2024: a testing year for democracy
Political Fix
Financial Times
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The next 12 months will be an epic year for democracy. Half the world’s population will have the chance to vote. Lucy Fisher is joined by the FT’s editor Roula Khalaf and chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman to give a global perspective, while Political Fix regular Robert Shrimsley offers sharp analysis on how Britain’s political parties are shaping their offerings to the public at the start of an election year in the UK.
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Presented by Lucy Fisher. Produced by Audrey Tinline. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Audio mix by Simon Panayi. Broadcast engineer: Andrew Georgiadis. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have we ever had a year like this for democracy? |
| 0:05.0 | Around half the world's population are heading to the polls in 2024, |
| 0:10.0 | including of course here in the UK. |
| 0:12.0 | So what does this year have in store for politics and |
| 0:15.2 | why are so many worried that we're in the twilight of democracy? I'm Lucy Fisher, |
| 0:20.4 | this is political fix from the FT. |
| 0:29.0 | With me in the studio, we have a lineup of Financial Times Heavyweights. Rula Halaf, editor of the FT. |
| 0:31.0 | Hello Rula. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello Lucy. |
| 0:33.0 | Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs commentator, |
| 0:35.0 | Hi Gideon. |
| 0:36.0 | Hi Gideon. |
| 0:37.0 | Hi, Lucy. |
| 0:38.0 | And Political Fix regular Robert Shrimsley, |
| 0:39.0 | the UK's Chief Political Commentator. |
| 0:41.0 | Hi Lucy, happy new year. So we've got elections coming up in more than 70 states kicking off with Bangladesh |
| 0:49.6 | on Saturday, ballots in three of the world's biggest democracies, the US, India and Indonesia, and of course |
| 0:56.3 | an election in the UK. |
| 0:58.3 | We'll come on to that, but I want to talk a bit about the global context first. Rula, the stakes feel high |
| 1:05.0 | high I wanted to ask you in particular about the spirit of democracy in |
| 1:09.0 | 2024 are you hopeful that it can be revived this year? |
| 1:13.0 | And which particular ballots are you going to be looking out for? |
... |
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