carlos mazon, to resign, saying his administration was unprepared for the disaster. qatar says its efforts to mediate to bring about a ceasefire in the israel—gaza war are stalled. the gulf state has played a key diplomatic role in trying to bring an end to the conflict and secure the release of the remaining israeli hostages held by hamas. the white house says joe biden will receive president—elect donald trump at the white house on wednesday. it follows mr trump's decisive victory over vice president kamala harris in tuesday's election. president biden has urged americans to bring down the temperature following the bitterly partisan election campaign. now on bbc news, newcast.

hello, it's adam in the pretend newcast studio in washington, dc. and it's chris in the real newcast studio in central london. and it's alex also in the real newcast studio. and nick enjoying the vibes in the real studio. - now i know you will all want to know about the vibes in washington dc, and the way i'd sum it up is it's kind of we're in a weird limbo because lots of the things that people predicted might happen haven't happened. so, for example, there were loads ofjournalists here who thought right now they'd still be filling airtime and speculating about what the result was going to be, because it wouldn't have been decided yet, because back in 2020, it wasn't decided until saturday afternoon. that didn't happen. and actually the result was quite decisive and quite quick on tuesday night in the end. also, i remember when i first got here, i went down to the white house for a little stroll to do a bit of sightseeing and quite a few of the sandwich shops and the coffee shops had boarded up their windows because their owners were worried that on tuesday night there'd be a mob angry that donald trump hadn't won and they'd be

smashing things up. a sort of repeat of the 6th of january at the capital, of course, trump did win, so that didn't happen. and, yeah, everyone thought was preparing for the big story to be, oh, can you trust the electoral system? how do you convince trump voters that their votes have been counted and the election hasn't been stolen? as far as they might see it. and that hasn't happened because there was quite a resounding trump victory and very little evidence of any problems with the electoral system. so lots of the things that people expected to happen haven't happened. and so everyone�*s feeling quite chilled. but i think that is that's not real because trump isn't president yet. he will not be in the white house hiring people, firing people, making decisions, applying tariffs, deporting illegal immigrants until the 20th of january. so this sort of relief that people are feeling that everything's kind of 0k and quite chilled, actually is not real because trump isn't president yet, and the gap has been filled with just lots and lots of analysis about why kamala harris lost. so actually, most of the airtime if you watched

the tv channels in america, is about kind of dissecting why the democrats didn't do it. you know what? i always find myself sort of raising half a sceptical eyebrow, maybe the whole the whole eyebrow around these kind of analyses that happen after an election like this, where instantly there are these long reads on why candidate x lost when a matter of a8, 72 hours ago it was apparently on a knife edge and all the rest of it. and there were these perfectly interesting, thoughtful, intelligent articles and you think, mmm, but it didn't seem that obvious 72 hours ago. i mean, look, we may mock adam wandering around the 80 degree heat in washington dc. nothing to do. but as adam has said so eloquently, two of the most significant speeches since that election result took place in washington, dc. kamala harris concession speech at howard university, her alma mater, on wednesday, and then the joe biden on thursday morning from the white house.

what did they both say? the democrats lost this election. there will be a peaceful transfer of power. we want to help donald trump. what they didn't say is what the area that you're talking about, chris, is that when you lose an election and you don't slightly lose it, you really lose it, and boy, did they lose this election. they lost it across demographic classes. they lost it geographically across the united states that donald trump didn't just win the electoral college. he won the popular vote. he won it really well. let us not forget, this is the first time in 20 years a republican candidate has won the popular vote. when you lose that badly, it's usually quite a good idea to say we lost really badly. tell you what, before we continue our discussion, should we have a quick listen to the kind of key moments that we're just talking about. so i want to thank the american people for the extraordinary- honour of being elected your 47th president and _ your 45th president.

and to every citizen, - i will fight for you, for your family and your future. every single day i will be fighting for you. . and with every breath - in my body, i will not rest until we have delivered - the strong, safe and prosperous america that our children - deserve and that you deserve. to the young people who are watching, it is ok to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it's going to be ok. 0n the campaign, i would often say when we fight, we win. but here's the thing. here's the thing. sometimes the fight takes a while. that doesn't mean we won't win. the important thing is don't ever give up. don't ever give up. don't ever stop trying to make

the world a better place. so the thing about kamala harris there, and that was her speaking at her old university here in washington, dc on wednesday afternoon when she conceded was, well, first of all, she she's clearly not retiring from politics. she left the door massively open to be the democrat candidate for president again, although i think lots of democrats might have other ideas when it comes to actually selecting who's going to be their front person next time around. and also just that idea of keeping up the fight made me think she was setting up her party forjust opposing everything donald trump does, using every tool that is available to them, whether it's in congress, whether it's in the courts, whether it's in the states, whether it's in the media. and that made me think, oh, hang on. they criticised donald trump from 2020 onwards for accusing them of stealing the election from him whenjoe biden won. are they now actually sort of thinking, well, you know what, gloves are off. we're going to do the same sort of tricks back at him.

if he's going to disrespect the electoral system and not play fair, then maybe we're going to see like a much kind of dirtier democratic party in future. and then what does that mean for just what happens in american politics? do we just have massive gridlock and loads of stress? and then my observation about donald trump there is that it's just so unclear what he's actually going to do, and that's why there's so little speculation or kind of thought or discussion about how he is actually going to enact his policies. and you think that's what people would be doing now in this transition period between him winning and him actually going into the white house. but no one's got anything really to go on because people are assuming, oh, when he says, i'll deport millions and millions of immigrants, peoplejust think, well, that's not practicable. what's he actually going to do? but no one's got anything to go on. so that's quite interesting. and then, nick, the question i wanted to ask you, because i was just thinking about all those nights you stood in the newsnight studio with the polls and the demographic data and that big screen. everyone here in america is talking about this, this big realignment and the fact that trump has managed to win over so many groups of people, whether it's hispanic people

or black men or white working class women. and itjust reminds me a little bit of of the borisjohnson era, when in the uk people were saying, oh, borisjohnson has permanently changed how politics works in in britain and who the conservative party appeals to. and actually, it turns out he didn't. he didn't really. and ijust wonder if everyone here isjust going down the same route and making these very big, grand claims about what's actually happened. i mean, we do have a tendency injournalism sometimes we may possibly maybe simplify things just a little bit. sometimes splashes of hyperbole, possibly. we're guilty of that occasionally. and you do have a big win like this. and we all say the world has changed. and that is indeed what was being said after the big borisjohnson 80 seat majority, which came after theresa may losing her majority. i mean, when borisjohnson got that 80 seat majority only a few months earlier in the european parliamentary elections, we still had that they were in fourth place. was it on something like 8%? yeah.

so, so and it is very volatile. i mean on the how big is this and is there a realignment, i tell you who's really interesting about this is nate cohen, new york times big pollster, big analysis analyst. and his argument is that this election is not a realignment. but what he says is, if you put the three elections where donald trump was the republican candidate in 2016, he won 2020. he didn't won 202a. you put those three together and you do have a realignment. two big reasons. one is he has completely transformed the republican party to make it a very protest party, not an establishment party. that's the first thing he's done. and the second thing is he has amassed an electoral coalition across the united states in areas where you thought and indeed last time the democrats were ahead. and that amounts, according to nate cohn, put those together a realignment, because the point that he makes is that when donald trump lost in 2020, he didn't disappear in the biden presidency.

who did we talk about most? donald j trump. and so that suggests that is potentially a historic realignment. and at the risk of committing another obvious journalistic sin, which is two days after one election to start talking about the next, you then wonder to to to stretch that analysis, analysis one cycle on if the thing if the legacy of the trump era can be the passing of the torch of kind of trumpian political techniques beyond him being the being the flag bearer. can the realignment outlast trump? - exactly. and eric trump, wasn't it i think. eric trump was absolutely at the heart of choosing jd vance as the vice presidential nominee _ and evidently the absolutely core thinking at that time was, who is going to carry on with maga? who's going to carry on the maga flame? that appointment was made whenjoe biden was still the nominee, and they thought they had it in the bag. and then when kamala harris

became the nominee, and there was what turned out to be a sugar rush of excitement, for it wasjust a sugar rush. they went, oh, no, maybe we need someone who can actually win the election, not be about the future. turns out their calculation in those terms was right. and they thinkjd vance is the continuation of maga make america great again. the massive caveat to all of this is that it dependsl what he does in the next fouryears, right? - because, you know, this guy has just been elected - to the point you were making, adam, on this whole - plethora of promises, some of which people are already pointing - to as practically incredibly difficult throw into the mix there. - he's very well documented. unpredictability ie how much i of this was campaign rhetoric? how much will prove to be reality? - we don't know. massive question mark. and i think you bake into that mix, an electorate not - dissimilar to the uk electorate in the sense that there - is a complete frustration with . promises made and undelivered and i think and...

and of course, the, you know, the economic promises trump| made that we will fix it. you'll feel better off all of this. . you know, it boils down to this. - before you can talk- about legacy, you have to talk about delivery. and i think this is- an electorate, like most who just want to see some blimmin results now. - yeah, i mean, the electorate don't like incumbents, wherever you are, butjust obviously think we're thinking of a uk parallel of how quickly it can turn and that borisjohnson 2019 keir starmer wins in 202a. but as you say alex, it could all be undone within four years. and the whole point of course, on the economic point - is that actually, you know, the democrats are makingj the argument that the economy in america wasn't that bad. - if people don't feel| it, it doesn't count. and that's the bottom line, i think. - and one of the lessons you've got to take from this - and previous elections, l unless people are feeling a certain way, it doesn't i matter what you tell them, you know they ain't going. to believe you and they'll act in a certain way at the ballot box as a consequence. - and chris, is the starmer strategy and the downing street strategy here to just massively suck up to donald trump. suck up to donald trump?

and ijust think exhibit a is that photo that downing street put out on wednesday night of the first phone call that the two of them had? and exhibit b is the email that came with that photo explaining what they talked about, where it says things like keir starmer heartily congratulated him on his victory, and then the two of them fondly remembered the dinner they'd had in trump towers, which is kind of ladling it on quite thick, really. no, it really is, because those readouts, as they're known when either side on a diplomatic call give a kind of public account of what happened from their perspective, are usually pretty anodyne, aren't they? i mean, almost always entirely anodyne. and this one included lots of stuff that you would expect about the quote unquote special relationship, etc., etc. but as you say, adam, had those two words that my eye was eyes and plenty of eyes were immediately drawn to hearty and fondly. it almost it almost sounded like the sort of thing you'd sounded like an enid blyton novel to me. i they were very english. you can imagine donald trump looking and saying, hey,

what's he on about, hearty? yeah, exactly. and then those photos and they are scrupulous, number ten, about which of those photos see the light of day and which don't. because i've occasionally come across incidents where photos have been put up and then have rapidly disappeared because they've decided that they really didn't want a particular photo to be, to be out there in, in public. so those things don't happen by accident. there was a handful of those still images, and as you say, one of them, there was a smile and it was radiating a sense of warmth and bonhomie. now, these are two people who have met, once spoken on the phone a couple of times. now, to be fair, that is more than is the case with some foreign leaders. and obviously keir starmer has not been in office for for all that long. and there's huge amounts of praise at the moment for the, um, uh, british embassy team in washington for setting up all of those meetings with the trump team and indeed with the harris team for the alternative, the alternative scenario. but they're totally leaning into that kind of warmth thing. and obviously, the reason. for that is, i think because of what has gone before. right. they knew that if there i

was going to be a trump victory, as there has been, i that people would quickly go back through the social. media and the interviews and the quotes and pull outj all the instances where now senior people in the labour government have been - highly critical of— donald trump in the past. so it's almost like they are having to get on very- much on the front foot - from a presentational sense to say, no, no, no, no, no, no. we're, you know, this relationship. is going to be fine. what's interesting is they think they're 0k, but they don't know. no. and that's the thing, isn't it? it's a classic example isn't it, of have they done lots of prep? perhaps as much prep as they could have done? yeah, probably. does that necessarily count for a row of beans? who knows? back to the unpredictability point about that, about - the president elect. we don't know how he's going. i mean, david lammy has done a phenomenal amount of work because obviously his tweets 2017. 0h, there's a phone book. the phone book. they are, you know, really, really, really difficult for him to read. this fruity, fruity language?

he did a lot before he became foreign secretary. shadow foreign secretary. he went over there. he has a very good, genuine rapport withjd vance. i did a story about this during the general election. i spoke to elbridge colby, who is in the trump world being talked about as a possible national security advisor, full of praise for david lammy. he criticised david cameron, the previous foreign. he criticised david cameron, the previous foreign secretary. and they love the way that david lammy is saying that europe's got to do more on spending defence. so they like all that and all the mood music from the trump camp is it's all absolutely fine, but. but donald trump is completely unpredictable. i've said this story before, but i'll say it again. kim darroch, former ambassador in washington. cables were leaked. he said lots of disobliging things about donald trump leaked in the mail on sunday. he phoned up the chief of staff in the white house, said it's all absolutely fine. and then 48 hours, i think donald trump walked out of the white house, was going to marine 0ne and said, we will not deal with that man. and that was the end of his time in washington completely.

you know, david lammy is simultaneously, it seems to me, an authentic atla nticist. he loves america. he studied in america. he's lived in america. he's talked about how, you know, his dad is buried in texas. so he talks about how he's been to america more times than he's been to france. and yet at the same time, there was this lorry load of disobliging quotes. and then you've got in keir starmer and donald trump, notjust politically but in character terms, two people who could not be more different. but then back to our point. does that guarantee anything about whether they get on really well or don't get on very well? we don't know. and they might get on very well for a few months and then spectacularly not. now, in terms of elections that millions of people are watching and the entire world hinges on, how is kemi badenoch doing in herfirst week as tory leader? yes, all politics is local. let's talk about this island in northern europe and the politics of the politics of the uk. it's interesting, isn't it? in a parallel universe, ie a week in which the american election had not been taking place, the focus directly

on kemi badenoch�*s performance at prime minister's questions and the new dynamic in the house of commons would have been subject to much more scrutiny. in the end, she kind of had a walk in the news coverage of it. she kind of had a walk on part. 0n the uk's reaction to the election of the election of donald trump. i was struck this is not wildly original because it's the nature of her character that there was a pugnacious kind of quality to her kind of contributions. there was a kind of waspish lilt to her contributions that we didn't get from rishi sunak. rishi sunak could do anger and he could do the, you know, political argument. and putting a counter view to keir starmer�*s. etc, etc. but there was a there was a capacity. i've said this already on the pod today. but to raise an eyebrow wasn't there in kemi badenoch, um in kemi badenoch approach. i suppose the big challenge will be to what extent can she or even to what extent does it even matter? turning pmqs that window you have every week as an opposition leader to make

an impression into something that counts for more than just the write ups of the kind of who's won and who's lost. because it's back to the kind of william hague comparison, isn't it? you know, where forfour years he was incredibly good at prime minister's questions against a massive labour majority and a hugely successful labour prime minister, and would capture all sorts of headlines. and they weren't social media clips in those days, were they? tv news clips? etc, etc. and then what happened? he won one seat at the next general election compared with where they were now. i'm not saying that's where kemi badenoch will be, but we're very early on in trying to analyse the extent to which she'll be an effective leader of the opposition or not. i remember sitting in there week after week with william hague and he absolutely stormed it every week. those gags, and it made absolutely no difference, took tony blair two years to work out how to deal with william hague. took him two years and he finally got there. he said, this is great sixth form debating society. and that completely floored william hague. and that line was used,

of course, wasn't it? but interestingly, with kemi badenoch, what she did is she picked up on all these disobliging remarks about donald trump from david lammy and keir starmer, and she clearly needled the prime minister, needled him on an interesting point that he found difficult to answer, which is you didn't want donald trump to address parliament in the past. would you allow that again? and he didn't want to get into that. i think technically it's a matter for the speaker. but one thing that i think was interesting is that, yes, she needled him, but she did make a mistake and absolutely provable mistake, which she talked about the budget and there was no mention, she said of defence in the budget. and i sat through, i remember sitting through two hours and 20 minutes of prime minister's questions, the budget, rishi sunak's response, i didn't have it in front of me when she said that, but i thought, i'm pretty sure the chancellor mentioned defence and indeed there was a funding announcement there. i think the much bigger. i mean, we know that - for a leader of an opposition who's going to be wrestling i for relevance over the course of the next few years - as leaders of the opposition often are, pmqs is a really important presentation - on public window and a platform that they're _ guaranteed every week. but beyond that, the much bigger challenge for- kemi badenoch still remains,

it seems to me, which is thatj although she's now assembled this shadow cabinet, - which is very clearly- an attempt at some unity, and she's, you know, - a couple of her leadership contenders have got decentjobs out of it and all the rest - of it, although. it does lean heavily in the direction of those who backed her. it does. it definitely does. but at this stage, - i think you're broadly getting a sense of a party. that's determined to at least appear united for as long as they possibly can. - but what did strike me this . week was when james cleverly stood up from the back benches, who clearly hasn't got a job - in the shadow cabinet because he said he didn't want one. - the guy that didn't even make it to the final two| in the conservative leadership contest — just listen to the reaction from the commons. - you know, i think the danger. for kemi badenoch at this point and it's very early, it's very early - in her leadership, but that what she hasl potentially got is a guy on the backbenches who will be seen by some as a sort - of prince across - the water if things. the water if things, if she cannot keep a united l party, a parliamentary party behind her and kind of force that relevance which she, i

which she needs to do. and so interesting - that he did have prime it's just the presence. it was the, it was the very visible presence of him i in prime minister's questions that struck me this week. - there's the same point from a different political perspective as well, which is when you look at the makeup of the shadow cabinet, firstly, it leans heavily in the direction of those who backed kemi badenoch. but also given you had this and this is a crude description but kind of wright versus wright final pairing in the leadership race. if you are on the right in the conservative parliamentary party, it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that you're not wildly represented numerically amongst people around that, around that table, you know. is it a shadow cabinet that rishi sunak could have assembled ? maybe it is actually. and therefore, where does that go if and totally right, it's very, very early on, but if by number of months down the track, there's a sense

that the new leadership isn't making much progress, etc., etc.. let's see. i was just going to say the two bits of other bits of uk news that i've noticed today. before we sat down to record this podcast. tuition fees in england, going up for the first time in ages and interest rates going down. yeah, both quite - significant, actually. i mean, the tuition fees thing is significant - on a number of levels. a, because it's going to affect a lot of people, you know, - because a lot of students and all the rest of it. - and b, because the sector, the higher education sector for some time has been warning of an imminent collapse - or financial crisis, - with a lot of universities saying they're having l to make redundancies, even close courses, - because the whole sector is getting close to the brink. so i think there was some real pressure on the government . to do something in this space when it came to higher- education funding. but, c, interesting _ because of course, you've got to cast your mind back to when keir starmer. was trying to be the leader of the labour party, - and not only did he say. he wasn't going to put up tuition fees, but get rid of them. - yeah, i mean, iwas talking to a minister a couple

of weeks ago who's really at the heart of all this, and they were saying putting up tuition fees, that is really, really difficult for us. so not that long ago they were thinking, oh, can we do this? but what they did know absolutely. what you're saying, alex, is that the finances of the university sector are really precarious. and they say that actually rishi sunak gave it a breathing space. this current government say that about rishi sunak when he said no to putting restrictions on graduate visas. they say that got a breathing space because one of the reasons why there's such a problem with the finances is that it has been a dropping off of overseas students who are the big drop off. they are the big money spinners. shall we quickly talk about interest rates before we wrap up? they have fallen from 5% to 4.75%. and andrew bailey, the governor of the bank of england, has been talking to faisal about it. i think that the path of rates is downward from here for we'll see how quickly and how much. i do emphasise the word gradual, which we've used. and the reason for that is that there are a lot of risks out there, both in the world

at large and also domestically. we've still got, still got risks, so we'll have to judge that carefully. but, you know, i would say i think the path is downward. i always love listening to andrew bailey because you can hear in his cadences and formulations of each of each letter, the weighting and the kind of freighting and the calibration of every single word. i mean, i was doing my thing last night. there were a whole bunch of votes in parliament on the budget, and i was standing in my little place where i stand because when these votes, you're not allowed in the members lobby. you're allowed in the ways and means corridor. and i was standing there and a member of the cabinet came up to me and said, nick, i've got to talk to you. and this is always a good moment. it's always a good thing, isn't it? and this person said to me, look, we're voting on this budget here. and the big thing that we're all focusing on is national insurance. he said, i don't think many people going through. and he meant people in the cabinet, people not

in the cabinet, have a clue about the impact of donald trump's presidency. and if he goes for it on tariffs. this person said that willjust have an impact that will completely overshadow what has happened in this budget for this country. completely. and the implications that that will have for andrew bailey and the bank of england and interest rates. but more importantly than that, for millions of people around the uk and elsewhere, and then how the government here responds, so does it hug you up close if you're ——here responds, so does it hug europe close if you're if the eu has retaliatory measures in response to tariffs from the second trump administration, does it use the capacity that the uk has post—brexit to go its own way? but with the all sorts of jeopardy around all of that, there's so many questions and so. same parallel briefly is, of course, - applied to ukraine. what happens, what course . donald trump chooses to take when it comes to ukraine, i

and how the uk acts and how the uk acts or not, - in alignment with the eu. and thatjust takes us back to where we started, which is that we've had this limbo period of the american election where everyone said, oh, once the result�*s clear, there'll be less limbo. but actually, we're still in limbo because donald trump isn't in the white house yet, and we don't know what he's going to do on these huge range of subjects. so the limbo is going to continue until the middle of january. but this episode of newcast is not going to continue because we've talked about everything and we've run out of time and we've been transatlantic, we've been domestic, we've been international. and also i've kept up my run of coming to america and bumping into celebrities. i was outside the white house on wednesday and i bumped into josh from the west wing. the actor, who plastosh from the west wing, just happened to be walking past. it's like it's true. america is like a movie. anyway, that's enough television and podcasting. we'll be back with another episode of newcast very soon. bye, guys. bye— bye. bye — bye. newcast. newcast from the bbc.

live from london, this is bbc news. thousands take to the streets of valencia, protesting over the emergency response to the floods

that killed more than 200 people. another blow to prospects of a middle east peace deal, qatar is suspending its role as a key mediator between israel and hamas. president biden invites donald trump to the white, as the handover to the new administration begins. the princess of wales attends the festival of remembrance in london, her first such appearance since being treated for cancer. we start in spain, where more than a hundred thousand people have been demonstrating on the streets of valencia over the authorities�* emergency response to devastating flash floods, which killed at least 217 people. the protesters, who include members of various civil groups and unions, are demanding accountability, with some

chanting "murderer".