The Fourcast

The blaze that engulfed seven high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district was the deadliest the city has seen in over 70 years. At least 156 people have died, 30 are still missing, while 15 have been arrested for alleged manslaughter. Grief has overwhelmed the city and fuelled an uncontrollable anger towards those in power.

Today - almost a week after the fire - we ask how the tragedy unfolded, why Hong Kong is st...

For months after Vladimir Putin’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders predicted Russia’s economy was on the brink of collapse under sanctions - and yet it didn’t.

It transformed into a wartime economy, fuelled by military production, redirected trade routes, and deeper ties with China and India.

But now there are signs this may be changing - with industrial output slowing, inflation rising, and severe labour shorta...

As Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver the budget on Wednesday, she faces the political nightmare of having to come back for more tax, having said she wouldn't and she's already made it clear that whatever she does the burden will fall on all of us, not just the rich minority - but the left and the Greens are demanding a wealth tax, while the right and Reform are demanding welfare cuts and tax cuts.

Voters are disillusioned, i...

With the budget just days away, Rachel Reeves is facing yet another black hole in the public finances - after ditching plans to raise income tax, it’s been widely reported that the government will go for a “smorgasboard” of tax rises and spending cuts to plug the gap, but critics on the left and right say it won’t address the deeper structural rot in Britain’s economy. 

So on this episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy is joi...

US and Russian officials have drafted new proposals to end the Ukraine war but they would appear to require major concessions from President Zelenskyy over territory and weapons. Will they be acceptable to the Ukrainian President, and what about his forces fighting on the frontline? 

On this episode of the Fourcast, Matt Frei speaks to the award-winning filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov who has a new film just out that follows a brigade of...

The NHS is facing one of its deepest crises - a string of maternity scandals, from Shrewsbury to Nottingham, Oxford to Leeds. Hundreds of babies have died or been left severely injured in hospitals meant to keep them safe.

So why does this keep happening? Is it about funding, training, or a system that protects itself instead of patients?On this episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru Murthy is joined by Jeremy Hunt MP, who was the H...

Labour is facing an extraordinary rift at the top of government. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has strongly denied claims that he is plotting to overthrow Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying that attacks are a sign of a toxic culture at Number 10. 

The story erupted after an anonymous briefing suggested Streeting could be preparing a leadership bid - a claim he has strongly rejected. But the row raises bigger questions: how loyal i...

The BBC is in meltdown: both the Director General Tim Davie and the Head of News Deborah Turness have quit in the same weekend after a leaked memo accused the corporation of systemic political bias - an edit of Donald Trump’s speech ahead of the January 6th riots at heart of the memo. 

The President has now piled in, threatening a billion dollar lawsuit.

So what is really going on? Was this a right-wing coup against public se...

While COP30 gets underway in Brazil - Donald Trump is ripping up climate policy, blasting his allies for falling for what he calls the ‘world's greatest con job’ and trying to get big business to follow his lead - and yet in New York, Zohran Mamdani - a left-wing populist unafraid to tout a green agenda - has just won the mayoral race and in the UK, the Green Party has surged under Zack Polanski.

So is the direction of travel re...

After months of a “vicious cycle of mutual retaliation”, as Xi Jinping has put it, Donald Trump and China's president seem to have come to a truce after their first meeting in nearly six years.

Meeting in South Korea, Xi agreed to stop withholding China’s rare earth exports for a year and start buying soy beans from America again. While Trump said he would reduce tariffs and suspend port fees on Chinese ships.

But how lon...

Is Keir Starmer’s immigration strategy doomed to fail? Despite tough language, a one-in-one-out returns scheme with France and speeding up the closure of asylum hotels,  Labour continues to plummet in the polls. 

So, why is it going so badly? Has Keir Starmer, as some of his critics say, just been playing into Nigel Farage’s hands by elevating the issue, or will it work out in the long run? 

To discuss all this and more on the latest...

Is the UK government complicit in the destruction of Gaza? That's the assertion in the new book by journalist and polemicist Peter Oborne, with both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak under fire for backing what he calls Israel's “criminal assault” following the Hamas attack of October 7.

What's more, he says, the British media played its part too: colluding with the government as well as misrepresenting or under-reporting tho...

As Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s latest meeting reportedly descended into another shouting match, the war in Ukraine feels as volatile as ever - and, according to some, more dangerous for the world than at any time since the Cold War.In this episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard and author of The Nuclear Age. He warns that fear is once again driving nations...

In 2011, Virginia Roberts Giuffre became known as the most outspoken victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Her campaigning against their abuse and trafficking helped to get justice for many women, but she was perhaps best known for a now-infamous photograph, taken when she was aged just 17, meeting with Prince Andrew. She claimed it was taken prior to one of three times she was forced to have sex with the King's brot...

With the IMF warning that we’re in an AI bubble that could be worse than the dot-com crash if it bursts — and even OpenAI’s Sam Altman admitting the market is “kind of bubbly” — what happens to the global economy if the AI boom implodes?

Are we witnessing the next dot-com bust, or just the growing pains of a genuine technological revolution?

To discuss it all on the latest episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined from Silicon Val...

After two years of war, a deal has finally been struck. Hostages are coming home, Palestinian prisoners and detainees are being released, and Israel and Hamas have declared that the fighting is over. But can this really be the end?In this episode of The Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin - a man who has spent nearly five decades talking to both sides of the conflict, including Hamas.From back...

After two years of relentless war, devastation, and loss in Gaza — a ceasefire has finally been agreed that will see all remaining Israeli hostages freed in exchange for thousands of Palestinian detainees. 

It’s a stunning diplomatic breakthrough, driven by Donald Trump’s personal intervention — but can this fragile deal really end the war, or is it just another pause before the next explosion of violence? 

In this special episode of...

As Kemi Badenoch fights for her political life at the Conservative Party conference, the Tories face a growing threat from the right. With high-profile defections to Reform UK and deep internal divisions, is this the beginning of the end for the Conservative Party?In this episode of the Fourcast, Cathy Newman speaks with former deputy prime minister and Conserative MP Baroness Therese Coffey, and Lord Daniel Finklestein, columnist ...

The Conservative Party Conference is underway in Manchester where the Tories are in turmoil, trailing badly in the polls and staring down electoral oblivion as they are squeezed between Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.  

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride joins Cathy Newman on this episode  of The Fourcast to explain how the Conservatives plan to regain momentum and rebuild their reputation as the party of economi...