The Fourcast

America’s Marco Rubio and Russia’s Sergey Lavrov have met in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine war peace talks. The US says a peace deal must be "fair, enduring and acceptable to all the parties involved" - not that all the parties - like Ukraine or the Europeans - were invited by Donald Trump to the first round of the talks. So what do Russia and the US really want to get out from it? And will Russia be b...

As Trump is invited to Moscow and praises Putin after a call with the Russian leader about peace negotiations, his defence secretary Pete Hegseth says American troops will not go to Ukraine as peacekeepers as part of any future deal with Russia. He also announced Ukraine will never be part of NATO and needs to say goodbye to territory seized by Russia. In this episode of the Fourcast, Matt Frei di...

Donald Trump has spent the week turning the world upside down again - launching a trade war with China and claiming America will take over the Gaza Strip - and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is scrambling to work out how best to respond to the American president. Sir Keir met with EU leaders earlier in the week for post-Brexit reset, but the prospect of closer ties comes just as Donald Trump has...

Donald Trump, with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, has said the US should take over Gaza, own it, and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East", but within hours of these comments Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Palestinians have rejected the suggestion outright. So what is Donald Trump really up to? Is this a serious proposal, a negotiating position or the dreams of a reality...

Donald Trump’s long promised trade war has begun, sort of - the US president threatened to slap tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners, before backtracking and striking a deal with Mexico and Canada. But a 10% tariff on Chinese goods has come into force and Beijing has retaliated by imposing hefty levies on a range of American imports and vowing to investigate Google over antitrust allegati...

In a major speech on growing the UK economy, Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she will make Cambridge and Oxford the “Silicon Valley of Europe” and build a third runway at Heathrow Airport - which is now backed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer even though he opposed it in the past. So will Labour deliver? Can Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves really get the economy firing again? And will it be enough...

In Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos he said,  again , that he wants a peace deal with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine,  again  suggested Canada could become part of America and  again raised the spectre of tariffs that economists say could devastate the global economy, so what is the new American president’s vision of the world order and how will he deal with China...

Hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States of America, he signed executive orders to take the US out of the World Health Organisation and the Paris Climate Accords; around 1,500 January 6 rioters were freed; a national emergency at the US-Mexico border was declared, he made the designation of two genders an official government policy and the TikTok ban was pau...

Donald Trump is set to be sworn in as President of the United States of America for the second time - but, from TikTok and the southern border, to Ukraine and the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza - he faces even bigger challenges than he did eight years ago.   Will he really end the Ukraine war on day one, pardon the January 6 rioters in the “first hour” and potentially bring bac...

Israel and Hamas have finally reached a ceasefire deal over the war in Gaza days before Donald Trump takes over from Joe Biden as the next US president - but Benjamin Netanyahu’s government hasn't signed it yet - and while Palestinians in Gaza are celebrating, there’s still a chance it could be derailed. Yet, if the deal holds, it will be a historic moment, but why has it taken so long and what’s...

Amid turmoil in the bond market and a plummeting pound, Sir Keir Starmer has had to defend his chancellor Rachel Reeves while dealing with the resignation of the former anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq. So, can Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves turn it around? The Prime Minister says it will take 10 years to solve some of the chronic issues facing the UK, but will he even get a second term with...

Silicon Valley’s billionaires are making headlines again as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’s going to get rid of factcheckers on his social media platforms, while X’s Elon Musk continues to attack UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz - so have we entered a new age of political discourse? In this episode of the America Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by Albert Eisenber...

With the Israel Gaza war reportedly on the brink of a ceasefire and Iran reeling after the devastation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Middle East is on the cusp of a complete realignment in 2025. Will Syria buck the trend of so many nations after the Arab Spring that have descended into chaos after the fall of a tyrant? The country’s new de facto leader Moham...

It’s a matter of days since Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria was toppled by a lightning-quick offensive led by the rebel group Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - and Syrians are still in a state of euphoria at their newfound freedoms, but also horror as evidence of Assad’s torture chambres are revealed.  Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Lindsey Hilsum have been on the ground in Damascus and in...

Bashar al-Assad has fled Damascus to Russia where Vladimir Putin is reportedly sheltering the former Syrian dictator - for those Syrians who have defied Assad’s brutal regime for years this is a moment of celebration and hope, but also fear. Will Syria manage to move on from more than a decade of war to become a democratic state, or will it descend into further chaos and violence like Libya and Ir...

Syrian rebels launched the biggest attack in years against President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces, reigniting a bloody civil war - but with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel Gaza conflict just next door, the world appears to be on the brink. So, what’s going to happen next, why did the rebels launch their attack now and how will the rest of the world react? On this week’s...

President Putin fired an experimental hypersonic missile at Dnipro - one of Ukraine’s biggest cities - and has talked about the nuclear option again. On the frontline, Ukraine appears to be losing ground by the day - in this episode of The Political Fourcast, we talk about how the Ukraine-Russia war is escalating. Krishnan Guru-Murthy is joined by Dr Hanna Shelest, Director of Security Programmes...

A close ally of Boris Johnson and open critic of Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch, Nadine Dorries examines the current state of the Conservative Party in this week’s episode of the Political Fourcast - and she also criticises the Church of England in the wake of the John Smyth scandal. Warning: This episode contains content that some viewers might find upsetting.   Mrs Dorries says she was abused as...

From Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the shape of Donald Trump’s administration is becoming clearer - and it’s like nothing America has ever seen before.  Firebrands, mavericks and disruptors make up the bulk of the government. The unifying factor? Their unwavering loyalty to the President-elect. So can they shake up the establishment to the benefit of ordinary Ameri...

It’s been a week since America voted to return Donald Trump to the White House, and there are already reports of new appointments - including Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik. How will these people shape the way Trump deals with the world - what’s going to happen in Ukraine and the Middle East? And what will China do? To talk about this in this episode of The American Fourcast, Matt Frei...

Donald Trump has won the election, beating Kamala Harris and the Democrats, and will be the next president of the United States - but what kind of leader will he be? During the campaign we heard from generals that worked with him that he has fascist tendencies - was this all over the top, or are we actually about to see the American republic on the brink? And what next for the Democrat Party? What...

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are making their final pitch to voters, as an American election race that has seen assassination attempts and President Joe Biden stepping aside as a candidate enters its final day. This is the tightest race in modern American history - so what comes next? Four years ago the world witnessed the horrors of rioters attacking Capitol Hill on January 6th - could it be wo...

Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the Conservative Party after beating Robert Jenrick in what is an historic moment - the first black female leader of one of the UK’s main political parties. But does she have any chance of winning the next election? Will she even hang on that long with the Tories’ history of ditching leaders who don't deliver? Are the Labour Party the real winners here? On this e...

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are out trying to salvage their US election campaigns after a series of gaffes started by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico an ‘island of garbage’, followed by President Joe Biden appearing to say Trump’s supporters are garbage. Will any of these missteps change the course of the race? In this episode of the American Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by Democ...

After months of speculation, leaks, and endless criticism, Rachel Reeves has finally delivered Labour’s first budget in 14 years and it had £70 billion more in spending, £40 billion more in tax along with a lot more borrowing and a lot more debt. So, will it define this government? Will it deliver growth and fix public services? Is it what people voted for?  In this week’s episode of the Political...