It's also been a huge year for democracy around the world, with a few bumps along the way. So we'll look at the pivotal elections that have happened here and elsewhere with our colleague Justin Webb

and we'll talk about

some of the other seismic

events that have happened around the world. So that's what to expect over the next 45 minutes or so as we bring you our Today Podcast news review

of the year. And because 2024 was the year we did our first ever Today podcast live show, we thought we should start this festive episode with the theme music played live on stage at the BBC Radio Theatre. This is fantastic. Let's do it.

Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast studio. And it's Nick. We're going to start our

review of 2024 in what we're calling Election Corner. We're going to hear from Justin, Justin Webb, of course, in a few minutes' time, who covered the big one, the election in the United States, also covered, as it happens, French parliamentary elections, because it was a massive year for democracy and for elections. And

quite a bad year. And we're going to come to the UK election where it was a bad year for incumbents too, because the Tories got voted out after 14 years. But if there was a theme all around the world, it was a pretty tough year for people who were in power. So some of our listeners will be of Indian heritage or perhaps even in India. They'll know that Prime Minister Modi and his BJP party won a third consecutive victory, but were forced into coalition. Similar vibe in Japan, where the governing Liberal Democratic Party lost their majority in parliament. And actually all around the world, lots and lots of people ended up losing who had started out in positions of power. Yeah, it is one of the things that we too easily forget when we turn to our own elections, as we're going to do now. We

say, you know, did Kyrsten do that? Did Rishi Sunak do this? And so on. There are big global trends going on. And the big global trends is people are giving those in power a mighty big kick up the you know what. Because they're unhappy. And why are they unhappy? For fairly obvious reasons, because the long term impact of the economic changes since the banking crisis of 2008, the impact of Covid, the impact of the problems there were in the supply chains around the world. All of these things have meant that many ordinary people have seen their real take home pay go down, their sense of insecurity go up and they don't see the prospect of anything getting better any time soon. So no great surprise, really, that the end of 14 years was not going to be a great

time for any leader of the Conservative Party to run for re-election. And yet, the election itself was a bit of a surprise, because Rishi Sunak called an election, took a huge number of people by surprise. It didn't just backfire. It looks more and more like a spectacularly strange decision for someone who is meant to have spent his career gambling smartly and analysing financial risk in particular. It's worth saying, we should say this in the spirit of pro-democracy, that Sir Keir Starmer pulled off something quite remarkable, which is that when he took over as leader of the Labour Party, they weren't necessarily ahead of the polls. He had to overcome several different Conservative leaders. And if you'd have said when he took over that he would end up a few years hence with a majority well over 150,

people would say, that's not going to happen. And he's pulled it off. He has pulled it off. Just returning, though, to the decision on that date for the election, until we hear the first interview, and we haven't had one yet, with Rishi Sunak, we have still not heard from his lips why he went early. There are all sorts of theories, theories, for example, that the small boats problem was going to get worse, not better, and that even if he did successfully see some migrants who came across the channel onto a plane to go to Rwanda. They would then be locked in a legal dispute in which his party would fracture down the middle, some of them saying, told you so, we've got to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and others like the then Foreign Secretary, former Prime Minister David Cameron, the then Home Secretary James Cleverley saying, absolutely not, we won't have that. That was a reason. Another possible reason was it gave more time for Nigel Farage to get his act together. He was, in fact, caught on the fly. He only decided the last minute to run for Parliament, Nigel Farage. He hadn't had time to get his candidates right, which is why there were so many problems with candidates for him in that election. He hadn't had time to raise as much money as he would have wanted to do. So there was an argument for going early, not least the one which I think is probably the one that was most powerful in his mind. The Prime Minister reached the view that nobody was listening to anything he said. It didn't matter what he did. No one was listening. So he needed the jolty thought of an election

to say, listen up! There's a choice. It didn't work out so well. One of the joys of sitting alongside you is, as you speak, trying to work out the bits that people have said to you on the record and bits people have said off the record. And I think we just got a bit of what you might call intel there, which is very, very handy and treasured by our listeners. And I was going to say, actually just before I say anything else, just remind us, this election only happened for one reason, Nick, and that's because someone must have told Downing Street that on the day that Rishi Swinok was rumoured to be thinking about calling an election, you came into the Today Programme office and you said something along the lines of... Just remind me, because I've actually genuinely forgotten. What was it? You said, don't be ridiculous. He's not going to cook. What did you say?

He's about as likely, I think I

said, to call an early election, bracket, hours before he actually did,

as I am to grow a fresh head of hair.

And so on the Today Podcast, we've got you a lovely old

present. Here we go. There you go. And it was a lovely wig. Oh, my old friend. The syrup.

And you did grow a certain hirsute.

Oh, wow. What do you think? Yeah? Good? Hold on. I'm going to take a selfie now. Oh, God, that looks quite like I did when I was in sixth form, actually. I had

a large amount of hair. It's hard to imagine you. Anyway, it's worth saying it was a good election for some of the smaller parties. The Lib Dems massively increased their representation in Parliament. Reform, it's got five MPs. A bunch of independents were elected. But it was obviously a terrible blow for the Conservatives. You've got to say, looking at the polls today, one of the dominant feelings in British politics, which this election conveyed, is a kind of general anti-politics feeling and anti-elite feeling. And I think we have, as you've talked about on this podcast, Nick, moved into an area you might call de-globalisation, where the great impulse of the last 25, 30 years towards globalisation seems to have gone into reverse. And the majority that Keir Starmer ended up with, pretty loveless. They ended up with less than 35% of the vote. And you could argue, I'm sure Labour figures who sat in the studio with us would dispute this, there's a sense in which Keir Starmer's got a big majority, but hasn't necessarily got a big mandate, because he only got that massive majority because of the exigencies and quirks of first past the post.

Yeah, it's become fashionable now to say he's got a problem without that mandate because one of the reasons for his historic unpopularity, is that a word? He is low in the opinion polls now and lower and got lower quicker than previous prime ministers is because he didn't seek a mandate. He had a very vague appeal at that election captured in that one word change which was meant to mean everything and nothing and meant to mean different things to different people that though i would argue was his political success i think whether you like that or loathe it or feel slightly disappointed by it what labor did ruthlessly was to say what matters in elections is not the popular vote. It is the number of members of parliament you get. That is our system. The question is that we're going to see in the next year and beyond where the achievement just came with a huge price, which is you get in and then you can't say the public voted for X other than saying the public voted to kick the Tories out?

Oh, I thought you meant in an even more narrow sense, which is you get in making a bunch of promises which then restrict you later. So for instance, you know, Labour felt that they couldn't be on the wrong side of a Labour's tax bombshell election campaign. So they said they had to rule out and you notoriously, shall I say famously, interrogated this idea on the Today programme. They said no tax rises on working people, which has massively inhibited their room for manoeuvre in this new parliament. They've had a very tough start. So what were you going to say? Well,

I was only going to say the problem with the conventional wisdom now, and I haven't heard this from Keir Stelman, but I imagine he thinks it. Do you really think they would have got more than 35% by saying, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Thank you for asking me the question. We are going to put taxes up on working people. We won't rule out an increase in income tax. We won't rule out an increase in employees' national insurance. You have to really stretch quite far to convince yourself that by being more candid, more open, you might say, that that would actually work.

Now, of course, one of the biggest elections to happen this year was over in the US. And our very distinguished, magnificent America Watcher colleague, Justin Webb, longtime Washington correspondent. I have got white hair. I suppose

that's the only thing that properly.

I think distinguished is quite

good. I think I prefer distinguished to veteran. I think veterans. Yes.

All right. Our distinguished colleague, Justin, who covered it for us on the Today programme. And of course, on AmeriCast, which people will be listening back to for years to come. And Justin is here. How are you, Justin? I'm good, thank you. I'll tell you what happened in this American election, which I really noticed. Other podcasters would go on social media and make very confident predictions that turned out to be wrong. And I also noticed that you went on social media and didn't make any stupid predictions, but actually got quite a lot right. So why don't we take this opportunity to allow you humbly to submit what you got right about the American election? Because I can say it and Nick can say it, you did get a lot right.

Well, OK, so number one, what we got wrong and what I got wrong, I think we all thought it was going to be closer than it was. And we need to be upfront about that. And we were fooled to an extent by the polls. But also, I think we fooled ourselves because the polls actually can defend themselves. If polls can defend themselves and say, we always said, a bit like with Brexit and with Donald Trump's first victory back in 2016, that there is a chance, whatever it is, 20% chance that something will happen. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen. That means there is a significant chance that it might happen. Well, in this case, there was a chance that he would win all the swing states that we kept on going on about. And we always said there was a chance that he would, and he did. So that was what we got kind of wrongish along with most other people. What I think we got right, and what I think is really crucial about the Trump presidency coming up now as well is that we took him seriously and we took people's attitude to him seriously and we understood and we do still understand that he has a real attraction for a load of people who are not racist loons, aren't conspiracy theorists, aren't whatever and can't be put in any of those buckets, baskets of deplorables, etc., but are just ordinary people who weigh up what they think of the Democrats and their candidate, what they think of Trump, and think not necessarily that they're complete fans of his, but that he was the right choice. And we understood that that was going on. Some people say it's really simple, this, just

came down to the price of eggs, maybe the price of gas as well. And there was an interesting study recently from the OECD, Organisation of Economic... I've no idea what it's done.

Cooperation and Development. That thing. I used to work at the Foreign Office, you know. Which...

He's never mentioned that. Which revealed that every government that had had an election in that period had either lost or declined significantly because of the economy. So do you think in that old cliche, that phrase of the raging cajid, it was the economy stupid?

Yes and no. It was the economy. But if the Democrats comfort themselves with the idea that because every incumbent government lost, then there was nothing they could do about it and it'll be fine next time. And that's the kind of crucial corollary we don't need to worry we'll win the midterms in two years which it probably will for the house of representatives and then we'll sort of glide back into the presidency if they think that i think they're fooling themselves and i think more importantly a lot of democrats think they're fooling themselves you're

being humble when you've got nothing to be humble about one thing that you because i listened religiously to AmeriCast, and one thing you talked about before we had the election result was that the Democrats had some fundamental structural problems and some of the policies that they were associated with, not all of them, but some of them were pushing away the very voters that Donald Trump said he would win, which is working class voters. What is the Democrats' structural problem which

you identified? structural problem is this that they have become the party of manners and etiquette and policing and in a way they've swapped places with the republicans who were probably that party in the 1960s you know behind white picket fences ways of behaving things you're allowed to say and not say and then this great kind of revolution against that way of thinking, and Nixon kind of holding the line and saying there is still a moral majority who believe in these things, and then eventually it kind of going. And what the Democrats have become is the obverse, if that's the right word, of that. So they are now the people who are telling people what you can think about racism, about sexism, about transphobia, about colonialism, etc. And they are policing language. always trying to suggest to people that they were in some way thinking unethically and should be and could be corrected. And that just seems to a lot of Democrats not to be the way to approach not just working class people, but actually everyone. And that is kind of a really fundamental structural issue for them.