Hello, this is the Red Box Podcast. I'm Matt Cholli, coming up on today's episode.

Well, it's only 48 hours to go until the French presidential elections. We've got some

exclusive polling from you, Gov, to see who's ahead, Marine Le Pen, or Emmanuel Macron.

We also told the country and asked some journalists in different parts of France where Macron's

ahead, Le Pen's ahead. What are the issues at play? There seems to be a big urban world

of art. So that'll be a really interesting thing coming up later on the podcast. Before

that, as ever, we kick off with our columnist panel. And today, no Melanie Reed this week.

So we've got James for size and Rachel Kunde.

The columnist on time's radio. Yes, normally on a Friday morning, it's Melanie Reed

and James for size, but Melanie's off this week. So we have got James for size,

with the morning, James. Morning, Matt. James also writes for the times and for the spectator

and joining us from the new statesman in a happy, I don't know, what, I don't know.

Rachel Kunde, what are Rachel? Good morning. I think it's what you were looking for.

That's what I was looking at. Balance, balance. Although we don't really go in for that sort

of, you know, we're not setting you up for a confrontation. Everyone happily agree

as much more last time. Rachel, nice to have you with. James, let's start with your columns

today then. And Boris Johnson, as you say, fighting for his political life. And the Tories,

I mean, it's sort of slightly beyond that. Tories fearing that the idea of one nation

conservators might be going with him. Yeah, I think, well, if you think back to the

Tories election victory in December 29, 2019, which seems a long time ago now, I mean,

one of the things that most excited Tories back was that they could once more call themselves

a truly national party. They had representatives in every part of Great Britain. And Michael

...