and a quick look at the front pages. may fights for a grip. it reports collea g u es may fights for a grip. it reports colleagues say she could be kicked out by the end of the year. tory mps say she should reassert discipline and the party and sack boris johnson. conservatives in open warfare. but the prime minister has seen off the immediate threat for now. the eu has brought brexit talks with labour amid concerns in brussels about whether the uk government is special. germany and france have crushed british hopes for a fast track deal in the transition period. a more positive ta ke transition period. a more positive take for the prime minister in the express. she has slapped down the plot to oust us. wealthy families are exploiting a government scheme to help first—time buyers. wayne rooney is doing his community service in a garden centre after his conviction for drink driving. and

thatis conviction for drink driving. and that is a summary of the news. now it is time for newsnight. we must strike at the root. fawkes will light the fuse. who needs guy fawkes when you have grant shapps? tonight, the plot against the pm is foiled. how safe will she be — and for how long? hollywood's dirty secret. as harvey weinstein takes leave of absence to conquer what he calls his demons — we ask how long the movie industry has been covering up claims of sexual abuse. and salman rushdie talks to me about gender identity and why he's adapted his writing for a fake news age. i think the break down — people's break down of trust injournalism, in the idea of facts and reality, is a very dangerous thing, and i think one of the reasons there may be for writing novels at a time like this, is it is a place in which writers

and readers can begin to agree once more on the nature of the truth. good evening. in politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. if you're plotting against a prime minister, more publicly than you first intended, there is a finite space in which to act. theresa may will be hoping that moment has now passed. those who awoke to grant shapps — on the airwaves at least — will have heard a man whose hand had been forced too early by a newspaper front page. he says he has a list of 30 mps who want to see her go, including former cabinet members. by mid morning she had pretty much seen him off — telling the country she was staying, to provide calm stability. that plot may be foiled.

there will be more brewing. she mayjust have earned herself a weekend off — as opposed to a free run of power. chris cook reports now on the end of a long week in politics. it's not a good sign for a prime minister when they have to meet a film crew in a berkshire car park to explain why they should get to keep theirjob. prime minister, are you able to address the speculation about your position? look, i've had a cold all this week, but i'm here today at a fantastic event that is raising money to support people and their families who are going through real difficulty. now what the country needs is calm leadership, and that is what i am providing, with the full support of my cabinet. she was responding to an attempt at a coup by grant shapps, the former party chairman. since the general election that went so badly wrong, there are quite a lot of colleagues who feel we might now be better served by having a leadership election sooner rather than later, and this was really to try to gather those people, in order to be be able to say that to her.

mr shapps didn't seem to get many names on his supporters‘ list beyond his own. grant, you are out of touch, you haven't been talking to your colleagues, he is not even in our whatsapp group. please, listen to what the rest of us are saying. stay with the prime minister. what grant has to do is calm down. teresa had the legendary conference cold. when you get a cold you take strepsils, you don't take a revolver. and we... (coughs) it is an unedifying end to a grim week for theresa may. she utterly failed to reboot her premiership this week in manchester. and, bluntly, she really needed a reboot. i'm thinking about the work we did at britain thinks focus groups in polling two or three weeks‘ ago. it really anticipated the events of this week, so we asked people what they thought about theresa may, and we asked them what kind of animal she would be.

she's a rabbit caught in the headlights, trapped. we asked what sort of car. they said she's a reliant robin. so this is a three wheeler, and the real point about it is you are mesmerised and it doesn't tip over. the election in june destroyed her authority, just as ten years ago not calling a snap election cost gordon brown his. mr speaker, the house has noticed the prime minister's remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from stalin to mr bean. i remember when i was working with gordon brown, as things started to get very very tricky, you know, in the early years of his prime ministerial career, and it was the moment in the focus groups where i realised that people felt sorry for him. at that the point i knew the game was over, there was no going back, they pitied him, and that is not what you want as prime minister.

when you think back to last year, when theresa may was first appointed as prime minister, one of the factors that won her the post was her position on the referendum. she had been a reluctant remainer who accepted the results of the vote. and that meant, the party felt, she would be well placed to hold the tories together, leavers and remainers. the thing is, when you look at the cast of alternatives now being mooted, it is not clear any of them could do thatjob. changing leader during the brexit negotiations would, even with an obvious alternative, be messy, and it does help her her personal poll rating is still basically the same as jeremy corbyn‘s. her leadership may still snap, especially if her weakness gets in the way of the brexit talks. but theresa may still looks likely to hang on for now, and perhaps until after we leave the eu. albeit as a diminished prime minister. what must it feel like to be the prime minister after a week like this?

and what of her prospects for the future? i'm joined by catherine meyer, who is a personalfriend of mrs may's. and by robert halfon, a tory mp and former minister who was sacked earlier this year by the pm. nice of you both to come in. catherine, what will she be thinking about the job right now? well, knowing her, and i think that she is going to continue doing thejob. because she wants to? because she has to, because this is the type of person she is. and she is somebody and that is why i get angry about the conversations about grant, i call him snaps. why are we talking about him? does he want to be prime minister? the prime minister now is somebody who you can rely on, who actually is a person who will continue to do the job nab she feels she has been chosen to do, and... this is not a woman you are describing who wants the job but one who feels the obligation of the job, is that right? well, i find that knowing her,

i think that she is somebody who will do what is the right thing, and she really cares about this country and sometimes i get irritated about people constantly criticising her because she is doing what is the right thing for her to do. she has been chosen to be the prime minister and for the moment we need her. she has been there, she has tried, she is doing the brexit talks, i mine it is not the point and the time to change to get somebody else and in fact, who, who will we get? you are due at dinner with her next week, do you think it will still be in the formal prime minister's residence? without a doubt. think that she will continue doing to job, she feels very strongly for this country and i think all the contenders who are pushing themselves now, because there is a moment of weakness, are not people who are thinking what is right for this country, they are people who are thinking what is right for themselves. i get angry with that. you have every reason to feel embittered about this pm. she fired you from yourjob earlier.

but you don't think she should go? i know i have huge respect for her i think she showed incredible courage. i may have differences on some policy areas but i think most of the party strongly support her. we have two roads we can go down. we can behave like knuckle heads like grant shapps did today. knuckle heads, really? what else was it? trying to act against the prime minister or we can we night and support the prime minister. but don't you think she has unleashed a boil? maybe he isn't going to be the next prime minister maybe he is the one who got the conversation going which is a conversation all the mps are having now. i think there is strong support for the prime minister. i think they think that the prime minister is someone who does it out of duty as you described. of course there will be rumblings behind the scene. i think she is doing this for duty to her country, and as i say, if we go down

the grant shapps knuckle head route, that leads to jeremy corbyn getting into downing street. is it because she is the best person in the cabinet or in the conservative party parliamentary system right now, or because there is too much wrangling about everyone else? i think he is a good leader, she is strong. she has acknowledged where things have gone wrong. not many politicians say that. that is why i respect her. one of the reasons i became more supportive was what happened on wednesday in the conference speech. one of the enduring images was that hug from her husband philip. it was so protective, i wonder what he must be thinking now, you know philip does he want her to go on, does he want to pull her away from this whole mess? he is probably torn. he adores his wife but he knows her and he knows that what she will want to do is to continue doing the right thing. he is going to support her. i think somehow this conversation about her coughing all the time.

i am a huge admirer of her. because i think it takes a lot of guts to continue, you know, doing a whole hour while you have a terrible cough and then all the, you know, the criticism she has been having after that. i think it is completely unfair, and sometimes i sort of wonder, is it because she is a woman, and is it all those people who are talking negatively against her, are they people who are really... you could say the same of... you know, there isjust a bit too much criticism, and i think that somebody who has been really unlucky, has had a bad cold, but she has given a huge amount of interviews before, she, you know, she is out there, doing the right thing. does she have enough ally, political allies to keep her there and hold her above the water. you have seen it today. mp after mp has been out on the broadcasting media, saying that they support her. i support her, you said i had no reason to. i believe it is the right thing to do four our country and party. do you think will be there until the next election. as long as she wants to be.

she is focussing, behind the coughs and the prankster, what are the three issues facing britain? skill, housing, cost of living. that was what her speech was about. dealing with energy price, dealing with education. starting with an apology was a difficult way to kick off. that is why i respected her. how many politicians get up and apologise? very few. you have described many of her close friends but not particularly within the party, or politicians or the cabinet? does that leave her isolated do you think? maybe yes, but on the other hand, this is, we can't keep on criticising, on one hand we were criticisng tony blair, david cameron, for being too much in front of the camera,

too much interested in what people thought of them, and we have a prime minister who is absolutely the opposite, she is introverted, dutiful. she doesn't need to come out and be loved by everybody and yet we are criticising her, as a conservative, ifeel strongly we really have to pull ourselves together, and this is the prime minister and either we are going to support her, or, you know. we have to be unifiedd or labour will get in. it is very simple. thank you. how much did the hollywood movie world know about the behaviour of harvey weinstein? more, certainly, than it let on for decades. a new york times investigation claims the sexual harassment and abuse went on for 30 years. and that the oscar—winning producer had reached settlements with some female employees going back 20. this week, speaking through a lawyer, mr weinstein said he would be taking leave of absence to conquer his demons. he apologised for his behaviour — although a short while later made clear he would be suing

the times for their story, citing defamatory statements. what does this tell us about hollywood culture — its sexism and its abuse of power — and whether anything is actually changing? here's stephen smith. harvey weinstein is the movie mogul with the midas touch. from pulp fiction... what concerns you? it's the colouring. ..to good will hunting. it's paint by numbers. shakespeare in love... you know how i stayed alive this long? ..and gangs of new york. fear. a la rger—than—life hollywood producer, seen here with director quentin tarantino, weinstein has been the driving force behind oscar—winning movies and collected many other honours. his company distributed the king's speech. it's great to be making movies in england. i'm a cbe, believe it or not, yes, and i think one of the greatest things that happened to us on this movie was,

when people started to criticise this film, the queen endorsed it and it meant a lot. just as her dad was pretty courageous, so is she. weinstein faces allegations of sexual harassment over almost three decades, though he is reportedly suing the newspaper which made the accusations. the new york times has alleged that the producer has settled privately with at least eight women. in a statement to the paper, mrweinstein said... his lawyer, lisa bloom, described her client as... weinstein, seen here with his british wife, told the new york times that he came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behaviour and workplaces were different. that was the culture then. he went on, "i've since learned it's not an excuse, in the office or out of it." weinstein, seen here with his british wife,

told the new york times that he came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behaviour and workplaces were different. that was the culture then. he went on, "i've since learned it's not an excuse, in the office or out of it." we were hoping to speak to harvey weinstein‘s lawyer, lisa bloom, but she pulled out of the interview this evening. she was coming on with guardian journalist hadley freeman — who is here — who, over the years has had her own colourful encounters with harvey weinstein, and been banned from his parties. it's fair to say you are not particularly surprised by the allegations. not at all. there have been stories about his behaviour with women for years. it's telling that all the sexual harassment stories that have come out, in the last year, the high profile ones like donald trump and bill cosby, there have been rumours for years. what's surprising is the stories are eventually published.

why do you think they were covered up and why are they coming out now? they are covered up for years because women are not generally believed. these men are very powerful, harvey weinstein is a powerful hollywood producer. women are scared to say anything if he crushes their careers. and women are generally not believed. what were you hearing at the time? these were second—hand stories. i have been in la quite a lot tougher in movie stuff, and even would that harvey was inappropriate with actresses and women. when people said he was inappropriate, did they say, harvey will be harvey, or was it, he has to stop. it was always, harvey is harvey, and he's one of those types of producers. the women who went to work for him knew they were putting themselves in his line of vision. it was generally known rumour about him for a long time. what do you think about his apology today, respecting all women? the also totally doesn't take any responsibility for this. he says he has a problem, seeing a therapist.

i love the excuse these men give that they came of age in the 70s as though in the 70s it was for a man to ask a woman to watch and shower. the 70s was an era of second wave feminism, when roman polanski was being pursued for his sexual abuse of the young girl. it's not enough to say that's when he was coming of age. it's also a time when a lot of stuff was covered up. a lot of stuff is still covered up. it's not an excuse to say you emerged a0 years ago and you didn't know the rules have changed. you are using a mobile phone, you know about modernity, you should know how to behave with women will stop why do you think this is starting to come out now? what has shifted that is making more women come forward and is making these stories come out into the open? it's interesting that there has been an

abundance. each one encourages the other. the emergence of the bill cosby allegations after decades of rumours. bill 0'reilly, roger ailes. all this encourages women that they will be believed. the election of donald trump has made women fed up with this, not being believed, telling the stories and still being pushed aside. donald trump's election is encouraging every donald trump's election is encouraging a resurgent feminism? we saw that, absolutely, there was the women's march. this is not about sex, it's about power. harvey weinstein, everybody knows that of all the hollywood producers, nobody has enjoyed wielding power more than weinstein. my encounters with him in the past, i would go to hollywood to

cover the oscars and he would ban me from parties because he didn't like what i wrote about him in the guardian. a more personal encounter i had with him was covering the baftas party three years ago in london. i said that it looks boring, like every hollywood party where all the actors and actresses have to be there rather than they want to be there. he was outraged by this and insisted on writing an opinion editorial in the guardian with his byline insisting i don't know how to have fun. he's a man who uses his power to an absurd extent. he has to be the man who has control particularly over younger women. the bottom line is, will anything change? will his career be over and can he come back? we're talking about hollywood, where roman polanski is still feted as a great director. mel gibson is still celebrated. he says he's an old dinosaur who has to learn new tricks. we will see about that.

thank you for coming in. in his latest book, the golden house, salman rushdie describes an indian family fleeing to a new life in america. it's a novel that explores and explodes identity — of race and gender. it's a novel that begins in the era of 0bama and ends in the era of trump. its protagonist observes from the outside whilst being inextricably caught up in the deceit at its centre. and it's a novel in which rushdie puts down magical realism teling me that we all need a bit of help with the truth right now. he started writing it eight years ago, when america seemed a very different place. as he told mejust before we came on air. that is the great shock of this event. for eight years there was a kind of optimism in the air, and then it was revealed that all that time, these dark forces had been building up. that's why, when i first started writing the book, it

hadn't occurred to me that it would be so precisely anchored from the inauguration of 0bama to trump. do you think the assumption of liberal values now is over? i still think that this is a reversible thing. i think the majority that elected him was tiny, he lost the popular vote anyway. what actually the novel is really saying is that the forces who created him are there any way, whether he is there or not. this incredibly divided and broken country. did 0bama sit on top of something that was broken without recognising it? did he help to heal or make it worse? i think in a funny way, his presence energised the extreme right is nothing else ever had. when we thought things were going to get better, they actually got worse. i'm actually quite an admirer of 0bama, that's what seems to have happened. what i was trying to do was do something that in a way you are told not to do as a novelist, which is to write up to the present moment, to try to write

a novel which is about the exact moment in which the novel is being written. because you always taught that you need distance and perspective. if you do it right, then you capture the moment all time, hopefully. if you do it wrong then your novel becomes unimportant like yesterday's papers. you would have to tell me if i did it right or wrong, but that's what i wanted to do. i wanted this social, panoramic novel, that's not just about trump, but all the things that have been eating at people in the last eight years. as i was writing it, it had to be reactive to events. there were things like issues of identity politics, gender difficulties and so on, so much on people's minds. i had to find ways of incorporating that in an. what the novel asks questions about how we work out our own identity. you say maybe it's better we remain that way, that the self

remains a jumble and a mess. one of the things that the novel as a form has always known is that human beings are many things at once. they are complicated and contradictory and multifarious, which makes us rich characters. so when the youngest son is exasperated with being told to find out if he is transsexual, transgender, whatever he is, is that your voice with this argument? i think there is an argument that says, leave him alone, don't try to force in this way that way. his tragedy is that he is being encouraged to choose and not able to so. is your sense on the gender issue that we are obsessing too much about its now? i think certainly at the youngest level, i think the fact this is sometimes being introduced into the lives of very small

children, i think that worries me. in the case of the novel, the character is very conflicted and tormented. do you think this will continue, do you think we will soar see more transitioning? young people seem very obsessed with it. we will have to see what they make of it. the issue of pronouns, what you call yourself, and he and she are no longer sufficient. i wanted to dive into it, and presented instead of judging it. do you think of it as a fad, will it pass? i don't think so. i think it's a change. and that made it interesting to me. something as significant as that, which has shifted how people look at questions of gender identity. where would you take this question of identity with the british and brexit right now? the point of this is it's a kind

of global obsession, right now, identity. you know, in america, when people talk about it, they're mostly talking about race and gender, you know, and here it seems as if there's been some sort of nostalgic image of english identity, an england that maybe never really existed, when there weren't any foreigners around and everybody wore straw boaters and went around in punts. somehow this myth of england has been used to propagate the idea of separation from europe. in india, identity is much more about religious identity, the hindu or muslim issues. this work spans the world, and it will mean different things in different places. when we have gone through with brexit, will that result in a better understanding of our identity? will it firm things up? i have no idea. i am very gloomy about the prospect, i

have to say. i may well be wrong, but i don't see how this will come out well. you write about truth in storytelling. you raise the question, can i lie better than the truth. what role does fiction play in time of fake news? i think about it a lot. it's one of the reasons why writing this novel i stepped away from so—called magic realism and high fantasy and surrealism. i thought in a moment when there is so much untrue, fictionalising going on anyway, maybe don't do that! one of the things the novel as a form is really good at is establishing between the writer and the reader an agreement about the nature of truth. you read a book that you love and you think, yes, this is how the world is and how things are, how we are as people. so you did that because you think we are missing that now in normal dialogue? yes, i think people's breakdown of trust in journalism, in the idea of facts and reality,

is a very dangerous thing. i think it's one of the reasons there may be for writing novels ata time like this, it's a place in which writers and readers can begin to agree once more on the nature of truth. do you really think experts are not particularly trusted any more? i think that's weird. the idea of the elite now has to do with education rather than wealth. you have a government in america with more billionaires in it and the ministry of america, calling college professors and journalists and artists the elite. we are not the people with the beach—front properties in the bahamas. the young man who narrates the novel, the american narrator who watches genuinely wishes well for his country. in the novel there are a number of riffs going on about

the agony of america. you know harvey weinstein. it's no secret about his behaviour in hollywood. there have been rumours as long as i can remember. he has more or less owned up to it. what is your sense then, of why hollywood, so many people turned a blind eye to it for so long? this is not new in hollywood. power and sex have always been closely linked together. when we raise it and talk about it in terms of shock, is that the news? i think people are becoming more courageous at speaking out. that's a good thing. what was the thing you said, "the cowardly times?" do you think we live in cowardly times? i think we do. i don't think this is an age of heroes. salman rushdie, thank you.

that's nearly it for tonight. before we go, we'd like to leave you with the work of sory sanle. for more than 50 years he worked as a photographer in burkina faso's second city, bobo—dioulasso. but he didn't place any long—term value on his photos, and was unknown outside of his local area. now the morton hill gallery in london wants to bring him to the world's attention. good night.