Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast

What are the actual, practical shifts in our political economy that we could do tomorrow, that would not require extra legislation and could transform our society?  This question applies to us all, wherever we are in the world and while there are many economists looking forward to an idealised system some way down the line, very few people - politicians or economists - are exploring what we could do now, today, within the guiderails of the existing system, with the politicians we have and the economy we have and the constraints of a world undergoing rapid geopolitical as well as geophysical change.
Jamie Driscoll grew up in the north east of England, with a dad who drove a tank in the army and a mum who was a youth worker, trade unionist, and set up the first Women’s Refuge from Domestic Violence in Middlesbrough. He left school at 16, and returned to education as a mature student, gaining a degree in Engineering at Northumbria University. He went on to run his own business as a software developer and then, when kids came along, and he was married to a GP, he  wound back his business and became the main carer for the children.
He was 48 when he became a politician and he clearly brought the clear thought of an engineer, the empathy of a parent and the basic common sense of his upbringing to his various roles. He was elected Mayor of the Newcastle city region in May 2019, a position he served in until 2024, turning Newcastle into what the Guardian called “the capital of a new radical British politics”. In his five years in office he had to work around four different Prime Ministers, six different Chancellors, a global pandemic, Britain leaving the EU, energy price shocks, a cost of living crisis and the start of a ground war in Europe. He's one of a tiny handful of democratic socialists – as opposed to social democrats – who have experience running an arm of government in Britain.  He smashed his job creation target by over 300 percent; built affordable homes to high-eco standards; ran child poverty prevention programmes; delivered skills training to thousands of people to enable them to increase earnings. For every £1 I invested, his team returned over £3 to the Treasury in increased payroll taxes from job creation. He even had a successful venture capital programme that generated profits for the team to spend on other programmes, rather than them being funnelled off into tax havens by private investors.
So, of course, in 2024, the Labour party changed its own internal rules to block him from standing in what was a new Mayoral area: he was too good, too effective - too socialist for them to let him continue when their entire reason for existence was to crush the left in the party. He ran as an independent in that election and came second after the official Labour candidate, polling the second highest independent vote in British political history, and built an organizational infrastructure that has become the progressive movement called Majority.
In amongst all this, he is one of the sharpest, most deeply thoughtful people I've come across in electoral politics - easily up there with Mamdani, AOC and El-Sayed in the US. And he's here today because he's brought out a new paper - 'Hostage Nation' which does something quite remarkable: it takes the existing system in the UK and with only a few well-placed tweaks - almost all of which require no new legislation - it creates a new system that works for people and planet.
I cannot emphasise too highly how innovative and necessary this is. It's the beginning step to a future that works for everyone - whoever you are, if you're listening to this in the UK, it would make your life measurably better within a year, significantly better in four years and utterly transformed in a decade.  If you're outside the UK, bringing the principles of this into your own nation would do the same.
This is common sense politics - worked out in detail and I totally recommend that you read the website, sign up for more details and read as much of the paper as you can. Figure out what you can embrace and then tell people about it. This is how we make change. 
Jamie and I were scheduled to have an hour's conversation. At the end of the first hour, it became obvious that there was at least another hour - actually, closer to two.  So we split the conversation: the episode is broadly about politics and how we might change it. The second focuses more deeply on the Hostage Nation paper.  So here we go  - please enjoy Jamie Driscoll of Majority, the Green Party and author of Hostage Nation.
Jamie's website
Majority
Hostage Nation
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then)  - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.

If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

Here is an Autumn Equinox Meditation to help set you up for the shift from the long days to the long nights.
For those in the Southern Hemisphere, there's a Spring Equinox Meditation here.
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then)  - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.

If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

"When we build, we first remove the soil and replace it with rubble, concrete and tarmac. When we grow, we exclude all life from the land bar the one crop we want. Where we belatedly recognise our ultimate dependence on nature, we confine it to intensive ‘nature only’ areas such as rewilding zones, field margins and beetle banks." Michael Taite 2026
How do we reconcile our human need for shelter, autonomy, a sense of safety in our own homes…with the wider need for us to collaborate with the Animate Earth, to become the self conscious nodes in the Web of Life, so that we can each find what's ours to do, that only we can do and that we can do best?  How can we create more homes in a Thrutopian process that shifts us from the dysfunction of our current system to something that works for people and planet?
Our guest this week has just completed a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has written his thesis addressing this very problem and today, he comes to talk to us about his concept of the 'Stewardship Freehold Village', which feels like one of those ideas that is so obvious, it's amazing nobody thought of it before - but nobody did, or at least, if they did, it is lost in the toxic chaos of a trust-less planning system that rewards the most predatory of predatory capitalists. 
Michael Taite started his professional life working for a huge London developer - now long gone - and towards the end was responsible for a portfolio of thirteen developments with big residential schemes in Docklands and other sites in London, Manchester and the north east of England.  While there, he passed over a dozen professional exams, which, amongst other things, gave him insights into the arcane depths of planning law. Since 1996, he has been self-employed and has split his time between his business, environmental and local community concerns. So, for instance, he served 19 years as the lead operational trustee for the Environmental Law Foundation, a UK national charity which secures free legal help for communities under threat. He has also served as a parish councillor and as a trustee of his local village hall and, with his wife Gail, ran their small brand strategy agency whose signature process was a system for consulting whole organisations to secure genuine, broad stakeholder support when radical change was scary but necessary. The agency’s slogan was BRAVE = SAFE which feels genuinely Thrutopian.
Having attained his Masters from SOAS, Michael is now working on progressing the concepts which emerged from that process, in the hope that they might contribute to averting some of the worst aspects of the intertwined global catastrophes that we address all the time on this podcast. 
Links
Michael's Substack on SFV
Michael general Substack
Michael on LinkedIn
Michael on YouTube
Environmental Law Foundation 

Elinor Ostrom’s 8 Rules for Managing the Commons - 
Williams, Jeremy. The Earthbound Report, 15 Jan. 2018
Efficient public transport for semi-rural areas

New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 1
Foyle, C. and Shepherd, E. (2023). Why have the volume housebuilders been so
profitable? Glasgow: UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 2
Carmona, M., Alwarea, A., Giordano, V., Gusseinova, A. and Olaleye, F. (2021). A
Housing Design Audit for England. [online] London WC1: UCL Place Alliance. Available
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 3
Transport for New Homes (2025). In search of the station ... What is being built in 2025?
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 4
Letwin, Rt Hon Sir, O. (2018). Independent Review of Build Out Final Report. London
SW1: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then)  - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.

If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

"I know that a good book can move its reader. Writing a book also moves the author. That is how it was for me anyway, not least when I wrote Doubt, Hope, Action. The writing process not only made me see the world and my own life with clearer and more realistic eyes. It also set me free." Uffe Elbaek, author of DOUBT, HOPE, ACTION
We talk a lot on this podcast about the need for a new system: politically, culturally, in business, media and art…in everything we do.  And yet, we don't often have the opportunity to talk with someone who has set up a new political party - still less one explicitly predicated on the core values of courage, generosity, transparency, humility, humour and empathy. You'd think it would be hard to argue against these, but, as Uffe Elbaek discovered when he entered the Danish Parliament…the system doesn't always want to be courageous, or transparent, or generous, or to embody humility, humour and empathy.
Nonetheless, Uffe brought all of these things and more to his time in politics, and then, with classic clear-sightedness, stepped down and went on to found The Tomorrow Collective - and to write the book, Doubt, Hope, Action, which has recently been translated into English from the original Danish and is available in all good bookshops now.
So what better time to talk to someone who has been in the heart of the old system, while creating a new one?  For those of you who don't (yet) know him, Uffe is a Danish social worker, educator, author, entrepreneur, and activist. In 2011 he became member of the Danish Parliament for the Social Liberal Party and was made Minister for Culture. Two years later, he left to found and lead 'The Alternative' which was based on the six values we mentioned. He didn’t run for a seat in the national election November 2022 so he remains an unbeaten politician, which is quite an achievement.
Apart from this, Uffe has been city councillor - in fact, he's the first openly gay man elected to Aarhus city's council, first openly gay man as Minister of Culture and as party leader in the Danish parliament.  He's former Principal of the KaosPilots international education programme and he is now part of The Tomorrow Collective, which is a social and democratic innovation lab based in Denmark.
With is sense that he is an outsider with inside experience, the common thread through everything Uffe has worked on is: We can do better. And right after that: How can we strengthen the life force in each individual, organisation and society as whole? Today, he is primarily concerned with how we as a society can support the ones building the new system we all know we need. All those who – across sectors and industries – are laying the foundations of a new post-capitalist society that respects planetary boundaries and leads us to be collaborators with the natural world. He lives with his husband Jens in the family home in Copenhagen, from where he joins us for this podcast.
Links
Uffe's website
Doubt, Hope, Action - buy from the publisher
The Tomorrow Collective
Uffe on LinkedIn
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.

If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

What happens when the Fires in our Hearts become tsunamis of feeling that take us beyond the narrow imaginal cul de sacs our culture has created, and throw our doors wide open to the wonder of the past and the absolutely unknowable, glorious, constantly surprising possibilities of the future we haven't built yet?
This week's guest, Clare Murphy, is an Irish Storyweaver, a storyteller who consults with people like NASA, the National Theatre, Climate activists, water protectors, first responders and limbless veterans. She's a Gatherer of world mythologies who seeks out the untold tales, the ones that were covered up by the hierarchies of blandness that came after them. She finds them and blows off the dust and breathes new life into them so the rest of us can step off the beaten track with her, and find new ways of being that could take us forward.
Clare's a magician with the spoken word, a fire-spinner who understands the age-old magic of our voices, and the ways a few words can shift us into new, expansive ways of seeing and being. At the time we spoke, Clare had just completed the third edit of her book (Edit-envy? Me?!) and was gearing up for her outstanding one-woman show, 'We All Came By Boat' in Bristol later in September.
As you'll hear, she's one of those people who lights up any room and helps people find—and then ignite—the fire in their own heads. So prepare to be ignited - Enjoy!
.
Links
https://claremurphy.org/
Clare at The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol 15th - 19th September - Book Now!
Clare's TEDx Galway talk

—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.

If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.