The Fourcast

Rachel Reeves’ big speech on the economy dominates the second day of the Labour Party conference. Ahead of the November budget, the chancellor warns that there will be harder choices and refuses to rule out tax rises. But with growth sluggish, polls tightening and Reform making gains, can Labour really deliver the change it promised? In this episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murphy speaks to...

Award-winning Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah was sacked after posts she made about Charlie Kirk on social media sparked a storm of controversy. Her dismissal has become a flashpoint in the debate over free speech, newsroom policies, and the future of press freedom in America. In this episode of The Fourcast, Karen Attiah speaks to Cathy Newman, reflecting on the circumstances of her firing...

As a UN commission concludes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and international pressure grows with more nations, including the UK, moving toward recognising a Palestinian state, is there any hope for a two-state solution? Can Israel and Palestine ever coexist side by side in peace, or has the violence, mistrust and the events of October the 7th and its aftermath made that dream impossib...

A UN commission investigating the Gaza war has concluded that Israel is committing genocide, adding its voice to growing international concern from legal scholars and human rights organisations. It doesn’t have the force of a court or the UN Security Council. But as a commission of eminent legal experts, its findings carry significant moral weight. Arab Barghouthi is the son of Marwan Barghouthi,...

For the third time in his political career, Peter Mandelson has fallen from high office in a scandal linked to rich and powerful men - this time it was his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that was his undoing.  Lord Mandelson was sacked from his role as UK ambassador to the US after leaked emails showed him offering support for Epstein even after a sex offence conviction....

Angela Rayner has resigned as Deputy Prime Minister following revelations that she failed to pay the correct tax on a new home. But what does her departure mean for Keir Starmer, the Labour Party, and the future of the government? In today’s episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy is joined by Tom Baldwin, former Labour communications chief, Guardian columnist Zoe Williams and Sir Craig Oliv...

The Green Party in England and Wales has a new leader and by an overwhelming majority members picked the candidate from the radical left-wing of the party - Zack Polanski.  His campaign focussed on poverty and Palestine rather than plants or the planet. He’s a former actor, a member of the London Assembly, though not actually a member of parliament.  So, is he now the voice of progressive populism...

Nigel Farage has put mass deportations at the centre of his new immigration plan — promising to detain and remove hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from the UK. While Reform UK currently has only four MPs, polling suggests they could win the next election and be in a position to implement this. It's a striking escalation in the rhetoric around immigration — raising the question of whethe...

Donald Trump has just met both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the same week - two leaders locked in a war that has reshaped global security. For Putin, the meeting with Trump offered legitimacy and a chance to show that Russia is still a power the US must engage with. For Zelenskyy, it was about survival, pressing Trump to keep American support flowing as Ukraine fights for its future....

Charged with looking after the United Nations’ humanitarian projects - from Israel’s aid blockade in Gaza to the crisis in Sudan, Tom Fletcher was recently described as having the ‘toughest job in the world’. But he disagrees. “The toughest job in the world”, he says, “is sitting there watching your kid having his arm cut off in a hospital without an anaesthetic.”In this episode of The Fourcast, K...

Chris Bryant MP has lived many lives  - from a childhood in Franco’s Spain to serving as a priest in the Church of England, and now more than two decades in Parliament. He reflects on growing up gay when it was still illegal, the abuse he endured as a young man in the National Youth Theatre, and how Section 28 drove him away from the Conservative Party. In this episode of The Fourcast, he tells Kr...

Is fashion the latest thing to be swallowed into politics, culture war and the backlash on woke? Stick-thin models with protruding bones were the marketing choice of Zara for a new campaign - the ad has just been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority as irresponsible. And the fallout from Sydney Sweeney's ad campaign for American Eagle jeans keeps growing - a few years ago accusations of w...

The world's eyes are on Gaza as the enclave faces mass starvation, but the war there is also emboldening Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Odeh Hadalin is a Palestinian teacher and activist who campaigned against illegal Israeli settlements and settler violence. He also helped make this year's Oscar-winning film No Other Land which documents Israeli attacks on the Palestinian com...

A year ago, towns across Britain were in flames as far-right anti-immigration protests turned into riots, while this week the Police Federation called recent protests in Epping a 'signal flare’ for further unrest. So with the number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats actually up and social media - not to mention certain MPs - pumping out inflammatory comments, is another summer fl...

Donald Trump is under pressure, again, this time over his alleged ties to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. As the scandal grows, the Speaker of the House has shut down Congress, seemingly to avoid any further questions being raised on the floor. Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s and Epstein’s longtime pilot, Lawrence Visoski, has testified that Trump flew on Epstein...

In America the Democrats are in crisis — leaderless, divided, and drifting after Donald Trump’s return to power, and on the left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Bernie Sanders and the Democrat's New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani are seizing the moment, but is their radicalism the way to beat Trump's Maga bandwagon? Or will they end up alienating the majority of working class Ameri...

Donald Trump says he's 'disappointed' that Vladimir Putin keeps knocking down buildings in Kyiv despite all the great conversations they are having about ending the war in Ukraine, as the First Lady Melania Trump keeps pointing out to him. So the president is ramping up the threats, offering 'top-of-the-line' weaponry to Ukraine and promising severe tariffs on Russia if there&#...

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have announced a "one in, one out" migration deal which would see France send one asylum seeker with a British family connection to the UK for every migrant sent back. Under the terms of the deal, up to 50 people a week could be sent back to France. But what impact will the new deal really have? In today's episode of the Fourcast, Senior Political Cor...

What comes first - a peace deal or a peace prize? The war rages on in Gaza - another 40 Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli airstrikes, but Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to thrash out a ceasefire deal despite two days of talks in Washington, though he did nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize. Meanwhile in Gaza families continue to struggle for...

Sir Keir Starmer pulled Labour’s flagship welfare reform plans at the last minute - a humiliating U-turn after days of rebellion, confusion and rising anger across his own party. The government narrowly avoided defeat in the vote last night, but the cost may be far greater than any lost vote. Dozens of MPs defied the whip, disability campaigners condemned the reforms, and what was once a central p...

Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury performance has dominated headlines and sparked a huge debate. The punk duo chanted “death to the IDF” to a live crowd of thousands, and millions more watched at home, as their set aired live on the BBC. The backlash was swift - some called it a bold act of protest, while others condemned it as deeply offensive and antisemitic. On-screen warnings issued by the BBC about dis...

Does Westminster make good people awful or does it attract awful people? As far as Sarah Vine is concerned, it’s the former - corrupting those with the best of intentions, turning them “mad and toxic.” For twenty years, Sarah Vine was on the frontline of UK politics - married to former Secretary of State Michael Gove, friend (and later, foe) of the Camerons and a tabloid columnist. She witnessed B...

The ceasefire deal Donald Trump says he brokered between  Iran and Israel already appears to be in jeopardy as the Israeli Defence Forces promise to "respond with force" after accusing the regime in Tehran of launching missiles at Israel. Iran denies launching any missiles. The US president has expressed his fury at both countries and has called on them to pull back. So will the ceasefir...

The United States and Israel have launched major airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and regime targets. Iran’s foreign minister is seeking diplomatic support in Moscow, while questions swirl around the true extent of the damage, and whether retaliation could spiral into a wider regional war. In this episode of The Fourcast, which was recorded before the latest developments in Qatar, our International E...

Israel and Iran have continued attacking each other overnight with more airstrikes, as both countries wait for Donald Trump to decide if America will bomb nuclear sites in Iran. What will happen next if the US decides to attack? Will the Ayatollah’s regime fall? And what will Israel do if America doesn’t intervene? To discuss all this and more on the latest episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is jo...