Electioncast: What’s Happening In England?
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we look at the local authority elections in England.
Adam, Chris and Alex explore the geography of the elections and who might do well where, the race for London’s councils and the challenges facing each of the parties as the campaigns enter their final week.
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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/4guXgXd Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenter was Adam Fleming. It was made by Anna Harris with Shiler Mahmoudi. The social producer was Gabriel Purcell-Davis. The technical producers were Mike Regaard and Stephen Bailey. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.6 | American politics can sometimes feel like a different language. |
| 0:11.1 | But our podcast can help you translate. |
| 0:13.3 | Make sense of what's happening in the US, with new podcast episodes arriving throughout the week. |
| 0:18.1 | AmeriCast, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.7 | Chris, welcome to election cast. Well, thank you for having me. This is great to be back on a pod called Electioncast. What a great idea. I mean, you've been on every episode of Newscast for like the last 200 episodes, so it's not really that different. It's good to be back. It means you get to hear a remoter voter. Yes, my favourite. So the most recent remoter voter we had was somebody in G-Long in Australia. And I said, well, you know what? You don't |
| 0:44.4 | have to be tens of thousands of kilometres or miles away from the UK to be part of it. You can be |
| 0:48.8 | just down the end of the road. It's just about interesting reasons that mean people can't vote in |
| 0:53.9 | person. And Joe has answered this call spectacularly. And he says, I filled in my postal vote for the May elections today. I'll be posting it tomorrow in the box just over the road for my house. I will be at home on the 7th of May, but I work nights. So I'll be asleep for most of the day and then working all evening. Well, that's funny enough, isn't it? That saves the body clock taking even more of a, you know, a hit than those kind of shifts, those kind of shifts do. And then Joe reveals a bit more about their life. He says, My job is making podcasts about boring IT stuff, which I find really interesting. And it involves working with lots of Americans, so it's just |
| 1:27.6 | easier to work at night and sleep during the day. I listen to Newscast every day, so thanks for all |
| 1:32.2 | the effort you put into it. Maybe one day I'll be as good as Adam at presenting my shows, |
| 1:37.7 | Dare to Dream. Joe, I reckon you're a rival for Adam or Eddie. I can sense it. I can feel it. |
| 1:43.7 | With that kind of level of organisation |
| 1:45.4 | about sorting out a postal vote |
| 1:46.9 | so it doesn't interrupt your sleeping patterns, |
| 1:49.1 | yeah, your street's ahead of us. |
| 1:50.5 | And also, being able to do shifts |
| 1:52.2 | is a prime qualification for this business. |
| 1:54.7 | Yeah, that's definitely true. |
| 1:56.3 | He says working mostly 905. |
| 1:58.5 | Right, let's get on with this episode of election cast. |
| 2:01.4 | Newscast. |
... |
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