and ideological forces around hierarchies and structural power – and who gets to belong in our institutions
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‘A Polar Bear on an Iceberg? Here’s This Picture of Catastrophe and You’ve Totally Depoliticised It’
The climate crisis can’t be solved without a commitment to fighting injustice at the same time – Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, sat down with Byline Times’ Editor in Chief to explain why
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‘A Polar Bear on an Iceberg? Here’s This Picture of Catastrophe and You’ve Totally Depoliticised It’
The climate crisis can’t be solved without a commitment to fighting injustice at the same time – Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, sat down with Hardeep Matharu to explain why
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There Will Be Another Jason Arday
There is no check to fetter power when unfettered power resides in the check, writes Editor in Chief Hardeep Matharu
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There Will Be Another Jason Arday
There is no check to fetter power when unfettered power resides in the check
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‘There’s a Value in What We Produce Because We Feel – and an AI Chatbot Can’t Feel’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets Kate Devlin, Professor of AI and Society at King’s College London, to explore how relationships with AI companions aren’t particularly new, why she believes the under-16s social media ban is flawed, and why human creativity can’t be matched
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‘There’s a Value in What We Produce Because We Feel – and an AI Chatbot Can’t Feel’
Hardeep Matharu meets Kate Devlin, Professor of AI & Society at King’s College London, to explore how relationships with AI companions aren’t particularly new, why she believes the under-16s social media ban is flawed, and why nothing can match human creativity
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Makerfield: Can the ‘Politics of Place’ Offer an Antidote to the Poverty of Possibility?
Having been on Reform UK’s target list as a winnable seat, Andy Burnham’s new constituency is a microcosm of Brexit Britain and the failed legacies of Thatcher and Blair. Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu paid a visit ahead of its seminal by-election
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Half Man: ‘We’re Beginning to Get a Better, Much More Nuanced Understanding… Vulnerability is a Part of Masculinity Now’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Duncan Craig, founder of We Are Survivors – a charity supporting survivors of male sexual abuse – about why the ‘toxic masculinity’ narrative has been problematic, and the eye-opening exploration of complex male relationships in Richard Gadd’s new six-part series Half Man
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Burnham Wins in Makerfield: Can the ‘Politics of Place’ Now Offer an Antidote to the Poverty of Possibility?
Having been on Reform UK’s target list as a winnable seat, Andy Burnham’s new constituency is a microcosm of Brexit Britain and the failed legacies of Thatcher and Blair. Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu paid a visit ahead of its seminal by-election
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Half Man: ‘We’re Beginning to Get a Better, Much More Nuanced Understanding… Vulnerability is a Part of Masculinity Now’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief speaks to Duncan Craig, founder of We Are Survivors – a charity supporting survivors of male sexual abuse – about why the ‘toxic masculinity’ narrative has been problematic, and the eye-opening exploration of complex male relationships in Richard Gadd’s new six-part series ‘Half Man’
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‘We Can See Beyond the Surface and Understand that this Character, this Person, is Much More Complicated… Theatre Can Give You That’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets Josephine Burton – creator and director of a new play ‘Our Public House’ by Dash Arts which examines political alienation in Britain today – and two real-life speech-makers taking to the stage each night
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‘I Hadn’t Anticipated Developing Empathy for Them, But You Can See How the Conspirituality Belief System Also Serves as a Set of Coping Mechanisms’
Hardeep Matharu introduced Liz Smith and Noelle Cook’s film, ‘The Conspiracists’, at its London premiere in April. She speaks to the British director and American writer about the eye-opening documentary tracking their journey to understand the lives of the women convicted for their role in the January 6 insurrection
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‘I Hadn’t Anticipated Developing Empathy for Them, But You Can See How the Conspirituality Belief System Also Serves as a Set of Coping Mechanisms’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief speaks to director Liz Smith and writer Noelle Cook about their journey into the world of ‘conspirituality’ for a new documentary shedding light on the women attracted to MAGA, their ‘soul contracts’, and existence in the ‘5D’ world
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‘Funnily Enough, What Matters to People is Other People’
Contrary to what big organisations in the sector say, housing is not the answer. It’s useful, but it’s not the answer.
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‘Orwell Knew the Moment You Discover that the Other is Also You, a Whole Range of Bullshit Just Drops’
It seems increasingly true to suggest that we live in an Orwellian world. What were the personal origins of Orwell: 2+2=5?
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‘Orwell Knew the Moment You Discover that the Other is Also You, a Whole Range of Bullshit Just Drops’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets the award-winning Haitian film-maker and director Raoul Peck to explore his new documentary, ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’, which investigates the prescience of the English writer’s warnings of authoritarianism through his own words
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Reform Attacks Byline Times
Reform UK accused Byline Times of “attempting to derail a democratic election” for reporting on Matt Goodwin’s academic ties to organisations linked to discredited pseudoscientific race ideology
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Naz Shah MP on Gorton and Denton Claims: ‘How Do Supposedly “Sectarian Muslims” End Up Voting for a Radically Progressive Party with a Gay Jewish Leader?’
The Labour MP told Byline Times that, from her experience of ‘clan-based politics’, it was not present in the Manchester by-election as Reform UK claims
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Reform Attacks Byline Times For ‘Attempting to Derail a Democratic Election’ – Before Blaming ‘Family Voting’ and ‘Muslim Sectarianism’ for Gorton and Denton Defeat
Having imported its own ideas for a DOGE and ICE from the US, Farage’s party now appears to be copying the Trumpian tactics of alleging vote-rigging in elections
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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor: How Power Protects Itself Through Contempt
As the eighth in line of succession to the British throne is arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, Hardeep Matharu explores how elite impunity is built on creating a sense of powerlessness in the many – in her editorial first published in the latest monthly print edition of Byline Times
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Nazir Afzal: ‘Class Discrimination Isn’t a Complex Mystery – It’s a Structural Issue Quietly Enforced, Politely Denied, Endlessly Deferred’
The Chancellor of Manchester University has co-authored a new report, ‘Class Ceiling’, examining working-class participation in the creative industries across Greater Manchester. He spoke to Hardeep Matharu and Peter Jukes about how opportunities for people from poorer backgrounds has declined since the 1960s, and why his work prosecuting the grooming gangs perpetrators as the former…
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Power Protects Itself Through Powerlessness
Does he really think we’ll believe it? It was the question that sat in our heads as we watched the then Prince Andrew give his fateful interview to Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis in 2019 on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, months after the sex offender and trafficker was found dead in a New York prison.
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Zack Polanski – An Outsider Going Mainstream?
In September, Zack Polanski – a Member of the London Assembly since 2021 – was elected to the Green Party’s top job. His leadership has seen its membership double to more than 150,000 – overtaking those of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
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Editorial – Brutality and Affinity
America’s attack on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The uprising in Iran and the massacre of thousands of protestors. Donald Trump’s continued threats to take over Greenland and destroy the Nato alliance by targeting one of its members.
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Fun and Joy Are Very Powerful Political Forces
In the turbulence of the post-2008 financial crisis period, in the UK and the US, there was the emergence of a range of political figures who previously would have been nowhere near formal politics.
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Editorial – Sanctuary
It seems quintessentially English. Though most of our subscribers are not London-based, and we have a readership from across the world, Southwark Cathedral is in effect the parish church for the area in which Byline Times’ office is located.
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The Carousel of Scapegoats
People are social animals and – in the absence of an absolute improvement in your life – there is a destructive but all too human solution: make sure others are relatively more miserable than you are.
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Editorial – Seeing the Light
In Brighton this month – where I was invited to speak about journalism, truth, and Byline Times – I sat down next to Charlie. He said he loved our work and, at one time, had been a subscriber to this monthly print edition. But the magazine, he told me, was just too dense for him;…
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Shami Chakrabarti:‘We Need a Popular Front Broad Enough to Go From the Left of the Left to Liberal Conservatives’
The Labour peer, lawyer, and rights activist speaks to Hardeep Matharu about why her new podcast – Shami’s Speakeasy – is focusing on human conversations with those of shared values, but differing politics
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Editorial – Signs of the Time
The artist Paul Klee once said that art does not represent what we see, but makes us see. And I quickly learned the same is true of journalism: far from being a neutral arbiter of information, it has the same power to craft the ideas we think with, not just the ideas we think about.
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Shami Chakrabarti: ‘Humans have Multiple Identities – When You Try to Take that Away and Make Identity Binary and Singular, You are Really Dehumanising Someone’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets the Labour peer, lawyer, and human rights activist to explore why her new podcast focuses on having human conversations with those of shared values but differing politics
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Clive Lewis MP: ‘I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say I Think My Party is Making this Country Weaker in Preparation for an Authoritarian-Right Government’
What happened to Keir Starmer’s pledge that Labour would return to power with a ‘government of service’? Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu speak to the backbench Labour MP to understand why the Government is focusing on how to ‘stop the boats’ rather than fixing people’s everyday lives
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How The Media Creates the World We Live In
In this edited extract from a new pamphlet, Pressing Issues, on the state of the media by the Fabian Society, Hardeep Matharu examines the ways in which the traditional press and social media-based news shape the ideas we think with
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Editorial – The Interregnum
In the very early days of the pandemic in 2020, I remember seeing news stories of people in masks queuing in socially distanced squares marked on the floor of a market in Italy. It was strange and interesting, I thought. And then I moved on.
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The Cost of Lies: Why We Identify With Deadly Misinformation
From Covid to climate change, understanding the role unevidenced conspiracy theories fulfil for individual and social identity in a shifting world can help explain our ‘post-truth’ age, writes Hardeep Matharu
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Lord Heseltine – ‘Nigel Farage, Let’s Not Mince Our Language, Is Mr Trump’s Vicar in England’
Fifty years on from the UK’s 1975 referendum on its continued membership of the then European Communities, the former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister speaks to Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu about the future of our involvement in Europe, the rise of populism on both sides of the Atlantic, and how Brexit has reshaped his party…
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Andy Burnham: ‘These Dangerous, Alienating Times Call for Radical Change of Our Politics’
Byline Times’ Editor in Chief meets Labour’s Greater Manchester Mayor to discuss imposter syndrome and proportional representation, the ‘incestuous’ Westminster media-political class – and how to connect politics with people in the everyday
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The Cost of Lies: Why We Identify With Deadly Misinformation
From Covid to climate change, understanding the role unevidenced conspiracy theories fulfil for individual and social identity in a shifting world can better help explain our ‘post-truth’ age
