in surrey last c m. incident in surrey last night after several children fell from a giant inflata ble several children fell from a giant inflatable slide at a fireworks event. eight children were taken to hospital initially, one is still there for observation. former cabinet secretary and head of the civil service sirjeremy heywood dies from cancer aged 56. more than 70 business leaders call for a referendum on the terms of the brexit deal. the family of a christian woman at the centre of mass protests in pakistan has asked for asylum in britain. players from leicester city football club arrive in thailand to pay their respects to the club's owner, who died in a helicopter crash last weekend. they are currently at a temple in bangkok attending his funeral. a 33—year—old man from lincolnshire has become the first person to swim around the british coast. now, shaun ley presents dateline london. hello and welcome to

dateline london, the programme that brings together some of the uk's leading columnists with correspondents from overseas who file their stories for the folks back home under the dateline london. this week, the long goodbye for germany's chancellor, brazilians choose populism over pragmatism with a president—elect who says a "good criminal is a dead criminal", and why donald trump isn't experiencing a us president's usual mid—term blues. to discuss that, thomas kielinger of germany's die welt newspaper, the anglo—greek journalist and broadcaster maria margaronis, ian birrell, contributing editor to the mail on sunday, and the us—born journalistjeff mcallister. welcome to all of you.

angela merkel jumped before she could be pushed. after last sunday saw her party lose around 10% of its support in a second regional election in succession, mrs merkel announced she would not seek a fifth term as german leader. despite heading a cross—party coalition that's creaking at the seams and is one of the reasons for her centre right party's electoral drubbing, she thinks she can remain as chancellor until 2021. is that feasible or is she just going through the motions? no, i think at the moment it is quite feasible because there is no strong leader or alternative candidate to take over from her. we have three figures who are now fighting for the party presidency, which will be decided upon in december. but this is no time for the country to want another election. the problem with angela merkel is she has overstayed her welcome, obviously, after 18 years as head of the party.

it is a long time and there is a weakening going on. but why is she weak? she is weak because in germany, wherever you look, you have coalitions. and you spoke so well about the creaking nation of the coalition, but coalitions are creaking edifices. they are never stable. you never get a sense that they know a strong way forward. they agree on the lowest common dominator. germany is expected to be a leader in europe. how can you be of leadership potential if the political culture in which you base your elected leaders and governments consists of the lowest common denominators? that is the problem that will beset whoever follows her as well. what do you think is kind of the balance sheet of the assessment of angela merkel after those long years

she has been chancellor? that is a big question! the interesting question for me about angela merkel is she seems like the last of the old guard, the last... one of the last figures really defending that old, post—war order. has she defended it or has she also helped to undermine it? the austerity policies imposed on southern european countries were one of the things that definitely helped to undermine european cohesion. her welcoming in the refugees, which i think was absolutely the right thing to do and i imagine she hoped and i certainly hope that other european countries would follow her lead and do the right thing. and they didn't. that is another thing that has helped the rise of the far right in germany and at this moment when we have very strong far right movements rising all over europe, we have steve bannon arriving with his movement to bring together far right candidates, from having run donald trump's campaign and

putting his arms around, including tommy robinson, every figure in the far right figure in europe and pushing for this. i am very sorry she is going. the reason why she has gone is because of the development of the party scene. there were four parties in government when she became chancellor. now there are seven. when you say she's the end of the old guard, it has been undermined by the break—up of the national consensus and any one of these countries which leads to the emergence of new diverse groups, and that worries me deeply because where does leadership come from in the face of such a fragmented, national, as it were, will? like all the things we are talking about today, this is something happening in one country which affects all of us. that is true. i also have to imagine that, even without angela merkel, german essential policy, values, will continue, even if it is not done with as much

heft and gravitas as she does. the desire to be in the centre of a powerful europe, not as powerful perhaps, the desire to push back on the russians a bit, to have good relations with washington as much as possible, to have a good export—orientated economy. i can't imagine any replacement for merkel deviating from the fundamental impulse of german policy. what kind of europe are we looking at? you say she wants to be the centre of a strong, workable, successful europe but the future of the eu is very much up for grabs. and if macron thinks he can inherit the vacancy that will be created by her leaving, he will have it coming because there is no consensus in europe to follow the french ideas of a european level playing field and a european finance minister, that has already run its course. so what is europe for? is that, in a sense,

her greatest achievement, that she has managed to paper over the cracks? these fissures have been developing over a long period of time. this one remarkable figure has kind of held the thing together. without her, can it hold? and of course her party is such a coalition, a weird mixture of different factions from all over the place. it is amazing she has stayed in power for so long. the extraordinary thing about angela merkel is how little we know about her, even now. 18 years in charge, 13 years in charge of germany, the most important country in europe, we don't understand this extraordinary pragmatic woman, given to these sudden lurches, whether it is helmut kohl, turn turtle on the nuclear issue, russia, i think the things we see now cast out of her, history will hail her rather more than that. she took a remarkable moral stand.

she deserves credit for it. it was good for germany. and for all the rise of the afd, she still seems remarkably popular. she will be seen as someone who has not really tackled the intrinsic problems of germany, with this obsession on keeping the sound economy, not investing in the future. and the current crisis in the eu over the italian budget, irreconcilable tension between the northern european countries and the needs of the southern european countries. to try and get to some kind of... on the point of migration, the latest election in hesse last sunday, migration hardly played a part. it was not discussed because some germans huffed and puffed about this, 1 million people suddenly arriving overnight, they will find a way. society as a whole will find a way of taking on what is good about the migrants and chuck

out those who are bad. there are scandals and murders and things like that which create irritation but, by and large, they are managing. germany is remarkably good at this and always has been. the guest workers who came in. to kick—start the german economy. i don't think her motives were entirely altruistic. she sees it can be beneficial. the guest workers from italy, they had a european background. turkey. turkey, not so, but there was this work ethic to some degree which could be merged with the germans. and also the interesting thing is the most likely successor, mertz, he is someone who has taken a hard line on integration and that is probably why he has come back and come back into politics. yes, he could bring about a new consensus on that very issue.

let's turn to a country where consensus has been absent in recent years. jair bolsonaro is a seven—term member of brazil's congress. yet in last sunday's run—off stage of the presidential election, he won convincingly as an outsider able to clean—out the stench of corruption which seems to permeate every crevice of brazil's politics. the only other really popular politician, the left of centre former president known as lula, couldn't run because he's languishing injail, another one of those caught up in what was called prosaically the car wash scandal. mr bolsonaro praises the military dictatorship which used to run the country, says he'll put business needs ahead of climate change, and will give police and army free rein to curb violent crime, which last year killed almost 64,000 people, some of them during the election campaign itself. the figures are staggering, even allowing for the fact that this is a large country. a shocking level of endemic violence, perhaps not so surprising that people should latch

onto the kind of strongman authoritarian figure when so many other politicians, the last few presidents, have been unable to do much about it. what it shows us is don't predict anything in politics. for most of his career, this guy has been a ludicrous fringe figure and suddenly he is president of one of the most important countries in the world. he has done it by hammering his political rivals and offering this tough man solution, sort of donald trump on steroids almost. which is a fearsome concept. it is really three issues. it is crime, the economic crisis and corruption. and he's going to be challenged in truth on all issues. and of course one of the things he's doing is talking about giving the police more power and basically like in the philippines accepting police murder but the trouble is the police are very heavily involved. they are very linked in a lot of these areas in the favelas, to the drug traffic, they are already...

there is racism going on in the types of attacks they are doing and it is not to me... his remarks about black brazilians have been pretty close to the knuckle. absolutely. it is an appalling situation but ultimately it may be the economy. he has hired someone who has an austere approach the economy. there are shocks ahead for brazil because what he is planning to do in terms of privatisation and pensions but it does mean that ultimately, a bit like donald trump, who we will talk about, it may be the economy that sways it because i doubt the crime situation is going to improve and may flare up worse. we have seen this in latin america before where authoritarian governments think it is possible to ride two things simultaneously, liberal on economics and hard line on issues like crime. what is the track record? do you consider hard on crime, including disappearing people, throwing them out of aeroplanes, repressing public conversation

but as we are talking about street crime. he's not talking about a more general crackdown. i don't see how you shoot your way to a social peace in brazil, especially because the gangs are mostly run by retired policemen and the whole thing is embedded. they have brought the army in in rio state. but then you look at the numbers, crime is going down, apparently, but then violence has gone up. about 900 people in the space of six months, 45% up on the same period last year, which is quite shocking. and the places where street crime is doing better is great is where they are doing community policing and the soft stuff, not the hard stuff. there are other examples. the philippines and other countries where they are bringing in the army sounds like a great idea but what is the next act? in the economy, it has been as much of a problem as the crime in making

people disaffected with the lula regime and his successors. there is the chance but i have to be dubious because this man is not a policy expert. he has never really cared much about the fine points of governing and he does not have a solution. are you worried by his elevation? immensely and the thing that worries me the most, notjust for brazil but for the whole world is his environmental... well, to call it an environmental policy is to put it completely backwards. he will open up the amazon forest to further exploitation, the indigenous areas, to mining and farming, he is planning to merge the agricultural and environment ministries, which is setting a fox to guard the chickens. and, in a week where we have had two reputable scientific reports, saying we have maybe 12 years to avert climate catastrophe and another saying we may be the first species to engineer our own extinction.

the amazon is the greatest lung of the planet. deforestation nad logging has decreased under lula, it is going up again. now we may see a further devastation of this forest which is essential for the planet. the good news is that brazil is a very vibrant democracy. it has a congress that has impeached two presidents that have stepped out of line and has courts that have been able to bring a former president to trial and conviction. it has a media that is very disrespectful of all polticians. let's hope it continues like that but with him in power, you don't know if he has plans up his sleep to curtail freedom of open debate and the media and see what happens to his detractors in future. he is very clever in his use of social media. yes, of course. it bypasses a lot of the traditional media. i will suspend my judgment about what happens to democracy in brazil until i see how he is actually putting

all his plans into action. that frightening list of intentions, but sometimes not everything which is intended which gets him into power is actually going to be put in place. but it looks a bit dubious, to use your word, about the future of democracy as well. also on the media, he has done what trump has done. talking about fake news. there have been attacks onjournalists. 0ne womanjournalist had her neck cut, there have been attacks on journalists. this is a wilful thing. they are talking about using government advertising to help supporters. he himself was stabbed during the campaign. it has been in a lot of ways a very brutal campaign. there were several candidates murdered during the course of it. in some ways, is he the consequence of the failure of the people who were they before? he's there because of the failure of the workers‘ party? of course. it is what we are seeing in so many other countries, there are deep problems in society, there are notjust divisions

and unsolved problems of crime or economic failure, or police corruption or whatever, and he is the guy that has come through this, just like in so many other countries we are seeing the same, but the fearsome thing is to see what will happen now when you have got another major economy in the hands of someone pushing very extreme policies. from an election that's over to one that's almost upon us. in the united states, the mid—terms take place on tuesday. only one third of the senate is up, but every part of the country is holding elections for their local congressman or woman, their member of the house of representatives. although these are elections for the legislature, by tradition the mid—terms are viewed as a test of the popularity of the president. both bill clinton and george w bush experienced mid—term setbacks. donald trump is certainly the most unlikely and probably the most divisive president for decades. yet, a democrat contact of mine emailed a few days ago: "steeped in the mid—term elections — so horrible". are democrats that pessimistic in general?

i think they are being careful because optimism is dangerous. hillary clinton certainly thought she was going to be president, so did everybody else, except what donald trump and four other people. you just don't know. the polls are good for the democrats, they have been consistent, they have a substantial lead in the house, they will probably take the house back. they are not likely to take the senate back because there are very few seats that are really in play. there are many more republican seat than democratic ones. early signs are that voting is going to be strong, much more participation, there has been a lot of early voting, which is generally in favour of the angry party, the one that is out of power, not the one that is in power and is defensive. but they are also quite angry, too. that seems to be part of the story of it. that is donald trump's tremendous way of doing things. and we have this strange thing

about the giant caravan of strangers and deploying the army to the border. they are going to stop these people who include apparently middle easteners and people with smallpox. wearing new sneakers bought for them by george soros. the cosmopolitans are doing all this. it is unbelievable actually that he gets away with it. and only last week, we had a shooting in a synagogue and we had the pipe bombs who all went to his opponents and the commentators and even he hinted it was a democrat, when bit is a guy living in a van with trump stickers. he has managed to rile up the base, he is so good at that. it is dangerous for the country and the future but that is the card he plays and he does it really well. the democrats have to try to do this thing, trying to be nice but also win votes.

you have been on the campaign trail over the last few weeks. are democrats kind of fighting fire with fire? have they come to terms with this critical reality? we are seeing all different things in different places. the truth is when you get outside of washington, the issues that count are the same old issues of health care, economics, jobs and such like and the economy is doing well, jobs are at a high, and a lot of people are feeling the impact of the tax cuts. they may love or hate the president but economically, a lot of them are doing well. i found a lot of people who are quite tolerant of him even if they didn't like him. clearly, there are dynamics you can see, you can see the ethnic minority vote is very hostile to him. i was very struck by the suburban women who seem, even those who supported donald trump seemed to be very unhappy with him and equally, i came across interest in west virginia, i came across a guy fighting a sort of almost donald trump of the left and he voted for trump

in 2016, he has hugely cut the republican lead. he campaigned in military uniform. he has the names of dead buddies from afghanistan and iraq tattooed on his body but equally, he speaks the language of unions and the left and everything and it is really interesting the way he is trying to come up with a different dynamic which is getting a lot of attention, away from the stuff that we hear in perhaps california or new york or boston. do you think trump is changing the democrat party? i think it is impossible for this giant gravitational force not to have some effect. they are looking to find their way, of course. they don't have an obvious presidential candidate. there is this division between the progressives and the moderates. candidates running both ways. some very interesting candidates trying to take quite left—wing positions. the governor races in georgia and florida...

trying to find a new way to maybe not bill clinton, southern moderate centrism, which has been the dominant feel of the democrat party for 20 years but who knows? trump and what he has done to the republicans has been so profound that the democrats have to find out something new. i think the two really important things in these midterms are one, for the democrats to take back the house or there can be some brake at least on trump's insanity, and the other is to see what happens with these insurgent candidates that you talk about and also people running for the house, and this is partly the aftermath of the bernie sanders campaign. the sense that hillary clinton lost, couldn't win, maybe bernie could have won. he galvanised and exposed a sort of ground swell of a very different kind of politics. presumably if those candidates do well, that will bring renewed pressure on the democrat leadership,

if there is such a thing at the moment, the democrat party officeholders that maybe they need to shift longer term in their kind of competition with trumping the republicans? it is difficult because if these people get power in the house, the republicans who are going to be left are going to be the ones who have embraced trump completely. there is no possibility for legislation. and then donald trump will play the card, i can't get anything done because of those nasty democrats. in a month, we will forget about this hopeful dynamic we had. i don't think so. the republicans are also divided. some of them are ignoring trump and fighting with trump, they don't know which way to turn. this is important for the future territory of the republican party as well. if they do well, that shores up the trump approach and if they struggle, it may encourage some of the more moderate, sensible, decent republicans to come

out against him. what you say about the economy, it is the economy, stupid, that rules the roost eventually. there is no certainty who is going to inherit from angela merkel and will be a future candidate for leadership about the same time, the economy is doing tremendously. the germans are experiencing a boom time at the moment. if donald trump gets away with a successful economy, it will be immaterial for who will be fighting for leadership, the economic issue will rule the day. if the democrats do take control of the house on tuesday, what will be the effect? how will they use that power, do you think? there will be investigations. the only thing they will be able to do is use subpoena power and the power the chairs of committees have to conduct investigations.

his tax returns and his business dealings and russia will be back. we haven't heard anything back from robert mueller. in a way, they have stopped doing anything public, indicting people in the run—up to the election. i bet there is a full order book to be used in the next month or so. and if the republicans hold on, what happens to mueller, tojeff sessions, the attorney general, what happens to james mattis the defence secretary, we are suddenly hearing might be in trouble again? trump will probably move to get rid of people. i don't think he necessarily will do it if he can't get replacements confirmed easily. that chris dobey prerogative of the senate and not the house. that is still the prerogative of the senate and not the house. it is always going to be chaotic if he is going to be in charge of the administration. in the end, could he still get through things without the house majority? is the senate enough for him

if the democrats don't have a blocking majority? the 18 supreme court justices. .. they had better hold on. what do you think about prospects for the second stage of this... in ourfinal minute, what do you think is the prospects for trump after these elections, his presidency? it depends what happens really. either the juggernaut will continue and get worse and i do think what we had been seen over the last couple of weeks is pre—election rhetoric but it has been the most horrifying couple of weeks with the shooting in the synagogue and trump having said in the last year when there was that big demonstration, there were good people on both sides, charlottesville, these things encourage the violence we have been seeing and notjust in america. the shootings by the nigerian army, where they defended it, what donald trump says has influence

across the world. thank you all very much. thank you for your company. that's all we have time for on dateline london for week. we're back next week, same time, same place. but for now, goodbye. good morning. a good deal of some today compared to yesterday, the winds not a strong either. a lot more cloud in england and was ante areas of rain, one extending from dorset and hampshire to the south with miller ‘s —— with the south midlands. either side, a

lot of clubbers brighter conditions in east anglia and the south—east, the winds not as strong. the far north of scotland will have the odd shower and gale force gusts. the winds remain a key feature, taking the club northward into scotland and northern ireland with some rain. some rain in northern england and staying damp in parts of cornwall and western wales. keeping the temperature is up, told them recently but still well clear of a frost compared to last week. not to chile on monday, a wet start in northern ireland and northern and western scotland, the rain easing of an brightening up. a few showers in the west and a few isolated showers in the east but with highs of 17. this is bbc news. the headlines at 12... the businessman, aaron banks, insists all donations he made to the leave campaign during the eu referendum complied with electoral

law and says his critics are trying to undermine brexit the electoral commission has a bias in this. everybody is biased against you. it is 52 versus 48. eight children were taken to hospital last night after falling from a giant inflatable slide at a fireworks event in surrey. most have now been discharged but one child remains under observation. we don't still know yet exactly what happened but eight children