The Fourcast

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 that can take on Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn?

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 whether this marks a turning point in British politics.Has anything like this been attempted before, is it even possible, and how does it fit into the long, often heated history of immigration policy in the UK?On this episode of The Fourcast, Cathy Newman is joined by Jacqueline McKenzie, a partner at the human rights law firm Leigh Day who specialises in immigration and asylum cases, and journalist and author David Goodhart who is the head of demography, immigration and integration at the Policy Exchange think tank.

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.So what really happened behind those closed doors and what does it mean for NATO, Europe and the wider world? In this episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei speaks to Emily Ferris from RUSI and William Alberque, a specialist on arms control and NATO, to explore what Trump’s diplomacy tells us about the next phase of the war - and America’s role in it.

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, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Tom Fletcher about why aid is not reaching those who need it most, in Gaza and beyond. He warns that global humanitarian needs are greater than ever, with crises in Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine, and makes a plea to the world to “step up” on Gaza crisis response.

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 Krishnan Guru-Murthy what power looks like behind closed doors, and why speaking out about abuse matters.This episode includes discussion about sexual assault. You can find where to access help and support with these issues at: www.channel4.com/4viewers/help-support 

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 white supremacy and promoting the right wing might have caused a share price to plummet.But after Donald Trump described the ad as the hottest ad out there American Eagle stock rocketed. Are we back in the 90's or even the 30's?Ad agencies have always looked for ways to get noticed - but is the war on woke also sweeping away years of progress on body positivity and diversity?On this episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy is joined by Katie Glass, who writes for the Times and Megan Jayne Crabbe - a writer, presenter and activist for body positivity and feminism.

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 community of Masafer Yatta.It was there that he was shot dead, reportedly after a confrontation between villagers and settlers who were using a bulldozer to destroy property.An extremist settler, previously sanctioned by the US, has been arrested.Around a thousand Palestinians have reportedly been killed in the West Bank in the last two years amid an increasing wave of settler and Israeli military violence.Joining Matt Frei on this week's episode of The Fourcast is the Palestinian film-maker Basel Adra. He co-wrote and co-directed No Other Land and was a friend of Odeh.

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 flare-up inevitable? And how do the police , the politicians and the protesters themselves distinguish between the genuine concerns of dispossessed communities, and the gratuitous violence of far-right racists?On this episode of The Fourcast, Jackie Long is joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think-tank British Future which focuses on diversity and social inclusion, the  academic Lisa McKenzie, who writes primarily about working-class communities and class inequality, and Adam Kelwick, imam of the UK's oldest mosque in Liverpool who came to prominence during last year's riots with his attempts at dialogue with protesters.

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's private plane multiple times. Trump has denied ever being on the plane and there is no evidence he was involved in wrongdoing.But now, even Trump’s usual allies in the alt-right world of podcasts and influencers are turning on him. So what happens when the support base that’s shielded Trump for years starts to crumble?On today's episode of the Fourcast, David Pakman, host of The David Pakman Show and author of The Echo Machine, joins us to break it all down.

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 America? Tim Ryan, a senior advisor for the Progressive Policy Institute, is the former Ohio Congressman who stood for the senate but lost to JD Vance. He also threw his hat in the ring for the Democrats Presidential nomination when Joe Biden won it. He wants to haul his party back to focus on what he sees as the central concerns of working class voters - their cost of living and the fairness of the system, as well as working with business not against it - what he sometimes calls more of a Bill Clinton style. But is that really the answer to a Democrat resurrection?