1c?" “5- ~ (£956,135; woolf, he oversaw the strangeways enquiry after the riot in 1990. he says that we are in that kind of territory, back to pre—strangeways times, which is shocking. and jeremy corbyn is under pressure? neil kinnock appears to be applying pressure? apparently 20,000 labour members have demanded a say on brexit and neil kinnock has halted the exit altogether. it is clear thatjeremy the exit altogether. it is clear that jeremy corbyn will be confronted by some people in his shadow cabinet this week who want him to come clear on whether he wants to remain in the single market and the customs union. from the referendum, jeremy corbyn has never been clear about what his particular sta nce been clear about what his particular stance on brexit is. it has been confusing for labour party members and the rest of the country. what is the point? good question! no, i did

not say that! nigel, please! you will get me into such trouble to even imply such a thing! what is the point in changing their stance? theresa may says there will be no second referendum but it is happening. yes, i still think that there is a very small possibility that there could be. i do think it is unlikely. it would mean a change in public attitudes, and we would have to see it with people protesting or whatever. i do not think any of those would happen. brexit will go ahead but there's the possibility that you could have a second referendum and it would have to bea second referendum and it would have to be a referendum on whether we left, given the conditions we had. it isn't unreasonable for party to ask their leader on their position. there are local elections coming up... it is now perfectly clear that they do not have a clue. but we do have all of these speeches to come.

they still have to go for an away day to get their position sorted out. and angela merkel is curious as to what they will come back with. and we all? and in the independent... a lovely photograph. lizzy yarnold successfully defending her winter olympics title. and she looks about ten years old. it's a beautiful photograph. she has hit the record books, hasn't she? and she is a fan of the archers. she calls her tea tree mervyn. would you like a calls her tea tree mervyn. would you likea go? calls her tea tree mervyn. would you like a go? no! you need nerves of steel. once you start... how do you get into it? you cannot do it

easily. it isn't at most leisure centres! apparently the winter olympics are very popular with children and i think it's because it looks like magical scenery and not like sports playing field. you don't normally get to see these sports. and it is great television. it is great to watch something like that. when you see her shooting down there... you the toboggan? a sleigh! with bells! and a nice and cosy rug to sit on. and my father christmas outfit. that's it for the papers this hour. you'll both be back in an hour. next it's meet the author. if you read any of the four mick herron novels you will know what to expect in the fifth, london rules.

skulduggery and streets alive with terror, a political class that is self—centred and often corrupt, time is pressing and the threat real and the ramshackle outfit, never playing by the rules, has to try and save the day, welcome. jackson lamb and his many men and women are a pretty rough lot? sort of. they are quite ordinary people in many ways and i'm quite keen on these spies having daily lives in contemporary london. and seeing part of those lives, as

well as the jobs that they do. that's right, they don't lead gilded lives, they are not pampered and they are under enormous pressure with a terrorist threat in this book and we will go into that in some detail but not too much. they are pretty rough in the way they deal with each other in the office. what strikes me is that very seldom are they really nice to each other. very seldom. that certain bonds between different characters, not as a group very much, but there are pairings that happens the series. indeed. i like to think in the group scenes particularly, i always have at least one scene where everybody is there all at once, and on those occasions they reach some kind of harmony, usually working on the problem. it may be harmonious in that sense and they do care about each other but you never get them saying, what

are you really like? they seem to be driven by a desire not to show too much of themselves. do you think it is a characteristic of people who find themselves in that world? it may be a characteristic of people who work in offices and i focus on the ordinariness of these people. and they are spies but to an extent they could be anything and the relationships are determined by the fact they are all frustrated in their ambitions and careers and all having to work together and don't want to. and the point is that if we met any of them in the street from would have no idea what they do by the way they behave, which is the point. i was looking on the tube on the way in this morning trying to spot characters. one of the things, and i am trying not to give too much away because it is a tense plot, but there's a blackmail threat made

against someone and it is made directly by someone who is quite high up in the security establishment. do you think that in that form could happen like that? almost certainly. a real threat. we have got this photograph, and we talked about this beforehand, but we can see it involves somebody who is involved in cross dressing and therefore is going to produce an embarrassing series of stories in the papers and the question is, will he brazen it out and say, this is me, or will he fold at the threat of blackmail? part of the reason for introducing that plotline was because i was interested in allowing this character who is mostly not pleasant to have some integrity and bravery so he is facing a challenge and will he tough it out or cave, and so the decision he partly makes to tough it out indicates that as a court of integrity. when you're a character like that

in circumstances like that, do you try however hard it might be to put yourself in that position? always, i try to write characters from the inside out. the only character i don't do that with is jackson lamb himself. you see what he does and says but never what he thinks feels. to somebody who hasn't read the four preceding books and might perhaps pick up this one and go back, how would you describe jackson lamb? the best way of describing him would be to meet him. to enter his department of the secret service where all the failures get assigned. you have to go round the back of the building through the door thatjams and all the way up to the top attic and when you open the door you would find a very dark room was no natural light because he always has the blind down, and you would see a very large man

with his feet up on the desk, the air would be noxious because he smokes and is aggressively flatulent. that's how he marks his territory. do you know jackson lamb well yet or are you still discovering him? still discovering him although in the book i am working on at the moment there is more revealed about him. are you going inside him for the first time? he is saying things he has not said before. what will we learn about him that we don't know without giving away the plot. a bit more about his past. that is really the core to the character. there's a sense in which we are always meant to ask the question, how did he end up here? we might know a bit of the story but we don't know the whole story. that is partly because i don't know either yet. so it wasn't deliberate to conceal his background,

just that as you began to tease out the character you discovered as well that there was a mystery about him which is a mystification use year with the reader. the character was never meant to take the central role he has come to do but as soon as i started writing i realised there were opportunities in a way i had never done before, in order to bring humour into the books and also that larger than life character who has a past cloaked in mystery. the other fascinating thing about this story and it is quite unusual is that you set it notjust in the contemporary world, in a london principally where the threat of a terrorist act is ever present, but you have been very specific. there has been a referendum on brexit, the politicalfigures who have not a resemblance in an imitator way but a broad

resemblance to characters we might recognise only political spectrum, not as individuals but as people with points of view. quite a risky thing to do, quite bold? it didn't seem to me at the time that was the case, i was simply writing about the world i find myself in. the novel had been in preparation before the referendum and i didn't start writing until after and it changed a lot of things. i hadn't foreseen the result of the referendum, few people had, but as soon as it happened a lot of things became clear, clear from the terrorised reactions from a lot of the cabinet ministers who had organised that, from the cowardice of the prime minister as he realised what he had done, and the carnival of backstabbing in the leadership election afterwards, we it was clear we were in for a long period of farce and chaos. london rules is a thriller and dramatic events happen but the political backdrop is one we have all been living through. the other thing finally about this book is that you resist very

deliberately the idea that on the last page everything can be neatly tied up, it is all over. maybe something has happened that avoids a cataclysm but the idea that calm has been restored is not really what you are comfortable with? we live in a state of ongoing tension and it can't be solved in the final chapter. so you say, prepare to be disturbed and don't think you can relax when it is over? yes. mick herron, author of london rules, thank you very much. good evening. i hope you made the best of the sunshine today, if you had it. there will not be as much sunshine around my. coming your way, this card is filling in the

atlantic. spilling across the uk later tonight and into tomorrow. some cloud arriving in the far south—west, not as chilly here. some spots of rain but ahead, clear skies, it will turn cold quickly. some fog patches, especially in the vale of york. increasing cloud in wales and northern ireland. it may lift temperatures a bit. frost likely further north and east. minus i--3d. likely further north and east. minus 1--3d. it likely further north and east. minus i——3d. it will likely further north and east. minus 1——3d. it will lift tomorrow morning, the best of any sunshine on sunday will be in north—east wales and cheshire for a while. it will be low cloud in the west, thick enough to bring some rain and drizzle, especially in the afternoon. temperatures could be up to 11 or 12 degrees. cooler where it is brighter in the north—east. this is bbc news. the headlines at 11: the husband of the murdered mp jo cox has resigned from two charities set up in her memory after claims of sexual misconduct in the past.

henry bolton is ousted as leader of ukip, as the party face its fourth leadership election in less than 18 months. security post—brexit — theresa may said a new treaty on foreign and defence policy should be effective by next year. lizzy yarnold goes to the front, and how. an historic day for team gb at the olympics.