meetings on the sidelines of the world economic forum summit are expected to discuss the war in gaza and possible ways forward. this week could be a pivotal one in scottish politics, as confidence votes are planned on both the first minister, humza yousaf, and his government. he has written to opposition leaders in an attempt to find common ground. the un security council expresses deep concern over an imminent attack on the sudanese city of al—fashir, by the paramilitary rapid support forces. in a statement, the un says attacks will have "devastating consequences" for the civilians. and thousands turn out for a massive street party after inter milan are crowned the footballing champions of italy. now it's time for today's sunday

episode of newscast, newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's laura in the studio. it's paddy in the studio. and it's henry in the studio. hooray! it's so nice to have you here with us. you tantalised us on the saturday episode that there was a scoop in the making. the scoop in the making ended up being a defection. yes, defection and defections are important because they are rare and defections are important because they really spooked political parties and in this case, a conservative mp until yesterday, was dan poulter, a part—time nhs doctor. he has decided that it is time for him to go from the conservative party and he didn'tjust sort of say, because i think i've had enough and they've gone in the wrong direction. he accused them of not caring about public services, about not caring about the nhs and of losing their compassion. so, defections are big news stories, even if newscasters, i will say the person in question is not necessarily a massive politicalfigure.

a bolt out of nowhere. i mean, defections from the government to the principal opposition party are extremely rare. we had one a couple of years ago, christian wakeford left the conservatives for labour when borisjohnson was in great difficulty, the start of 2022. before that, the last time it had happened was 1995, so labour will be, indeed are ecstatic that they have managed to get two in two years. but when the christian wakeford defection happened, there were a lot of rumours in westminster that labour were talking to potentially several conservative defectors, people from the awful phrase, red wall. people who had come into parliament in 2019 as christian wakeford had. i don't think anyone at that point or subsequently would have ever had dan poulter, suffolk, true blue territory, tory mp since 2010, david cameron era minister, i don't think anyone would have ever had them on a long list, let alone on a shortlist of potential defectors to labour. i think that's right and as a sort

of political manoeuvre and a political stunt, i mean, stunt is a bit of a silly word. it's the timing of it. the timing, a few days out from the local elections, very much already into the general election long campaign or short campaign or whatever kind of campaign it is going to be. but the other thing about it and i know newscasters sometimes like to know these things, labour will also be absolutely cock a hoop that they managed to keep it so tight. they genuinely managed to keep it under wraps and in westminster where gossip comes out of every crack in the wall, that is something of an achievement in itself. and the way it's been written in the papers is, it's a sort of labour trampoline the moment, because he did do an op—ed in the observer in which he said, he said that the labour party of 2019 is dead and buried. so in the moment of maximum publicity, he is praising keir starmer's revolution in the labour party in the papers and the guests who came up on the radio todayjust admitted this looks really good for keir starmer. of course it does and there's two things, one is that they are able to say, look, it's notjust us, the labour party is saying the labour party has changed.

look, the conservative guy coming over here because he believes the labour party has changed. but also, especially given dan poulter isn't a household name, at least until this morning, for the labour party, one of the great boosts here is basically rubbing the conservative party's faces in the mud. what is the choreography of it? you said stunt but then not stunt, but i said timing, but it is sort of it say, look, oh! yes. it's a big reveal. if we talk about it in the context of politics being some kind of reality show, it is a big reveal. it is a big ta—da moment and it will have been worked out under great, great secrecy. downing street was only told a few minutes before it happened, before it was made public by us here at the bbc and the observer newspaper. so downing street didn't know anything about it at all. only i think a less than six people in the labour party knew anything about it at all. wes streeting, the shadow

health secretary, who this obviously interested in this because of his links to the nhs, said this morning to us that he had met him in the last couple of days. dan poulter told me that he had been thinking about it for the last couple of months. so the circle has been tiny because gossip isn'tjust the way of the world in westminster, it also has power and currency, right? who is talking to who and about what. so this is something that has been executed for the labour party, i think really quite, been executed by them very well but defections are so rare. partly because i think it is worth saying politics is a very emotional thing. it's very tribal, it's very emotional. to say to your colleagues, i've had enough of you, when you have walked through, think about what has happened in politics in the last ten years. it has been intense and crazy. they have walked through the fire together and actually to say, i've had enough of you, it's a really big deal.

i mean, these things can be a more chaotic than they appear at the time. it looked incredibly smooth from the labour party yesterday. i remember when sort of subsequently, digging into the last defection, the christian wakeford one, which again looked pretty smooth on the day, they got him to cross the floor, physically cross the floor in the house of commonsjust before prime minister's questions, sort of rattling borisjohnson. but actually, it transpired in the subsequent days that because a fewjournalists appeared to have got wind of it, they said to christian wakeford, "0k, you've got to do it tomorrow if you want to do it, and they got him in then to meet keir starmer for the first time. so, so a lot of these things, i'm sure it's been happening in dan poulter�*s head and his heart, i guess, for a long time. and there may be lots of things that were going on behind the scenes where it was a near miss or whatever that we don't know about yet. but certainly in terms of their public achievement is a political and public coup for labour at the moment. but, you know, sometimes these things, sometimes what seems initially a great success is in politics before too long actually turn into looking like something else. shall we listen to the man himself?

well, i've been thinking about it for a little while. and it was over alongside my work as an mp. i work as an nhs doctor and have done the health service that i saw under huge strain is very different to the health service of maybe a decade ago and the struggles and the challenges that patients have been experiencing in accessing timely good care was something that really resonated with me and stayed with me. and i found it increasingly difficult to look my nhs colleagues in the eye, my patients in the eye and my constituents in the eye with good conscience. and i feel that the nhs deserves better than it has at the moment. i feel that actually the changes that the labour party has made since 2019 under keir starmer, not just on the health service but particularly on that offer on health, about tackling the determinants of poor health and housing, poverty and all those issues are the sort of things that are really going to make a big difference. and i think that's why i believe that, why i've made the change i have and why i believe it

will make a difference to the patients i look after. can i pick up on what you said is you're both a specialist. this is not a household name. he's not really speaking, he's not martin luther king, is he, when he speaks. so i wonderjust the public here if it has anything, it's health, labourfor health. is that the kind of what the voters are going to hear? yeah, i mean, that's the clear message of his interview. i mean, interestingly, that he combined it, though, with this other claim about the conservative party becoming increasingly nationalist, to use his word. and that was something that shami chakrabarti picked up on, on laura's panel, on her programme. i mean, actually, ithink that's a very unique criticism among conservative mp, although he's not conservative mp anymore. you heard a lot more about that, a lot more concerns like that from a plank of the conservative parliamentary party when borisjohnson was prime minister and actually in the run up to the 2019 general election, i'm sure that's a critique that people like amber rudd and david gauke and dominic grieve would share. they all left the conservative party five years ago, more than five years

ago in some cases i'iow. so actually it's a bit surprising to me to hear a conservative mp who was re—elected in 2019 stayed in the party or didn't actually frankly seem to have done an awful lot in parliament since then harboring that criticism. and ijust thought that was noteworthy. but yeah, the sort of the top message of his defection is that he doesn't believe the conservatives are running the health service. and he did say, which was interesting, too, that he felt there were plenty of colleagues who shared his view and maybe he didn't share his view on that nationalist, because i think also there's something about that word that is very striking and it's a very negative word to a lot of people's ears. but i think what more conservatives might find sympathy with is the way that he talked about the the party moving away from where it had been in 2010. so we're wary from some of those sort of cameron... yes, remember that particular slogan — you know, remember, "oh, yes, we will put compassion and hug a hoodie,"

which he never actually said. but, you know, "we will put those kinds of things front and center." whereas now you look at where how the conservatives have been flirting with the idea of campaigning on cultural war issues. and there's a big debate about whether that's the right thing. but look at where they've moved to on migration, making it illegal for people to try to come to this country. they have moved to the right by, i think, by any analysis. and there are conservatives who are not happy about that, even though, as you say, it's nothing like the level of concern of when borisjohnson and his team were deliberately crashing around downing street, trying to wind up the other side. but it's also always worth remembering, so much of this shows that politics is about presentation. because, yes, i think everybody, most conservative mps, would say their party has moved to the right since david cameron was prime minister. but if you wanted to make a counterargument, david cameron pledged, though never quite delivered, that legal migration would come down to the tens of thousands. rishi sunak does not have that commitment. taxes are record high. taxes are at a record high. state's bigger than ever. the state is bigger than ever.

public spending was restrained, to say the least, under david cameron. and when chris philp was on your programme responding to dan poulter, he was talking about how much spending on the health service had swelled, particularly in recent years. so there is an interesting sort of counterargument, but obviously david cameron portrayed himself as much more comfortable... but there is another name we're not mentioning at the moment, which is rishi sunak. and just for the newscaster who wonders what the sunday chournalism situation... "chournalism?" i will not have that said! i'm talking about myself. we gather, we watch everything and we read everything on a sunday morning and we churn it all together into a digest, is what i meant by that. it's a beautiful pat of butter. so... so rishi sunak's been out today on sky, spoke to the fabulous trevor phillips. and what i spotted as i was listening to it, apart from the fact that it sounds to have been recorded in an echo chamber, was that... what, a real echo chamber or a metaphorical echo chamber? ..was that it was tetchy rishi again.

he was pushed by trevor, and instead of owning it... and i remember david cameron saying tojohn humphrys once on the radio, "john, you'll interrupt yourself if you're not careful," and sort of laughing it off. rishi was tetchy on the tv today. yeah. and he complained at one point, which was quite amusing. i have to say something like he said something like, this is the fourth question in a row you've asked me about politics and well, you know. well, welcome to politics, prime minister. and i think i do actually think some members of the public like a politician, to show a flash of impatience if it's on their behalf,

if they say, you know, come on, i want to talk about the health service. i want to talk about the issues. but it's a very fine line. and certainly there are lots of conservatives who fear that rishi sunak too often strays onto the tetchy side of that line. shall we have a listen to how labour was crowing about it with wes streeting and how the conservative minister chris philp, who was doing the morning round this morning, responded to dan porter. well, i think as we get closer to an election, most likely i in the autumn, it becomes more of a choice rather than a sort - of referendum on do you feel grumpy with the government? _ and clearly at the moment people do feel grumpy with the government. i but as we get closer _ to an election, it's not so much a referendum on grumpiness. it becomes actually a choice. who do you want to run the country? you know, rishi sunak, - who's got a plan that's working. 0r keir starmer, who has no plan whatsoever and wanted to makel jeremy corbyn prime minister just a few years ago. - and i think confronted with that choice, we will see our poll- ratings significantly improve, significantly improve there. i that is on the record from a minister and here was wes streeting. i think technically we can use the word cock a hoop about the new member of his party. he's abandoned the conservative party to save the nhs and i think

there are millions of conservative voters across the country- who are feeling politically- homeless, who can see the chaos land the failure to deliver of now| five conservative prime ministers who are now looking for an alternative. i and i hope they will trust the doctor. . so how will they be used? this moment. on in the sky interview, the prime minister was asked for four or five times about the july election. so has that gone away? is that speculation or is this new season, are we going to have this type of talk now for weeks? oh, the election speculation this week went crazy. and i was speaking to people at the start of the week. obviously, laura talked last week on this podcast about whispers she'd been hearing at the start of the week. a few people proactively got in touch to say things like, have you heard about these rumours that an election might be called next week? you know, when i bounce that off people, it's certainly the case that there are some people at the top of the conservative party who believe that rishi sunak should call an election sooner rather than later.

they believe that that is to his advantage. they believe that will help him get the election to rein onto things that he wants to talk about, things like miranda as well as the economy, rather than put them at the mercy of whatever events happen to be when time runs out. and it's important to understand that the economic picture, while still improving, is different to what downing street was anticipating because of what's happening in america. probably not going to get anywhere near the number of rate cuts that they were hoping for. so there are some powerful, influential people at the top of the conservative party who are saying to rishi sunak as a result of all that you should have the election. but there are no signs yet that rishi sunak agrees with them and he is the person who will decide how long he wants to remain prime minister before he rolls the dice that he can turn it around. i know, but no wonder he's tetchy now. well, quite. yeah, but the thing is, i think you could say it's long.

it's obviously go long, isn't it? i mean, it's ridiculous. he'll have to make the decision this week. you just want to be, right? yes. this question, right, over whether rishi sunak has retained... he has got in a way that his predecessors didn't have — although they ended up with snap elections — the ability to choose when the election... correct. ..because they repealed the fixed—term parliament act. but here's the thing about here's the date. i'm deliberately interrupting you because i know you both know more about this. but if he went injune, he could be faced with going on thursday, june 6th, which is the 80th anniversary of d—day. do we seriously think that a british prime minister will call a general election on june 6th? i don't know, paddy. i don't know. but can i blame you if he does? lots of people blame me for absolutely everything, so that's fine. there's no reason it couldn't be any of the other thursdays injune, or any of the thursdays in july. i mean, i think it won't be august or september, there's my definitive prediction. but is there, though? i mean, there's a genuine question. george osborne has been talking about this. he's been saying he thinks all of this speculation is destabilising for rishi sunak. of course it is! even if members of the public don't particularly care.

of course it is. we're talking about this rather than about whatever else. and is there a point at which the benefits of flexibility for rishi sunak come to be outweighed by the drawbacks of this kind of speculation? and i do wonder whether at some point, even if he doesn't call an early election, he might decide to say it's going to be on this thursday in october, or this thursday... and it might be that after whatever unfolds in the local elections next week, that might be, although in a way it seems completely crackers, it may be that somehow naming the date or at least allowing it to be known, or at the very least completely ruling out a summer election, might be one kind of action that rishi sunak perhaps even feels forced to do in the aftermath of what's likely to be a pretty grisly set of election results for the tories. so we will see. and we have there a roundup of your own scoop, for which congratulations, and thanks, the prime minister's been there on sky. well done, sky. and we've previewed the local elections on thursday, which we know we're going to be talking about next week. we do. and i can say, i can share with you,

i am so excited not just because i love election programmes, but also i'm so excited because i've just got my little flip chart book to help me do my homework, and it's really, really exciting. it's made out of an old photo album. 0k, we'll take that moment to have a little jingle. so to the other enormous political story of the weekend — will humza yousaf, the first minister in scotland, survive? so our guest said no, but it's not clear how ash regan, the alba ex—snp msp, will use her swing vote. indeed. and you had alex salmond, her boss, on. we did. and he is obviously absolutely loving this because he's been politically estranged from the snp. he's got a big voice in politics, but he doesn't have direct influence. he thinks at the moment he does have huge influence. but what's interesting is that the snp has said informally, and then this morning on the record, ian blackford, the former snp

leader, said there is no way that humza yousaf is going to pick up the phone to alex salmond. so by all means ash regan can go and have her meeting with humza yousaf. they can talk about the kind of ideas that they've put on the table. but it seems to me very, very tricky to see how there's any kind of big accommodation between those two parties. so i think what's more likely is the snp kind of frantically doing what they can to see if they can peel back one or two green members of the scottish parliament, with whom they had such a big bust up and flounce out last week. because it's notjust parties, it's people. yeah. i mean, on radio 4, wejust this up as a sort of game of thrones rivalry. it's almost incomprehensible that alex salmond is emerged stronger out of something that humza yousaf has done after alex salmond had the psychodrama with nicola sturgeon. i mean, who's writing the script, henry? it is absolutely extraordinary, even from sitting from our vantage point in westminster, where we've had our share of wild politics over the last few years, to see

humza yousaf attempting a manoeuvre of strength and then find himself fighting for his job within a few days, is one of the more candid moments of politics i've ever seen. what's interesting as well is that conversations i've been having privately with various different snp sources, people are quite keen to make it be known that they were not involved in making that decision and maybe he didn't really listen to other people and maybe there were some quite important people that he didn't even consult before he made that decision. and that is one of the criticisms, isn't it, of humza yousaf that he has a very small, closed group of allies who he consults on things. and clearly when you're in a pickle, you need broad support. and one of the criticisms levelled against london based national media people is that actually holyrood was designed to have a minority administration and it's often said that we don't know enough and i'm not certainly not talking about you, but adams made this point very eloquently on newscast, actually. this is a system that is constructed to have coalitions. yes.

i mean, it is not unusual for there to be governments without majorities in holyrood and nicola sturgeon in 2016, at the height of her pomp and powers, she didn't have a majority on her own. so it's a really important point to make. this, however, is a giant political snafu bust up disaster. it may well have always going to be that the deal between the snp and greens, the house agreement was going to come to its natural end. ok, so you sit down, you work out, how can you walk out of this room without looking like an idiot? how can i walk out? i walk out of this room without working like an idiot. you don't go. i'm going to go out first and chuck you in public and then expect you to still be my friend. and the date looks like wednesday, is that right? we will know one way or another how ashley egan will vote on wednesday. and i think the vote is i think, well, there might be two votes

of no confidence. yeah, one in humza yousaf, one in the scottish government itself. and i think the votes are going to be i think the votes are pencilled in for thursday. but if humza yousaf thinks he can't win the confidence vote, i think the snp will conclude he's got to quit before the vote because if he loses the confidence vote he'd have to quit anyway. if they then lose the vote in the whole government there'd have to be a holyrood election. they can't risk that, they don't want to risk that. so i think by wednesday he's going to have to make a decision if he can feel confident that he will win and if he's not, i think he's going to have to quit anyway. that's what's been put to me. but who knows? it's really rocky. talk about the power of defectors, by the way. yeah, right. here you are snp and also the alba. yeah. and keep that thought because also what's interesting to me is the fact that this isn't about independence. she went over gender recognition and in other words, you've got the greens going on emissions targets and you had ash regan�*s defection over gender recognition. bill, that's nothing. that's nothing to do with the independence question

on which the coalition was allegedly was was was explicitly founded through the bute house agreement. that's right. and there are a lot of bitter seeds that people don't really want to swallow at the moment about nicola sturgeon�*s legacy, that she was the one who did this deal with the greens and she gave them things that she shouldn't really have promised. there's a lot of muttering. "well, of course it's nicola that left us in this mess," going on. but not to make the comparison too laboured, but talk about parties that have been in government for a long time. and, you know, as in the conservative party, you've got the snp... i mean, they've been in power for longer. you know, dealing with... they have been in power for longer, haven't they? they've been in powerfor ages. . diam-t— want to fall into the westminster journalists not knowing their onions about scotland. just don't say north of the border. well, i don't think that anyway. just don't say north of the border. they've been in power in scotland for longer than the conservatives have at westminster. and, you know, clearly there are all sorts of issues, the sort of shakespearean alex salmond on your programme. and as paddy says, he wasn't talking just about independence — he was talking about i think what he described as cultural issues.

you know, he clearly feels as strongly as ash regan about the gender stuff. and, you know, this is what happens to parties that have been in power for a long time. they have a lot of bad blood swilling around. and that becomes very difficult. no question about it. and also in passing, we pay tribute, i think, independently to one of the most impressive electoral winning machines in a western democracy, in the snp. it's perfectly possible to say independently they did a masterstroke for years mopping up all the mps in scotland. and gobbling up territory injust an absolutely astonishing way. and there's a big debate and books have been written and theses will be written in the future and all the rest. about to what extent was it their campaigning genius and to what extent was it the rot and complacency in scottish labour, which also talk about people who've been in powerfor a long time, who didn't ever sort of conceive that they might be doing and they might not be in charge. but, yeah, they were an absolutely

formidable campaigning force. i remember, you know, filming campaign visits and just the snp people in yellow t—shirts everywhere. everywhere you could look. i was rude about your flip chart book, and in the moments... i'm going to remember that. in the moments remaining, would you tell us both what to look out for on thursday? where do we go to? any swing seats, any big counts? no, it's a secret because it's my flip chart book. i'm not going to tell you. so henry can do it. well, one of the interesting things is that it's not a local elections night. it's a local elections weekend. how exciting is that for nerds? because councils seem to want to count in a long, drawn out way, which is perhaps slightly frustrating for those of us on overnight programming. it's good because it draws it out. it means you've got even longer. well, but the answer is, if you want to draw quick conclusions, you've got to hold your fire a bit because the labour party will be

talking about what happens overnight, thursday, friday. there are crucial councils, but also the by election in blackpool, scott benton's old seat — labour will be very hopeful. i mean, i think they ought to win that. if the national polling is anywhere close to correct, they ought to walk that by election. they will say that's a sign they're going to win at a general election. but you'll also be looking at how the scale of conservative council losses, and i think losing some councillors obviously is inevitable for them. but how that compares to how many they lost in 1996, how many labour lost in 2009 — the last sort of changeover election moments. but then on friday and saturday, you get to the mayoralties — and that's where the conservatives are hoping to find a bit of consolation. so nice to have you with us. it's been lovely. yes. thank god you came in. thank you very much. on a sunday we say goodbye. we say goodbye. goodbye.

live from london, this is bbc news. the us secretary of state heads to saudi arabia as diplomatic efforts intensify to stop israel's offensive in rafah. in ukraine, the commander—in—chief says the situation on the front line "has worsened". forces had withdrawn from some positions in eastern donetsk. in the uk, ministers insist health is a priority after tory mp daniel poulter defects to labour because of concerns over how the nhs is managed. the tesla boss elon musk meets government officials in beijing. they're discussing the future of us—china relations over electric vehicles. and it is party time in milan, thousand nternet to celebrate italy's new football champions, inter milan —— thousands turn out. and real money is on the line for virtual sport. £800,00 is up for grabs in the grand final of the esl 0ne gaming £800,000 is up for grabs in the grand final of the esl 0ne gaming tournament in birmingham.