Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is Elections in Britain and France.

With me to discuss the results and consequences of the recently completed elections

in Britain and France are Matthias Matisse and Daniela Schwarzer.

Matthias is Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council and the Dean Atchison Associate Professor of International

Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He is an

expert in comparative politics and European political economy. He recently wrote a piece for

CFR.org titled Pivotal Elections for France and Europe.

Daniela is a leading expert on European and international affairs.

Over the course of her distinguished career, she has worked at a range of renowned think tanks

foundations in universities, including the Bertelsmann Schifhtun, the Open Society Foundation, the German

Council of Foreign Relations, which I should say has no connection with the Council of Foreign

Relations and the Free University of Berlin. Matthias and Daniela, thank you for joining me on the

president's inbox. Great to be back. Very happy to be with you, Jim.

So let's jump into it.

Over the past five days, we've had separate elections in the United Kingdom and in France.

The British elections, more or less when is expected.

The French elections didn't.

So let's begin with Britain, Matthias. The headline in American

newspapers that the Labor Party won a landslide victory. It took nearly two-thirds of the

650 seats in the British House of Commons. What else should we know about the election?

...