‘together again? i think some way together again? i think they are more, what is the word? they are more popular now than they have been because people are like the spice girls, they are quite big. people are quite nostalgic about them, girl power. there has been a big trend in 90s fashion and music recently and i think because the spice girls like the pioneer of girl power and cool britannia and all about, people are that throwback, especially with ibrahim dag going on in the world at the moment, people are wanting something to... so, you think that girl power message could resonate once again? definitely, girl power all the way. 0k, resonate once again? definitely, girl power all the way. ok, that is all we have time for but thank you so all we have time for but thank you so much for talking to us this evening and we will wait and see whether that reunion happens and whether that reunion happens and whether they sing. many thanks for joining us. now it's time for newsnight, with emily maitlis. the legitimacy and legality of the fbi's investigation into donald trump is

called into question by republicans who accuse the intelligence agency of bias. i think it's a disgrace, what is happening in our country. when you look at that and you see that, so many other things that is going on, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that. donald trump makes public a top—secret document that proves members of the agency are against him. we live in washington, dc with a man who lives and breathes the white house. exclusive footage revealing the true extent of what experts say i warcrimes in syria. repeated bombings of hospitals, medical centres and ambulances. we ask a former ambassador as to whether assad has won the war. and how do you remember the predicament in election? we have been granted a first peek at the work of official election artist cordelia parker.

let's do something that doesn't happen here very often. shake hands. thank you very much. great seeing you again. good evening. is the fbi's investigation into donald trump compromised by it's reliance on the work of british spy desperate to bring him down? trump believes it is. tonight, the us president called for the release of a top secret memorandum which accused the fbi of abusing its powers. the document, written by senior republicans supportive of trump, criticises the way the fbi and us justice department used christopher steele's claims to approve a wiretap on a trump campaign adviser. steele was, you remember, partly funded by the democrats. trump, as you can imagine, was not amused. the memo was sent to congress. it was declassified. congress will do whatever they're going to do. but i think it is a disgrace,

what is happening in our country. so why does this matter, these questions of memos, dossiers, intelligence from spies can get complicated quickly. what is the bigger picture? we have the associate editor of the hill, joining us live. put this into context for us. how big does this feel? this is a huge story in washington. this is probably the biggest we've seen since james comey was fired by donald trump, he was the fbi director last year. this is something that puts the white house and the fbi in a state of virtual war with one another and raises lots of other questions about the independence of the law enforcement system. so when you talk about a state of virtual war, where does this put the mueller investigation? further or closer to trump? well, it's fascinating that this has

happened at a time when he has been talking about interviewing trump. we will see if the white house uses that to avoid the interview. but i think this raises questions, at least in trump's sceptics' minds, which is already what mueller is looking into. so that doesn't really help the president in the broader picture. did the democrats get something fundamentally wrong? are they recognising that fairly serious errors were made that have played right into trump's understanding of that narrative? well, it's debatable. i mean, there were certainly errors have been seized upon by republicans and people frankly in the media who are friendly to trump. democrats, though, are pushing back very hard at this memo. they want to release their own counter memo rebutting these points. they say that the republican version doesn't tell the full story. and broadly there's this idea

that there are many trump friendly hands all sort of pumping at a bellows to try to create or cast doubt on mueller and that's certainly a point democrats are making. what are republicans around trump thinking or saying to you tonight? some of them, of course, are very impressed by what they have put out. others are less so. even a republican source i was talking to was speaking fearfully about the idea the president would use this as what this source termed as a blunt force instrument to go right at mueller. if that happened we would be in the territory of constitutional crisis. thanks very much. well, tonight, newsnight can reveal the true extent of what appears to amount to war crimes in syria. his programme has seen the most compelling evidence yet that assad's forces are repeatedly targeting hospitals, medical

centres and ambulances. as many as 500 strikes have now been verified in rebel strong holds like eastern aleppo, eastern ghuta and idlib. the footage and witness accounts that we are about to bring you paint a picture of a country that has surrendered to assad in all but name. it shows an administration led by a man consistently prepared to direct violence at some of the most vulnerable citizens in his country. viewers may find scenes in mike thompson's report distressing. people come to hospitals for healing. but in rebel—held areas of syria, they have now become places to die. on monday, the oday hospital in saraqeb, southern idlib, was bombed for the fourth time. on tuesday, a bomb hit its medical warehouse, too. five people are reported to have died and all medical services

have now been abandoned. bereft of anywhere to treat them, saraqeb‘s injured now have to be taken many miles north to the city of idlib for treatment. but when they get to the central hospital, doctors there struggle to deal with the growing number of new arrivals, many of whom have injuries they are unable to treat, and patients moved on yet again. translation: since we cannot cope with most of the injuries that we have admitted to the hospital, we do indeed transfer them to the northern medical point. and what makes things a lot worse is that the fighters actually target ambulances and any cars suspected as belonging to the civil defence. translation: it is barbaric. the medical crews should not be attacked. we get bombed and shot at, even after we collect

the injured of the roads. we get hit with rockets and machine gun fire. the destruction of hospitals hasn't just been happening in idlib, but right across syria. the new york—based campaign organisation physicians for human rights claims there are a92 verified attacks on hospitals, mostly by syrian government forces, since the war began. but the group claims that what amounts to a war on health is not confined to the bombing of hospitals. physicians for human rights has also documented the blocking of humanitarian aid, including deliberate stripping of medical supplies from humanitarian convoys. just today, the un came out asking the russians, the iranis, the turkish authorities, to push the syrian government to allow for humanitarian aid.

apparently, the syrian government has not authorised aid for the past two months. the syrian government has denied that it deliberately attacks hospitals or other civilian targets. but physicians for human rights say they have documented 11 attacks on this one hospital alone in eastern aleppo last year. could a mistake be made that many times? at this point i think it is on them to prove it is not deliberate. as we have documented attacks on health care facilities that are in remote areas, where they really could not have wanted to hit anything else. as we have documented double attacks where the same facilities are being hit as first responders are there, as ambulances are leaving with patients. as we are documenting attacks on hospitals that have been built into caves in order to protect them, i think there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest these are indeed targeted attacks. international lawyer geoffrey nice lead the entire prosecution case against slobodan milosevic.

he insists nearly all governments know the coordinates of their hospitals, which would in any case have their roofs clearly marked. this, combined with increasingly sophisticated arms, makes repeated mistakes very improbable. with modern weaponry, accurate strike is possible. and inaccurate, accidental non—strike may happen, i suppose, from time to time, but not 11 times. in 11 times looks, does it not, like part of an intentional plan. but geoffrey nice doubts that we are likely to see war crimes trials any time soon, or other actions against syria, thanks partly to russia's much—used un security council veto. translation: the world simply watches. nobody responds, not one

has helped us till now, or stopped the bombardment. the situation is quite desperate. we need someone to hear our voice and to see what is happening here. we have come a long way, it seems, since the heady, euphoric days of the arab spring seven years ago, though not in the direction hoped for back then. civil war in syria has evolved into a regional sectarian conflict and has now been spreading even wider, so making a solution ever more complicated and difficult to find. i'm nowjoined from princeton by ryan crocker, the former us ambassador to syria. and with me in the studio is ruth citrin, director of the middle east and north africa programme at the european council of foreign relations. she spent 15 years in the white house, most recently as director

for syria and lebanon at the national security council. it's great to have you both here tonight. rught, do you accept that assad has been all but named won this war? thank you. let me start with some truth in advertising. i was 15 years, more than 15 years with the us department of state. i served as director for the national security council. but doing 15 years in the white house would have me crossing multiple administrations, so i am a long—time civil servant. the point about russia and the strikes that we currently see is, in essence, that you have multiple conflicts still ongoing inside syria. those strikes against hospitals are really the regime going after what it terms "terrorists", in areas that are essentially in de—escalation zones agreed upon by the russians, turks,

and iranians, with russian help. and what it does is it increases the territory under and what it does is it increases the territory under assad's control. this has been going on since the early days of the de—escalation agreements. the assad regime is expanding the amount of territory that it holds with russia's help. eventually it will hit the borders of where you have coalition supported kurdish forces... this would not have been possible without the backing of putin? it wouldn't have been possible. it would not have been possible without iranian help. it wouldn't have been possible without hezbollah‘s help, or shia militia's help. and america did have a chance to end the war, you would accept, and failed? look, we're nowhere near the end of a war. i spent six years in lebanon, different tours during

that civil war. that went for 15 years and it was far less complex that what we're looking at today. so, sadly, there's a lot more death, misery and blood to come. while the us seems to be missing in action. after strike after strike on civilians in aleppo, the recourse was forjohn kerry was to call his russian counterpart or go and visit moscow. frankly, i think we went during that period, before the fall of aleppo, from appeasement to complicity in those crimes. is it now too late for trump to push back against putin? do you think his military action last april was the right course? the action in april... ..it was a token.

a one—off. it changed absolutely nothing. the president had an opportunity in the state of the union to take a much tougher position on russia. but as he has done since the beginning of his presidency, he elected not to do that. so we have some interesting consistency in policy from obama to trump. unfortunately, it is in all of the wrong directions. it was lavrov and kerry, now, with the current administration, it is president to president. we always risk overstating what the us is capable of doing in syria and what europe is capable of doing in syria. right now, the united states has a couple of thousand troops in the areas that are held by syrian kurdish forces, that they have been working with against isis. how can that be right, that we overstate america's

potential in syria but not putin's? america had the same chance as russia did. given all the considerations, made the decision it was not in us interest to assert that kind of military power to try to change the balance of power on the ground. but president putin determined that it was in russian interests to do so. and would wave in front of the international community that the government of syria, the legitimate government of syria invited him in. ryan crocker, i know you dispute the idea we are near the end, but would you agree nobody stands a chance of winning it, if that is a word, except for assad now? well, you have to define winning. how will he rule over, how much will he will rule, with what assets? wars like this, and i've

seen too much of it, really are not predictable. does he win if various militias, from the islamists to the kurds, are holding most of the territory in the country? does anybody win? my expectation that this willjust go on. can do is an important one. assad's not capable of retaking the entire country, especially not with the syrian kurdish forces backed by the coalition, holding the ground east of the euphrates. certainly, also, not in the south. where israel has a stake in preventing the regime from extending control to the border. probably in co—ordination and in agreement with russia.

the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu will talk about israeli red lines with respect to infiltration along the border and i suspect president assad's aim is to attenuate the conflict and work with allies to gain as much ground as possible, but even to rest and refit and move his forces elsewhere under a de—escalation, but there are boundaries. he is going to reach the limits, and there is where we come to the question of what next? the what's next should in theory be some sort of devolution of authority in ways that allow these small pockets... to flourish. to administer themselves. ambassador, i would like to ask a quick question about the trump memo release this evening. the last guest called it the biggest

crisis since comey was fired. is there a constitutional crisis between the fbi and the president in terms of faith? i have no idea what the specific points are. i'm not a lawyer. the crisis i see, and it is a very dangerous one, is the crisis of extreme partisanship. to release a memo drafted by republican staff and sent only to republican members on such key issues, i think is a loud warning bell. if we don't climb off this ledge of partisanship, i think some bad things will happen. thank you. now, this is the moment on newsnight when we turn up the dial and hear an impassioned argument. tonight, it's the turn of mental health campaigner, author and actor, ruby wax. we need to upgrade our mind. here's a question i get asked a lot.

why am i so bummed out, stressed out, burnt out? you know, i always thought evolution meant we get more and more perfect through time. turns out i was wrong. each time we evolve, we get better at dealing with danger. ruby wax. now, there's new evidence that the testing regime that keeps our buildings safe from fire is fundamentally flawed. the company that makes celotex, the insulation used in grenfell tower, has retracted the result of the test it relied upon to sell the product for use on tall buildings. the retraction‘s because a major error was made in the safety tests — they added an additional layer of fire—resistant material onto the test design without telling test scientists. that admission is the latest in a series of clarifications by the firm, and it raises serious questions about how fire testing in this country works, and how confident the public can be that the necessary standards are being met. chris cook has our report.

this week, there was a curious new development in what we know about how dangerous cladding came to be on towers across the country, including grenfell tower, where the cladding had such a terrible cost. a lot of attention has been paid to the cladding's outer layer. aluminium panels, which had a combustible plastic core. those flammable panels were critical to the disaster. but beneath them was a much thicker layer of flammable plastic foam insulation, a product sold under the name celotex rs5000. celotex is an excellent insulator. for any given weight or thickness of the material, it helps keep homes very warm. but it's combustible, so can only be used on tall buildings in certain designs, designs that have been carefully assembled on a rig like this and then tested against fire. we already know the design at grenfell was never tested, but this week, the makers of celotex announced they were withdrawing the only such test they had prior to the fire.

back in 2014, the company that makes celotex insulation sought to test a design that was very different to the design used at the grenfell tower. it was a design that would hem the combustible insulation in on all sides with very flameproof material. but what they actually installed at the test centre for testing was a slightly different design than the test centre scientists were expecting. it was a design that would be more likely to pass the test, based on subsequent test results, there's very strong reason to suppose that the original design would have passed anyway. but, this raises a serious question. why is it that it took four years and the fire at grenfell tower for anyone to notice this very serious breach in the testing regime? and there's more. in 2011, celotex passed a test relating to a flame‘s ability to travel over the surface of the insulation, but it failed a retest last year.

a separate test found it wasn't as good as previously thought at insulating homes. we don't know quite what is going on here. a scientist who developed celotex products long before they went on tall buildings thinks part of the issue is that these tests are all done in secret. what i think is it should happen. that reports, which i used as a base for product certifications, should be published. should be publicly available, so everybody can access reports and scrutinise the test reports. celotex has already suspended a number of products and is retesting them, and its seeking to establish what the safety consequences of this are. but as the ongoing review of building regulations has found, the problems we have go well

beyond one insulation company. that was chris cook and he is here now. do you sense it helps us to understand grenfell better? it helps us understand the picture in an important way. we have talked a lot over the last months about how, for example, there are companies that will test one design for fire safety and take a totally different design and say they are basically the same, even though we know they are not. we have talked about the transparency problem about how you can live in on of these towers with potentially dangerous cladding and you are not allowed to see the evidence that says the building you are living in is safe. this adds a new angle to both of those things, which is what if the tests that happen are terrible, what if they are just wrong? what if the tests are just allowing bad cladding designs through? in that situation, those two

problems that you cannot see the evidence and the fact people might be manipulating evidence to get unsafe designs onto building become worse. chris, thank you very much. cast your mind back to that turbulent few months of the 2017 election campaign. the terrorist attacks in london and manchester, the leaked labour manifesto, the tory u—turn on social care, alongside the insistence nothing had changed. and then the night itself. exit polls. victories. defeats. and lord buckethead. that is, perhaps, a journalist's take on it. but what would an artist find? cornelia parker was named the official artist of the 2017 election. and in an exclusive interview with steve smith, she reveals for the first time how she saw it, and what she created from it. it took a lot of negotiating and time and permissions, and nothing moves fast, so it was quite a challenge, but it was fantastic to have that opportunity. i needed a drone, i think, because i wanted to have two cameras

in the house, the benign one, a dispassionate camera thatjust watches the drone do its stuff. a kind of malevolent one, which is the drone, which is a free radical that's swooping around and hunting, or surveilling. the film is called left, right and centre, and it's basically filmed at night at the beginning. it's stacks of newspapers on this desk. all the newspapers from the election period and beyond. so about five months' worth of newspapers. all of these newspapers have been read here in the houses of parliament. they are the ones that they subscribe to. i put all the right—wing newspapers on the right side, and all the left—wings on the left, and the drone disrupts all the papers and blows them all over the house, creating this terrible mess. left and right newspapers all get mingled together and they form this kind of, bombardment,

visual bombardment of news headlines, some trivial, some meaningful. a lot of your finished pieces concern the printed media, the press. but there's a view that they're rather on the way out now. yeah, but the fourth estate's not going away, people read the newspapers online, that's all. the physical object, i like the cliche of the newspaper. is that what it's become now? i think it has. and i think it's... i love all of those things in films where you see the newspapers spinning round, and, you know, on the news you always have the factory where they are printing them. so i quite like the cliche value of that. perhaps if newspapers have gone in ten years it'll be a snapshot of a time, but they haven't gone away, you know? you get off the tube at the end of the day and it's covered in evening standards.

i like that. when you see the tube all covered in evening standards. it's somehow people have digested something and they've moved on. let's talk about the instagram feed. you know, it was left completely up to me what i wanted to deliver as election artist work. and i found it very hard to boil it down to just one piece. i'd never done social media before. i really enjoyed that because it was just like my sketchbook. i take photographs all the time, so for me it was very natural to be recording all of these little snippets. then i started to use more video because i just thought, well, this action is happening, the photograph isn't going to do it. and then i thought about howl then i thought about how i could crystallise this time. that's why they made the animation, which is all of my videos and images from the instagram condensed into this flyby of the election and the aftermath. do you think that rapid sort of superfluity of images is what the voter x beer in was? i think there was so

voter x beer in was? i think there was so much happening, especially with the terrorist attacks in manchester and london bridge, the westminster attack that happened more 01’ westminster attack that happened more or less at the same time as i was being appointed