HOW DID WE GET HERE? Explaining The News

Jeremy Hunt served as the UK's Health Secretary for six years before being made Foreign Secretary in 2018. He then ran against Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party's leadership contest, exactly a year to the day before this interview with Andy Bell. Mr. Hunt now serves as the Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, where recently he has been analysing the response of the Government to the coronavirus pandemic. The former Health Secretary admits that the scientific advice given to the British government at the start of the outbreak was wrong - and was partly based on work that he was responsible for. He believes Ministers should've been presented with a choice to follow a South Korea style system of track and trace, and says if the advice had been published the UK's wider science community would have offered the alternatives and challenged the approach. Jeremy Hunt prides himself on his work trying to reduce avoidable deaths in the NHS, but during his long stint in the role he also clashed with Junior Doctors over contracts, something which for many would define his time in the Department of Health. He speaks with Andy Bell about the outbreak and likelihood of a second wave, his regret over the strike action of Junior Doctors, and also of his regards for the man who took the top job of Prime Minister away from him. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

U.S. President Donald Trump was first elected as the 45th U.S. President in 2016 after beating Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. Since then his approval ratings have been up and down, but heading into 2020 Donald Trump's supporters would have been confident that he could win reelection because the economy seemed strong and unemployment was at its lowest rate - but since then a lot has happened. President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. has been seen as "exceedingly negative" says Washington Post's Chief Correspondent Dan Balz. He comments that Donald Trump is "at odds with the scientists" and that there's a "perception he has not taken it seriously". Donald Trump will compete with Barack Obama's former Vice-President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election campaign. Dan Balz is the Chief Correspondent at the Washington Post, where he has been a political correspondent since 1978. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

Boris Johnson has declared his plan for the UK to 'build back better and bolder' after the COVID pandemic to help the economy recover. The Prime Minister pledged an initial £5 billion as part of a 'new deal' to be used to accelerate infrastructure projects as he promised to 'build, build, build'. But can the Government emerge from the crisis without having to levy the cost on the public who are already experiencing financial struggles from the crisis? Economist Miatta Fahnbulleh is the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation, a British think-tank promoting "social, economic and environmental justice". She has worked in government under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Miatta tells Andy Bell that the economic forecast for the UK is "looking pretty grim", with high levels of unemployment. The pair discuss what the government's role will be in the recovery, whether we should pay more taxes and whether or not this creates an opportunity to build a greener economy for Britain in the future. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

Historian and author Tom Holland's latest work 'Dominion' concludes that without Christianity the Western world wouldn't be what it is today. Not many books can start with St Paul and end with Harvey Weinstein but that's what Tom Holland does with Dominion: the Making of the Western Mind. From human rights to sexual morality, the historian says we have forgotten how Christianity has shaped what we now think of as western civilisation. Without the dominant influence of the followers of one man in Palestine two thousand years ago, he claims, the ideas and values we take for granted simply wouldn't exist. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

Four years on since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union on the 23rd of June 2016, is the UK Government any closer to actually leaving? Both Boris Johnson and his EU counterparts have agreed that there will not be an extension to the transition period beyond December 2020, giving the UK just 6 more months to agree on a deal or leave without one. Raoul Ruparel was the Special Adviser to Theresa May on Europe and had a key role in the Department for Exiting the EU. He believes the Government should have negotiated a conditional extension period with the EU, and suggests that there may be a few issues that Boris Johnson will not be prepared to compromise on, such as fishing rights and State Aid which may mean not getting a compromise on a lot of issues from the European Union. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

The death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody in the US sparked protests across the world. In the UK, the Black Lives Matter movement organised marches up and down the country with one notably ending with the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, being pulled down and dumped in Bristol Harbour. It was clear that people weren't just protesting alongside the US counterparts, but were raising their own historic grievances here in the UK. It led Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesperson to state that the UK was not a racist country, however, many activists, historians and rights campaigners disagreed. Sayce Holmes-Lewis is the Founder and CEO of Mentivity, an organisation that works with young people from diverse backgrounds and helps them to get a foot in the door of global brands where staff may not currently represent them. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit countries around the world with each government having to quickly create a strategy to combat the spread of the virus. Many countries have followed guidance from the World Health Organisation but there hasn't been a consistent global effort to fight COVID-19. Each country and government has faced their own challenges in their own way, so will this lead to a change in rhetoric for global diplomacy after the pandemic is contained? Andy Bell speaks with Tom Tugendhat MP, the Chairman of the UK's Foreign Affairs Committee, who thinks foreign policy has never been more important as a way to protect our interests and "protect our home". They discuss Covid-19's origin, the dialogue between superpowers US and China, and how the UK will appear on the world stage after the outbreak as it attempts to continue with Brexit. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

Across the UK, the NHS has had to rapidly change its approach to healthcare in order to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, both for its patients and its staff. Dr. Zoe Barber is a General Surgeon in a hospital in South Wales, she is also a mother, and her partner also works in the NHS. Since the outbreak hit the UK her normal work has been turned upside down, and so has her home life. She speaks to Andy Bell about working night shifts, the strain on her family and their fears of a second, or even a third, wave of coronavirus. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

The UK Government has suggested that a test, track, and trace strategy could be the answer to unlocking the lockdown in Britain and fighting the coronavirus outbreak. It would require an "army of volunteers" to aid contact tracing, where a person who is ill with coronavirus could log their condition on an NHS app - the tracing team would then use that person's data to work out who they may have come into contact with in recent days, and alert those users. Eivor Oborn is a professor of health technology at Warwick Business School - in this episode, she helps explain how contact tracing in the UK may work. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.

NHS workers across the UK are focused on prioritising coronavirus patients and fighting Covid-19 up and down the country. Thousands have had their shift patterns affected so that care can be provided around the clock, with many changing their job roles to pick up night shifts or even come out of retirement to help where they can. Dr Ron Daniels is the founder of Sepsis UK and has been an intensive care consultant with the NHS for 18 years. So far during the outbreak, he's solely been working night shifts and describes the level of PPE that he and his colleagues have to wear every night. How did we get here? Explaining the news is a podcast from 5 News. Join Andy Bell as he explains the world's biggest news stories through interviews with politicians, experts, and analysts.