254: Elections Roundup
About this episode
In this week's special Election Roundup episode, our hosts delve into Labour’s recent victory in the UK, offering detailed analysis tailored for both UK and non-UK listeners. They cover the key events and implications from both before and after the election, providing a comprehensive overview of the political landscape.
Highlights:
- Labour’s Win in the UK: In-depth discussion on Labour's success, including the factors leading to their victory and its potential impact on the UK political scene, as well as key figures in Starmer’s cabinet who will play a crucial role in climate policy going forward.
- UK and French Elections: Celebration of the defeat of far-right factions in both countries, examining the broader implications for European politics.
- US Politics: A brief look at the challenges facing the Democratic Party, especially in light of President Biden’s underwhelming performance in his recent televised debate with former President Trump.
Season Finale: As we wrap up this season, we want to thank our listeners for their support. Have an amazing summer holiday, and we look forward to returning in September with more discussions on climate action, political debates, and much more.
Stay Connected:
- Follow us on social media for updates over the summer.
- Send in your questions and topics you'd like us to cover next season.
See You in September!
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Today, at the end of our series, we bring you a special episode looking at the results of the elections in the UK, where we are in France, and what might happen next in the US. Thanks for being here.
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Paul Dickinson: So, Christiana, what's been happening in France and England?
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Christiana Figueres: So, my two British friends, have you slept at all, or have you spent the entire weekend, starting Thursday, at the pub celebrating? Tell me the truth.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, it's true there's been some pub time. It's also coincided with England being in the quarterfinals of the European Championships, which is important, not necessarily to control my life, but it has meant the entire country has felt in a state of celebration, because they very rarely won on penalties. But that's not the thing we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about the fact that after 14 years of conservative rule, which let's not forget has had bright spots on climate and nature, there have been moments where it seems like they've done the right thing. But in general, that's not been true. The policies have been regressive around things like certainly taxation, also immigration, and the climate and nature agenda has not been where we want it to be. That's particularly true of the most recent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. And it is a new beginning for the UK. And I myself am extremely happy with the outcome of the election. The UK is back. I'm feeling very positive about it.
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Christiana Figueres: Okay. Okay, okay, okay. But I'm going to dial you back from your enthusiasm just for one second. Because, yes, many listeners are UK citizens and will be aware of numbers and details. But for those who are not, could we start just with the number of seats that have been won? And I think it's very interesting. Well, A, the wins by Labour, but also the Liberal Democrats. So what does that mean for the Tories?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So Paul, shall I kick off and then you can hop in?
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Paul Dickinson: Go for it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I mean, so first thing says UK's parliamentary system first passed the post-elections, which means that you can end up with some very strange things to do with the numbers in terms of where the popular vote is and the number of seats won, and we'll get into that. But you first asked about the number of seats. The UK has 650 seats in the House of Commons. You need to win half of them, 325, in order to form a majority and thereby create a government. Labour won 411, a gain of 209 seats. That is, puts them very clearly in a position where they have an overall majority without needing any partnership with anybody else. The Tories, the Conservatives, won 121 seats. That is, a collapse of 244 seats. I mean, they lost nearly two-thirds of their seats. That's all. That's all, including former Prime Minister Liz Truss, people like Jacob Rees-Mogg, darling of the Brexit Party. I mean, there was a lot of high-profile casualties in the Tory Party. The Liberal Democrats had one of their best nights ever. They won 71 seats, which is a gain of 61. That's partly to do with the collapse in the Tory Party, also to do with the collapse in the Scottish National Party, who lost 39 seats to end up on nine. And then there's a long tail around things like Sinn Féin, the Northern Irish Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and then Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party, which used to be the Brexit Party, won five seats, and the Greens won four seats, which is an increase of three. So that's actually very positive as well, that we're seeing a trend towards electing more green politicians in the UK.
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Paul Dickinson: And let me just add to that by a little bit of nuance here, which is that maybe labour and the Lib Dems were a little bit more strategic than you might think in what they were doing, because it's quite weird, the Reform Party, this kind of splitting party away from the Conservatives, led by this strange Nigel Farage character, it got 14% of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats only got 12% of the vote. So Reform got more votes than Liberal Democrats. But Reform got 1% of the seats, and the Liberal Democrats got 11% of the seats, or 10 times more than the Reform Party. So they got 2 less percent of the vote and 10 times more seats. So we're going to see this also when we talk a little bit about the French elections. This idea of the strategic vote, particularly to keep out the extreme right, is a growing theme. And I think perhaps in response to the fact that the extreme right has become a very real thing.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, let's talk about that extreme right, because it is something of huge concern for other elections. But talk about extreme right in the UK. Could one or both of you explain to me a mystery? It seems to me, if my memory is not wrong, that for a long time, it was in the United States and in Australia, of course, in Anglophone countries. But especially in the United States, it has always, climate has always been such a divisive issue. And it was not in the UK, even in the beginning of this 14-year run of the Tories. And we actually even commented on the podcast, how refreshing it was that there was cross-party support for wise and prudent climate policies in the UK. And then, is it Rishi Sunak who changed that? Did he make climate a divisive issue? Why did he do that? And was that one of the reasons why they lost so dramatically? Or is this way down in the list of reasons for the dramatic loss of the Tories?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, so great question. So first thing I would say is, I do think that's true, that Rishi Sunak is the one who really tried to turn this into a culture war. I mean, before him, of course, Boris, forgetting Liz Truss, let's forget about that, it's only two months. But before him, Boris Johnson was the Prime Minister, and actually he was pretty straightforward on climate. He wanted to hit Nigeria, wanted to conserve nature. You can say a lot of things about Boris Johnson, and I do, but he actually did want to keep that as a bipartisan issue with conservative support. Rishi Sunak, in the run up to this election, has taken the opposite tack, where he tried to turn it into a culture war, and he tried to say, the UK has gone further than others, those old chestnuts, it's only 2%. We can't really look at the UK to solve this problem. What about China? What about all those other people and those other foreigners in other countries? That familiar populist playbook that tries to advance doing nothing. And I think he did that for a number of reasons. But one of them was that he has this major attack coming to him from the right, which is Nigel Farage's Reform Party. This right wing party that created Brexit in many ways, they were the ones who lobbied for Brexit, created a split.
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Paul Dickinson: He was the leader of the Brexit Party.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, created a split in the right of the UK, which then forced David Cameron, well, made David Cameron make an election pledge in 2015 that he would have an in-out referendum on the EU. The UK public were not clamouring for a referendum at that time. This was to solve a Tory Party problem, that all of this problem was created. And since then, Nigel Farage has emerged as one of the most influential politicians in the UK, because he is able to pull the Conservative Party towards him by going further and further to the right, pandering to that perspective that exists in the UK. It's absolutely true. It's a significant number of people, and we need to be aware of that. And so he's powerful in and of his own right, but his ability to pull the Conservative Party towards him has actually also been powerful. So those are the factors that led to Rishi Sunak making the decision to try to turn climate into a left-right issue and try to fight the election on the fact that he was not going to do so much on it.
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Christiana Figueres: But do you think that that was one of the reasons for this dramatic fall of the Conservatives, or is it not topical enough to have influenced the election?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, Paul, I mean, just one quick answer from me. I mean, I would say, I don't think that it led to him losing votes. However, the interesting thing is, I don't think he was able to turn it into a culture war. I think he tried to make it a hot button issue, and I think it just sort of didn't land. I don't think people really bought the idea that we should do less on climate, or we should slow down. And I think that's interesting in and of itself, that it didn't land as a political narrative. Paul maybe has a different view.
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Paul Dickinson: I'm going to broaden this conversation about the sort of extreme right to show some different things are being put together. I just want to say a word about one of the most successful right-wing leaders in Europe, Giorgia Maloney, the Prime Minister of Italy. She's quite mainstream in some regards, but she kind of promoting homophobia. She's going against same-sex parents, for example, which is terrifying. It actually didn't go out on the podcast, but I did ask Noe Uval-Harari when we had him on for an interview, just before we were recording, I said, why is it that so many people who are homophobic are climate change deniers? He thought for a little while and he said, great minds think alike. What I think he would say is incredibly stupid. But the extreme right are in the business of defining through opposition. If you talk about our reform party, their manifesto said that they wanted to scrap Net Zero and related subsidies, saying it would save 30 billion pounds a year. Now, I think that the whole debate about decarbonisation is incredibly trivial in the way it's conducted. Even the Labour Party, they had to pull back on their 28 billion pounds a year investments in decarbonisation. No one ever talks about the fact that in 2022, the UK spent 117 billion buying fossil fuels from other countries, pounds. So, my point being that there's an incredibly trivial debate. But I think that the far right in France and the UK, there were some shocking policy proposals from the far right in France, ending subsidies for wind power projects, cancelling all wind power projects. They're trying to define themselves. They're trying to build a culture war. And so, yeah, I agree entirely with what you said, Tom. Rishi Sunak, in a sense, was responding to an attack, but it completely failed. The vote was divided. And the scary thing is that the Fox, Nigel Farage, has got into the chicken coop of the Parliament. We're now going to have this extraordinary populist leader talking absolute rubbish about energy policy in the UK from the Parliament.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And I have one other thing to add. Sorry to keep you on this. And actually, Sarah, our producer, has just pointed out an interesting statistic that I had missed in the southeast. The Tories lost 51 seats. And some analysis that was conducted just before the election said that one in four voters said it was the party's stance on climate change and environment, which was a key reason that they weren't voting for it.
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Christiana Figueres: That's what I wanted to know.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So actually, I do think that alongside the broader things we're talking about, I think there's actually some specific evidence to show it cost them.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, let me just jump in on this because I think if we look forward, we're up against potential fascism in the UK, in France. We need to recognize that the extreme weather is politicizing people against this climate denial, and we need to own it and use their crazy policies. It is the Achilles heel of the extreme right that they're opposed to the realities of extreme weather. That's how I think if we're organized and disciplined, we will defeat them.
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Christiana Figueres: Okay, well, we will get to that and deeper in a minute. But Paul and Tom, I'm going to continue being the interviewer since I'm the non-Brit here in this little team. So I would love to hear from you just a short, fun description of what happens at Buckingham Palace when there is an election in the UK, because it's highly unusual, to say the least.
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Paul Dickinson: It's very simple. The incoming prospective prime minister has to dress in national dress, which is very much like what Morris dancers wear, goes to the palace and then is required to feed the corgis. This is the Queen's original corgis. It's a thousand-year-old tradition and then is anointed in a ceremony that nobody knows about and cannot be discussed by law. So that's pretty much the end of all I can add on this topic.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Analysis from famous royalist Paul Dickinson. Go on, Christiana. Neither of us know, so you have to tell us.
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Christiana Figueres: Well, actually, the truth is not very far from that. So the election was on Thursday. The election was on Thursday. And so what is the first thing that happens on Friday morning with the sitting prime minister if he loses the election? What happened last Friday?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, so what happens, of course, is that in the UK, the king is the head of state. So the king creates the parliament, creates the government. And even if you've won an election, you can only form a government at the request of the king. So after an election, when the people's will has been made clear, the sitting prime minister goes to Buckingham Palace, has a cup of tea with the king. Rishi Sunak and his wife were there, I think, for a couple of hours. We don't know what they talked about. He left, so there's this sort of parade of like a revolving door. He left, at which point, they're already moving vans.
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Paul Dickinson: As soon as he leaves, by the way, the king is running the country.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, if he gets his moment. Moving vans outside number 10. I mean, none of this like three month transition stuff that happens in the UK. So, you know, all the...
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Paul Dickinson: In the US, you mean?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That happens in the US. All of the, you know, the moving vans are going full speed, getting his stuff out and then moving the next load in. And then I think it was less than an hour after Rishi Sunak.
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Christiana Figueres: Literally, they're moving his personal things out of number 10, correct? It's just crazy.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's crazy.
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Paul Dickinson: The king has been ruling Britain for almost an hour, but then...
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And then an hour later, Keir Starmer heads in to Buckingham Palace, sits down with the king, who asks him, amongst other things, I'm sure, to form a government in his name. And then Keir Starmer then leaves, leaves Buckingham Palace as prime minister and goes back to number 10, at which point he started then announcing his cabinet. And it was actually pretty much his shadow cabinet that ended up getting the positions inside governments that we expected. That's not always the case. They don't have to appoint shadow ministers to be full ministers. But in most cases, that is indeed what happened.
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Paul Dickinson: Clay said it was called kissing hands. In the old days, the prime minister would kiss the hands of the monarch. But I think that's been dispensed with now, probably something COVID related.
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Christiana Figueres: I think it was probably before COVID. But we will get to the bottom of that. We will do some research on that one. Now, something that is typical of all changes of government, or most changes of government, which the Buckingham Palace show is not, is the importance of the first 100 days. It has traditionally been the metric of political direction, and political progress for new governments. Is that still going to happen in the UK, or is the Kissing Hands actually something that changes that tradition, or changes the importance of the 100 days?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I don't think it changes the importance of the 100 days. I mean, I think that certainly in terms of creating a different tone, that there is a new government in the UK, and there will be a different strategy. I think, actually, we've seen some of that already. So Keir Starmer announcing his cabinet, having a first cabinet meeting on a Saturday. I know that seems like a small thing, but it's actually quite significant that that was then a workday, and that's when they had their cabinet meeting, and then he immediately left.
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Paul Dickinson: Get a job in a shop, mate. I used to work a lot on Saturdays. Sorry, Kevin.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: He then immediately left to go to all of the four devolved countries, all of the countries of the United Kingdom. So he first went to Scotland, then Northern Ireland, then Wales, then back to London. And that again was to signal that there's now a different relationship between Westminster and the devolved authorities, which has been really appalling over the last years of the conservative government. David Lammy, the new foreign secretary, was immediately on a plane going to see partners in Germany and Poland, talking about Ukraine. So again, there's this very front foot strategy to signal that there has been chaos, there has been immaturity, there has been party politics happening in the Westminster government for many years now. And that's over now. Now the adults are back, there's going to be a serious attempt to deal with a very difficult situation by a new government that is incredibly competent and capable, I would say, on the strength of the first few days. I mean, they're really taking it seriously. They've got a plan. They're clearly following that plan to change the narrative and make stuff happen, and things are happening in a sequenced and planned way. And it's quite impressive to watch.
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Paul Dickinson: Although I'm going to throw in just like one oddity from the nature of democracy. The previous Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had suffered a tremendous loss at the polls in the general election before Keir Starmer became leader. And eventually, actually, in March last year, he was expelled from the party. He wasn't even allowed to stand. And although he did win a seat, actually, as an independent. But why am I telling you this about Jeremy Corbyn? Despite the fact he suffered a terrible loss of seats in the election, he got three million more votes than Keir Starmer. So isn't it extraordinary to consider the first-past-the-post electoral system? And I'm sure those who were supporters of Jeremy Corbyn would see this as some sort of strange distortion. But, you know, I guess we live with the democracy we've got. But I just didn't want to ignore the extraordinary events within the Labour Party. But, there's a great sense now that we have a competent government, because between Boris Johnson and Liz Truss' mistakes and Rishi Sunak's weird lurch to deny climate change, we have suffered from what is widely regarded as chaotic government. And I do think the country feels much more positive that the grown-ups have come into power.
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Christiana Figueres: So let's talk about some of those grown-ups. I would love to hear you say a little bit about Sir Keir Starmer, which honestly, outside of the UK, I think most people had never heard about him. So the new Prime Minister of UK would love to hear you say a little bit about his background and what we can expect from him. Also, just so that you can all get ready, the two of you, would love to hear you say some, give us some background on David Lammy, a very exciting choice of Foreign Secretary, and Tom knows him very well. So would love to hear that. And then, of course, the very good friend of all of us and of this podcast, Ed Miliband, who will be Minister of Energy Security and Net Zero. And was the former head of the Labour Party. So who wants to take on which of these three?
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Paul Dickinson: I'll give you a poster stamp on Keir Starmer and then Tom can talk about it.
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Christiana Figueres: Can I just say, I also want to note that I'm asking about three men. OK, so.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There are also brilliant women, including the first female Chancellor of the UK, Rachel Reeves, who is...
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Christiana Figueres: OK.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, yeah.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, just referring to the leader of the party, Sir Keir Starmer, of course, everyone outside the UK thinks it's bizarre, the Sir and Lord and all this kind of thing. But it's worth referencing that he is a lawyer who entered the government prosecution service and became director for public prosecutions, which is a significant role. And he had a reputation as incredibly studious, hard worker, mastering the brief and then winning the cases, and was knighted, as we call it, for his services. And then I think transferred to a political career, but bought that same rigor of the lawyer trying to understand the brief completely and then kind of operate or activate or discharge or kind of get the outcome, essentially, based upon the information. And that seems to have worked really, really well. And I certainly, like a lot of people, thought, who is this person? But his quiet competence has won the trust, I think, of the nation. Have I missed anything about Keir Starmer, Tom?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: No, I mean, I think that, you know, I think he's regarded as a bit of a boring politician. I think...
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Christiana Figueres: Which he loves.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And honestly, I mean, I think I'd like, looking at the last few years with Liz Truss, Donald Trump, I mean, I think I'd like to go back to the days when my politicians were just a little bit more boring.
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Paul Dickinson: You know, imagine you're really, really ill. Do you want an exciting surgeon or a boring surgeon? I'm going to go for the boring surgeon every day.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, yeah. Steady, stable, competent, thoughtful leadership, I think I will go for every day over the last few examples that we had in the UK, so yeah. David Lammy.
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Christiana Figueres: David Lammy, your good friend.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right, yeah, so, declaring interest, David is a good friend of mine. I got to know him several years ago, in part through his project on the Guyanese Amazon. He himself, his parents are Guyanese, obviously born in the UK, former guest on the podcast, MP for Tottenham since 2000. He was a minister in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments. David is really interesting, right? Because he comes from these gritty urban issues. He was the one wading into the riots in Tottenham when this happened on the street. And over time, what has happened is he's come to understand that these issues of justice that are so fundamental to who he is are deeply intersected with climate. And that's made him much more of a front foot active climate politician. He gave a TED Talk a while ago that I worked with him on a little bit, all about climate justice. And it really sets out the intersection between these two different issues, how climate is going to affect people in cities, people of working class backgrounds. It's a very different approach to what we've sometimes seen in the climate movement. He has been Shadow Foreign Secretary for, I think, about three years. He's really mastered the brief. He wants to focus on resetting our relationships with the EU, with the Global South, and on climate change. He has got a very front foot agenda on climate. He sees climate as a foreign and development policy issue. Of course, foreign policy on climate in the UK is actually dealt with by the Department for Net Zero, Energy and Net Zero, that Ed Miliband is leading, but the two of them will collaborate very much on that. And I think already we've seen him to be energetic, thoughtful, going around the world, building coalitions. I think he's going to be a great Foreign Secretary and, you know, about time.
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Christiana Figueres: What do you think? Obviously, you know, can you just imagine for a second him as Foreign Secretary in the scenario that the UK were part of the EU? But we're just going to, you know, visit that thought and then let it go.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I will never let that go. I will never forgive him for that.
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Paul Dickinson: Tom's breaking his Brexit nose, if you listen carefully.
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Christiana Figueres: But how do you think, Tom, because it is, if you think about those two scenarios, right, as part of the EU or not, he is getting a somewhat or quite a curtailed role.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, diminished.
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Christiana Figueres: Diminished role. So how do you, you who know him so well, how do you think will he work around that? Because there's no doubt that he and the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband, they all, in fact, the whole new government, they really want to elevate the UK back into being an international leader in so many different respects. So how do you do that as a single country, not part of EU?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, I think you have one of your, as you said, one of your massive assets has been curtailed because you're no longer part of the EU, but you still realize that coalitions and partnerships are the way in which you get big things done. So the relationship with the EU has changed, but that doesn't mean it can't be reset and repaired to the point where there can be joint collaborations on a whole variety of different important issues in the run up to the negotiations in Brazil next year. And I think that's what we'll already see, is partnerships to actually deal with, how do we bring countries along, create just energy transition partnerships, focus on nature, these other different critical issues that David sees fundamentally as foreign and development policy issues. I think what you'll see, I'm sure what you'll see is him going around building coalitions of other donor countries, European and elsewhere, to try to advance that agenda. Now, David is a good friend of President Obama. They were at Harvard Law School together. And there will be a very interesting moment if Donald Trump goes back in the White House in September around how David will navigate that. And he's aware of that. So he has spent a lot of time over the last few months meeting with senators, Republican senators and lawmakers. I believe he's been to Mar-a-Lago, meeting different folks to just prepare for that potential eventuality. Because you can see that as maybe a vulnerability. But I think he's practical. And I think he's trying to work out how would you build alliances even in that scenario by tying climate to broader issues of national security and defense policy.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, we might get time to discuss the fact that scenario is far from unlikely in the current circumstances. But let's go on to that. Just a quick word. On terms of senior women in the government, the deputy prime minister is Angela Rayner. She's an interesting character. And then also the treasury minister, or as we say, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, are two prominent women out of a reasonably gender balanced government. But I think certainly in France, there actually ended up being less female MPs. So it's a turbulent time. Now, you asked also about Ed Miliband.
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Christiana Figueres: Ed Miliband. Yes, please, Paul.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: But I think you should answer that question, Christiana.
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Christiana Figueres: No, go for it, Paul.
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Paul Dickinson: All I'm going to do, I'm going to just quote him a little bit. I was listening to him on podcast recently. The only route to energy security is decarbonisation. Yes, huge, big heart. Big heart. I'm making the heart logo that people make on TikTok videos. The climate crisis is an opportunity to be ceased. Absolutely. Then jobs and insulation and renewable energy. I mean, my heart goes out. I was just looking at these fantastic policies that the Labour government have. Mandating UK-regulated financial institutions and FTSE 100 firms to develop and implement credible transition plans. You know I love transition plans. Of course, they're all going to say support the government to pass laws. Energy efficiency, an extra 6.6 billion in home energy efficiency improvements. Well, that just speaks to my heart and soul of Mitch and Dickinson's insulation. So I'm a huge fan of Ed Miliband. But Christiana, it seems you are no stranger to him.
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Christiana Figueres: No, I am no stranger to him. I'm just an incredibly lucid, deep thinker on energy, on climate, so visionary. He was so helpful in the lead-up to the Paris Agreement since then. He really has never wavered, right? He really, really understands the benefits of decarbonizing, and he understands the challenges as well. But he understands that the benefits outweigh the challenges. He had, as both of you will remember, he was co-hosting a podcast that was called Reasons To Be Cheerful, which he did with Jeff Lloyd, and had me on that podcast, and I believe you as well, Tom.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: We went on together, I think, yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: And we went, that's right, we went on together. And so comforting that, I mean, just take the title of his podcast, he really...
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Paul Dickinson: There's lots of optimism there, right?
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, lots of optimism, but it's by choice, it's by hard work, right? It's not naive optimism, it's hard work optimism, it's by choice, it's by intention. And he covered many, many different issues in that podcast. Of course, he also covered climate. So I know that he is very excited to be back in government and seeing the horizon now of what the UK can do on climate. And he might, let's see what his role is going to be straight on, specifically on climate, but he might even lead the UK delegation into cops because he is so well versed on this. So, so well versed.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Sounds like someone has a bit of inside knowledge, but yes, we'll find out what happens. And I would just say one more thing. I mean, I'm also a huge fan of Ed Miliband. I've known him for many years. He's been very kind to me in all kinds of ways. And God bless him for staying with it, right? I mean, we know when, you know, he led the UK delegation in Copenhagen and was an absolute star in the attempt to drive a positive outcome there. That was 15 years ago. And he has been basically in opposition ever since, first as leader of the opposition and then on the backbenches. That is a tough job where you don't get the opportunity to create the impact you want, and you've got to keep going, finding a way to do that, build a way back. He has really deserved the shot that he now has at making a positive impact, both in the UK's transition and also in the global attempt to double down and implement the Paris Agreement. So it's great news that he's back, and he deserves this space to be effective in all of our support.
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Paul Dickinson: Perseverance works.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Paul Dickinson: Christiana, sorry.
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Christiana Figueres: No, I was just going to say, so unbridled enthusiasm about the elections in the UK. Where are we with the elections in France? Parliamentary elections, not presidential, parliamentary elections. Actually quite a quite a surprise. Most people thought and the polls were saying that, that there would be a swing over to the right and it did not happen. What can you all tell us about that?
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Paul Dickinson: Paul, I'd say, I'd say pretty happy news. It looks like Emmanuel Macron's reputation for unbelievably brilliant political instincts were kind of correct and so he called the snap election. There was this huge surge for the extreme right. There was then a second round where the parties managed the process extremely effectively and managed to push the RN, the extreme right, into third position. But they are the third largest group in the parliament and no one party has a majority. And so you now have a quite peculiar shotgun coalition that is going to be governing against the interest of the extreme right. But how effectively they're going to be able to organize themselves is another whole question. But I think the key point being there is a fear in the people of many countries in the US, Europe, UK, France, that things are going to hell and they're a little bit drawn towards the strong man or actually the strong woman in the form of Murray Le Pen. But actually alongside that risk of some sort of security in the kind of nasty right, there is a risk of fascism in France turned defiantly against that. So we've got a messy government, but we have not got a successor for the extreme right.
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Christiana Figueres: Which is what we thought would happen, yeah.
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Paul Dickinson: Which is what we, from the first round showed that would happen and it didn't.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, such a sigh of relief. Tom, how do you think the UK and France now will be able to take advantage of this situation?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, so before we get to that, I mean, it's interesting, the story in France is also a story of the nature of the electoral system, right? The first pass, the post system also led to that. And that led to this very impressive wave of tactical voting. And that the French existing political parties really see the risk and they're able to mobilize. They've done this before, of course, but that's largely what led to the outcome that we see. And you've got to hope that that strategy holds. I mean, it's held in this case, of course, a presidential election in two years' time. But I would say right now, the gamble that Emmanuel Macron took does appear to be paying off in the sense that even though he's going to have a more difficult time governing, he's seen off what appeared to be, don't forget, the trigger for all of this was the European elections that returned such an overwhelming vote for far right parties, he now at least has, it would have been very difficult for him to govern with the assumption the electorate had moved in that direction to such a degree. Now we have more of a sense of it. It's going to be interesting to see how he pulls his alliance together. How the UK and France, Paul?
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Paul Dickinson: Well, I was going to offer up these two numbers, one from from Cathy Kay on the rest of the politics US, 28 and 82. 28 would have been the age of the far right prime minister, had they won, 82 is the age, which Biden will be coming in to the US presidential election. Sorry, Tom.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: No, no. Well, let's turn to that in a sec, because we only have a couple of minutes before we have to go. I think that Emmanuel Macron will continue to be a global presence and a global thinker. And despite his challenges at home, which he's going to have to figure out how he pulls together a coalition, he is still going to want to be a progressive leader on the world stage. And I rather suspect and hope that the French-UK progressive alliance can be reestablished now that we have Keir Starmer in place. I mean, there are of course German elections next year as well. So there's a lot of instability in Europe coming up over the next couple of years. But I hope that David Lammy, Keir Starmer, can begin to build these alliances. I mean, you know, the UK really needs Europe. But, you know, the UK can also help Europe in various ways, if it is minded to do so, and if it can be thoughtful and progressive. I mean, Paul's looking sceptical.
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Paul Dickinson: I just think we are Europe, you know. Like 24 miles from Dover to Calais.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. So I'm hopeful that, you know, you might have another period of a progressive alliance that the UK plays a constructive role in. But politics is more complicated than it was a generation ago.
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Paul Dickinson: Well, in our last few moments, I don't think we can avoid mentioning Joe Biden's catastrophic presidential debate with Donald Trump and, you know, nearly everybody I know saying, not if, but when and what happens now. Is that the right analysis? Biden has to go.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's very hard to watch, isn't it? I don't know how much you two have watched, but I find it excruciating.
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Paul Dickinson: I drank two bottles of whisky and I managed to get 20 minutes into it and then I had to switch off.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, well, now that I know the calculation of a bottle of whisky every 10 minutes, I can have another go. I don't know. I find it very difficult to see how he can possibly win a national election in that state.
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Paul Dickinson: And there's no way to fix that state, by the way. Sorry, Christiana.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I am deeply concerned and I am surprising myself every morning about the thoughts that are going through my mind, which have to do with irresponsible egotism. Because this is not about Joe Biden. This is not about the Biden family. This is not a small issue, right? This is about who can defeat Trump because of the huge negative consequences of a win by Trump. And not only his debate, but what has happened since then denotes that he would not be able to win the election. So that to me has to be the central question.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: The criteria.
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Christiana Figueres: That's the criteria. Who and under what conditions and how do we set it up to win against Trump? And it's so interesting because we've said on this podcast so many times that this election, even without the debate, this election is about Trump. It's about do you love Trump no matter what or do you hate him? It's not, it never was about Joe Biden. That's the, that is the irony of this whole thing. And if Biden had been able to shore up enough anti-Trump votes, well, then God bless. But everything seems to be pointing in the direction that he cannot shore up enough anti-Trump votes and that he may even be attracting now anti-Biden votes, which weren't there just three weeks ago. So that to me is, whoa, country first, world first, planet first, and self later. And he's not being able to see that.
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Paul Dickinson: Yeah. Last word I'm going to give to Jenin Ganesh in the FT who said, Joe Biden and the tragedy of liberal denialism, the left ignores problems on its own side and recent history has turned on that failure, something sober and sensible for us to reflect on.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, I mean, I couldn't agree more. And by the time we come back, we will know more. So we are now beginning our summer break. We'll be gone for about a month. Please keep an eye on our Twitter accounts and our social media accounts, and we'll be dropping back into your feed as the summer progresses. There is going to be an enormous amount to cover in the second half of the year. New UK government in place, complicated picture in France, US election coming up, COP at the end of the year. We'll be coming through all of that with you. Thank you for joining us as ever, first half of 2024. It's been a lot of fun. Paul is doing his traditional I've got a small thing to say.
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Paul Dickinson: Just remember everybody, all through the summer our movement is getting stronger and stronger and stronger and hold that in your heart.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There you go. All right. Love you guys. Nice to see you all. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you in a few weeks. Bye bye. Bye.
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Christiana Figueres: Bye.
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Clay (podcast producer): So there you go. Another episode of Outrage and Optimism. The last in our first half of the year. We're really looking forward to getting up, stretching our legs a little bit, recollecting ourselves and coming back stronger at the end of the summer. So I'm Clay, producer of Outrage and Optimism. There's no real credits this week. I just wanted to say directly to all of you, thank you. Thank you to everyone who has joined us this year as a listener, as a new listener to the show. And thank you to all of our listeners who have been with us, who have stuck with us and have come back for this first half of the year. We say it regularly, but we'll never get tired of saying it. We are so grateful for your support, for your listenership. And we look forward to returning with more outrage and optimism at the end of the summer. So a couple of things. One, our sister podcast The Way Out Is In is going to be releasing episodes over the summer. So please enjoy that while we are away. And actually, Christiana was recently a guest on The Way Out Is In on an episode. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. You should go check that out. It's fantastic. And then second, I wanted to thank everyone who filled out the listener survey. We will be pouring over it over the summer while we are off the podcast, taking your advice, listening to what you had to say, and we'll be back in action when we return. And speaking of which, we already have some exciting things in the works for when we return. So the best way to not miss us when we return is to hit subscribe or follow in your podcast app. That way, when we're back, we'll be right in your feed. OK, I'm about to shut my laptop for the summer. All right, enjoy the break. Stay safe and we will see you right back here.
