Mhairi Black was yet to graduate when she was elected to the House of Commons in May - the youngest Member of Parliament for over a century. She overturned a 16,000 majority and ousted the veteran Labour MP Douglas Alexander to win Paisley and Renfrewshire South for the SNP.She's packed a lot in to the past few weeks: taking her seat in Parliament; sitting the final exam of her politics degree (dissertation subject: the rise of the SNP); attending her graduation ceremony; and making her maiden speech, in which she attacked the Conservative budget with the observation that she was the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK who the Chancellor was prepared to help with housing support. The seven minute speech has been viewed online an astonishing 10 million times.Mhairi Black emerged as a political starlet during the referendum campaign on Scottish independence in 2014. She caught the eye of the former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars, who invited her to play a central role in the Yes Campaign, and who also advised her to stand for Parliament. She was expected to give Douglas Alexander a run for his money, but the real target was Holyrood in 2016.Now she's at Westminster, where an eager press is watching her every move. Her candid teenage tweets have been exhumed and her eating habits have been put under the microscope (even her best friends worry about her appetite for chips and Irn Bru). And she'll have less time to use her Partick Thistle season ticket. But Mhairi Black has her sights set for the top. "She will be a significant leader of a left-wing position in Scottish politics," says Jim Sillars.Presenter: Adam Fleming
Producer: Tim Mansel.
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Folge vom 25.07.2015Mhairi Black
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Folge vom 16.05.2015Seymour HershMark Coles profiles the muckraker's muckraker, American journalist Seymour Hersh, who has challenged the official story of how Osama Bin Laden was killed.The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer is one of the world's most famous investigative reporters. He exposed both the My Lai massacre, when US soldiers killed hundreds of civilians during the Vietnam war, and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison.To some he is a hero - a tenacious investigator of uncomfortable truths. To others he is a fantasist - a gullible journalist who sees conspiracy and cover-up wherever he looks.At 78 he shows no sign of slowing down. Now Mark Coles investigates the investigator.Producers: Hannah Barnes and Joe Kent.
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Folge vom 14.05.2015Sir Christopher GeidtThe last couple of weeks of the election campaign - and the erroneously narrow polls which highlighted the role of The Queen in the event of a hung parliament - brought to the attention of the public a man who has held arguably one of the most important jobs in Britain since 2007, but who remains largely unknown. He's Sir Christopher Geidt, Private Secretary to The Queen. He is her adviser on political and constitutional matters, and her line of communication to the Government. But who is he?Presenter: Mark Coles Producers: Joe Kent and Charlotte Pritchard.
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Folge vom 02.05.2015Loretta LynchEarlier this week, Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the new US Attorney General. Brought up in North Carolina the daughter of a Baptist minister father and a mother who picked cotton as a young girl, Lynch is the first black woman to hold the position of the nation's top law enforcement official. Harvard-educated Lynch worked at several private law firms and has been a federal prosecutor, winning high-profile cases against corrupt New York lawmakers, sex traffickers and mafiosi. But there has been criticism, too. She is accused of being soft on Wall Street wrongdoing. Edward Stourton has been speaking to people who know her well.Producer: Chloe Hadjimatheou.