Hardtalk

MPs are currently trying to find a Brexit consensus in defiance of the wishes of Prime Minister May. How close to breaking point is Britain’s political system?Image: Kenneth Clarke (Credit: UK Parliament)

HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is 70 years old this year, but despite its achievements and longevity, celebrations are muted. That’s because NATO's cohesion and long-term viability are being questioned as never before. Is the Secretary General simply papering over the organisation’s widening cracks?Image: Jens Stoltenberg (Credit: European Photopress Agency)

Is the World Bank braced for turbulence ahead? HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to the bank's interim President Kristalina Georgieva. For more than seven decades, the World Bank has been a pillar of international consensus forged in Washington – where ‘rich world’ money has been funnelled into poorer nations prepared to play by its rules. But maybe the consensus is breaking down. The World Bank is about to get a new Trump-nominated president who has been sharply critical of its past activities.(Photo: Kristalina Georgieva. Credit: Stephanie Lecocq/European Photopress Agency)

Is UK policing fit for purpose? Stephen Sackur speaks to Michael Fuller, former chief constable of Kent police, and the only black Briton to have run one of the country’s regional forces. There has been an alarming rise in knife crime in the UK and this prompted a bout of soul searching about the causes and responses. Many of the questions focus on the police. Are they doing an effective job? How well do they handle the challenges of policing in disadvantaged and minority communities? (Photo: Michael Fuller, former chief constable of Kent police

Is there a way out of Venezuela’s protracted agony? Stephen Sackur speaks to Juan Andres Mejia, Deputy of Venezuela’s Voluntad Popular party. For millions of Venezuelans every day is a struggle for survival. This is an oil rich country where the shops are empty, the power is out and healthcare is collapsing. And politics offers little hope of salvation. The Maduro Government is clinging to the trappings of power while the country’s other self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido leads mass protests against him. Juan Andres Mejia is one of Guaido’s key allies in the Venezuelan parliament. Is there a way out of Venezuela’s protracted agony?(Photo: Juan Andres Mejia. Credit: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images)

Stephen Sackur speaks to Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, a prize-winning Israeli novelist who brings a trained psychologist’s eye to compelling stories set in her home country. Hers is a world of moral ambiguity where truth, memory, right and wrong aren't necessarily what they seem. Does her work tell us something important about the Israeli psyche?

Mental health is not easy to talk about, least of all for young men, so often brought up to regard emotional vulnerability as weakness. In a special edition of HARDtalk filmed in the BBC’s Radio Theatre, Stephen Sackur speaks to Stephen Manderson who is better known as the British rapper Professor Green. He has been very honest about his own struggles with mental health issues and is determined to break the taboos around the subject. Can we all learn from Professor Green?(Photo: British rapper Professor Green)

Theresa May’s European parliamentary elections could be a defining moment in the struggle for the EU's future; a continent wide clash between the forces of liberalism and populism exists - perhaps best personified by French President Emmanuel Macron up against Hungary's Viktor Orban. HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Italy’s former centre-left Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. Politically he’s with Macron, but his country is led by populists sympathetic to Viktor Orban. Whose message is resonating with European voters?Image: Paolo Gentiloni (Credit: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)

As the political debate over Brexit grows ever more polarised in the UK exposing deep fractures within the political parties, questions are also being asked about the how the machinery of government is working. Lord Ricketts, a former top diplomat, and national security adviser has very publicly condemned the current government’s handling of Brexit negotiations describing them as a fiasco and expressing the fear that Brexit will leave Britain permanently and significantly weakened. This public airing of views has created the impression that the supposedly apolitical civil service, particularly the foreign office, is institutionally and temperamentally opposed to Brexit – a policy which was of course approved by a national referendum in 2016. Does this represent a real problem in Britain’s democracy and in the relationship between the people and the government?

Is President Putin crushing press freedom in Russia? Since coming to power nearly 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin has been accused of gradually taking control of the media in Russia, and silencing those who would criticise him. Galina Timchenko was editor of Lentu.Ru until she was fired – she claims as a result of pressure from the Kremlin. She left Russia and with some of her former colleagues set up another news organisation - Meduza – in exile, in Latvia. It reaches millions of Russians. But what does her self-imposed exile say about media freedom in Russia? And should she have stayed to defend her journalism there?

Can Hungary's ruling party win Europe’s battle of ideas? HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur is in Budapest to speak to the Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó. Hungary is led by a nationalist, populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who believes his opposition to immigration and his defence of so called Christian values can transform not just Hungary but the whole of the European Union.Image: Péter Szijjártó (Credit: Robert Ghement/European Photopress Agency)

Does comedy have the power to transcend borders, religions and politics and can it build bridges between different communities who may mistrust and misunderstand one another? HARDtalk’s Zeinab Badawi speaks to one guest that thinks so. He is one of the Arab world’s most popular comedians- Nemr Abou Nassar. Brought up in the USA and Lebanon, he quit his job as an insurance broker to become a stand-up comic. He believes humour can change the world. But does he risk promoting misunderstanding and perpetuating stereotypes through his comedy?

What makes a great photograph? Stephen Sackur speaks to one of the great women pioneers of photo journalism, Marilyn Stafford. She was born in the United States but moved to Paris where she became the protégé of the brilliant Henri Cartier-Bresson. Like him, Stafford loved to capture intimate portraits of ordinary people. She has photographed everything from refugees fleeing war to models on the fashion catwalks. Now at 93 her work is being admired by a new generation.

Is there any political or diplomatic initiative capable of saving Yemen? The current limited ceasefire in Yemen between the warring parties has barely alleviated the suffering of the country’s people. The situation is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster and millions of people are in dire need of food and medical assistance. HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur speaks to Yemen’s foreign minister Khaled Alyemany.

Is Kenya's ruling political partnership in danger of collapse? Kenya’s big ambitions to be the economic and infrastructure powerhouse of East Africa cannot be truly realised without political stability. HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur talks to the country's Deputy President William Ruto about fragmentation and factionalism at the top of Kenyan politics.Image: William Ruto (Credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

Stephen Sackur is in Florida to speak to Cameron Kasky, who survived the Parkland School shooting in February 2018 and went on to co-found the March for our Lives movement. This organisation was committed to taking on America’s gun lobby and organised a demonstration in Washington D.C. that was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. But one year after the attack, has anything changed?Image: Cameron Kasky (Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for March For Our Lives)

What draws the novelist to such dark visions of femininity? Sarah Montague speaks to Leila Slimani, one of France’s most famous, and most controversial, authors. Her first book Adele, just published in English, shocked readers for breaking taboos about women and sex addiction. Infanticide is the subject of her second novel, Lullaby, which became a publishing sensation and has been translated into 40 languages.(Photo: Leila Slimani in the Hardtalk studio)

Ireland's former Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, negotiated the Belfast Agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland. Sarah Montague asks if Brexit is a threat to that peace.Image: Bertie Ahern (Credit: Getty Images)

Up until last month, Christian Zerpa was a Justice on Venezuela’s Supreme Court; now he is a high-profile defector from the Maduro regime. With two men claiming to be the country’s President and protestors on the streets, Stephen Sackur asks: is Venezuela's socialist revolution in its death throes?

Is Florida the state where the American dream turned sour? HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur talks to the writer Carl Hiaasen whose hugely popular newspaper columns and darkly comic novels cast a jaundiced eye on the Sunshine State where he was born and continues to live. His writing is fueled by anger - at rotten politics, crooked business and environmental vandalism.