Japan's prime minister wins landslide election victory
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Japan's prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has led her party to a decisive election victory. Her Liberal Democratic Party won more than two thirds of the seats in the lower house of parliament. It gives Ms Takaichi wide scope to push through her conservative agenda. She's promised to boost defence spending, tighten immigration and revise Japan's pacifist constitution. Also: Thailand's incumbent prime minister has claimed victory, after early vote counts gave him a big lead in the country's general election. The Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner, Jimmy Lai, has been sentenced to twenty years in prison under the territory's strict national security law, which China says is necessary for stability. The man convicted of shooting dead fifty one people at two mosques in New Zealand seven years ago has begun an appeal against his conviction and sentence. The Seattle Seahawks have won the Super Bowl -- the biggest prize in American football.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm Paul Moss and at 430 GMT on February 9th, these are our main stories. |
| 0:17.7 | Japan's Prime Minister has won a decisive parliamentary majority, increasing the chance |
| 0:22.7 | she'll now change the country's constitution. The pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been |
| 0:28.5 | sentenced to 20 years in prison. And the Seattle Seahawks win the US Super Bowl, but Donald |
| 0:35.1 | Trump has called Bad Bunny's halftime performance an affront to the nation. |
| 0:41.7 | Also in this podcast, Brenton Harrison Terrant, you are separately in charges of 1 to 15 of the |
| 0:48.8 | Crown charge list charged that on the 15th day of March 2019 at Christchurch, you did murder. |
| 0:56.4 | Yes, guilty. |
| 0:57.6 | New Zealand's mass killer pleaded guilty, but now he wants to retract his guilty plea. |
| 1:08.0 | When Senai Takahichi called a snap election in Japan, the move was widely described as a gamble. |
| 1:15.1 | After all, she was already the country's prime minister. She was just hoping to increase her parties |
| 1:20.2 | showing in the country's parliament. And if that didn't work out, Ms. Takaichi had said she would |
| 1:25.9 | resign as leader of the Liberal Democrat Party. |
| 1:29.1 | Well, if it was a gamble, then it looks like the Prime Minister has pretty much hit the jackpot, |
| 1:34.2 | certainly as much as politicians ever do. Results so far suggest she's won her party a majority, |
| 1:40.3 | giving cautious optimism to her many supporters. |
| 1:45.0 | I think Sinai Takkeichi is very different from other politicians. |
| 1:48.8 | I have high hopes. That's why I voted for her. |
| 1:53.3 | With President Trump back in office, there are many challenges. |
| 1:57.8 | National defense is won. |
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