Is It The End Of The Global Order As We Know It?
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, the government is considering accelerating planned increases to defence spending.
The news comes after the PM dropped some heavy hints that he was ready to spend more on defence during his speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
Katya Adler and James Landale drop by to explain how America is trying to rewrite the global order… and get Europe to sign on and Joe Pike explains why spending more on defence is never politically straightforward.
Plus, Joe and Adam discuss the government’s decision to scrap it’s plans to postpone elections for 30 councils after recieving “legal advice”. They also review the government’s latest proposals to crack down on online safety for children and Starmer’s response to claims that a Labour Think Tank paid a private investigator to look into journalists.
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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 Joe Wilkinson. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. 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. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, lovely to be back in the newscast studio, and thank you as always to Alex and James |
| 0:10.8 | and the other people who kept the studio warm while I was away getting cold watching the |
| 0:15.5 | Olympic Winter Games, because that is the official name. |
| 0:18.5 | It's not the Winter Olympics, It's the Olympic Winter Games, |
| 0:21.6 | which actually doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as a very fast slalom skier goes down the hill. |
| 0:28.0 | Right. While I was away, we got a message from newscast of Paul, who says, |
| 0:31.6 | I listened to each episode and note that Adam has been absent for the week, |
| 0:34.7 | but my wife and I wondered if Adam's sound alike had turned up commentating on the curling at the Winter Olympics |
| 0:40.4 | or whether it was Adam himself. |
| 0:42.5 | Thanks for a great programme, says Paul. |
| 0:44.4 | Well, we think Paul is referring to Olympic commentator Logan Gray, |
| 0:49.5 | who sounds like this. |
| 0:52.1 | So a nice couple of draws to start this third round robin match in the men's curling event. |
| 1:00.6 | And Vicki, Great Britain will be coming in here, you know, really high on confidence after two |
| 1:05.4 | tremendous performances to get things underway. |
| 1:08.0 | Do you know what? |
| 1:09.0 | I was sceptical at first because I thought, are we really |
| 1:11.6 | that much of a sound alike? But actually, the more I listen to it, I realize we do actually |
| 1:14.9 | have some very similar sounds in our voices. So maybe when the Winter Olympics is over, we'll get |
| 1:20.5 | Logan into the newscast studio and can put the sound of liking to the test. Alternatively, |
| 1:26.0 | I could go on even more holidays. But why would I, when there's so much |
... |
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