speaking injerusalem, mr scholz emphasised the high costs of the war against hamas on civilian lives. ukraine says it hit an oil refinery in southern russia overnight, as part of a campaign to undermine russia's economy. the kremlin says the attacks were timed to disrupt the russian election. and a state of emergency in iceland — after a fourth volcanic eruption in as many months. now on bbc news, it's newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello. it's laura in studio. hello, it's paddy in the studio. and henry at home. and today, paddy, i think we ended

up basically doing a lot of really similar things on the wireless and on the telly box, because we were asking if politics in the uk has a racism problem and you were asking...? is politics a big stinking pot with the lid come off? oh, so that was cheery then? well, kind of. i mean, we spoke to a 19 year old who i first met on radio two when he was 16. he's a member of the youth parliament called dev sharma. he says i've absolutely no desire to join this unsafe, illogical game called parliament. over the past few years, we've seen it become i so immoralised, become so murky and just full of cheap _ political stunts. that doesn't really- represent what we want. you're 19. do you want to go into politics in parliament? not any more. so i represent... i'm part of the youth parliament currently, and i speak— to my fellow youth parliamentarians. and politics doesn't . seem to reward sanity. it seems to reward a sort -

of radicalism or having to take a really strong view i and then sticking to it. that is absolutely heartbreaking to hear, to me, because i'm a politics nerd. and i think if you cover politics, you have to believe actually that we still have the right kind of system and that most politicians go into it for the right reasons. but what we have seen in the last while are so many incidences of things going wrong, of offence being called, of language being casually chucked around, of violence, of incitement to violence, of all kinds of things. and to hear a young person who a short while ago thought, that's the world for me, to hear him so clearly say, i don't want anything to do with it, that is absolutely heartbreaking. he was on with dame margaret beckett. henry, we love your geekery. but she served under the government of harold wilson. she said, look, if you're not in the room, you can't change the system. so she was saying to the young guy, you've got to be in the room, try and fix the building, get in the room. there's kind of two things which get

meshed together in this debate. there's one thing, which is the health and functioning of the political system, and that's things like who gets on in politics, whether westminster is too argumentative, whether there's enough power devolved to local people, whether people are able to affect the functioning of political parties and so on. and that's one kind of bucket of problems. and then there's the other thing which we've been talking about so much in the past few weeks, which is kind of external to the political system, which is threats to politicians as they go about doing theirjob, how people respond, members of the public respond. and then there's the second issue, which is kind of how people respond to the political system and the threats that mps are facing and many of them say they're getting worse. and all of it put together does seem to be creating this horrible world in which not that many people want to get involved in politics. and actually, i was speaking to one

quite senior mp a few weeks ago when we were reporting so much on the threats that mps were facing. and they said to me, this is terrible. but rightly or wrongly, i don't want to speak about how terrible it is because i think you will end up putting good people off from going into politics. and they said they then thought the problem would get worse. i think that's a really interesting point there. and there are... i've had a similar conversation with our politicians who if you highlight it, you make it worse. you put a megaphone. but there has been this specific issue, i think, in the last seven days around the frank hester row. and i think it's become a particular problem in the last few days for the conservatives, whether they're tolerating racist language within their ranks because they need the money or because they politically don't think it's advantageous for them to take a strong position against it. it was fascinating this morning. we had on the show samuel kasamu, who used to work for borisjohnson in downing street, a young black man, very bright, very able.

he quit downing street because he had concerns about the operation when he was there under borisjohnson. but he said this morning — explicitly he didn't think that theresa may would have tolerated what happened with frank hester. he didn't think borisjohnson would have tolerated what happened to frank hester. and he said that the defence that rishi sunak and his colleagues put out there that, "oh, look how diverse we are. oh, look, we have a british hindu prime minister. oh, look, we're the most diverse cabinet in history." he said... it's not the color of your skin that matters, it's the content of your character. quoting martin luther king. when i was first involved in politics, it was folks like richard fuller, nicholas boles, elizabeth berridge, white parliamentarians who saw a young guy from a working class background and thought i had potential. and when i was in downing street, when george floyd was murdered, it was not the black or brown members of parliament who reached out and said, how can we bring communities together? it was borisjohnson, despite some of the things that he said in the past, that was most interested in that. and now, of course, some of the most divisive politicians

are people like suella braverman. and so, to paraphrase martin luther king, it is not the color of your skin that matters when it comes to tackling racism and discrimination, bringing communities together. it has to be the content of your character and your willingness to lead, and that is not what we are seeing today. i asked mark harper, the cabinet minister who was doing the rounds this morning, if the tories had a problem with race and he absolutely denied it. did you straightaway think these alleged comments were racist? yes. look, the prime minister made it very clear at prime minister's questions on wednesday that they were racist. it took him some time to do that. did you think straightaway they were racist? well, you said it took an age in political terms, it didn't really take very long at all. the prime minister was very clear on wednesday and his spokesman had been clear the evening before. they were racist comments and they were unacceptable, and mr hester apologised for those. that's not actually what happened initially. it did take some time for downing street to say these comments were racist. they were rather dancing around that issue. in fact, until your cabinet colleague kemi badenoch said online these were clearly racist, that was not what downing street

was saying on the record. well, i'm sure people wanted to make sure and check the facts, in newspaper reports and things you do want to go and check the facts are correct. and then i think the prime minister was very clear about it, that they they were racist comments and they were unacceptable and wrong. and he made that very clear. both his spokesmen made it very clear, and he himself made it very clear in the house of commons on wednesday. so that's the rear view mirror. henry, the road going ahead at the steering wheel is follow the money. is there more money that he's given? and will the question of giving the money back remain active in british politics this week? we don't know whether more money has been given. there's this strange sort of slight wrinkle to this story, which is we know that frank hester gave £10 million in actually quite a short space of time last year, having not been a conservative donor before. but the way that we find out who's donated to political parties

is they are published quarterly by the electoral commission. so there's a time lag and that means that we at the moment can't know and won't know until, i think, june, whether frank hester gave any money between the start of this year and between this round taking and between this row taking off this week. but there have been reports, not denied, that he gave or is in the process of giving a further £5 million. now, i know all sums of big political donations are wild amounts of money to you and me. but even in the context of political donations, the amount that frank hester has given or is giving the conservative party is astronomical. so you can see, especially in an election year, through the very narrow, pragmatic lens of funding the conservative party's election war chest, why they're so reluctant to give the money back. and i think that that is fairly widely understood across the conservative party, whether it should be or shouldn't. and that's why actually the

political pressure on rishi sunak to hand the money back, or for the conservatives to hand the money back, i don't think has been that intense. you've had the odd conservative voice, andy street, and also the scottish conservative party, but it hasn't stretched into westminster. and i think that means that rishi sunak probably is in the clear on the £10 million he's taken. but whether he's given more and whether the conservative party would accept more now that they are aware of the alleged comments he made in this meeting back in 2019, i think that is a more politically sensitive question. it's just... it's hard for us to press that question because we don't have all the facts. and it also might have been... given the level of public interest, it is perfectly feasible for mark harper to phone up tory headquarters and say, "i've got to go on the telly this morning and on the radio, and i'm sure i'm going to get asked whether or not we're taking any more money from this man." he didn't do that, so he didn't have the answer. so he did one of the classic

political tricks of saying, "this is a hypothetical question and it's not for me to know." of course, it's not a hypothetical question because like you, me, like otherjournalists from whenever it was wednesday morning, got a bit of a nudge from someone saying, you should ask if he's given more money, ie he's either handed over another big cheque or he's about to. but mark harper... and it's a classic political trick that newscasters will understand. sometimes it can be useful to get through interviews, not to know the facts. but we know, and smart newscasters and listeners and viewers know very well, how frustrating that is because they can see that it's plausible deniability. i don't know the answer. it's not myjob to know. here's another plausible deniability question — when, if at all, will diane abbott get the labour whip back? which i heard at the rally i went to on her behalf in hackney this weekend, people were saying, give the whip back. now she had the whip removed because of an anti—semitism inquiry into the letter she wrote

to the observer, for which she apologised 11 months ago. so it's been a long independent inquiry, but is it a question for keir starmer because two wrongs don't make a right. will she get the whip back? is that a live question this week? it's absolutely a live question this week. and we sanonathan ashworth, who was speaking for labour this morning, basically playing snapsies with mark harper because he sat there and said, i'm really sorry. it's probably going to be frustrating for people, but i don't know the answer to this. and it's not myjob to know because it's somebody else who's dealing with this. the independent panel on the nec, the governing body of the labour party. what's tricky for them, i think, and i think it will be a live discussion this week is, as you said, paddy, it's nearly a year since she was suspended, 330 days to the day since she was suspended for a letter that was 126 words long. so newscasters might be scratching their head and thinking, how on earth could it possibly be taking this long to work out whether or not she should be let into the party? she said sorry very quickly. what was interesting, though, henry,

is thatjonathan ashworth, i mean, he absolutely didn't want to touch us with a bargepole, but he did say, well, i've been on the nec and sometimes, you know, lawyers get involved and people start, you know, bringing in other things that have been said in the political debate. so i don't know if he was trying to just flannel or if he was trying to drop a clue about what might be happening in the investigation behind closed doors. i don't know either. i mean, it seems absurd how long it's taken. and it's not the only instance we've seen, by the way, of a labour party suspension appearing to take a very, very long time to be resolved and in some cases not being resolved at all. there's a handful of labour mp5, or i should say former labour mpps, who either are in that boat or were in that boat. in fact, in the case of nick brown, a former labour chief whip, he was suspended for so long that eventually he said, actually, i'm just quitting the party and i'm going to stand down at the general election. and that sort of meant that the entire investigation

at that point was void because there was there wasn't a labour party member to investigate, as it were. so look, i think the political focus on this will remain for a few days, but i can so easily see how, just as 11 months ago when diane abbott initially was suspended, there was a lot of political focus on the question of her suspension and how it might be resolved. but then ultimately things happen. you move on. i can see a world in which we're a few weeks, months down the track and diane abbott's suspension is still unresolved. but because we're not talking about the frank hester case any more, for example, the fact that it's unresolved sort of becomes a bit less politically vicious. although at some point as we charge nearer and nearer to an election, there needs to be a decision about who the labour candidate may or may not be in her seat. however, harriet harman, who was on with us this morning, did say, well, look, she's getting to the end of her political career. that's why this should be resolved.

so i don't know what that means in terms of... is that true? because i saw clips from diane abbott speaking at the... because in private conversations i've been having, off the record conversations i've been having with labour people over the past week about this, they say, yeah, no one wants to see diane abbott end her career as an independent. but i have not seen any evidence from diane abbott's public comments and quite to the contrary, that she thinks her career is ending. also, jeremy corbyn showed up on the steps of hackney town hall to speak. indeed, old comrades. old comrades. and sort of almost neighbours in that part of london. yeah. look, we won't go. are we are going to go? i was just going to say one thing because i've had a couple of communications from our wonderful viewers and listeners saying, well, why haven't you spoken to diane abbott? basically, she was denied her voice in the commons this week. she shouldn't be denied her voice here when people are discussing her. we would love to speak to diane abbott and we have invited herfor interviews. and it'sjust important, i think, to say that we are not excluding her at all from

the conversation, but for the time being, clearly she doesn't want to come and do big interviews. she spoke briefly at the rally the other night that you were at. but i just want to put that on the record. we are not denying her her voice and she'd be welcome any time to come and speak to us. but let's just round this off. now, we've been talking about all of this business, about how politics is broken, apparently or certainly stinks because of the diane abbott — frank hester row, which has been the story of the last seven days. i think that's right. and i think it makes me sort of feel morose, really, in a way, because actually in the last few months, we've so often found ourselves in a place having a conversation like this and saying that we understand why people, members of the public, look at what's going on in our names among the people who are meant to represent us. and not only does it look like it isn't working very well, it also can seem very unpleasant and make people feel that they're not very safe. so we're trying our best every weekend, henry, laura and i, to bring you a summary of what's on the radio, what's on the tv and some of the speculation in the papers.

so we've done that, and now we really have to change the tone to address once again this big signature interview that laura has done with charles spencer, earl spencer, the brother of princess diana. and also the coverage that we've seen in the papers, it was covered by our guests on radio four. and you've got a new piece of honesty from charles spencer about how writing this book has affected him. that's right. he told us in the course of his interview, and the long version is on a special episode of newscast, you can hear the whole thing on bbc sounds, and the tv version is also on iplayer. and it was a very, very moving conversation, ifelt. but one of the things that he said to me, which hadn't been in all the papers already, was actually the process of writing the book led him once he'd finished, to have a nervous breakdown. the experience of what he described as confronting evil that he witnessed at the hands of teachers at his school when he was eight, nine, ten, 11 years old,

led him once that had been put on a page unburdened, he had spoken and interviewed other people who were at school with him at that time, led him to what he described as a very dark place. he had to check into a residential facility to be able to cope with this sort of well of pain that overwhelmed him. it's sort of emotional archaeology. he's gone back to something he didn't expect to go back to. absolutely right. and one of the incredible things through all of the conversation and reading the book isjust to imagine that none of these boys told anyone at the time. he didn't then tell anyone until he was 40, in his forties when he told the therapist, he didn't tell anyone in his family until a year or so ago. so to be living with that through all of this period of time is something extraordinary and difficult. and i think he would say with

humanity that for anybody living with something as awful as that, that happened in your childhood, that the impacts that has on your later life is really profound. and somehow he wants to encourage other people to get it out. and i think it's important to say, as we said yesterday, i don't think that charles spencer is sitting there asking people to say, oh, poor me, you wealthy, privileged man. i think what he's trying to offer to people is to say, look, this is when you have pain buried deep, you have to find a way of getting it out. so he opened up and said he'd had a breakdown through the process of writing the book. what was the effect of putting pen to paper? i didn't know the appalling effect, and when i finish the book i had a bit of a breakdown and i had to go into a residential treatment for trauma

for writing this book. the other thing some people will be interesting and, although it only affects a narrow section of society, is his strong belief that no child under 13 should be sent away to school because they are not ready. the possibility of damaging them is too great and he has that strong view. you mean boarding school? i would say any child under teenage years, under 13, i don't think they should be sent away. i don't think it's fair. i don't think they can possibly understand what's going on. there are a lot of teenagers who think, great, i want to get away from my parents and that's fine. i mean, of course it's a personal decision, but i don't think any child personally should be sent away before they hit puberty. i mean, i wasjust very struck listening to the very, -

very powerful interview, how old fashioned l much of it sounded. i mean, i don't have i the stats, but you can understand why, given _ what he experienced, earl spencer wouldn't want a child under the age of 14 to go to boarding school. - but i assume that far fewer children under the age of 14 do go— to boarding school now than it did when he was a child. _ and i think a lot of this, _ and actually, you know, you can also see changing british society- in what laura was just describing, which was the sort of decision, i if you can call it that, for him i to keep it all inside. that also feels to somej extent a kind of vestige of a previous stiff upper lip age in which brits i but i guess boys and men- in particular, were not meant to have and certainly not share emotions. | i think one of the things i found most moving in the interview.

actually was when he said when you asked him, - and he talked about people who'd got in touch with him _ after he had started speaking about this, you know, - within recent weeks. and he talked about one man who got in touch with him and said _ that he'd been married to his wife for 40 years, i think— it was, and hadn't ever felt he could tell her about - what he had suffered at boarding school. l but as a result of these interviews, he did. - and he also had an anecdote about being in a restaurant recently. - i think it was the day before - he recorded the interview, in fact, and the waiter came up to him and whispered to him, i wentl to a school like that, thank you. and i found that the most moving section of the interview, - because it clearly isn'tjust him - who buttoned something like this up. it clearly affected - quite a lot of people. and just to close with two thoughts perhaps on this, there's one other thing he talks about and he writes about in the book. he believes that the impact of being sent away to school

at a young age had on other men of his class has actually been quite profound on our society. he basically said politicians, leaders, people who came through this system, have been influenced and are not necessarily... his implication is that they're not necessarily the right people to make decisions because as he said, part of you dies. you're sort of — part of your sensibility, part of your emotion, it's just sort of not really there. but i think, as you was saying, one of the things he wants is other people to speak out and we've had lots of messages this morning and some people, i think, objected to somebody in privilege making these kinds of admissions about their past. but here's just one of the messages i had. "earl spencer was remarkable. i, too, suffered years of childhood and teen abuse at the hands of my father. in those days, you just kept quiet. there was no one to tell who would have believed you. and all these decades on, i still feel the mental effects." so these are important messages. whether or not you feel

a particular sympathy or empathy for earl spencer. and if you want to listen to the full interview, as i said, it's on the podcast feed as a separate episode, the whole interview there. importantly, also, if this is something that has affected you, there is tonnes of information on bbc action line, which is on the bbc website, and there is support out there for people if they have been affected by any of these kinds of issues. should we go out with a bright thing because he's so bugle again? henry if i've got something bright, i am off to play squash, which i enjoy very much and crucially is indoors. we should play squash. you would win? no, you're both squash players. you canjoin me. i am always gone for 25 years. maybe we should go and play. we should do squash special

after we've done paper pulp weekly. ok, so i'm going to france on a ferry. i'm going to go. are you overnight? yeah. you're going to go there and see a friend in france and i'm trying to learn french better. so you get a real squash when you're there. is that now real squash? do we have a bright point from you to go out on? i think we'vejust had one, haven't we? the the bright point for me is looking forward to our squash match. it must be time to say goodbye. goodbye. i think it really is. newscast from the bbc. hello there. we're into some much milderfeeling air now with temperatures in the mid teens quite widely on sunday as a wet start to the day for some of us. but we saw some sunny spells emerging such as here in nottinghamshire and there's more sunshine on offer as we head through monday — it's a similar looking day. for the vast majority of us, it should stay dry, some low cloud, mist and murk to begin with, but then it will brighten up quite nicely. but overnight there are some weather

fronts just gradually clearing eastwards. a lot of the showery rain is starting to fizzle out on the easterly track. and this is how we'll start off the day on monday. temperatures between five and eight degrees. it's a cooler start than yesterday morning across much of england and wales. but still temperatures in mid to high single figures so mild for the time of year. lots of dry weather around these areas of cloud just pushing further eastwards, the rain fizzling out. a lot of dry weather, some sunshine, clouds thickening from the west as we head through the afternoon. and there will be some rain across northern ireland for the second half of the day, too. a brisk south—westerly wind blowing, particularly for irish sea coast. and it's still mild, its warm but not quite as warm as on sunday, perhaps temperatures between 11 and 16 degrees celsius. and there's more rain on monday night. it's just dragging its way further eastwards as we head through the night and into tuesday. so tuesday we'll see this front sinking southwards and eastwards bringing more cloud across east anglia, the far south east of england. showery outbreaks of rain pushing eastwards across scotland. but for many central areas there'll

be some bright spells and perhaps a scattering of showers, too. it's turning cooler now in the north and the west. but still, that mild air hangs on further south and east, 16 degrees celsius here. and you can see that quite nicely on the air mass chart here with that milder feeling air, still the south—westerly wind, colder feeling, conditions taking hold across the north and the west. now, as we go through wednesday, we're going to start to see this wave develop on this front, and that's going to bring us perhaps some further outbreaks of rain, but still a lot of uncertainty regarding just where this rain is likely to be. it could clear away from eastern scotland towards the end of the day. and i think many northwestern areas could stay largely dry, too. look, it's still very mild across the south east of england, 17 degrees celsius, perhaps here. as we go through thursday though, we're likely to see some more rain, especially in the south of england and wales. and it could turn a bit colder by friday. bye— bye.

welcome to newsday. i'm steve lai reporting live from singapore and these are the to top stories his hour. president putin says his victory in russia's presidential election shows the country was right to choose its current path — despite protests and international backlash. the result of the election signifies

trust on the part of the country citizens and their hope that we will do just as we planned. germany's leader, olaf scholz, warns israel's prime minister about the �*terribly high costs�* of the war in gaza. we cannot stand by and watch palestinians die of starvation. that is not what we stand for. as gangs tighten their grip over haiti's capital — a plane sent to evacuate us citizens has departed, but only about two dozen were on board. and steve harley, the frontman of the rock group, cockney rebel, has died at the age of 73.