welcome to the programme. plenty of elections around the world this year. now know a bit more about what could be happening here in the uk. rishi sunak says the general election is likely to happen in the second half of this year . he didn t rule out it happening earlier but says his working assumption is later this year. take a listen. so, look, my working assumption is we ll have a general election in the second half of this year, and in the meantime, i ve got lots that i want to get on with. that means cutting people s taxes this saturday. that s a tax cut worth £450 for the average person in work. we can do that because we d halved inflation. i want to keep going, managing the economy well and cutting people s taxes, but i also want to keep attacking illegal migration. last year, we got the numbers down by a third, and now we need to get our rwanda schema through parliament, up and running, so we have a full deterrent. and that s how we are really going to solve this
leaders in the south. but in the statement, also went on to talk about what would happen after military operations, affectively, said that after the war, hamas would no longer control gaza, guys that would be run by palestinian bodies, so long as there is no threat to israel and that israel would reserve operation of freedom of action, that there would be no israeli civilian presence there. so that update a few hours ago now coming from the defence minister there. a second veltman today, our lead story, in fact, this hour has been here in the uk, politics, general election, we have a bit more guidance from the prime minister as to when that general election here in the uk will be taking place. it is towards the end of the year, according to rishi
i m lewis vaughn list onjones. this is bbc news. i m lewis vaugthones. hello there. as we head towards our first full weekend of january, the weather story is on the change. somewhat drier conditions are expected by the weekend, but before that, we ve got this area of cloud that s bringing some persistent rain across channel facing coasts. so it arrived in the south west, some of it quite heavy at times, accompanied by gale force gusts of winds on exposed coasts in the channel. and that is going to continue to drift its way steadily eastwards. it means that there will be some difficult driving conditions if you re out and about on the roads over the next few hours. this was the isle of wightjust before darkness arrived, and you can see there are certainly some localised flooding in the area. now that rain will continue to drift its way south and east. it may lingerfor a time across the east midlands, lincolnshire, east anglia as well. a few scattered showers and stronger winds acros