alexander nekrassov, and michael goldfarb, host of the podcast the first rough draft of history. very good to have you all with us to look back at 2019. with one electoral bound, he was free. borisjohnson spent his first few months as uk prime minister at the mercy of a house of commons he could not command, making promises he couldn't and didn't keep. the first december election in nearly a century was a bitter one for labour, experiencing under jeremy corbyn its worst defeat in more than 80 years. the nationalists triumphed in scotland, setting up a fresh battle for independence. northern ireland elected more nationalists than unionists for the first time. david, we know the results of the election, huge tory win. how do you think we should interpret that result? not as some kind of huge endorsement of borisjohnson, because essentially the opposition were gulled into having an election when there didn't need to be one.

the parliament had a couple more years to run. his strategy of saying it is me orjeremy corbyn, and his cut—through of "get brexit done" both succeeded excellently. both did very well. the consequences, the one that you see around that, the british electoral system is pretty good at producing results like this from time to time, and it now sets up a whole series of problems, but the one thing it does resolve is whether or not there will be a brexit. that will happen. it doesn't tell you what kind of brexit it will be or the consequences, but we're almost certainly like the rest of the world heading for an economic slowdown and the election from all sides was a cornucopia of promises of what would happen. we are now going into unpromising circumstances to deliver that. meanwhile, for 18 months there is no opposition in britain to speak of, except that offered by the scottish

nationalists who have only one opposition point which is independence for scotland. janet, what does he do with this huge majority? he takes us out of the eu, obviously. the exhilarating fact of this for me was seeing the absolute shock in westminster where we all circulate all the time, at this result. it wasn't a shock to any of us who went out into the country and talked to real people. the westminster club seemed to have no idea of the degree of rage and alienation in the rest of the country. not only had all these elected politicians, who had in all their manifestos promised to abide by the result of the referendum, and passed article 50, not only had they betrayed that trust, but they had then spent three years traducing, bullying and threatening and patronising the people they were betraying. it was one of the most shocking things in parliamentary history. if you're right, they got their comepuppance.

exactly. but that was not shocking to those of those who were talking to real people. the interesting thing, i mean, that thing that restored one's faith and is a great credit to the british population is that the rage that was felt never went out onto the streets as it would have in many european countries, and the faith in institutions in this country was extraordinarily inspiring. they got their election. they got the result that they wanted. westminster had a very close call in terms of losing the confidence of the country, nearly. michael, did it nearly go badly wrong? no. i was in a state of anxiety in the 48 hours leading up to the election, but then i woke up and thought, "there is such a thing as reality." this election result was foretold the day in 2015 when a bunch of people who, for the price of this

than a london pint of beer, joined the labour party and elected jeremy corbyn to be leader. he was never going to be elected prime minister. but let's leave that aside. i don't want janet to elide over history. let's remember that in the earlier part of the year on successive occasions, theresa may brought her deal to parliament for a vote, and borisjohnson refused to back it. crosstalk. he did it because he wanted to be prime minister. he played a hard hand of hard politics and he won. and now the government shall be upon his shoulders. it is the season for that phase. david brings up the scottish nationalists. it interests me about what comes now with all of this power, the fact is, there is no effective opposition. he has a fixed term of at least five years. it would be unprecedented... they are going to abolish the fixed term parliament act. they really are. really, really, really. well, they should really think about it.

they played an extreme game of power politics. if you want to know what the conservatives do, look at the republican party in america. they are as whipped and as disciplined in a very narrow range of ideals. i am not convinced that borisjohnson can be convinced to grant a second referendum without a lot of fighting. you mean the scottish referendum, because it's very easy to confuse our referendums. yes. it is all on the british government to grant. i am not really seeing him as a granter of a lot. he is the minister of the union, after all. with a line down the irish sea. but the conservatives were not disciplined like the republicans. there was an enormous conservative blockage of the whole process. crosstalk. the republican party has purged away all of its moderates... they were not moderates.

save it. it was an extraordinary election. every single party avoided the real issues, the proper ones, the economy, banks out of control, people are in debt... not a word. brexit, brexit, brexit. brexit, and we'll give more money to the nhs. the nhs does not need more money. it needs reform. it is a waste of money. nobody said anything. the labour party, just like in 2017, did everything to lose the election. everything possible. in 2017 the tories would not hear about this. no, we are going to lose. this time they won becausejeremy corbyn really went for it. he said we are going to tax all of you so you will live better. nobody was gonna vote for him. they are amazed that they lost in such a big way.

why? the other opposition parties destroyed themselves. the lib dems said crazy things, nobody would vote for them. you mean the promise to revoke article 50? everything, the climate, everything. the greens destroyed themselves as well. the reason the snp did so well is because they are using misguided patriotism. it is a very clever thing. nobody can say, look, guys, you are mad. "you hate scotland." that is how they operate. they don't have anything to offer. this whole independence thing is going to collapse because it is mad. if you are leaving the eu. "no, we are not leaving the eu because our part of the country voted to stay, so the rest of the country doesn't matter." london can secede as well, presumably. but the snp victory in scotland was rather misleading. it was largely due to the labour collapse in scotland.

if labour had not collapsed, the snp victory would not be... if — the most powerful word in the universe. donald trump ends the year facing trial in the us senate for high crimes and misdemeanours. his republican party has the votes to prevent him being forced from office, but already the impeachment process has coloured the nation's politics ahead of what will be election year. democrats have called the shots over impeachment thus far, but they appear no nearer to settling on a champion to face mr trump in the presidential election. i mean, he has been impeached, but it has not been a bad year for donald trump, has it? he is still there so i think it would have been a good yearfor him. his popularity is still there. 42—43% of the electorate will vote for him no matter what. that leaves him 3—5 million votes behind him. if he wins a few states, because of the nature of our electoral system which is as outdated as first past the post in terms of reflecting

the true democratic wishes of the polity, yeah, he's still there. and in a sense this is something slightly ritualistic. everybody, from the moment nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, decided that the ukraine situation, and it is too complicated to go into now, but this attempt to hold up funding for the ukrainian government to provide defence capability against the increasingly aggressive... which biden did, by the way, on tape. he acknowledged it on tape. please don't go there! she thought there is no way of getting out of it. there are two very narrow articles of impeachment. one of them, interestingly, is obstruction of congress, not obstruction ofjustice, because trump has worked very hard to stop people who have been

subpoenaed from testifying. they will go in the senate, and they don't have the votes in the senate. it then becomes a case of how further politicised this is going into next year as the democrats try to select one of three 70—plus—year—old people to face donald trump, who will be aged 7a. biden, elizabeth warren, or sanders. once the actual voting starts in the primaries, it is a slightly new game. so anyway, he's made it to the end, much to my surprise. i didn't think he would get this far. you said on this programme a year ago that he will be gone but it won't be anything to do

with the mueller inquiry, russia... so you are right. there was a time when it seemed like the republican party might actually, in congress, step away slightly from trump. he has insulted a lot of people. and yet they've all come toadying up to him just like certain members of the politburo... the democrats started the impeachment process because they know they're going to lose the election. they are desperate. the republicans can't stand trump but they're stuck with him because you can't change him months before the election. so he can say whatever he wants and they will still support him. this is a stupid situation, an extraordinary situation. is he in much trouble? politically, realistically?

leaving aside whether it's right or wrong what happened. it depends on who the democrats nominate and the strength or weakness of their campaign. it is a very good year to be a strong democratic candidate for president this year. trump is pretty unpopular. he is not spreading outside his own area, he is not going to take any votes that he didn't have in 2016. there is not much prospect of that. if they can close off wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, which were lost by incredibly small margins in 2016, then trump is utterly beatable. far from him looking good, trump often looks fairly desperate to me. i'm slightly old—fashioned in this way. the first question that occurs to me is, did he do the things that he was accused of in the impeachment? the answer is clearly yes, he did. the second question is, do they rise to the level of impeachable offences? ask yourself, if hillary

clinton had done them, which the republicans in picture? the answer is yes. is he comprehensively the worst president we've had in our lifetime? yes. he will probably get to be in prison. all we can hope, democrats around the world, is a decent democratic candidate comes up and defeats him and we get out of this pattern of trumpism, relieve the republicans of their incredible self—imposed burden, and try and get back to the world as we have known it, with alliances being alliances. janet, when you look at that shortlist, is there a decent democratic candidate? they're mediocre. that is part of the democrats' problem. there is a crisis in soft—left politics for complicated reasons. we can go all the way back to the cold war.

the democrats have overplayed their hands, perhaps deliberately. they can't depose the president because he is incompetent. it has to be high crimes and disc demeanours. when he said, can you do us a favour? he meant the country. it is very difficult to prove that he didn't mean the country. no he didn't. we know that he didn't but that is psychological analysis. will it stand up in court? i don't think so. to take it back to whether there is a candidate out there. spending time in georgia and texas during the midterm elections in 2018,

this year, in an off—year election, democrats took a governorship in the old confederacy. they removed the governor of kentucky and took over the house of burgesses in virginia. the empiricalfact, and this isjust a level belowjoe biden and elizabeth warren, is there is a tremendous organising going on at grassroots level. it is not students and lefties. it is mostly women who are on the million women march, and they will... just let me make a point about the soft left. the reason hillary clinton ran such a disastrous campaign was not a coincidence. she took up identity politics, when women were worrying about putting food on the table.

what we can say is what in the labour party in this country, that was created to be the voice of the industrial proletariat, there is no industrial proletariat any more. there is no working class as we knew it. that makes the problem of democratic ce ntre—left politics, by extension, very difficult. if there's one abiding image for 2019, it's street protest. from the middle east to the far east, in europe and in latin america, people power proved more resilient than many would have predicted. in sudan, it ended the 30—year dictatorship of omar al—bashir. in hong kong, it persisted in defiance of beijing even if its objectives remain unmet. it changed policy in chile and in france, deposed a prime minister in lebanon, and remains an unspent force in iraq. i'm rolling a lot of very different things together there. segue of the year!

what you take from them? some of them at least, perhaps the majority of the most significant ones, the idea of democratic self—determination has become embedded in in our consciousness. it is very moving to see hong kong holding up uk flags. they understand the principle of democratic self—government which actually seems to have become rather lost in european politics. it was one of the driving forces of brexit. democratic self—government, wanting to be able to elect and remove their people who govern you. it is significant how much that is ineradicable now from our modern political consciousness. in all kinds of context and settings. are you inspired? i am not inspired at all because all

revolutions and civil wars lead to ordinary people living worse lives and the bad guys winning. every single one. you take the french revolution and the civil war in the american revolution, anything. let me finish, please. you've spoken too much by the way. i must tell you that this is a great misconception. that people hitting the streets changes anything. the bad people behind—the—scenes manipulate this. they come to power very quickly. take the arab spring, what did they end up with? the same dictator, even worse. we had islamists taking power. communism in russia using this so—called revolution which was a coup, by the way, not a revolution. so all of these revolutions are a bad example of politics, horrible example. but people have no choice. they never change

anything for the better. if you don't have democratic institutions and a democratic process, that is the point i was making about britain. the fact that they... what we're seeing in hong kong will not change anything. the street protests in hong kong will not change anything. that has nothing to do with social change. so what should people do who are living under what they consider to be totalitarian despotism? what can they do if they don't have that democratic institution? there is a sign of democracy of whatever. democracy doesn't work. it didn't work in greece. it does not work?! in greece, it didn't work they cancelled it. they said it didn't work. democracy is usually the role of a tiny minority behind the scenes. look at the election.

four fifths of parliament is the same. how is it the same every single minister comes from the... how are they going to change this? i'm going to let you both pause for breath. david, do you gain optimism from those protests? saying the obvious thing that people are talking about, climate change, the big international movements and street protests and peaceful disruption, aimed at changing politician's minds. there are obviously good and bad things that can happen as a result of street protests. it is possible that the street protesters imagine for a moment that the strength of their feeling trumps the other feelings of other people who are not out on the streets. that is always a dangerous moment. there is always a dangerous moment for the street protesters

when they lose sight of where they stand. the other problem is that it is quite easy for big authorities with more resources to outlast them. they are very rarely deciding the outcome of an event. the civil rights demonstrations in america actually brought about a change in the law. but the planning went on for a decade. just to say two things here. several hundred people have been killed in iraq, possibly more. hundreds have been killed in iran. people have not reached their limit yet. this is not revolution, they are just street protests. twice last year people came onto the streets of london but they were very polite and english about demanding a second referendum. hence, they didn't get a second referendum. no, they did, they got an election that was the second one. each to its particular

circumstances, but i wonder if there is a different environment now simply because if there is a different speed of communication, and in parts of africa now people have access to mobile phones even if they don't have much cash themselves. suddenly they can communicate in a way they didn't communicate before. in hong kong the protests were pretty much controlled online if they were controlled at all. greece is still in the euro and the euro is still functioning in the brits have left europe. the arab spring. with young protesters. look at what they're doing, they're communicating they are flash mobbing. this is going to liberate the world. here we are, at the end of the decade, and every... over the last 72 hours, iran has switched off

bits of the internet, but it is better now for the resume to work in the dark now if they really want to organise some significant change in their government. that is pretty smart. we feel that should be true. i take some optimism from the fact that people are sufficiently interested in politics and the big events want to make big protest, as long as they understand the limitations and posssibilities of those. i take a great deal of pleasure looking at young people going onto the streets with extinction rebellion, as long as they understand what the limitations of such protests will be. it requires engagement and a level of self—education and engagement with others. it is one of the blessings of a democracy that you look out and there

is somebody who disagrees... wants the government to tax people even more. how is it against the government? i don't understand. i have written in fact that we will look back on these last horrible three years as a golden age of political engagement. people arguing about brexit in the street and in the shops. in the final minute of the final date line of the final year of the decade, what was the best moment of 2019 for you? for me? it was interviewing john dean and others who participated in the impeachments that have preceded this, and learning how different this one coming up will be. i have to say the election result because the defeat of an anti—semitic, hard left communist, effectively, party

was so important and significant. i was so reassured about the sanity of the british electorate. the goal in the semi—final of the european cup, easily the best moment for me. tottenham. i think the press in 2019 as a whole got everything wrong. it was absolutely amazing. they will have to change! thank you all very much for being here all year and for being here today. happy new year to all of you. we'll be back in the new year for the first dateline of 2020. dojoin us then.

hello. grey skies were abundant across the uk yesterday. a thick blanket of cloud which stayed in place overnight and kept it very warm over the north west of scotland in particular where it was actually it was actually 16 degrees in the middle of the night. that very warm air stretches all the way from the tropics. this amber band shows it is still sitting across northern ireland and northern scotland today. the cloud will hopefully become a little thinner for this afternoon. some drier air from the continent mixing in across the south east of england and east anglia, allowing a morning of sunshine to be seen here. hopefully some sunshine for northern england also, but i think it will be northern ireland and scotland that wins out the most extensive of the blue skies and the top temperatures. off to a flying start, you will agree, but then come the afternoon with the south—westerly wind direction as well, thatjust favours a little bit of warming around the moray firth, we could even get up to 16 degrees here. still some rain in the north west

of scotland, however, even as we head through the evening and overnight. that is thanks to a weather front. further south, a dry story. clearer skies, potentially some chillier spots across east anglia and the south east of england. a front in the north is proving pretty slow moving at the moment but through monday and onto tuesday, which is new year's eve as if you needed reminding, that front will make quite good progress from north to south. monday daytime, still pretty slow as it sinks into scotland but eventually come the afternoon some drier weather for the northern and western isles and particularly the highlands. getting much drier through the day but, as you can see, central scotland is in for a wetter afternoon along with parts of northern ireland. england and wales dry. temperatures in double figures. to the north of that front, fresher air and that will spread across all parts of the uk as the front sits to the south by the time we get to new year's eve.

perhaps bringing a little more cloud into southern england and south wales, maybe even a bit of drizzly rain, but overall a lot of dry weather for new year's eve daytime. but temperatures back closer to where they should be for the time of year. as for the evening, and on into the night, if you have plans to head out the forecast is offering up a lot of dry weather as it stands, but we could see some very dense patches of fog forming and some of those could stick around a good while into new year's day as well. it could be a little bit hazardous or cause some disruption if you plan on travelling.

this is bbc news i'm ben brown. the headlines at midday. the mayor of sydney says the new year fireworks display will go ahead as planned — despite a petition calling for it to be cancelled because of nearby bushfires. five people are stabbed in new york during hanukkah celebrations at the home of an orthodox rabbi. calls for an independent inquiry after the new years‘ honours data leak — in which the addresses of celebrities, politicians and police officers were published online. it is a serious and indeed extraordinary breach as this is a well—established process that has gone on and been the same way for so i think an urgent investigation are certainly needed. in tennis: former world number one andy murray says he's gutted to be missing next month's australian open — after pulling out