into the fire that engulfed a london tower block, killing at least 17 people. that figure is expected to rise, as fire chiefs say they don't expect to find any more survivors. it will take weeks to complete the search for bodies. local residents have demanded to know who will be held responsible for the fire. london's mayor said they should not wait for answers. doctors treating otto warmbier, the american student who was released on tuesday from a north korean prison, say he has suffered extensive loss of brain tissue and remains in a coma. us politicians have been playing their traditional charity baseball game a day after a leading republican and three others were shot during practice for the match. the annual congressional game in washington has been hailed as a rare and welcome moment of unity between both major parties. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. the western world for so long a

dominant force is confused and uncertain. fractures in europe. donald trump's worldview and angela merkel‘s up poles apart. the latest consensus is no merkel‘s up poles apart. the latest consensus is no more. merkel‘s up poles apart. the latest consensus is no more. my guest is an influential economist and writer and former chief economist. is globalisation stuck in reverse gear? stephen king, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you very much. given the dramatic nature of events in the uk, we have to start with britain, and then move our perspective to the world as a whole. but the uk. we have just seen an election that has brought about a hung parliament and a sense that nobody knows really what the government theresa may forms will actually do about brexit and a whole host of other challenges. do you feel a deep sense of incoherence and uncertainty in britain? there is. because the vote brexit was originally 52—48 in favour of leaving the eu. 48 for remain. and for those who wanted to leave, they were really a variety of different views as to what people wanted. some had a nostalgic view of things in the past in the 1950s and 1960s when globalisation was not getting on their way. others said the eu was far too protective.

we are better off outside of it to recover productivity. others focused on the issues of migration. that was clearly an issue for many people in the uk. in many ways, the vote for brexit was a vote against something, against the eu. without being clear of what it was. it is that split that has made life so difficult for politicians across the political spectrum over the last few months. when we talk about the split across the political spectrum, we must remember that the conservative party under theresa may got 43% of the vote, but 40% of the vote went tojeremy corbyn and the labour party, selling a hard left and radically socialist agenda, a tax and spend agenda. more radical than we have seen in years. in terms of britain and a broad consensus over years about liberal economics and open economies and embracing globalisation,

is that at an end? there was little debate about something that matters, economic growth. with economic growth, you have decent growth with tax revenues. you can do all sorts of things with public spending, you can target pensions and healthcare as well, what you want to do. in the past ten years, we have seen little economic growth. we now have a kind of battle over the spoils of economic activity. that battle becomes awful. on the one hand, some say it should be a low—tax economy. many would say that is not fair, because you are only benefiting the wealthy. you could have a high—spending economy. evidence from around the world is if you have high public spending you can squeeze out entrepreneurial activity that you want to generate decent long—term growth. both parties refuse to discuss how you make the cake bigger. as a consequence of that,

they were not able to discuss how to create revenue for all that they want to achieve. my point is borne out of your book, brave new world, talking about globalisation. it seems there is a lesson from the united states where one can argue donald trump, whatever he actually is in terms of a successful billionaire businessman, he is no fan of globalisation and small l liberal economics. yes. one can say the same, arguably about theresa may, and certainly jeremy corbyn, and others like bernie sanders, in the us whom i interviewed recently on hardtalk. there seems to be a move away in the west in many different countries away from this liberal consensus, of which globalisation is an important part. absolutely. i think what's really happened is the narrative has changed. if you go back to before

the financial crisis, and actually a little bit further, 1989 and the fall of the berlin wall. there was a powerful sense at the time that the world could be a better place with western liberal and democratic values, and the world could be better and the west could trade with china or brazil, or whatever might have been the case. but we have seen growth rates slow down dramatically, even in china and india. but also, there has also been a much bigger sense of winners and losers, in the west. inequality. bernie sanders was telling me the other day that as far as he is concerned, the rise of the billionaire oligarch class is one of the fundamental sicknesses that is undermining the health of his nation, the united states, today.

well, it's possible, although, if you look around the world, you realise that globalisation has actually dragged a huge number of people out of poverty. bernie sanders said during the campaign that he said globalisation wasn't working for the us and elsewhere in the world. i think that is a mistake. in the us, you have winners and losers. in china, you have had an extraordinary transformation in living standards over the past few years. it has a different effect on things. in china, income equality has gone up, but it's only because you've seen a dramatic increase in urbanisation. others remain in poverty, but many have been lifted out of it. the us and europe. it is a different story. some have been left behind for one reason and others have done well for another. it is a western difficulty, not a global one. moreover, in the us, you want high levels of income equality in the usual way.

in the case of the uk and europe, it is more complex. you don't have an increase in overall income equality. but you have dramatic increases in regional income inequality. if you are in london, you have probably done quite well over the last 30 years. wales, you have been left behind. in the eurozone, europe, if you're germany, you are doing quite well... in a sense, you have got a stake in this because you work for one of the biggest transnational corporate banks for many, many years, the chief economic adviser. you oversaw a system where the banks were bailed out for totally irresponsible behaviours in 2007-2008. you also oversaw a financial system that helped the very rich and did nothing for the low and middle earners. and we have seen the figures show it. over a generation, if you live in the united states,

europe, your living standards have not only risen, but in many cases, have actually gone down. first of all, i wish i was that powerful. i provided advice to hsbc, and i provided advice to many people. i did not have the power to give those kinds of results. ok, so, you were not the architect of the system, you were a happy and comfortable cog in the wheel, if you like. you must thought about this in 2007—2008, when you saw the fallout of the crash which affected many people. it is worth remembering in the period before 2007, there were warnings about what might happen. no one got the whole story. i was writing in 2003, 2004, about the dangers of the us housing bubble, for example. clearly, house prices were rising quickly. look at the us at the time.

there was little willingness to listen to these warnings of danger at that particular time. in hindsight, there was a bubble. look at the attitude of the us government at the time, whether it was the administration, congress, they were in favour of saying we need a property—owning democracy. we need more people owning property. look at regulators. they were happy to allow the growth of so—called sub—prime lending. many things were going on. when i warned of these kinds of things, and other people as well, who were warning about the dangers associated with the story, there was a collective unwillingness to listen, whether you where a bank, whether you were a finance ministery. .. the power of the system is vested very clearly with transnational corporations and an elite who are tied into the political system and who can game the political system. that may be changing right now.

to go bring you back to the the british system, you remain a key economical voice in britain. who does theresa may listen to when she has to put together a brexit strategy? the argument is that in recent times, in part, frankly, big business has been somewhat discredited in the eyes of the public, she has not been listening to them. i think the way she has put her policies across is look at the person in the north of england, wales, whatever, she wants to reach out to more people. big business has in one sense been ignored. that is highly understandable. you know what is stunning? i saw a survey after the election from the institute of directors, which has seen 57% of business leaders professing to be either quite or very pessimistic about the future of their businesses in the uk today. to you, does that represent

something of a crisis here in the uk in terms of where our economy is going to go as this brexit uncertainty continues? part of the uncertainty is do we have access to the single market, if we have it, what do we have access to? the problem here is that britain attract lots of business from abroad from transnational corporations. it does this because it has a flexible labour market, the english language, all of these advantages. people come to britain precisely because they want proper full access to the single market, ie, so they can sell to the whole of europe by building cars, for example, in britain. if it turns out these companies — japanese, american, whatever companies — if they have no access, risky access, they may go to germany, poland, wherever it might be. how do you read where we sit today?

you are a much more loose adviser to hsbc now. not the chief adviser. they are classic transnational business with a long history in london as well as in hong kong. yes. going forward, the directors, bosses, those of hsbc, they have to make a choice, do we continue to invest in a london headquarters, or do we put more future investment into a european hub or hong kong? theresa may, sitting there, with so much confusion, hard brexit, soft brexit, what do you think a boardroom like hsbc is going to do? first of all, i cannot speakfor them as i do not represent them. no, but i want your insight. but in terms of any company, whether it is american, japanese, whatever it might be, they will be thinking hard about whether britain is the right place to be copied the consequence for britain is they have a balance

of payments deficit over the last few years funded by investment coming from abroad. if that funding doesn't appear, the sterling gets be weaker. but that is not right. it raises import prices. it means prices in the shops go up. it means a lower wage rise. a lot of consumers, a lot of households, and are being worse off. one of the ironies of the brexit vote is many people who might have voted for brexit in england or wales, wherever, as a consequence of the falling sterling and the erosion of spending power, they are actually worse off. i think one of the economic forecasting groups reckoned that the so—called hard brexit, ie pulling out with no deal on preferential access to the single market, it could cost, over the next ten years, 2.6% of gdp. if we go for a so—called norway option, a sort of full access to the single market,

even though no voice in how it is shaped, that might be half as damaging, 1.3% loss over the decade. in your view, how grave is the threat hanging over the united kingdom, today, in terms of economic damage done? first of all, i should reveal my own preferences. i voted remain, so i had economic concerns about the consequences of any kind of brexit. i would also note that if you interpret brexit as a vote against, for example, immigration, it is a difficult under those circumstances to the norwegian—type model. because freedom of labour, movement of labour, is one of the pillars of the single market. if you refuse that, then you this cannot have full access to the single market. and the desire in the uk is to have an a la carte menu,

to pick that and the other, but within the eu itself, there are rules. within the scope of those rules, it makes a difficult simultaneously do have full control over immigration and at the same time be a member of either the single market or the european economic area. is that you look at the choices that the uk want to make and the choices available from the eu, they might be contradictory. you have just come from the united states, where you've witnessed, as we all have, donald trump's impact on america. let's leave aside all the legal issues, russia, investigation issues — let's just talk about donald trump and economics. his message is one of america first, an embrace of the idea of protectionism when necessary for americanjobs.

the building of walls, where necessary, to stop people coming into his country. it is the very antithesis of this small l liberal, open economics that we have talked about as the consensus for the last generation. add to that, you know, the message coming from britain, and would you say that we are at the end of an era in terms of the west's economic thinking? i think we probably are. so you go back a long way to 19114, the so—called brettoneux conference so you go back a long way to 19114, the so—called bretton woods conference in the us. it set the institutions for the post—war world. these institutions recognise something important, which was that countries connected with each other and engage with each other. we are far better off having that engagement then having disengagement. people had learnt after the terrible experiences of the interwar period that having countries that did not relate to each other, did not engage with each

other, was very damaging. trying to avoid the damages of the treaty of versailles, bretton woods comes along, you have the creation of the international monetary fund, you have money coming through to europe, in the form of the marshall plan, a generous act by the us, you had the seeds being signed for what eventually became the european union. the importance of each of these that was by creating the rules of the game internationally, trade connections, connections and other people and their movement, and so on, it meant, in one sense, that wealth and income could rise pretty swiftly. but what has happened over the last ten or 15 years, partly because of the slow down growth and the increase in income equality, there is a sense that these institutions, in fact, all the global economy, has failed. it has raised questions about the security of the nationstate. in one sense, it has returned to what we saw in the interwar poor at period, or 19th century. a retreat in the west, but not a retreat in the east. i mean, china is not talking about retreat. china is absolutely... i think beijing is entirely happy about this, because it gives china

an opportunity to create its own form of globalisation, which arguably competes... it's a very different brand of globalisation that we now need to look towards and to understand as perhaps the pre—eminent force of the 21st century. so i have this sort of sense, and this is a long historical sweep, of where we move from what is loosely described as a post—columbus world to a pre—columbus world. this is what i mean by the long historical sweep. christopher, that is? christopher columbus, yes, in case you're wondering who that migh tbe. the point about this is that we have lived all allies with a sense of it is europe, it is the us, it is basically the west that governs the world. and you can take this back to columbus and the shift of economic and political power. the seed of european empire building. absolutely. and that reaches its apotheosis with the us having the dominant power after the second world war and of course with the fall of the berlin wall and so on, the thought was that western values, western everything had won.

because the west has lost its way, and other countries have been successful, especially china, we start to see new competition coming through. with donald trump — and to be fair, hillary clinton would have probably done the same thing — is to withdraw from the transpacific partnership, a set of rules to link north america, south america, and asia, to create a trading bloc, whereby a ready could agree on the rules of the game and engage with each other. important, of course, the tpp excluded china. having gone, it creates a vacuum china can fill. this book is subtitled the end of globalisation: the return of history. that there are some forces in the country continue to push us towards a more open, globalised world, whatever the politics of the day in the united states, or indeed, united kingdom. those forces might include the the unfolding, or the the continued unfolding of the digital age, the internet, and everything that goes with it. and you could include artificial intelligence, robotics, 3—d printing,

all of these things. surely they are going to leave us all more interconnected than ever before, whether we like it or not. that — that's a natural conclusion. although in the book i cast doubt on some of this. the reason i do that is not on having technological advance, but what you do with that technology, when it comes along. so if you look at previous eras of globalisation... but technology tries to globalisation, doesn't it? not necessarily, no. first of all, it decreases the cost of communication around the world. that they can create all sorts of pressures in different way. for example, social media, i think, has created circumstances where you can get a sort of herding of ideas, which is of pursuit of belief, rather than a pursuit of truth. under those circumstances, it makes it easier for people, perhaps populist politicians, to be successful in ways

that they wouldn't have been years ago. donald trump was brilliant at exploiting social media. people might laugh at his twitter accounts, but it isn't an issue. one of the biggest issues in late 20 century was the growth of what has been described as global supply chains. the fact that you make something and... you have your iphone and it is made in china and sold for a vast amount in the us. although sorts of things. although it is more complicated than somebody made in china. nevertheless, you have this global supply chain. it means capital can go in search of relatively low—cost labour in different parts of the world. but imagine a world whereby robotics means that robots are even cheaper than the low—cost labour. then why not bring the production back home? that process of reshoring will be an interesting and potentially dangerous story of the next decade. because the more that you reshore, the more difficult it is to spread wealth to other parts of the world, so it will be harder to catch up.

when i portrayed you as a big fish, in a big bank, with a global reach, you told me not to get too carried away. it seems to me that you spent your entire career at the heart of a financial and economic system which looked forward with great optimism to the future, because it felt that you, and your hsbc bank, you are part of it, you felt that the world was yours, going in your direction. do you not feel that any more? do you feel — i know you've left hsbc, but you still represent an important and influence force in the west. you still fear for the future? yes. i feel uncomfortable in some ways. i think when the west starts retreat into the idea of nationstates, it starts to define itself as us against them, whoever they might be. and globalisation in one sense was a desire or mechanism to reduce the them in the world. it was us altogether. some might dispute that. but it is dramatic reductions in terms of global poverty of the last 30 or a0 years, you could reasonably say that this a very powerful and in economic terms a very successful story.

but when you return to the nationstates and start this debate about us and them, you end up with a much more antagonistic relationship between different countries around the world. and the most obvious antagonistic relationship that might exist in the years ahead, of course, is the existing superpower and the aspiring superpower, namely the relationship between the us and china. and then going back to the pre—post—columbus world, if you are someone from 1100 or 1200 ad, and looked forward to today, and a map of the world as it is, and see these chinese—led organisations, that is going to look very familiar. because this is something they would recognise from the pre—columbus days. back to the future? back to the future. stephen king, we have to end it there. thank you very much.

thank you very much indeed. hello there. it looks predominantly dry for the uk for the next three or four days. temperatures will rise as well. but actually through the course of yesterday, we lost temporarily some of the heat. things freshened up behind our cold weather front. we still managed 25 degrees in the sunshine ahead of it. but the fresher atlantic air brought quite a pestering of showers, which continued into the evening but have been easing away overnight, as high pressure‘s built in. but we're not without weather fronts. there will be very weak weather fronts coming in across parts of northern ireland and western scotland. so it will be a more comfortable end to the night but we will have rather more cloud again to greet us across northern ireland, western scotland.

cloud coming and going further south, i think, is really the name of the game, because it will be bright with some spells of sunshine, particularly in southern and western areas. for the west of scotland, and the islands, the western isles in particular, it looks to be fairly damp day, 14s or 15s here. east of the gambians, where the sun comes out, we could see 19 degrees, 20 across northern ireland with some afternoon sunshine as well. we'll see varying amounts of cloud across northern, central and eastern parts of england. looks like we could see some very decent breaks in the cloud across south wales and the south—west. temperatures in comparison to recent days will be just a degree or two down, 22, 23 the high, but strong sunshine and very high levels of uv unfortunately. as we go through the coming night, we'll see a little bit more misty low cloud around. we'll see that anyway through the day across western scotland. there could be some around southern and western areas, notjust the coast but inland. it's not going to be a particularly cold night either. as we move into saturday, we've got that high—pressure starting to build in again, pushing those weather fronts northwards. they're still going to hang

on in the far north—west of scotland through saturday morning but it's essentially a fine day. more sunshine, i think, compared with the day ahead. although for northern ireland, still some cloud around and scotland, again, the best will be the east for scotland and there we could see temperatures getting into the low 20s. a little warmer for northern ireland again, and certainly so across england and wales as we start to build up the warmth. sunday again we see the warmth building even further. we start to pick up more of a southerly in the south, so hopefully losing the misty low cloud but, again, the north—west of scotland is looking as if it could be persistently cloudy with some rain at times. if you are finding the prospect of temperatures approaching 30 a little stifling, the sea is a little cooler at this time of year so those sea breezes will be refreshing.

particularly in the south. bye— bye. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: seventeen people are confirmed dead in london's tower block fire. the prime minister orders a full public inquiry, as local residents demand answers. at the moment we are grieving but there is a bubbling anger underneath and we want to see someone held accountable for this. dozens of people are still missing. families continue the desperate search for relatives doctors say the american student freed this week by north korea remains in a coma and has suffered severe brain damage. democrats and republicans unite. the us‘s congressional baseball game goes ahead — a day after the shooting that left steve scalise critically injured. and a new chapter in us—cuba relations — after two years of tourism and trade will president trump