Double Jeopardy - UK Law and Politics

By Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC

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Category: Politics

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Subscribers: 44
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Episodes: 116

Description

Covering the critical intersections of law and politics in the UK with expert commentary on high-profile legal cases, political controversies, prisons and sentencing, human rights law, current political events and the shifting landscape of justice and democracy. With in-depth discussions and influential guests, Double Jeopardy is the podcast that uncovers the forces shaping Britain’s legal and political present and future. What happens when law and politics collide?  How do politics shape the law - and when does the law push back?  What happens when judicial independence is tested, human rights come under attack, or freedom of expression is challenged?  And who really holds power in Britain’s legal and political system?  Get answers to questions like these weekly on Wednesdays. Double Jeopardy is presented by Ken Macdonald KC, former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Tim Owen KC, as they break down the legal and political issues in Britain. From high-profile legal cases to the evolving state of British democracy, Double Jeopardy offers expert legal commentary on the most pressing topics in UK law, politics, human rights and the British Constitution.  Ken Macdonald KC served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2003-2008, shaping modern prosecutorial policy and advocating for the rule of law. He is a former Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and a leading voice on civil liberties.  Tim Owen KC has been involved in many of the most significant public, criminal and human rights law cases over the past four decades. Both bring unparalleled experience from the frontline of Britain's legal and political landscape.  Episode topics have included:  How UK politics is shaping the legal system and British politics explained – from judicial review of government decisions to the erosion of civil liberties.  The toxic confrontation between gender critical feminists and trans activists over what defines a woman in law.  The extent to which special measures intended to support vulnerable witnesses are making it harder to prosecute rape and other serious sexual offences.  Inside the most controversial legal cases – including human rights battles over immigration law, terrorism and national security, the Assisted Dying Bill and the gross miscarriage of justice in the Andrew Malkinson case.  Britain’s never ending criminal justice crisis – from overfilled prisons to policing policies that test the rule of law, threats to jury trial and the massive backlog of Crown Court cases.  Lucy Letby’s convictions, the media’s role, the Court of Appeal’s detailed rejection of her appeal and the fresh evidence which may demonstrate fundamental problems with the safety of the convictions.   Episodes feature discussions with the most influential voices in law, politics, and justice, including:   Professor Kathleen Stock – leading gender critical feminist and Professor of Philosophy hounded out of her job at Sussex University discusses science, gender and the importance of free speech.  Joshua Rozenberg - Legal commentator and broadcaster reviewed major legal and political developments, including judicial independence, rule of law, and shifts in UK legal norms.  Baroness Brenda Hale – Former President of the Supreme Court discuss human rights, politicians and populist attacks on the judiciary.  Danny Shaw - Former BBC Home Affairs Correspondent explored the government’s Crime and Policing Bill, political motives behind law-and-order messaging, and public trust in the justice system.  Melanie Phillips – Times columnist and public commentator discussed the developing constitutional crisis in Israel arising from the Netenyahu government’s plans to trim the powers and role of Israel’s Supreme Court.  If you like The Rest Is Politics, Talking Politics, Law Pod UK and Today in Focus, you’ll enjoy Double Jeopardy. If you would like to sponsor the podcast, contact us at info@thepodcastguys.co.uk.

Episode Date
Peter Mandelson, Graham Linehan, Palestine Action, and the Nastiness of Elon Musk
Sep 17, 2025
Small Boats and the Irresistible Rise of Reform UK: Can the Refugee Convention Survive?
Sep 10, 2025
Mr Farage Goes To Washington: The Truth About The ECHR
Sep 03, 2025
Farage, Tolerating Torture, and Mass Deportations: Dragging U.K. Justice into Uncharted Waters?
Aug 28, 2025
Holiday Postbag: Lucy Connolly, Lucy Letby, the Leveson Review and Two-Tier Justice
Aug 20, 2025
Is Our Government Any Good? Palestine Action, Shabana Mahmood, and Foreign Prisoners in UK Jails
Aug 13, 2025
LIBOR, Farage’s Cure for Lawless Britain, and Palestine Action in the Dock: UK Justice Goes on Trial
Jul 30, 2025
Super Injunctions, Afghanistan, and UK Law
Jul 23, 2025
Sir Brian Leveson and Criminal Justice: A Requiem For Jury Trials in England and Wales?
Jul 16, 2025
Lucy Letby: Will She Waive Privilege as UK Prosecutors Widen the Net?
Jul 09, 2025
Bombing Iran: Self-Defence or a Lawless Attack?
Jul 02, 2025
When UK Law and Politics Collide: Abortion, Assisted Dying, and Bombing Iran
Jun 25, 2025
Politics and Money in UK Justice: Juries, Abortion and the Double Jeopardy Postbag
Jun 18, 2025
UK Politics and Bad Science: Investigating the Graveyard Spiral of Forensic Science in England and Wales
Jun 11, 2025
David Gauke: Solving the UK Prison Crisis
Jun 04, 2025
State Threats and Subversion: Keeping UK Politics Clean
May 28, 2025
100th Episode of Double Jeopardy - Terminating the Cruelty of Victorian Era Abortion Laws: The Campaign to Decriminalise Abortion Across the UK
May 21, 2025
Debating the Rule of Law in the UK: Hermer versus Wolfson
May 14, 2025
Reforming Criminal Appeals and Righting the Wrongs of UK Justice
May 07, 2025
Authoritarians Against Lawyers: Political Attacks on the Rule of Law
Apr 30, 2025
Womanhood Defined: The UK Supreme Court Puts Biology and Science at the Heart of UK Discrimination and Human Rights Law and Transforms the Approach of UK Politics to Adult Human Females
Apr 23, 2025
Fake News on Asylum, The Battle to Define Human Rights Law, and Labour’s New UK Politics
Apr 16, 2025
Disclosure, Artificial Intelligence, and Modernising UK Criminal Justice: Will the Fisher Report Have Any Real Impact on Collapsed Trials and the Crumbling UK Justice System?
Apr 09, 2025
Two Tier Justice, Mass Migration, and a Pound Shop Trump in the UK Parliament
Apr 02, 2025
Lucy Letby’s Victims Strike Back: Identification Evidence, Miscarriages of Justice and Legal System Insights into How UK Juries Reach their Verdicts
Mar 26, 2025
Judicial Independence, Human Rights Law and Political Hypocrisy: Breaking Down the 6 Page Letter from the Sentencing Council Chair
Mar 19, 2025
Amending the Assisted Dying Bill and the Sentencing Council Under Attack
Mar 12, 2025
Labour’s Criminal Justice: Performance or Reality?
Mar 05, 2025
Why Sentencing is Out of Control
Feb 26, 2025
Immigration, Asylum and Liberal Democracy
Feb 19, 2025
Lucy Letby: The Experts Break Cover
Feb 12, 2025
The Stolen Honour of Andrew Malkinson
Feb 05, 2025
Southport, Terrorism and Whole Life Tariffs
Jan 29, 2025
Listening to Criminals
Jan 22, 2025
Foreign Interference in the Age of TikTok and Musk
Jan 15, 2025
Spies, Royals and Elon Musk
Jan 08, 2025
Review of the Year with Joshua Rozenberg
Dec 18, 2024
Getting Away with Murder?
Dec 11, 2024
Judges and the Power of Life and Death
Dec 04, 2024
Politics, Religion and Assisted Dying
Nov 27, 2024
The Daily Mail Goes to Strasbourg
Nov 20, 2024
Lucy Letby, Fair Trials, and a Conservative Path to Justice
Nov 13, 2024
Defending Diversity and Defining a Woman
Nov 06, 2024
No Money for Justice and Chris Kaba: Part 2
Oct 30, 2024
The Shooting of Chris Kaba and Failing the Victims of Mohamed Al-Fayed
Oct 24, 2024
Law, Psychiatry and Murder
Oct 16, 2024
Naomi Campbell’s Philanthropy and Robert Jenrick’s Stupidity
Oct 09, 2024
Ian Burnett on Punishment, and the Disgrace of Mohamed Al-Fayed
Oct 02, 2024
Diversity, Orwell and the Death of Satire
Sep 24, 2024
Rape Trials in Peril and the Sentencing of Huw Edwards
Sep 18, 2024
Tommy Robinson's Tax Returns & Grenfell Delays
Sep 11, 2024
Hate, Bigotry and Bleaching the Internet
Sep 03, 2024
Lucy Letby Part 2: The Response
Aug 27, 2024
Lucy Letby: The Shadow of a Doubt?
Aug 16, 2024
Riots: The Full Force of the Law?
Aug 08, 2024
Sarah Lunnon: Just Stop Protesting?
Aug 01, 2024
Fiona Rutherford: Justice into the Future
Jul 24, 2024
Starmer’s First Move - Ending Our Addiction to Prison?
Jul 15, 2024
David Gauke: Conservative Reckoning, Labour Change?
Jun 26, 2024
Justice Under Labour?
Jun 14, 2024
Mark Fairhurst: Britain’s Prison Shame
Jun 05, 2024
Angus McCullough KC: The Undermining of Secret Justice
May 22, 2024
Jessica Simor KC: Judicial Activism in the Age of Global Warming
May 14, 2024
Jonathan Jones KC: Will the Rwanda Bill Work?
Apr 30, 2024
Nick Ephgrave - Meet the New Director
Apr 23, 2024
John Bowers KC - The Power of Corruption
Apr 10, 2024
Hannah Quirk - The Problem with Criminal Justice
Mar 27, 2024
Jo Phoenix - Gender and the Ducking Stool
Mar 07, 2024
Secrecy in the Family Courts
Feb 16, 2024
Patrick Green KC - Mr Bates Beats the Post Office
Jan 19, 2024
Jonathan Jones - Stopping the Boats?
Jan 12, 2024
I. Stephanie Boyce - Leading the Law Society
Dec 19, 2023
Jonathan Hall KC - Gaza and the Right to Protest
Dec 04, 2023
Frances Crook - Political Power and Penal Failure
Nov 29, 2023
Adam Wagner - Rwanda and the Rule of Law
Nov 19, 2023
Alex Chalk KC - Speaking for the Government
Nov 13, 2023
Angus McCullough KC - When Justice is Secret
Nov 03, 2023
Ian Winter KC - Can the SFO Work?
Oct 27, 2023
Stuart Russell - AI in a World of Risk
Oct 12, 2023
Edward Garnier KC - When Justice Fails
Sep 28, 2023
Robert Spano - The United Kingdom v Human Rights
Sep 14, 2023
Melanie Phillips - Israel and the Politics of Law
Aug 01, 2023
Gavin Millar KC - Huw Edwards and the Limits of Privacy
Jul 20, 2023
Richard Moorhead - Lawyers Behaving Badly?
Jul 11, 2023
Dan Neidle - I’m the Taxman
Jun 27, 2023
Andy Verity- Telling the Truth about LIBOR
Jun 16, 2023
Akua Reindorf KC - Twisting the Law
May 30, 2023
Sarah Wootton - Dying for the Law
May 15, 2023
Richard Ekins - Judges and Political Power
May 02, 2023
Maya Foa - The Death Penalty, National Security and Terror
Apr 21, 2023
Dr Bryn Harris - Free Speech, Harm and the Internet
Apr 07, 2023
Harvey Redgrave - The Met in Meltdown
Mar 24, 2023
Joshua Rozenberg - Reporting the Law
Mar 13, 2023
Karon Monaghan KC - Sex, Lies and Women’s Rights
Mar 02, 2023
Sir Nicholas Blake - Small Boats, Dog Whistles and the Law
Feb 17, 2023
Nick Vineall KC - Leading the Bar
Feb 02, 2023
David Pannick KC - Defending The Law in Parliament
Jan 26, 2023
Sir Robert Buckland KC - Making Better Law
Jan 16, 2023
Bad Law for the New Year, with Sir Jonathan Jones KC
Jan 05, 2023
Helena Kennedy KC - Fifty Years Fighting
Dec 28, 2022
Clare Montgomery KC - Getting Away With Fraud
Dec 12, 2022
Andrea Coomber KC - The Prison Addiction
Nov 24, 2022
Brenda Hale - Judicial Independence and its Enemies
Nov 17, 2022
Hugh Tomlinson KC - What’s in a SLAPP?
Nov 08, 2022
Hakeem Belo-Osagie - Africa Rising: Politics, Law and Sympathy For Russia
Oct 27, 2022
Chaos
Oct 20, 2022
Dominic Grieve KC - When Governments Trash the Law
Oct 13, 2022
The US Supreme Court - Going Rogue?
Oct 06, 2022
Truss on Rights and Johnson on Trial
Sep 26, 2022
Dinah Rose KC - Appointing Supreme Court Justices. Is the System Working?
Sep 15, 2022
Pia Sarma, Chief Lawyer at the Times - Privacy, Press Freedom and the Rights of Oligarchs
Sep 05, 2022
Enemies of the People, Cameras in Court, and Allison Bailey
Jul 29, 2022
Edward Fitzgerald QC - Defending Very Bad People
Jul 22, 2022
Kathleen Stock - The Importance of Being Rational
Jul 14, 2022
A special edition on the Conservative leadership election and what it could mean for rights
Jul 10, 2022
Jonathan Jones: Lies, Lawbreaking, the Attorney General and her Government
Jul 07, 2022