homeless or been left homeless or displaced after catastrophic flooding across several south asian countries. utility companies could be charged by the hour for utility companies could be charged by the hourfor digging up our busy roads in england in a bid to encourage contractors to speed up their work and reduce delays. stay tuned. now it's time for dateline london. hello and a very warm welcome to dateline london. i'm jane hill. this week we discuss whether theresa may can go on and on as prime minister, we'll look at the latest round of brexit talks, and ask what can be done to defuse the north korea crisis? my guests this week are the author and journalist rachel shabi, are the politicaljournalist

and commentator alex deane, the north american journalist and broadcaster jeffrey kofman and the writer and broadcaster mihir bose. welcome to you all. the british prime minister theresa may ended up having a ratherfrank conversation with journalists on her flight to japan this week. she insisted she would like to lead her conservative party into the next general election, not something a lot of people were expecting. for politics—watchers of a certain age, there were echoes of margaret thatcher's stated determination to go on and on. alex, what did you make of her comments? i think as soon as any political leader gives a deadline as to when they are going to go, speculation becomes rampant about who will replace them. it's healthy for a leader to want to fight whatever the next contest is that their party faces. it was the right thing for the prime minister to say. there is also more room to manoeuvre than in the blair brown years because there is no gordon brown. there is no one person going around

with lots of aggression, both theirs and others, determined to oust the incumbent. i regard this as a good thing interestingly, tony blair also got caught by a pack ofjournalists on a plane coming back from china when doctor david kelly died. they got a lot of commentary out of him in that time. there seems to be something that happens on aircraft. i wonder if political leaders should avoid this? i think you are right. the dilemma that theresa may faced was if she did not declare this, she was in danger of becoming a caretaker and lame—duck prime minister. she has to be all in. she can't be, so to speak, half pregnant, so to speak. whether it is the intention to stay, she needs to declare this or else she loses control. i don't think she is going to stay. obviously she will wait until the brexit negotiations and then she will go and you are quite right. you know, she can't say now,

i won't stay otherwise she will be dead in the water. she will wait for the brexit negotiations. i can't see her leading the conservative party. into an general election? you say it's obvious, but there was speculation after the election, which of course didn't go as the conservative party had planned, that theresa may's leadership might have been under attack before that, but her fortunes have improved considerably. david davis is the one to watch out for. the bigger picture is, you are right, it was the only answer she could give as the leader of the conservative government, but in national terms, what is this good for if she stays? she is, as many people have commented, she has lost her credibility. she went into an election she did not need to and lost the conservatives seats and ended up with a hung parliament which means

that she is too weak, the government is too weak to legislate. at a time when britain is dealing with brexit, we're dealing economic stagnation, wage stagnation and spiralling costs. we have a government that is ineffectual. they cannot do anything to address very real issues and very problems. so when we look at her in terms of she is doing the responsible thing, and that might be true for her party because the conservatives don't have another leader otherwise she would be replaced in a flash. they simply do not have anyone to replace her with. it might be good party, but what is good for the country? you could make the argument that it would be better for the conservative party to have a leadership challenge, even if that precipitates another election. another elections?! one of the reasons for her making the comment now is that the party conference is coming up. yes. she would not want to say something like, i'm going to go because then the party conference will become an election for which is

the last thing they want. it's going to be tha anyway. no, but on a subdued level. they are too disgruntled with her and there is too much disunity within the party for that plaster, for that band aid to stick. and to your point, alex, there is no obvious successor and that is perhaps different to where we were a few months ago. as you suggested, it has changed remarkably quickly. there is no obvious person around whose ambitions might coalesce, but where i disagree with rachel is i think there are plenty of people who could lead the conservative party. there are plenty of people around the cabinet table that are qualified to hold the role of prime minister. it's simply that theresa may's position does more to defend itself when she is in the mode of governing and not campaigning. in campaigning, any party that calls an election when it doesn't have to and goes backwards — rachel is right — has not done as it would've wished. on the other hand, theresa may in government seems, actually,

where i also disagree with rachel, seems to carry the trust of the conservative party and i think that challenges to theresa may are far less likely than these conversations imply. i know where going to talk about brexit in a moment, but it is part of this conversation. they dovetail! as brexit goes, so does theresa may in many ways. we now see the labour party defining a different position over the last week and so it becomes a much more nuanced going for her to try to figure out how to navigate brexit. it is not going well and whether or not she can deliver something that is going to satisfy enough people, i think it will determine her own future. mihir, you mentioned david davis. let's talk about him and what he has been saying. to give him his full title, he is britain's secretary of state for exiting the eu. great title, isn't it? he said that things had got a little tense this week. that's the word he used as brexit talkss were into their third round. another british minister, liam fox,

said the country shouldn't be blackmailed by the eu over the divorce bill. michel barnier, the bloc‘s chief negotiatior, expressed frustration at the slow pace of discussions. rachel, you've been writing a lot about europe. are you optimistic, as david davis insists that he still is, despite all of this? no, i am not optimistic. it is not looking good, is it? it's a deadlock and it was to be expected. in terms of the eu blackmailing britain, i mean i would not expect anything other than the eu looking after now it's 27 remaining states. i do not expect it to do anything different, so i think it's a bit ridiculous and certainly, i can understand the frustration of the eu negotiators saying, look, we need to see some paperwork here. something, anything. just give us some indication of where this is going so we can negotiate, so we can start negotiating.

what is becoming more and more clearer is how much brexit is really an ideology rather than a deliverable practical reality, but we are where we are, we voted to leave and we have to execute that. i think what is becoming clear now is that there is a difference between the two. the eu, their political reality of what they are saying rhetorically is very much what the negotiating situation is. for britain, the political reality differs from the rhetoric that brexiteers have been giving us over what we might expect from a deal and i think the government, it's incumbent on them to manage people's expectations and say look, we promised you a lot of stuff we can't deliver. they might say, we don't know yet, we might be able to deliver it. it's still quite early days, actually. the writing is on the wall. we do know, that there...

the cake and eat it thing is something that we know. we cannot have the same conditions and exit. things will change, right? it's likely they will change for the worst, at least in the short term and we almost certainly do need a transitional deal that leaves as much continuity in place as is possible and certainly parliament, with the labour party changing it's position on that in the last few weeks, is moving in that direction, leaving no ground for the hard brexiteers to say, we should just drop out with no deal, we should just crash out. that is not a tenable position, that won't have any parliamentary weight. there is a big gap between what the public has been promised and what actually will be the case. that is a problem for britain in a way it isn't for the eu. i think this notion of blackmail is very much about trying to set up a bogeyman that says, oh, it's their fault. in europe this is not a big deal as it is here. this is britain's problem.

that's what's interesting to look at, yes. the people of france and germany and the netherlands aren't waking up and saying, i wonder how the brexit negotiations went this week? they have their own issues. macron is trying to completely transform the french economy. that's what they're talking about in the french media. and so this is an old political game. those bad guys in brussels, the eu are making it difficult and not playing fair. this is a british problem and britain has to find a way to navigate with the eu. alex, what was your reading of the language here? this is a strange conversation from both of these guys because on the one hand the rhetoric coming out of the eu is wholly accurate and representative of the negotiations. on the other hand the rhetoric from the united kingdom is outrageous, absurd and does not reflect reality. both sides are posturing. there is this weird self lacerating instinct amongst some in the united kingdom to believe

everything that comes out of the eu bloc and nothing that is said by our own government and representatives. furtheremore, some of it is just not true. the suggestion that we need some paperwork to have some kind of negotiation as rachel said, that was a big gap there. there have been publications of brexit papers from the uk government. you may not like what they contain. you may want to disagree with them. in fact, i sense that you would. no, it's not about whether i disagree, it's about what is actually empirically in them. you are having your own meta—debate where you say there's no paperwork. oh, ok, that paperwork. no. oh, i don't like that paperwork. paperwork with substance. can ijust say, historically, this reminds me of how the british withdrew from the empire, but there was a difference. the british then were in control. if you remember how they withdrew from the empire, and i take the question of india. india was going to become a republic. it was part of the empire. back them the word commonwealth wasn't used. india was going to become a republic. attlee and churchill wrote begging letters to nehru saying stay and they created the commonwealth which is a totally imaginary club, if you like.

the queen has no powers in india or the various republics that formed. the british aren't used to suddenly walking away. they like to be liked. they like to feel they are morally superior, that is the basis of their rule, we are morally right. what the eu is not giving them is enough of that reassurance, that feeling that we can create a club somehow and have links with the eu of a certain kind, and yet we're outside it and i think that is going to be very difficult to do. for me, what is interesting this week is labour's walk back. now we have some differentiation between the two main parties and it creates an interesting opportunity for debate. corbyn, for so many people is hard to stomach as much as that he has a huge following. he is also a very polarising figure, as is theresa may. yet now you have him, or his party at least, straddling these different worlds. that distinction is interesting — him and his party. corbyn, until he became leader at least, used to say quite openly

that he thought the eu was a stitch up, done in the interest of big business and big banks. he's not completely wrong. then he becomes the leader of a party that is vastly, at least in its parliamentary representaion, vastly more pro—eu then he is. he sort of mumblingly and going on with his position. it's weird they get away with it. keir starmer, whose position is different, it goes almost unsaid that there is this gulf between him and his leader. does anyone think that there are moderate voices in europe who are not being heard in this debate? to alex's point, there will be posturing, this is part of a negotiating process and there are probably lots of reasonable people behind the scenes who do want to strike a deal with britain because it is in everyone's interests, in terms of trade and harmony.

they're worried if they give britain too good deal, other countries might want it as well. they have to keep the union together. if they have too many getaway clauses, other countries will want it. isn't that a great eu worry? the fear of what will happen when you leave something is what keeps you in it. if you had a friend who was in a relationship and they wanted to leave, but were afraid to do so because of the consequences of what would happen, what would you advise them to do? that has no substance. that is an allegory that has no bearing. sorry, what? look, if you are a member of a club, then obviously you want the perks to be better than they would be if you were outside the club. nobody in that club will want to see someone leave that club and have the same benefits, and that is what i meant by the rhetorical gap.

that position is the eu position and that is consistent with what they are saying. they are constantly saying, look, things can't be the same for you. ok, i'm going to pause it there because guess what? we will be talking about this a lot in many weeks to come. the next stage of the reading of the bill is in the uk parliament on thursday, so there may even be more next week. so thank you on all of that for now, but there will be more on that to come. we will turn our attention to the situation in north korea because tensions on the korean peninsula are the highest they've been for years. the united nations condemned as outrageous north korea's firing of a ballistic missile overjapan a few days ago. president trump said all options were then on the table, and today we learn that the us and south korea have agreed in a phone call to strengthen seoul's missile programme, and that donald trump approved the sale of billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the south. jeffrey, the firing of this missile over hakkaido was a worrying escalation?

we have talked about ratcheting it up a few times, but this is ratcheting it up again? these are frightening times. if you live in the korean peninsula and guam, these are terrifying times. what we have are two schoolyard bullies in kim jon—un and trump. what we need is diplomacy. simply, any kind of war, no one is going to win this, we know that. ultimately the us will triumph, should it get to that horrific scenario, but it's not one we can allow to happen. we have to bring it back and find a way to allow the sides to save face enough to dial this down. if that means the us and south korea pullback a bit on their military exercises, somehow we have to get north korea in its insanity to stop firing these missiles and say ok, you can save face.

the problem is it now looks like extortion. it is extortion. it is. the sanctions that were passed in early august by the un are crippling against iron ore, an seafood and other exports from north korea. a major part of there economy, their pathetic economy. 25 million people with an average income of about $1000 us a year. they need these sanctions lifted. this is related to all of that. i'm really puzzled by the moral equivalance that you seem to suggest between donald trump, the duly elected president of the united states, whatever you think of him, and the third generation repressive dictator of a family that systematically abuses their country. i think it's in term of their military belligerence. exactly. listen, i take your point, but the fact is we have a president in the us, this has gone on through obama, through bush, bill clinton, it goes right back to richard nixon, this belligerence we are seeing

out of north korea. they have managed to contain it. the policy, like we have seen in the cold war, is one of containment. if through belligerence of a duly elected us president, and we can talk about that another time... definitely another time! if belligerence meets belligerence, are we going to be better off? the point is, why is kim on doing it? he is fearing regime change, which china will not accept. he has seen saddam and gaddafi, two very bad dictators, no question about it, not having nuclear weapons, removed. so there is at some stage some negotiations that need to take place and china is crucial to this to make sure that whatever your regime is, and of course you were not elected through the electoral college, like the americans have, but we don't want to remove you from power. how you do that is the crucial question and the more belligerent talk there is from trump,

it becomes more difficult to get that. it's interesting to see the effect it has had onjapan. you look at the country, and whatever you think of the geopolitics of those nations, they are now looking out for the first time they have raised the possibility of installing pre—emptive missile capacity. that is a really big deal for a country that constitutionally has been disinclined to do anything like that since the second world war. it's a really big change and of course, they are now having drills in a way that it must be very terrifying for the population, and there is a guardian story about this today. they have 600,000 northern koreans living in japan, a lot of them descendants of former prisoners and the tension being caused in the country itself between those two groups,

is it is having terrible ramifications for that country as well and i do think that that is where the belligerence is really unhelpful. let's get back to how we get to any form of negotiation. i have lost count of the number of academics, politicians, diplomats i have interviewed in the last few weeks who say, it is all about diplomacy, you have to get them around the table, but no one is coming up with an answer as to how we do that. what you're seeing out of washington is a two track narrative. on one hand the president with his belligerence and the people very close to him, tillerson, the secretary of state and others in the cabinet, being much more diplomatic and giving a different story. that‘s the point. that's exactly what nixon did with russia and china in his triangulation policy and kissinger had negotiations, notwithstanding the fact that the president was thumping the table and saying terrible things about communists. maybe there is a rationale here.

maybe people don't want to see because they don't like president trump, maybe they see it. ultimately, this is about buying them off and working out what the price is, as compared to the fact that the people that have been most resistant is the north koreans. they have acquired the technology to have nuclear capacity and attack others. not that they will do it in some mad act of self destruction, but it is to raise their stakes in the game. it's about self—preservation. north korea, it's much more complex than german reunification was in the '90s. this economy has been in a decrepit state for so long and china has so much interest in not seeing an outcome that ultimately makes a unified korea with western allies. there are all things at play in terms of the chess

game in that region. we will pause it there for now. we have mihir with us. i have to ask you, and it is well documented that my knowledge of football is negligible. even i know that the transfer window closed this week and the sums involved were astronomical. it's a new record. what is going on here? there is more money available. the premier league, which is the best run, most successful league in the world in money terms, they did a deal a year ago, 8.4 billion, which is almost double what they had. more importantly, the money is going down to clubs that don't expect to be in the premier league, like bournemouth and others who now have more money to spend. britain has allowed a free market so most of the top premier league clubs are owned by foreigners, some of them in effect foreign states. manchester city is owned by the united arab emirates. like america, it doesn't believe in socialism,

but it does believe in sporting socialism, where it doesn't allow anybody to come in, but we allow everyone to come in. leicester city is owned by someone nobody knew about. they see this as branding exercises and as far as they are concerned, most of the money is going abroad. in the old days, there used to be reaganite trickle—down economics. the big clubs paid the lower division clubs. now they pay all sorts of foreign clubs. this owners think if they can get into the premier league and brand themselves, look at what has happened by psg. they are owned by the qatar state. they pay 198 million, a bit than what you might be getting from the bbc, for neymar. why? because qatar is saying this is our soft path. maybe that is a solution for kim. perhaps if he paid 198 million for neymar and they could say that north korea has a great footballer. maybe that is the solution. if only!

i am a fan of the best club in the united kingdom, ipswich town. we have secured a new striker from rangers, so we have done our acquisition in the uk. it does seem that when other clubs see that an english club is making an acquisition, the price goes up. people can pay more, so they do. we play very exciting football that the world wants to watch and that is what is a sign of success. when people say that the sums are obscene, are we just wringing our hands? there is nothing we can do about it, it is the new world order. much of neymar's money went to his father. these players, because of the money they earn, they are little corporate entities. they can employ the best lawyers, the best agents and because of the way that football works, the agents are

also the recruiters. but what about smaller clubs, grassroots? this is what is wrong with the 21st—century economy. we talk about the titans of wall street and the city salaries, but this kind of polarisation of wealth, they are given a lot of money, but £30 million, 35 million, it isjust ludicrous. as we sit around the table at the bbc, let's not pretend it's just football that has a problem with salaries. that's what i said. the americans have done it better. they disclose more details about players salaries and they do control. the germans insist that 51% of the club is owned inside their own country. we have owners i'iow who have no connection. abramovich has never given an interview. at the end of the day, football is meant to be a community sport. if the owners are somebody you have never heard of, theyjust come in and buy the club, what is their purpose in doing it? there we are.

we attempted to solve geopolitical problems through football. thank goodness you managed to do that for us. lovely to have you all here. thank you all very much indeed. much more to discuss same time, same place next week. thank you for being with us. goodbye. i hope you are making the most of the weather. things will change in

the weather. things will change in the second half of the weekend. we are seeing some patchy cloud developing overland but the beaches are generally sunny through the rest of the day. we have seen some thickening of the cloud in suffolk and norfolk. there has been one or two light showers around here. those should be moving away out into the southern north sea. the cloud slowly moving into the uk tomorrow, bringing rain and drizzle with it. aify end to the day for the east. the cloud is moving in in the west. because there is a shield of high cloud coming in ahead of the rain, temperatures won't be as low as they we re temperatures won't be as low as they were last night. let us head into sunday morning. a very different look to the weather across northern ireland where we have a lot of low cloud, rain and drizzle. it will be across the western side of scotland. similar mixture across england,

a lwa ys similar mixture across england, always better to the east of the pennines across the north—west of england. not much rain at this stage. wetter across wales and the south—west of england. low cloud as well with those cooler southerly wrindz. much of the midlands, it will be dry. hazy sunshine. may well stay dry here for much of the day. at the same time, that rain becomes lite and patchy, more damp and drizzly. there'll be a lot of low cloud pegging back the temperatures. the tour of britain starts tomorrow and we are probably going to start with dry weather. we may end in kelso with a few spots of drizzle but no great amounts of rain. this weather front is stalling really across the uk and, at the same time, it's weakening. but, as that happens, we have got a more active weather system coming in from the atlantic. that'll bring some wetter

weather into northern ireland, scotland, south of that a lot of cloud and it's damp. warm and muggy air across neverland and wales and the temperatures in the afternoon could be as high as 22 or 23. this is bbc news — the headlines at 5pm. the metropolitan police pays compensation to retired field marshal lord bramall, and the family of the late lord britton over false accusations of child sex abuse. more than moo people and a0 million more than iaoo people and a0 million have been left homeless or displaced after catastrophic flooding across several south asian countries. police arrested a man after a crossbow bolt was fired into a cricket ground on thursday. six form is excluded from the school because of their a—level results will be allowed to return, their lawyer has confirmed. the campaign

group says more than 700 homes have