What difference does a Party make? This week on the Laura Flanders Show, we talk about what's happening in the UK where one of the two main parties is picking up many of the radical demands coming out of movement groups seeking to transform the economy and society.

In 2017, mainstream media predicted that the Labour Party would be crushed in the general election. Instead, it won its best result in 20 years, getting more than 40% of the vote under the leadership of lifelong socialist and anti-war campaigner Jeremy Corbyn. Although he didn't become prime minister, Corbyn did come close to unseating Theresa May, which one reporter described as a "nice vindication for Jeremy Corbyn."

Slashing social safety nets, cutting people’s programs, shrinking life chances and everyone’s chance of enjoying clean water… My incoming emails have begun to read like a horror movie script, with non stop terror and round the clock slashing.

The reason: Democrats and their pals are up alarmed about the administration’s budget.  Sure enough it’s scary. The GOP White House wants to strip $54 billion from spending on all things human and ecological while they increase already massive military spending.

The president’s plan would boost spending on so-called defense to well over 60 cents of every discretionary dollar. It’s largest budget share in decades. That’s even as Donald Trump himself admits that years of multi trillion dollar spending have left the Middle East "far worse than it was 16, 17 years ago” and none of us any safer.

Let’s not forget, that when it comes right down to it, the US already spends more than the next eight countries combined. That’s China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, India, Germany and Japan - combined.  The US military is in 150 countries. Just how many countries are there?

Guest host Bhaskar Sunkara (editor of Jacobin Magazine) engages political voices Kate Aronoff and Jonah Birch in a conversation about the future of the Left; were the election results a testament to the decline of the Left, or is this a moment for a new left movement? When 13 million people in America cast a vote for a self described Democratic Socialist, is there hope to be found in a political movement propelled by the swamp in the White House? Our guests this week discuss how we got to Trump, and where we, as progressives, are going.

Can the wealthy save the rest of us from themselves? Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer tells us what’s wrong with rich people, and former Goldman Sachs Vice President Raphaële Chappe tells us about her work to even the playing field between the 1% and the 99% with the Robin Hood Hedge Fund.

This Week on the Laura Flanders Show: Making sense of the election season with prominent historian, Eric Foner. From Confederate monuments and the Black Lives Matter movement to election politics and utopian communities, Foner discusses today’s politics through the legacy of the past, and Laura takes a new look at a hundred-year-old proclamation.