says, my vote really swim, my, ,®|lw bass“? a «jim, says, my vote really makes a that says, my vote really makes a difference, and we would like all women to walk away thinking that really is true, that they need to step up, and take part in civic life, and actually follow directly in the footsteps of those ancestors who went before them. wonderful, thank you very much, helen, and jenny waldman. thank you forjoining us. jenny waldman. thank you forjoining us. the march starts at two o'clock and we will bring that to you live on the bbc news channel. back to you. all right, frankie, and a lovely day for it, thank you very much indeed. dateline london is coming up in a few minutes but first let's check out the weather for the rest of the country... we have thundery showers around mainly eastern england and southern scotland. some filtering into northern england. some for the channel islands, wales and northern ireland. mainly dry here but cloudy and somewhat cooler than elsewhere it is just and somewhat cooler than elsewhere it isjust dry and somewhat cooler than elsewhere it is just dry and fairly sunny afternoon. the earlier cloud across

southern and eastern areas starting kissing and bread. the best of the sunshine, 24—25dc for east anglia and cooler for the eastern coast. some showers around this evening for pa rt some showers around this evening for part of scotland and south—west england. for most it is dry, some clear skies of that cloud pushes its way westwards of the night wears on. temperatures on a par with last night at 9—14dc. some warm spells of sunshine. cloudy but mainly dry for northern ireland. cloudier still for scotla nd northern ireland. cloudier still for scotland and it will see some patchy rain. otherwise dried, some sunshine and highs of 2a celsius. now it is time for dateline. hello and welcome to dateline, where each week some of the uk's best known columnists debate the week's big stories

with journalists whose dateline is london, as they report those events to the world beyond. this week, theresa may averts the resignation of her brexit negotiator — but is itjust crisis delayed? as donald trump delights the russians and alienates long—standing allies, is it g7 minus one? and the me too movement, has it moved too far or not far enough? with me agnes poirier, who writes for marianne in france. the portuguese academic and journalist eunice goes. yasmin alibhai—brown, political commentator in british newspapers. and maria margaronis, who writes for the nation but also makes time to translate modern greek poetry. i am amazed you find the time, good morning to you all. thank you for being with us. for brexiteers, membership of the european union must feel like the gordian knot. two years ago this month, the majority of those voting in a referendum said they wanted to leave. the uk will be out of the union at the end of next march. the biggest problem, though, is how to trade with the eu after the uk has left. new mechanisms are supposed to ensure that goods

can cross the border without economically damaging delays. in the case of the land border between northern ireland — out — and the republic of ireland — in — the damage could be political. in december, theresa may, the uk's prime minister agreed a fall back position in the absence of customs arrangements acceptable to both sides. the eu and the uk said in that situation northern ireland would have to remain compliant with eu standards. this week, mrs may's cabinet colleague, david davis, her chief negotiator with brussels, threatened to quit, if she accepted a back stop without an end date. i hope you are following all of this! she satisfied him but that only served to alienate the eu further. alexander the great, according to legend, didn't worry about the niceties involved in untying his knot by negotiation. instead, he simply sliced through it. maria, i suppose if that were to happen, that would be the hardest of hard brexits. how much trouble are these negotiations in? i think they are in a lot of trouble. i think in britain everyone is obsessed with the british side of it and back stops and non—back

stops and so on. but look at what is happening in europe. the whole thing is in crisis. we've just had this election in italy where we now have this strange coalition between the northern league and the 5—star movement with its anti—european stance. we have far—right governments in poland, hungary, now slovenia and the czech republic, all leaning towards russia as italy now also is apparently doing. so you know this is not just a british crisis. this is a pan—european crisis. and unless the european union also changes the particular sticking points, especially for southern european countries, they are the 3% fiscal discipline rule and the way that europe has not handled the flow of migrants and refugees, we are in trouble all around. so brexit is just part of that, agnes, but do you think this particular conflict this week tells us anything about how the two sides are shaping up ahead of that eu summit?

there will be a cast of new prime ministers, not least the new leader in spain and also in italy. well, brexit. so we learned a new word, backstop. and barnier, the irony was not lost on him. he said backstop means backstop! unless it is a stopgap. look, this is all about the irish border. the border between the european union and the uk. that is to say between ireland and northern ireland. ok, so no hard border between those two. it means the border there but northern ireland will be in the customs union and will be treated differently. and that is not acceptable. not to the uk

government nor the dup. to have the sort of crisis just before the summit, that sort of pantomime, it has been happening for two years since the referendum took place. so theresa may will probably survive the next eu summit and everyone will try to save face. and then there is this summer and then what next, september. she might not survive the party conference. because we are talking about brexit but perhaps we should stop talking about brexit and start talking about the tory party. and labour as well. the tory party has ossified between tribes, the brexiteers claiming to be the real patriots, and the soft brexiteers, the philip hammond kind of tribe saying we are the real patriots. gained last year

if that was really a thrust... in last year's general election. it doesn't seem to have capitalised on it in the polls, labour is frustrating everyone. it's having this difficult balancing act, between the remainers in the electorate and pro—leavers, is also frustrating everyone. so, yasmin, it is notjust theresa may and her government that are paralysed, this process is paralysing politics across the board. it is those russian dolls, you go from absolutely the party politics and the regional and national divides in our country to the wider, the biggest dog of all which is exactly as you said, the eu project itself. but here it seems to me that in your script you said something

about march we will be leaving. i think one should put something of a question mark because this is exactly one year, the tories fighting each other, labour fighting each other, and people, throughout all kinds coming up, and increasingly this kind of warning coming from the leave side saying, "if you take this away, "you metropolitan elites, there will be riots in the streets." i've heard that ten times in a week. kettle them and put them in the cells! i never thought i would hear you say that. iamjoking! laughter are we going to worry about the riots in the street and not apply some...? common—sense. eunice, do you agree that agnes is right and this is mainly about brinkmanship and, when push comes to shove,

both sides want a deal and they will come up with one? we don't know about that actually. we really don't know. because on the one hand as maria mentioned the european union has a handful of problems to address, brexit is only one of them. they are not terribly interested in having britain out, that's another thing. most member states would like to help britain to remain in the european union. and the british government remains undecided. they have had the same discussion for the past two years. the debate has not yet moved on. a large number of members of the cabinet, brexiteers, who think that they can have their cake and eat it. they can have the deal they want. they can sign up to the bits of the european union that they like... but not others that they don't like and that is not possible. but picking up on what maria was saying, there has been so much political change in europe

at the bottom line is that they will probably get a bit more of the cake than brussels wants to give them at the moment. the european union is very good at kicking that can up the hill, that is why the eurozone crisis hasn't yet been solved. it's out of the papers but it hasn't yet been solved. so the european union will continue to kick the can up the hill. so it means that rather than britain becoming global britain in charge of its own destiny, it is going to be discussing the european union for the next decade at the very least. and when boris says, "i wish she was more like trump," does he know anything about how the european union functions, or about diplomacy? it is a great quote because this was wednesday evening when he thought he was having a convivial dinner and it was all off the record. so people could hear what he said but it wouldn't be quoted but of course somebody recorded it, and apparently, he said that he would go in bloody hard,

that's donald trump, all sorts of chaos, everyone would think he had gone mad but actually he might get somewhere. and he doesn't have a point? no, there's a new book which analyses, you know he is supposed to be so good at doing deals. they said he was hopeless at doing deals. he said he would get £1 million, he was getting $50,000. he is not a good deal maker. you don't go around behaving like this. we will see what happens in singapore. this is a problem, it is about the egos of eton public school educated boys. who don't care about the public. these are people who have never had to budget in their lives, when they were students or in adult life. so they don't really care... a bit of a generalisation,

many tory mps would say, we come from ordinary backgrounds... over the past month we have seen the windrush scandal, all the scandals of the management of universal credit. i am terribly sorry but i see a lot of ministers doing terrible hurt to millions because they don't care. they are thinking about the grand scheme of things. just to challenge the point, they would say it is not about caring or not caring, it is caring about other people who pay taxes, many of whom are poor and trying to get better value for their money. boris johnson says there will be a bit of hurt and chaos for two or three years, that's the negotiating point. i think it is totally unacceptable. this whole thing is a total disaster. it was the wrong question put to people at the wrong time, in order to try to heal the rift in the tory party which it hasn't even done. it has only exacerbated it.

and now we've got probably a decade of wrangling over backstops and frontstops and non—whatever's instead of dealing with the real issues! as long as that? i don't know. unless the people in parliament stand up and say, "we are the power "and this is how we are going to do it for the sake of the "country," they should say. because brexit is a national crisis, this is something that requires honesty, that's all. there are great politicians in the uk, not all of them don't care about the people, but who is honest enough to say, "look, this is not in the interest of the country?" i really think it is an important point, shaun, to make, we have never had a cabinet where the vast majority are millionaires. and that makes a difference to how

you regard the poor. we have never had a gang of millionaires deciding on policies for the ordinary person. and the most impoverished. it's not the case in the british parliament though. let's broaden out further from what you were saying, maria, at the start of the programme, because the g7 taking place over this weekend has kind of illustrated, thrown the spotlight on the divisions. emmanuel macron, calling it the g6 plus one, we all know who the one is, donald trump. trump exercising this different approach, tearing up the rules. some say that in other situations it could work. maybe it could work in singapore this week. canit? we will see in the same room the two most erratic world leaders. who behave like toddlers with tantrums. we are also seeing a trump

administration going into this summit with very high hopes, being very open about the high hopes that we will reach a deal — north korea will agree to denuclearise, forgetting that these processes take a very long time. a lot of patient diplomacy. and that north korea has a very long list of demands. so they will only agree to denuclearise, to comply with international rules on nuclear weapons if for instance there's a deal with south korea. if the united states perhaps withdraws military support to south korea. if there is economic assistance to north korea. will donald trump enter the room ready to give all of that to the north korean leader? no. i think it is a big question mark. trump is a reality tv

star and in november there are mid—term elections... so he needs a win, or to call it a win. there might be a peace treaty with north korea, he might be a ruthless dictator but he is more intelligent than the american president. you'll probably get a peace treaty without much concession from north korea but we have been there before. trump's support is higher at this point than president obama's was. there is a kind of population in the united states and here and across many european nations where they want this kind of tough, macho, non—negotiating real man doing business. that scares me.

his popularity is not only not sinking, it is going up. is that in part a reflection on the perception that in international terms, president obama did not achieve very much? i think what trump's done in iran is a criminal act of destruction. without talking about israel or its nuclear arms. what it's done to the middle east is exactly what they wanted. trump wants a war. you really believe that? i believe that. israel is egging him on to have this little war. russia did very well. horribly well in syria. again, in syria, it was donald trump who set a red line which the syrians crossed and acted on it, president obama drew a red line and walked away.

you have a point when you say that obama did not do half of what he could have done. but also this is a white supremacist backlash. ta—nehisi coates wrote a piece saying that trump is the first white president, and in the sense he is. we are seeing a backlash... and american president, because this is america first but actually he could not care less about america. what about the impact on the global balance of power then? because china remains a key player in all of this. the president on the one hand has had skirmishes with the chinese about trade but not the confrontation he's been having with g7 members. last night i googled "what is the g7 for?" did you get an answer? no! other search engines are available

but you would probably get nothing from them either! the g7 is a very strange group of countries. it doesn't include the second—largest economy, which is china, it doesn't include india which is a larger economy now than italy, i don't know the rankings exactly. it was set up during the oil crisis to try to manage that. it appears to me to be a group of western european and american white nations, which are trying to run the world economy to make sure it runs for their benefit. i agree. not only an international organisation, it raises the question of whether in some ways breaking things up might be a necessary stage in world progress, that we need to have some kind

of cathartic process... but we need to know what we are going to build afterwards and this is the big problem. it's pointless. it's very dangerous. and also there is all this undertext, trump's relationship with russia, russia's alleged influence in the united states... even across europe. one has to ask, why is he courting russia now? why now, and overtly? that is a huge dilemma for the european countries, isn't it? we saw in the last few days president putin in vienna because he was marking 50 years of energy co—operation between those two countries, saying, "i do not want a divided europe." and there is a common interest, we see countries, traditionally greece has had a positive relationship, there are suggestions that some on the far right... exactly, it is about the orthodox faith... perhaps the italian prime minister

saying, perhaps russia should be back in the g7. he was slapped down firmly by some of the other leaders. there is a sense that russia matters to a lot of g7 countries so maybe the european union will have to shift on it. germany was one country being very ambivalent about russia and it has clear economic interests in russia. there's also the point, do we want russia to have a positive impact on the european continent? since the end of the cold war, russia feels completely humiliated because it is no longer a super power. to be seen as a nation that counts, that may

help to get more constructive behaviour to ukraine, this is extremely complicated because all the countries of the former soviet bloc do not want any proximity. but maybe there is some benefit in recognising at the very least that russia is a nation that counts and it should be part of some kind of conversation. but i think with putin it is difficult. i mean i am looking forward to the football... starts later this week! i have never forgotten the wonderful song by sting, ‘the russians love their children too.‘ when we talk about russia we have this hard man in our heads. there's a whole world out there now but why we have these hard men in charge, i don't think they are disrupters for the long—term good, they are disrupters because they want to end the post—war extraordinary understanding and values that came out of it and if they destroy

that we will have fascism. but we have angela merkel. i do admire germany a lot. yes, but if europe is going to survive germany has to shift on and change, it has to... george soros said quite rightly that if the eu had properly funded those nations... yasmin, the money is not enough. i've been looking at this closely in greece for the last five years. it's notjust about money, throwing money at the problem and expecting greece and italy to absorb people in dire straits is not enough. europe as a whole has to work together. and then you see hungary doing what it's doing to refugees. the choice europe will have to make is, are we going to reach

the point where we'll shoot those boat people dead ? one more grain of hope has been the announcement from the ethiopian government about the border deal struck with eritrea years ago, the reason for the enforced construction in eritrea, 12% of the eritrean population refugees, that is the solution, what are these leaders doing in europe and the west in your view, or are they engaging, in ways of reducing the flow, not by blocking the flow but by resolving problems back at home? they are. who? last week the libyan leaders were in paris, we talked about a package, you say money is not enough but a few... the libyan refugee

camps are appalling... and he keeps talking about it, the way he tries to convince angela to listen up... he doesn't want any of those migrants. libya was wrecked by france, by britain, by the us, making unilateral decision. well, the united nations... and by gaddafi. but you don't go in and destroy a country without knowing what is going to happen next. there was a cry for help from benghazi and the united nations. the west is so utterly ignorant... would it have been better to let him do what he wanted to do? we didn't make the country any better. same thing with iraq. you've got to have a ten—year plan

and you've got to know the society. the victorians, the imperialists, when they went into the middle east they spoke the languages, even the bedouin tribal and bridges, they spoke the languages, even the bedouin tribal languages, they knew the societies, which they took control of. we are in the middle of this great gap of information and knowledge and trust and then we go in. i don't think it helps. as we look at the end of the g7 summit that perhaps has no place any more in your collective view, what is your hope for what might emerge, if we can get beyond this uncertain phase? does human creativity give you cause for hope? i don't know. i wish i did know. but i think yasmin is right

that what we are seeing is the unravelling of that post—war consensus which has been going on slowly for some time. i remember in 2003 tony blair saying we needed to rewrite the refugee convention. the world has changed, those rules were set up in a sort of atlanticist world. we have a very different economic structure, we have the rise of china and india and much larger migration flows but those basic values about human rights, about making peace and the geneva convention and all those things seem to me to be absolutely essential. it seems to be a horrible truth that about human beings, in times of uncertainty people to authoritarian, frightened right wing regimes. we will leave it there, maria, yasmin, eunice, agnes, no time for the #metoo movement this week but i'm sure we will be

talking about it shortly. that's it for dateline this week. thank you for watching. many places will be dry with warm sunshine today but there are still thunderstorms in the forecast in eastern parts of scotland, northern england and perhaps a few for the channel islands as well. for most, it is dry, plenty of sunshine. can see how those showers are starting to develop across eastern scotland. filtering down into northern ingham. cloudy for northern ireland and a few showers for wales. look out for if you shop showers in the channel islands. highs between i9—24dc. for most, a fine end to the day. most

showers should fade away but we keep going across parts scotland and england. that cloud starting to feel back in. those between 9—14dc. for most of england and wales tomorrow, dry warm spells. much more cloud across scotland and a bit of patchy rain through the afternoon. maybe a few showers creeping into northern ingham. highs between 18—24dc. this is bbc news. i'm ben brown. the headlines at midday: the north korea leader kimjong—un is welcomed to singapore — ahead of an historic summit with us president, donald trump. president trump is currently en route to singapore and expected to arrive later today. the two men will hold talks on denuclearisation. meanwhile, the g7 summit ends in disarray over trade tariffs —

president trump lashes out at the canadian prime minister, calling him dishonest and weak. i have made it very clear to the president that it is not something we relish doing, but it is something that we absolutely will do. because canadians, we're polite, we're reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.