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One World with Zain Asher
Britain's New Prime Minister Keir Starmer Vows To Rebuild His Nation Through Trust, Stability And Inclusiveness; Dr. Sanjay Gupta Shares A Medical Advice To President Biden; Hurricane Beryl Continues To Hammer Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula; La Roja Fans Create Enjoyable Atmospheres In Different Bars All Over Madrid, Spain. Aired 12-1p ET
Aired July 05, 2024 - 12:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR: Live from New York, I am Zain Asher. Bianna is off today. This is "ONE WORLD". Our work is urgent and it begins today. Keir
Starmer, Britain's newest prime minister, is vowing to rebuild his nation through trust, stability and inclusiveness after what he referred to as an
era of noisy performance.
The dust is now settling after a political earthquake led to a record- breaking victory for the Labour Party, ending 14 years of Conservative leadership defined by chaos and divisiveness. The new prime minister will
now govern with a powerful majority in Parliament. CNN's Nic Robertson has more on this seismic shift in British politics.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (voice-over): Number 10 Downing Street has a new tenant and the United Kingdom, a new leader. After
the Conservative Party's worst defeat in its history, Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party are now in power after a landslide victory in Thursday's
general election.
KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: My government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that. We have changed the
Labour Party, returned it to service and that is how we will govern. Country first, party second.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): But it wasn't smiles all round. The now former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held on to his seat in North Yorkshire but,
looking downbeat, said he would step down as leader of his Conservative Party, a party that has ruled for the last 14 years.
RISHI SUNAK, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry. I have given this job my all. But
you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change. And yours is the only judgment that matters. I have heard your
anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Both men made their mandatory visits to the King and now the transfer of power is complete. As dawn broke and newspapers hit
the stands, there was no doubt who won. Many well-known Conservative lawmakers lost their seats, among them Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the
Commons, Penny Mordaunt, and, most significantly, the short-lived Prime Minister Liz Truss, was booted out.
For the far-right, a success. After eight attempts, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage won a seat in Parliament, his party taking a total of four in
the House of Commons.
UNKNOWN: Twenty-four thousand --
ROBERTSON (voice-over): It was a good night for Jeremy Corbyn, too, the former leader of the Labour Party, now running as an Independent candidate,
held on to his long-time constituency of Islington to North. For many in the U.K., a hope of change. And with a turnout of just 60 percent, a sign
that change needs to come.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ASHER: And Nic Robertson joins us live now from Downing Street. So, Nic, obviously we've been spending the entire morning here -- morning, U.S.
time, obviously, just talking about Labour's win. But when you think about what happened here to the Conservatives. I mean, this was a resounding
blow. How did it all go so horribly wrong for them? And, of course, there will be a lot of analysis within the party at this point in time in terms
of where the party goes from here.
ROBERTSON (on-camera): You know, I think fundamentally why it went wrong and where does the party go from here are very much one and the same thing.
The party was incredibly divided. It became more divided during its tenure of leadership, and partly because it opted to give the British people a
referendum to vote to leave the European Union, Brexit, which they did, which divided the country. The party became divided about what sort of
Brexit they should have, should they be, you know, inside a closer partnership with the E.U. or at a distance.
[12:05:05]
So, the party was fighting within itself, which was destructive for the governance of Britain. It was destructive for the party itself. And we've
seen the rise of the reform on the right, which has always advocated, it was a real advocate for Brexit, has advocated the government's never been
tough enough on that, is an advocate for very tough immigration policies that it says the government didn't put in place.
So, there have been, and they will be now, the Conservatives attacked on their right flank. We've seen some of their sort of more centrist M.P.s,
former ministers like Penny Morton, former defense minister, lose their seats. So, there are moderates in the party who might have tried to run for
leadership now, who are no longer there.
So, I think the party, rather than now fighting amongst itself for what the party is going to be, what it means, what it represents, who's really for
it and is not backing it, while it's running the country, destructive, it will be doing it while it's in opposition. Destructive again for the party,
but it won't be so destructive for the country. But the pressure is on them now, and this is what Rishi Sunak said, we need a professional strong
opposition that can be a strong opposition.
But a party needs to be strong in itself, needs to reform itself, needs to be strong, needs to be united, to be that effective opposition that he
wants the Conservatives to go on to become. But I think at this moment, we really don't know what that debate, fight, call it what you will, within
the Conservatives is going to look like. Undoubtedly, it's going to happen, though.
ASHER: And just in terms of the Labour Party, obviously, they're celebrating, right, last night's victory. But when it comes to, you know,
looking at the meat and bones of these results, I mean, there was a lot of voter disillusionment, there was low turnout, and really, a lot of members
of the British public now have a sort of apathetic relationship with politics. Take us through that.
ROBERTSON: Yeah, and this is something that Keir Starmer really wants to change. He gets that. He gets that the public no longer believe in
politicians, don't trust them. And of course, that's fundamental to democracy, very much in the same way that President Biden sees the values
of democracy and its strengths and where its weaknesses are.
He wants to change that. He wants to reverse it. This is why he was talking about, you know, if you -- if work hard, if you play by the rules, then you
will get, you know, a fair chance that you will be respected by the government. Everyone will be respected across the country. He is trying to
encourage that faith in politicians. He does want to turn it around.
So, you know, that's what he'll try to achieve. But it will be difficult, because he will be judged on his record, and his record will be, in part,
what he said he would do in power and what he achieves in power. And he did lay out that some things, like building houses, building schools, will take
time. They have big ambitions over the next five years.
But it's sort of indicated the horizon on that is a little bit a ways off. And that will depend on improving the economy, his number one job, which
depends, for instance, improving trade relations with the European Union. Many steps need to be taken to improve the economy, to bring the changes he
needs. And if he isn't able to deliver on that, then he's not going to win the trust and confidence of the public, you know.
And just to underscore that, and we've talked about it a bit today, 59.9 percent of the population voted. The last time it was that low was 1997.
The time before that, it was at its lowest over a century before. So, you can see that the turnout was low. And in that turnout, only 35 percent of
the population actually voted for Labour, even though they won 412 seats, so far.
So, you know, it looks like a staggering majority, and it is in effect for governing, but it's not a massive, you know, rounding support from the
public. Only 35 percent of the people voted for them.
ASHER: That's an important point. Nic Robertson, live for us there. Thank you so much. All right, Stella Tsantekidou is a political commentator and
former Labour Party adviser. She joins us live now from London. So, Stella, just first and foremost, give us your reaction to these phenomenal results
in terms of the U.K. election for your party.
STELLA TSANTEKIDOU, FORMER LABOUR ADVISER: Absolutely amazing. For people my age, I will be 30 in August, we have lived all of our adult lives under
a conservative government. Obviously, I'm not from the U.K. I'm from Greece, as you will have gathered from my last name and from my accent. But
still, this is something incredibly amazing for a lot of young people in the U.K.
They have only known a conservative government. They have not expected the kind of Labour victory that we got here today. Up until three years ago,
there was still a lot of pessimism about when the Labour Party is going to be able to rebuild a healthy majority, let alone what happened now,
especially when you're looking at Scotland, which returned just nine SNP MPs.
[12:10:00]
This is an amazing result for the Labour Party. I understand what Nic Robertson is saying about the percentage of the vote not being high enough.
It's certainly not as high as Boris Johnson got in 2019. And this is why a lot of conservatives, of course, looked at Boris Johnson at the time as the
Messiah and as someone who could help the Conservative Party regain power at some point in the future.
But because of the voting system in the U.K., people vote tactically. So, the fact that Keir Starmer got 35 percent of the vote doesn't mean that
only 35 percent of the people who voted wanted a Labour government. There is -- there are a lot of websites, Best for Britain is the best known one,
where people will go and they will put in their postcode, and it will direct them for which party to vote tactically to vote the Conservative
government out of power. So, I do think there is a lot of that that played into what we saw in terms of the percentages of the vote.
ASHER: Right, but Keir Starmer can't ignore the fact that, you know, there was a low voter turnout. And also just in terms of the sentiment in the
U.K., there is a bit more apathy, there is a little bit more disillusionment. In fact, he sort of hinted to that during his speech
outside Number 10. So, what is the --what tactics does he need to employ in order to win back public trust and really convince young people that
politicians and politics can be a force for good?
TSANTEKIDOU: I don't know that there is apathy and disillusionment, perhaps for sure with politicians. But I don't know that there is apathy,
especially because you saw the votes for independent M.P.s and for smaller parties, which is something extremely unusual for British politics to see
independent M.P.s win against the two major parties. That's something very, very unusual.
Now, I think a lot of Conservatives will be looking at the results and will be thinking that the reform votes, reform being the more populist right
wing party, winning votes from the Conservatives means that the reason why they are in the situation that they are is because they weren't right wing
enough.
But I think that a lot of the voters, what they will say is, it's because very obviously the government was not working for the last 14 years. So,
what Keir Starmer now has to do is he has to make sure that at least the basics are taken care of. And he has the opportunity to do that. July 17th
is the date to look out for. That's the King's speech.
And this is when Keir Starmer will be setting out how he's going to be reforming the public services. So we will expect to see quite a bit about
the NHS -- NHS reform. Remember, we still have junior doctor strikes here in the U.K., which is something that people are very worried about. And we
will be hearing more about the budget that's going to come out in the autumn.
We will be hearing about GB energy. How is Labour going to tackle the cost of living crisis? If people see their energy costs going down, that this is
going to be the best, perfect signal for the voters that they can trust their politicians again. Y
ASHER: Yeah, I mean, there's so much to say. I mean, first of all, just in terms of the turnout, we saw the lowest in around 20 years participation at
around 60 percent, incredibly low. But just to your point, it is important to discuss policy. I mean, that is really what matters at this point in
time.
When you think about all the different issues facing the U.K. at the moment, the debt burden, housing shortage, infrastructure issues, the
public, you know, just issues when it comes to the NHS, you talked about junior doctors and the number of strikes we've seen and the fact that
junior doctors want a wage increase or salary increase of up to 35 percent, what is it that Keir Starmer has to do specifically to get the U.K. economy
back on track?
TSANTEKIDOU: Yes, so the thing is, he has been saying over and over again -- he and Rachel Reeves, is we shouldn't see as the only levers that the
government have is not just taxing and spending. And they want to see growth. This is what they're saying, growth, growth, growth. The main thing
that I see in the Labour manifesto.
And I think what has attracted a lot of the younger voters to vote for the Labour Party is planning reform, because one of the biggest frustrations
for British voters is the lack of housing, the lack of affordability with housing and the very, very poor infrastructure in the U.K., which means
that they have struggled a lot to attract foreign investment, private investment. And this is something that is seen as keeping the British
growth behind when it comes to when compared to other countries in the world.
So, planning reforms is one of the first changes that Keir Starmer needs to show very decisive action when he sets out legislative plans on July 17th.
This is going to be challenging because the Labour vote is very efficiently spread across the U. K. And these are very, very different constituencies.
And across these very different constituencies, you have people who want more housing, younger people, people who want to buy their own houses.
[12:15:01]
And then you have some other constituencies which are traditionally more conservative voting, who do not want to see radical planning reform because
they don't want to see more buildings in the green zone. They don't want to see their communities change completely.
So, this is something, this has always been a tension and this has been an obstacle for the Conservative Party and where the Conservative Party
failed. But if Keir Starmer is decisive and he takes action, then he will be rewarded by voters.
The other thing is, the other thing that Keir Starmer can really make a difference, is NHS reform, because the Labour Party is trusted with the
NHS. So, if Keir Starmer announces NHS reform, changing the healthcare system, improving its productivity, it will not be judged by the voters in
the same way that it would have the Conservative Party strive to do the same things.
ASHER: All right. Thank you, Stella, thank you so much for being with us today. We appreciate your insight and congratulations, I should say.
All right. It is the last official day of campaigning ahead of Sunday's high stakes parliamentary elections in France, and tensions are running
high. The government says it will deploy an additional 30,000 police and security officers after a wave of election-linked violence. Left-wing and
moderate groups are trying to prevent the far right from sweeping into power.
In an exclusive interview, National Rally's Marine Le Pen sat down with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, where she addressed the issue of
racism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST, "AMANPOUR": Can I ask you, because you have spent a long time trying to rebrand your party to the extent that here you
are on the verge of potentially taking power in government.
But there's still a lot of troubling statements from members of your actual current party, including people who are currently, you know, candidates for
this election, like North Africans came to power in 2016. These people have no place in high places, in high positions. Ministerial positions must be
held by Franco-French people, un point c'est tout.
I mean, then there was a very unfortunate image of a mixed-race child in Brittany carrying a Breton flag, and then there was racist insults, and
then this candidate's put a white face, and he labeled it true Brittany, false Brittany.
MARINE LE PEN, MEMBER, NATIONAL RALLY (through translator): Right, Madame, yeah. Madame, there are --
AMANPOUR: No, I just want to ask you, is this acceptable now, in today's R.A.?
LE PEN (through translator): We had to put forward, we had to come up with a thousand candidates in 48 hours -- a thousand candidates -- a thousand
candidates in 48 hours. Let's be very clear, Jordan Bardella has said very clearly that people who have made unacceptable comments will be brought
before the movement's Conflicts Commission, and will most certainly be excluded from the movement, as others have been in the past. See, I mean, I
think that in any political movement there can be what we call black sheep.
AMANPOUR: These people are still -- okay, I'm telling you, and it's not me telling you, this is in the French press. Will they be expelled?
LE PEN (through translator): I'm not contesting the existence of these comments. I want to explain that, in response to these comments, our party
immediately initiated disciplinary proceedings against the candidate, and as a general rule, they are excluded because of these remarks. Other
political movements, who also have candidates who make unacceptable remarks, rather than excluding them, they actually protect them. They cover
them up. And I think that's what we need to look at.
AMANPOUR: Yeah, but I just want to know, will these people be exclude? Will they be expelled?
LE PEN (through translator): They are already facing --
AMANPOUR: No, they're running right now. They're now candidates. These names.
LE PEN (through translator): Forgive me, we have certain procedures.
AMANPOUR: Yeah, but you've got an election in three days.
LE PEN (through translator): Forgive me, but that's not my vision of justice. We have statutes whereby people in this situation must be called
before the Conflicts Committee, and they will be. There is a 21-day delay, but believe me, the jurisprudence of our commission is extremely tough, and
we do not let this kind of language slide.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ASHER: And tune in to "AMANPOUR" next hour to see the full exclusive interview with Marine Le Pen. All right, Iranian voters are casting their
ballots in the country's presidential runoff. Election officials extended poll hours to ensure a higher voter turnout. Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei turned out to vote right after the polls opened.
Iranians face a choice between two polar opposites for their next president, reformist lawmaker Massoud Pezeshkian, who won the most votes in
the first week of the last round, and hardliner, reformer, nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
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Dozens of other candidates were banned from even entering the race by Iran's powerful Guardian Council.
ASHER: All right, still to come, Joe Biden now faces many questions about his capacity to perform the job of president. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta will
join us to explain one thing Biden can do to answer those questions.
And as we've been following all morning, the U.K. has a new leader. Keir Starmer is promising a brand new political era. A bit later, we'll look at
the challenges he faces in delivering on that.
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ASHER (voice-over): All right, you're looking at live pictures. This is Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. That is, of course, Air Force One. The
president is on board a flight now headed to Madison, Wisconsin, where he does have a campaign event that is set to start in a couple of hours.
The U.S. presidential race is, of course, right now dominated by one question, and that is whether or not the president is mentally fit enough
to be president for the next four years, especially given that debate performance that we saw just last week.
Today, Biden will attempt to answer that question as he sits down for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. Biden hopes their
conversation will show that his disastrous debate performance was just a one-off, just a bad night, and not a sign in any way, shape or form of his
mental decline.
The interview will happen in Wisconsin, where Biden, as I mentioned, is headed right now for a campaign rally in very key swing states. All of this
comes as the Biden campaign is revealing a new strategy.
Our Priscilla Alvarez is at the White House with more on that. Just explain to us how crucial the T.V. interview that we're going to see tonight is
with George Stephanopoulos in terms of reshaping Biden's public image after that debate performance.
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's certainly a make-or-break moment for this president and his campaign as they try to salvage his
reelection bid and reassure both allies and voters that he is up to the job.
Now, what he's starting today is really a cleanup tour in earnest as he heads to Battleground, Wisconsin, later followed by a visit to
Battleground, Pennsylvania. Now, I will note, because we're getting a report from those reporters traveling with him, that a pooler, that is a
reporter traveling with the president, asked, can you still beat Trump? And the president, as he was boarding the plane, clearly responded, "Yes."
[12:25:00]
So, you can imagine that this is the type of message he's going to be giving on the campaign trail, that he is fit to serve the -- and there you
hear it. So, he did not respond to reporters saying whether he would drop out of the race. I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure that we're getting
this audio. Oh, that is where he appears to have said yes when asked if he could beat Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (D) AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (D): I'm not going anywhere. All right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ALVAREZ: -- campaign trail. Now, of course, this is the message that the president will be taking on the campaign trail, as he, again, tries to
convince voters who have sort of expressed their hesitations about whether he is suited to be the Democratic candidate nominee. The campaign also
releasing a memo today laying out the month of July.
Now, in many ways, this memo is a "we hear you" to the many allies who have come out over the last week saying that there should be more unscripted and
candid moments by the president on the trail. In addition to these two stops that he's doing over the next few days, he's also going to go to
Nevada for two conferences targeting Latino and black voters.
We also anticipate more travel being announced, not only for him, but for the vice president, the first lady, and the second gentleman. They will
also be doing a $50 million paid media blitz. So, this gives you a sense of them sort of coalescing the conventional methods and also trying to
strategize around travel to show an aggressive and vigorous president out on the campaign trail. But there is no doubt that the interview today is
going to be crucial into all of this.
Everyone will be paying attention not only to what he says, but how he says it. And on that front, campaign officials tell me that they, too, see it as
a high-stakes moment, but they also acknowledge that the president is prone to verbal missteps, something that he has grappled with his entire life and
something that has come into more focus now, especially as he is older.
And so, his allies will be watching this closely, and the next few days will certainly be critical to the trajectory of the race and whether or not
he remains in it.
ASHER: All right. Priscilla Alvarez, live for us there. Thank you so much. All right. As Joe Biden tries to convince voters that he has the ability to
handle the job of president in his next term, CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, says the president needs to take a
cognitive test. Dr. Gupta is a brain surgeon, and he saw a number of behaviors during that debate that caused him concern.
Dr. Gupta joins us live now. So, Sanjay, just walk us through what your reaction was to that debate performance. I mean, I think a lot of people
watched it and were quite concerned.
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. No, I think I shared some of that concern, as well. You know, I wrote this essay not as a
political statement, but more as a medical sort of analysis. And, frankly, many of the things I think people observed were not necessarily new, but
they were pronounced and they were sustained, Zain, and I think that's what got a lot of people's attention.
And I think the question really is, are these episodes that are sort of these intermittent episodes, or are they reflective of some sort of, you
know, bigger underlying condition? And we don't know, and that's why the testing, I think, is so important.
Some of the things that I noticed, and, by the way, many brain doctors from around the world, frankly, called me, many of them noticed these same
things, the slowness of the speech, the halting of the speech at times, sometimes a confused rambling, and also something that you may see more
than hear, but sort of the lack of expression on the face.
These are all potential signs. By themselves, they may mean nothing, but I think the message is that if you see these things, it should warrant some
further investigation. If he were my patient, if he were my father, Zain, that's what I would suggest. That's what I would recommend. And also, in
part, because there's things you can do about it. By not testing, though, you never know.
ASHER: Yeah, absolutely. And we know that the president's last medical exam was quite a while ago. It was four months ago, not sort of immediately
after the debate, but it was the full medical exam was four months ago. Just walk us through what that said and what you gleaned from that.
GUPTA: Yeah, so, you know, when the president gets an examination, it's usually a pretty extensive process. Twenty-plus medical specialists were
involved, including a neurologist. One of the things that's worth pointing out is that there was no cognitive testing that was done. And when the
White House was asked about it, they say that it was not recommended. The doctors did not recommend it.
What they mostly did was rule out certain things. Rule out evidence of stroke, for example. Rule out multiple sclerosis. Rule out Parkinson's
disease, which is of note, again, because when you see someone who has a stiff gait, loss of facial animation, Parkinson's disease is one of the
things you worry about. But Parkinson's disease is one of the most common causes of Parkinsonism, but not the only cause.
[12:30:04]
And those other potential causes, there was no mention that they had been investigated. They did talk about the fact that he had neuropathy in his
feet and arthritis in his feet, which could explain why you see this sort of stiffness, if you will, of his gait when he walks. So, those were sort
of the main points in that physical exam, and it sort of mirrored what we heard in February of 2023 as well.
ASHER: All right. CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. All right, it's been a difficult day, to say the least, for
former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. His Conservative Party was ousted after 14 years. We'll look at what led to this momentous event in
the U.K. after the break.
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[12:34:24]
ASHER: All right, welcome back to "ONE WORLD". I'm Zain Asher. Let's take a closer look at our top story. The new British Prime Minister is promising
an era of national renewal, this after his Labour Party won a landslide victory in Thursday's general election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASHER (voice-over): Mr. Starmer was greeted by cheers as he arrived at number 10. He gave his first speech as P.M. after he was formally appointed
by King Charles. His party's victory swept away nearly a decade and a half of conservative rule. Mr. Starmer promised to rebuild the nation.
[12:35:02]
STARMER: With respect and humility, I invite you all to join this government of service. In the mission of national renewal. Our work is
urgent. And we begin it today. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ASHER: Let's take a closer look at Britain's new Prime Minister, CNN's Clare Sebastian talks more about Keir Starmer's journey to number 10.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STARMER: Walking out the tunnel onto the pitch is always a magical moment.
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Football came long before politics for Keir Starmer.
STARMER: I've been playing football pretty well every week since I was 10 years old.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Now, it's part of his political persona. A human rights lawyer turned opposition leader used to playing defense. He even
launched his campaign for Downing Street on a football field. Part of a bid to show himself as an ordinary guy.
STARMER: Now, when I was growing up, my dad was a tool maker and worked in a factory.
TOM BALDWIN, KEIR STARMER BIOGRAPHER: He had this kind of ramshackle childhood I would call it. You know, a quite run down house, a very sick
mother who was in and out of high dependency units in hospital, almost died several times.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Criticized for being uncomfortable with the spotlight, even boring. His law career however --
STARMER: I saw this first hand when I was chief prosecutor.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Showing his more cutthroat side.
KEVIN MAGUIRE, DAILY MIRROR ASSOCIATE EDITOR: I think Keir Starmer is quite a normal ordinary family guy but he's got a real ruthless edge. He's
quite tough. He's not some, you know, namby pamby easy going liberal.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Holding one of Britain's top legal jobs, he brought about multiple prosecutions against journalists over phone hacking.
Cracked down hard after riots sparked by a police shooting spread through the U.K. in 2011. And he talks a lot about tackling terrorism.
STARMER: I prosecuted a director of public prosecution. Serious terrorist for five years.
SEBASTIAN: More evidence of that toughness when he finally entered politics in his early 50s. Just five years later rose to lead the Labour
Party after its worst election defeat in over 80 years.
STARMER: It is the honor and the privilege of my life.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Once elected, he not only abandoned his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn's far left policies, he later kicked him out of
the party following a damning report of anti-Semitism allegations. Giving Labour a centrist makeover.
STARMER: A vote for change.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Starmer campaigned in change promising to end years of political chaos and build a more equal economy.
STARMER: The way we create wealth in this country is broken.
SEBASTIAN: Is there going to be real change?
MAGUIRE: The sums don't add up for Labour any more than they do for the Conservatives. In order to sustain public services at their current level,
taxes will have to go up.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): In foreign policy, no radical shifts promised, but perhaps a new approach.
BALDWIN: I think we will see some changes in terms of a closer relationship with Europe. They talk about a European security pact which I
think will be very important, you know, particularly if Donald Trump wins the White House again.
STARMER: We're the only positive team left on the pitch.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Starmer tends to play midfield in his weekly football games, treading the same center ground that has made him a serious
player in politics. Clare Sebastian, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ASHER: The U.K.'s decision to hand the center left Labour Party a victory comes as Europe is in the middle of what some call a right-wing populist
surge. So, where did the Tories go wrong here? Was it Brexit fatigue? Was it Rishi Sunak's controversial migrant policy? Boris Johnson's scandals? Or
are Britons just fed up of 14 years of a party that its critics say didn't deliver?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUNAK: You have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change, and yours is the only judgment that matters. I have
heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.
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ASHER: Former senior adviser to Boris Johnson, Henry Newman, joins us live now from London. Henry, good to see you again. I just want to talk a bit
more about Rishi Sunak's legacy here. I mean, he's somebody who rose really quickly in U.K. politics, but he fell just as fast. I mean, he's somebody
who now will be remembered for delivering the Conservative Party their worst defeat in history. Where did it go so wrong for him?
HENRY NEWMAN, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISOR TO BORIS JOHNSON: Well, there's an old saying that all political careers end in failure, and I think Rishi
Sunak has demonstrated that yesterday evening and this morning. This is an ejection election for the Conservative Party. I think it would have always
been difficult to win a fifth term in office. That would have been essentially unprecedented.
[12:40:00]
But the electorate has decisively rejected the Conservative Party. And there's another saying which I think has been proved correct in this
election, and that's that governing parties lose and win elections. The election is a referendum on the governing party, and I think the public has
decided they didn't want the Conservative Party.
And I think that was a far more decisive factor than a sort of rush of affection towards the Labour Party. The Labour Party have obviously won,
and they've won a very large historic majority. But I think this was an election that the Conservatives lost, first and foremost.
ASHER: Yeah, people are describing it as a loveless landslide for the Labour Party, that it wasn't really about electing Labour, it was just
about getting rid of the Conservatives. When you think about how the identity of the Conservative Party is going to shift going forward, I mean,
you look at Nigel Farage's party, Reform U.K., and how well they did. Are we now going to see a battle for the soul of the Conservative Party going
forward?
NEWMAN: I think that might be a little bit overstated. I mean, it's certainly possible. And in previous defeats the Conservative Party has
spent a long time arguing of itself. But I think if I was advising a Conservative politician now, I would say that what the country don't want
is more internal arguments within the Conservative Party.
We've got to work out how we begin to make a case for the public to re- elect us. We've got to show discipline, and we've got to show that although we're a broad internal coalition, there's a church stretching from the one
nation side of the Conservative, perhaps the more small L, liberal end, to the more sort of Eurosceptic, right wing, potentially Thatcherite side of
the party.
But the Conservative Party has always encompassed both of those dimensions, and it needs to do so today. I think these results obviously were very
depressing. But within some of the figures, there's also some quite interesting nuance. We saw that the kind of the games that Boris Johnson
made in the north of England weren't entirely reversed. Quite a lot of those seats in the so-called red wall seats that were Labour for a century,
and then flipped to the Conservatives in 2019, many of those were lost, but not by large margins. We haven't seen the sort of wholesale reversal to the
Labour Party.
So, I think there's everything to play for in the next election. Obviously, politics is particularly volatile now, right across the West. And I think
it's we saw Boris Johnson's historic majority overturned within just one term. And I could imagine the same happening again.
ASHER: And when you think about the sort of key decision the Conservative Party has to make now, it's really who's going to be their next leader. I
mean, there are a lot of people within the Conservative Party who have made names for themselves and who are well-known because of some of their
controversial policies.
Do you think the leader is going to be someone who's a little bit more to the right or someone like James Cleverley, right, that a lot of sort of
moderate conservatives can really rally behind and some people might say is somebody who can bring both wings of the Conservative Party together?
NEWMAN: I'm a fan of James Cleverley's. He's been most recently Home Secretary, but he I think he's ruled himself out from running. So, unless
he changes his mind, I don't think it will be him. But I think the most important thing rather than the individual is I think that they, as I said,
ground themselves in the sort of sensible mainstream policies of the country.
And I think that the country still is largely in the same place that it was before, country that would like to see lower taxation, but also wants to
see effective public services. And I think that the rise of reform is, to some degree, but not entirely related to the failure of the conservatives
to control migration, both legal and illegal. But it's also a sort of wider rejection of potentially mainstream politics.
And that's something that I am worried about. And I think that any party in government has got to be able to show that it can deliver the change that
the public want to see. And I think one of the problems the Conservative Party recently is, as I said, we spent more time arguing with each other.
It certainly seemed that way than we were actually delivering change.
I agree with you about the concern in terms of voter disillusionment. That's something that Keir Starmer actually addressed, saying that he
really wants to sort of regain public trust, that people can believe that politics can be a force for good. But we did see the lowest voter turnout
in 20 years, participation at 60 percent. These numbers have to be concerning to both parties. Henry Newman, we have to leave it there. Thank
you so much. Appreciate it.
ASHER: All right. Still to come, Hurricane Beryl loses some steam, but it's still walloping a popular tourist spot in Mexico, where the storm is
headed next, just ahead.
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[12:46:57]
ASHER: All right. It's expected to be a scorching weekend across the U.S., leaving nearly 140 million people under heat alerts. Records are expected
to be shattered through the end of next week. Las Vegas could exceed its all-time high temperature of 47 degrees Celsius or 117 degrees Fahrenheit.
The dangerous heat wave is also feeding wildfires in Northern California, where firefighters are battling blazes in record high temperatures. Right
now, Hurricane Beryl is hammering Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The storm has lost quite a bit of steam, weakening to a category one hurricane while it
makes its way over land.
But Beryl is still packing strong winds of nearly 136 kilometers per hour, 85 miles per hour, while bringing torrential rain to the area, too. Beryl
is expected to weaken further now that it's cut off from the warm waters of the Caribbean, where at least nine people died as the storm carved out a
path of destruction earlier this week. Meteorologist Elisa Raffa is tracking Beryl. Elisa.
ELISA RAFFA, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, we are still dealing with a category one hurricane here as of the last update, with those 85 mile per hour
winds, still some storm surge up to a meter possible along the coastline here as we still have some of these onshore winds.
We could still see some heavy rain across the Yucatan Peninsula, but the next place that we're looking for some of these heavy rain totals will be
northern Mexico and south Texas, where we could see maybe four to six inches of rain, maybe more than 150 millimeters of rain as we go into the
weekend as that track starts to head towards the U.S.
So, as we go into tonight, it emerges into the Gulf of Mexico. These are warm waters again, very warm, so we could even have more organizing and
reintensifying, yet again, before it heads to that south Texas coast. Probably late Sunday going into Monday could be a hurricane yet again.
We are watching this kind of turn to the north into Texas because we have this area of high pressure that's bringing us some heat in the southern
U.S. Well, it's weakening and kind of getting out of the way, opening up the door for this turn to the north going into Texas by the end of the
weekend.
So, we are finding increasing chances of at least tropical storm force winds from places like Brownsville up to Corpus Christi and Victoria,
Texas, as we go through, you know, the weekend, the next couple of days, something to watch.
So, here's that track. It should weaken into a tropical storm soon as it continues to get interaction with land, gets back into the Gulf of Mexico.
There's that reintensification could be a category one hurricane as it makes another landfall on the border there of Texas and Mexico. Rip
currents though will be a problem all weekend, which is dangerous. It's a holiday weekend here, so a lot of people will be at the beach. Zain?
ASHER: Elisa, thank you so much. All right. Up next on "ONE WORLD", two of the biggest stars in football square off in the quarterfinals of Euro 2024.
A preview of the big matches is just ahead.
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[12:52:29]
ASHER: It may not be the World Cup, but the European Football Championships is widely considered one of the toughest trophies in sports
to win. The quarterfinals got underway just a short time ago with Spain and Germany facing off. These are the two highest scoring teams in the
tournament just thus far, and two countries with high expectations as they have each won the Euro title three times.
Later today, the second quarterfinal will pit Portugal against France, an eagerly anticipated matchup between superstars Ronaldo and Mbappe. CNN's
Pau Mosquera is watching all the action for us from Football Crazy Madrid, Spain. I see that in the past hour, the bar that you're in has really
filled up. A lot of people are really excited. Just walk us through what's happening so far in the match between Spain and Germany.
PAU MOSQUERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is undeniable, Zain, that the atmosphere at the Mercedes-Benz Arena looks amazing, but it's also true
that La Roja fans are managing to also create enjoyable atmospheres in the different bars that are all over the country.
For example, this one that is located in the north of Madrid, very close to the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, and that, as you can see now in image, Zain,
it looks packed. We have seen over the first half of the match how they were cheering to their team, how they were suffering every time that both
the German and Spanish teams created occasions on which none of them concluded into a goal.
So, now we're going to have to see what is going to happen in the second half, and oh, you can see here in front of me, this marvelous table with
people that have the best spot for -- watch the match. And here we have Andres. Andres, how bad has been the suffering over the first half?
ANDRES, WORLD CUP FAN: Well, I think for us, for the Spaniards, it hasn't been really much suffering. The Germans should be suffering because I'm
very happy with the Spanish performance in this first half. We are playing that game, being more aggressive. They have the possession, but I think
Spain is playing its game. So, it's been very entertaining first half, so we are very much looking forward for what's coming in the second half.
MOSQUERA: Besides entertaining, I would say that a nail-biting clash. What do you think is going to happen now in the next 45 minutes? Who's going to
make the goal, if there's any?
[12:55:01]
ANDRES: Well, there is only one way to find out, and that's just what's going to happen in the next 45 minutes. The chances are, I would say, 50-
50. So, yeah, let's see what's happened, but you know, we're very much looking forward to it.
MOSQUERA: And now, just out of curiosity, Andres, if Spain makes it to the semi-finals, who would you prefer the team to beat, Portugal or France?
ANDRES: Oh, that's a tough one. I would say Portugal, because it's the neighbor country. So, that would be a very fun game to watch.
MOSQUERA: So, let's see, let's see what happens. And next week, we will see who's going to be in the semi-finals. Thank you very much, Andres, for
your time. Now, we have a very much expected second half for the next 45 minutes. We do have to take into account, Zain, that Spain is playing in
Germany, so the Germans are playing at home, and that atmosphere won't be much of help for De La Fuente's squad. Nevertheless, just one will remain.
Let's see, who will it be, Zain?
ASHER: Yeah, but the score right now is still nil-nil, as you mentioned, and so it really is a nail-biter. Pau, live for us there, thank you so
much. That does it for this Hour of "ONE WORLD". I'm Zain Asher, appreciate you watching. "AMANPOUR" is up next.
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