to become the fourth fastest woman in history. i am not sure they can catch him. and weir will win once again in london. britain's david weir won the men's elite wheelchair race, for the eighth time. and australia's madison de rozario won the women's. now on bbc news, it's time for politics europe. hello and welcome to politics europe, your regular

guide to the top stories in brussels and strasbourg. on today's programme, the irish border threatens to scupper the brexit talks again. can the uk persuade the eu that there's an alternative to staying in the customs union? president macron wows the european parliament with his vision for the european union, can it revive the block's fortunes of post—brexit? and why is the eu preparing to buy a military grade laser? so all that to come and more in the next half an hour. joining me for all of it, polly toynbee of the guardian, and camilla tominey of the express. welcome to you both. here is our guide to the latest from europe in just 60 seconds. there has been some uncharacteristically warm weather across europe this week, but in strasbourg things were not quite so sunny for martin selmayr,

top civil servant and former aide to jean—claude juncker. the european parliament called on the commission to reassess it's nomination process. at the same time, the windrush fiasco in the uk lead some meps to raise concerns about the registration of eu citizens after brexit. certainly after the windrush scandal in britain, are we going to be sure that the same is not happening to our european citizens? there are more questions for politicians in malta, as 18 international news organisations came together to launch the daphne project. it seeks to continue the work of an investigative journalist daphne ca ruana galizia, who was murdered last year. and could the irish border be set to derail brexit once again, with the eu already having said non to the uk's tentative proposals? well, let's pick up on the progress of the brexit negotiations, we are joined by the telegraph's

europe editor peter foster and the conservative mep david campbell bannerman. welcome to both of you. peter foster, tell us about your story today, you have reported the ireland brexit proposal is in tatters. downing street disagrees. downing street has got to be rather careful with its words. they say they could find a solution if all sides were together productively. that's a big if. what we saw this week, on wednesday, was the end of five rounds of technical negotiations after the european council in march. and my story is essentially that is the two options theresa may put forward in the mansion house speech have been rejected by the eu. the idea that we'll collect tariffs on behalf of the eu has been ruled out and the idea that we can sum avoid a hard border in northern ireland by using technical solutions and by using technical solutions and trusted trader schemes. it is looking extremely shaky. do you except that, that the personals from theresa may

have pretty much been eliminated. i think the customs partnership, the bigger picture stuff, is in difficulty. the gameplan, on the technical side i don't agree with that at all, i have done my own paper, and the eu's own advisor has come up with a solution already. what they are doing, the game plan is to use the northern ireland border issue to keep us locked in the customs union. they are terrified of us being supercompetitive outside of the eu. right, but if they have rejected those two proposals and the uk government has signed up to the third backstop solution, which is keeping northern ireland in a customs union if not the whole uk, what is the alternative for theresa may? as i say, my research on a technical solution, you're not talking about canada us, you're not in a 370 million, it's six and a half million.

it is more people than cross the turkish eu border under a customs union, the same customs union, twice as many cross the border than the entire population of northern ireland. you still think the technical solution is viable. what do you say to that? where does it leave the negotiations? it leaves mrs may trying to square a triangle. she has made three promises, there won't be a hard border in northern ireland, there won't be border in the irish sea, she will leave the customs union. only two of those can hold true at any one time. i think technical solutions could have a role to play. what is clear from, if you read my story, from what is coming out of brussels, technical solutions can have a role to play at the margin, but in order to get there the starting point is that we join the customs union. michel barnier has said that himself. a very senior irish diplomats

are to be the customs union doesn't fix everything but without it can't fix anything. the next step of that is the eu are clear that the customs union doesn't fix everything and you will need high levels of alignment. this is why it is so toxic for brexiteers, for david davis, to get to a world where those technical fixes work you end up pretty close to brexit in name only. will we be in the customs in all but name? well, we have got to avoid that. the customs union has 20,000 tariffs. i am amazed that labour are supporting the customs union. you're talking about hurting the poor. 60% tariffs on shoes, on meats, apparel... but with this border issue in ireland, or will britain have to stay in the customs union? no, their own advisor has an issue to it now. it is being rejected by the eu. where does it go from here? polly, do you think, at this point, that theresa may, even though she has categorically said and promised britain will not be in the customs union, that she is going to renege that? it has been put perfectly.

she is having to renege all the time because she made red lines that are contradictory. she made an impossible trying all. my hunch is that we will end up in something so like the customs union, it may not be called the customs union, because in the end that is what suits us. the fantasy of all this trade elsewhere compared with the tariffs and the barriers put up against us if we don't are just so daunting, as one industry after another discovers what is about to hit them, including even, ironically, the fishing industry, who would not be able to sell their fish if there was no deal and no proper customs union. do you agree that is a more likely scenario for the government to agree to? not at all. why? even the eu, their official position, they have given ground on services, they will pass services, we will have 100% tariff free, 100% quota free deal. that is where we are at. they have agreed that. because we import so much more.

we will be their largest customer outside the... all right. let us get back to the negotiations. michel barnier, according to you, has announced that the talks are going to pause until the northern ireland issue is resolved, is that right? not precisely, actually. what i say in my report is that michel barnier has ended the internal scoping process of the eu. the discussion of the eu about what it looks like has essentially reached a pause because there isn't much else to talk about. until the brits come forward with a workable solution you don't know what it will look like. if we don't get a deal on ireland byjune, you will be looking at an increasingly flimsy document, non—binding trade document, to go with the agreement in october. do you agree that time is running out? the pressure is on. the point is, we don't have any tariffs. the point about negotiations is it is all about getting rid of tariffs. we don't have any to get rid of.

what makes you think the eu is going to do an about turn on this issue, on northern ireland? it is putting pressure on because its preferred policy is to force us to stay in the customs union, but that is absolutely ridiculous. not our policy. the policy hasn't changed. it is not as pressure from the eu, it is pressure here too. the house of lords, as you know, defeated the governor is part of the eu withdrawal bill. how much do you blame the tory colleagues in the lords? i think their vote was absolutely shameful. here you have a very privileged group of people forcing people to be hurt more by their 20,000 tariffs... that is absolute nonsense. the idea that the conservative party and the brexiteers are standing for the poor... have you spoken to the poor? sorry, the customs union... let's not have a battle about who has spoken more to the poor. carry on with what you were saying. this is realms of unreality. we are going to get everything we want and we don't have to give

anything away instead. what alarms me most of all about the irish border is that i hear a number of conservatives, including borisjohnson, suddenly saying, well, you know, the good friday agreement, it's time we renegotiated, rethought it and you think right, are they really willing to make that sacrifice, over 3000 people killed and they are willing to go back to those days. i think any undermining of the good friday agreement, particularly as things are very tense in northern ireland anyway with a government in power, is very alarming. how dangerous is this moment? for theresa may. surely the only people undermining the good friday agreement would be the eu if they force a hardboard northern ireland. the eu has said it doesn't want it, britain says it does not want it, and ireland has said it doesn't want it. this is a negotiation. the government has another strategy. the brexiteers will sake say no deal. it leaves a massive problem for ireland. if it has the common external tariffs slapped on it will have tariffs slapped on beef and it will go bankrupt. if we withdraw the £40 billion pot of cash the eu goes bankrupt. it will have to turnaround

to all of the countries and they could you give us more pleased because we have lost britain's 40 billion. that is a fairly good... where we are now, how much pressure is theresa may under politically here? we have had the house of lords defeat, we have had the motion tabled by tory rebels calling on the government to make being in an eu customs union a negotiating objective, how seriously should she take it? the public voted for brexit. the public does not advocate a peers against the public scenario. the public doesn't like this rhetoric about reversing brexit. brexit has happened. we must not lose sight of what the public wants. nobody knows what the public voted for. they know exactly what they voted for. no they didn't. you do not speak to them any more than i do. we know they voted for out. that is all we know. any polling has suggested that the brexit and remain vote remains the same. you have not had a load

of brexiteers pulling their hair row going i didn't vote for this. i agree. so they did know what they were voting for them. they did know. they haven't changed their mind. don't talk over each other. we know that they voted for out. i totally agree people have not changed their mind much about that. what out means is what all of this is about. i think it's clear what out means. an out that really does us harm or an out with minimal damage. the frustration is being voiced over there, the accident of history the frustrations being voiced over there, the accident of history creates an external eu border in ireland. theresa may does not want to put a border in the irish sea. she has a treaty obligation, the good friday agreement, not to undo the borderless arrangement of the good friday agreement. so she cannot deliver on that. she cannot physically do that. to david's point, if the ireland thing did not exist, we could be having a discussion about trade—offs and tariffs. because she does not want to break up the united kingdom and she does

not want to ruin the good friday agreement. so what is the solution in your mind for her? she is in rocks and hard places. she has tojoin a customs union. if you want an all uk solution... she does not want to break up the union. for the sake of argument, she joins a customs union, and the devolved institutions in northern ireland, say we will be aligned on goods and agriculture. it does not solve the problem. we might have done a deal with the americans, but it will still have to be policed on the irish sea border. she can't sign up to that. i was going to say, as we sit here, we've got the commonwealth down the road. they're talking about £700 billion of deals. we cannot do our own trade deals if we stay in the customs union. i'm on the trade committee of the eu, doing a greatjob. they have not got one with china, india, the united states. thank you both for coming in. french president, emmanuel macron, did a star turn at the european parliament this week. adam fleming was there to watch it all. every month a different eu leader has hit the red carpet here at the european parliament

to give a speech sketching out their vision for the continent. no offence to the croatian prime minister or the leader or portugal, but they did not have people lining the balconies to get pictures. the man hailed as the saviour of the eu arrived to the sounds of the marseilles and the ode tojoy. his not so humble mission, a reinvigoration of europe's entire democracy. translation: a type of european civil war is reappearing where our differences, sometimes our egoistic nationalism, seem more important than that which unites us in the face of the rest of the world, where our fascination with illiberalism grows every day. there were policies among the poetry. a new fund for migrants, support for attacks on tech companies, and a call to reform for the eurozone by the end of spring. translation: before the end of this mandate we must define a roadmap

which allows us to advance step—by—step towards a banking union and the creation of a budget which allows for stability and convergence in the eurozone. he's still going. it has been about three hours now. the three hours and more of debate left meps thrilled. well, most of them. the president's speech was impressive and very practical. what to think of the president's speech? good, good. was it a blockbuster? he is such a star. what can i say? i don't agree with his policies but he is charismatic. he listened more than he spoke and that is always a good thing in a politician. thumbs up for emmanuel macron? great. i think is a visionary. he has a vision we have to support him. he was rather smaller than i thought. like napoleon, i suppose. the messiah was on his way out. next stop, berlin, to cell his plans for the euro

to the sceptical germans. the risk on the one hand, and the responsibility on the other hand, they have to go together. we in germany are against the nationalisation of national debt and we are also not in favour of an own budget for the eurozone. we would like to use the existing framework of the european institutions. so there is some way to go to realise emmanuel macron‘s eurovision. next on the red carpet, the leaders of belgium, luxembourg, poland, and in november, angela merkel. so, emmanuel macron, feted as a hero by some meps. his idea, which many will see as federalism, straightforwardly, that the eurozone should come closer together, a banking union, a bigger budget, is that going to wash? i doubt it. things are moving emotionally in the other direction. we are seeing a revival of nationalism. i don't think it is going to happen, particularly as he has been very close to the germans, but angela merkel isn't having it, and in her new government her new partners aren't

having it either. the germans are very worried at the idea that anybody else is going to control finances, that some central bank will control finances. so i do think so. i think he will be on his own. but he will get huge support for the idea that europe must remember its liberal heart, and at the moment it is letting the poles, the hungarians, get away with things that are not basic human rights that they have signed up to human rights to be members of europe, and yet they are disobeying them, with the distinction between keeping the law separate to the executive and so on. i think he might get support for saying we need to get tougher on those people not keeping to the broad principles. just broadly, in emmanuel macron, are you a fan? the jury is a bit out. he answers a straight question with a straight answer, because he is not

from a political background. he is playing an interesting game because he is obviously in favour of the federalised european project but he is also nationalistic about france. we saw him aligning with donald trump recently on the syrian bombings, and leading the way, which would have played very strongly... as the uk did. yes, i am not condemning him for that. it plays into the hands of some of the people who might not have been his natural supporters. so he's sort of, at the moment, managing to have his cake and eat it. he warned of a civil war in that speech, unless countries shun nationalism, and rising in liberalism, in favour of liberal democracy, but who is going to take lessons from emmanuel macron in poland or hungary or anywhere else, when they are asked to cede more sovereignty and when the uk is leaving? i think they will in the end, because i think europe's identity and its sense of itself is as a beacon of democracy. why do all the migrants

want to come to europe? because we are a safe place, the upholders of democracy. so why the rise of these populous parties in so many eu countries? and that is what is so alarming. they are the ex—communist countries and perhaps they have never quite absorbed the full message of... let's not conflate europe with the eu. lots of people find the eu as a political construct an anathema, but think that places italy, germany and france and britain are wonderful. it is a turning of the tide against the political construct of the eu in britain and other countries, not necessarily, i mean, of course migrants want to come to europe because europe is great. what about looking ahead ? do you support the idea of a much closer eurozone, obviously with britain outside, and are much closer eurozone? would that be good for the uk? a federalist structure, shared budgets and banking, more than they have now? well, if the eu doesn't collapse, it will be in a format anyway. weather it gets ever closer not is up to the eu.

the eu is going to struggle with that because lots of people heard jean—claude juncker speaking about increased federalisation and eu armies and the rest of it, not least funnily enough, ireland, who are not sure they want to contribute to an eu army, indeed, they are neutral and only have 5000 troops on their own soil. so some of these plans are opposed by people within the eu. so doesn't rarely matter what the uk says. what about the phenomenon of a new centrist party here in the uk? can the trick that emmanuel macron pulled off work you? admittedly, it is a different system, not presidential, but lots of talk about it. it is the different system that is the key. nobody can break to our system. it is utterly rigid and keeps newcomers out. look at ukip. you can do well but be slaughtered by the first past the post electoral system. in a presidential system, you can have somebody...

it isjolly difficult, and what macron did was amazing, but we have not got anybody. where is our macron? there has been a suggestion that arsene wenger... laughter. people might see him as a corbynista, of course, becausejeremy corbyn is a massive arsenalfan. what is interesting about the progressive movement is that on the one hand you have that guy the 50 million supporters but no mps supporting it, and on the other hand there is the umunna and soubry alliance which might have 11 or 12 mps. they don't have any money. this progressive movement has to become one... no, they are not going to be successful. will it happen or not? absolutely not. umunna and soubry aligned on europe, but think of all the things that soubry has voted for, in terms of austerity, what we have seen happening to councils. there is no meeting of the minds between labour and tory accepts

there is no meeting of the minds between labour and tory except the group about europe. let's leave it there. enough chat about macron and centrist parties. lasers might seem the stuff of star wars, both the eu is asking for bids to build a new high powered laser weapon. the plan is to build a prototype similar to this one developed by the us navy, which could take out things like drones and missiles. the uk is also developing a weapon and brussels is said to be worried they would have to rely on non—eu technology after brexit. the plans have led to some in the tabloid press claiming that could be a laser arms race between the uk and europe. here to bring some light on the subject isjustin bronk, a military technology expert with the think—tank rusi. how likely is it? there is definitely going to be some form of laser arms race but it will be between united states and china. it's also worth remembering that lasers sound terribly sexy and cool,

everybody has seen star wars, they are undeniably futuristic. that actually, in terms of what they can be used for, they have a few niche applications that are very effective, at least in theory, if you can get them to work at a higher power levels for long enough. but for most of the time, a missile or a shell from a cannon is going to be the more effective option. they have a niche role. who is in favour of driving this forward? certainly the us navy and the royal navy would love to be involved as well, the uk has an programme which we have christened dragon fire, very much after st george. the problem with a laser is that you have to have huge banks of capacity, cooling batteries, and a large power source of some kind. that basically means they work quite well in theory for ships, but for something mobile on the roads, let alone and airborne, you are stuck with some thing quite low powered. so not useful for the kinds

of things like intercepting missiles or drones that people are talking about. so navies tends to be in favour. the royal navy, on the other hand, has other budgetary commitments it is struggling to meet without laser weapons or anything else. so you would not be a fan of britain or the eu spending money on this? well, it fundamentally depends on what they want to be looking at. if we are in an era, as we seem to be, where threats, and by that we mean russia, because it is the only country that could conceivably pose a geopolitical military threat to europe, we have far more to do in terms of rebuilding stocks of basic things like spares, munitions, in order to be credibly able to fight a long war in terms of more than a few weeks against the russians. nobody ever starts a war if they think it will be long. as long as russia thinks it can't win quickly it won't fight, so that is all we need to do. have you taken thejedi spirit a little too much to heart, do you think? the tabloids here are talking about laser warfare?

can't resist it. notjust that, but james bond and austin powers and his famous laser, which would threaten to cause some kind of apocalypse. it sounds very technical and i'm glad you summarise it but it doesn't sound like it will be top of the list of the government's priorities right now. that is the impression i'm getting. there are other things they need. yes, the armed forces are in a desperate state. you could list of things they need, most of all the navy. but the idea, the concept, that there would be an arms race between europe and britain, if we get to that state of mind, then brexit is not only an economic calamity, it is an utter calamity for our future. you've ended where you started. that's the spirit. thank you for coming in and explaining that to us. that's it for now. thank you to all my guests. from all of us here, goodbye. the cloud is thinning and the rain that we've had on it, and there it was early on as it is pushing its

weight east, the rain is petering out. we are moving into the warm air in the south—east and east anglia so 24 in the south—east and east anglia so 2a degrees here could trigger sharp showers later in the day but the temperatures tumbling back further west. sunshine in most areas and showers towards the north—west. it is going to be across the northern half of the uk that will see most of the showers earlier in the night but they become fewer and brighter. westerly wind setting up and would no thunderstorms, we should get a good night's sleep. we start tomorrow with brightness and sunshine and some of that through the week ahead. there will be showers and we are back to normal spring weather and those temperatures peaking at around mid—teens. the weather will be coming in from the atlantic and we start the week with this weather system coming in our way. that will increase the cloud, bringing patchy rain but for many we start dry bright sunshine. it is northern ireland who gets the cloud and

pockets of rain through the morning into early afternoon and then we see some rain arriving at south—west scotla nd some rain arriving at south—west scotland over the irish sea. the best of the sunshine in the south—east, another lovely day. 13 to 15 is more typical of the temperatures for this time of the year. we temperatures for this time of the yea r. we start temperatures for this time of the year. we start with cloud on tuesday, in southern areas, further north, some sunshine and showers becoming more frequent and heavy in western scotland and northern ireland. then signs of another batch of rain developing into the south—west. those temperatures about 12 to 60 degrees also. the rain will push eastwards across southern areas overnight, taking away any mild, cloudy air and we are into this pressure westerly airflow and bring sunshine and showers. on thursday and friday there will be heavy and frequent showers possibly with ha ilstones frequent showers possibly with hailstones on thunderbird in between there will be sunshine. temperatures, a little disappointing. this is bbc news.

i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at three: new laws are being threatened by the health secretary, jeremy hunt, in an attempt to persuade social media companies to do more to protect children online. police and m15 could get extra powers to intervene earlier to stop terror attacks, according to a leaked government document. in the hottest london marathon on record, sir mo farah finishes third. mo farah were also collect a british record as he crosses the line. sir mo's time of two hours, six minutes and 21 seconds is a new british record — this year's race was was started by the queen. 41,000 runners are thought to have taken part in the 26—mile race.