this is bbc news. the headlines: representatives of around 200 nations at a un climate change summit in poland have reached agreement over how to implement the paris accord. talks had continued for an extra day, but some critics say the deal doesn't put enough pressure on countries to cut their emissions. there've been scuffles in paris between groups of yellow vest anti—government protesters and police. it's the fifth consecutive weekend of nationwide protests in france over issues including the cost of living. after decades of negotiations, the historic council of orthodox bishops in kiev has created a new ukrainian church. the country's president has hailed the move as the final step in independence from russia. and a new tomb, believed to date back around 4,500 years, has been discovered in the saqqara pyramid complex in egypt. now on bbc news — dateline london. hello and welcome to

dateline london, the programme which pitches some of the uk's leading columnists against the foreign correspondents who file stories for the folks back home with the dateline london. this week, theresa may's mps decide her career can die another day after the prime minister reaches the same conclusion about her own brexit deal. from russia with love — a gun activist pleads guilty to conspiracy, and donald trump's lawyer is sentenced, he says, for covering up donald trump's "dirty deeds". but are we any closer to the truth of the alleged russia connection? with me — jeff mcallister, us writer and broadcaster, tim montgomerie, journalist

and founder of a website for british conservatives. uk political commentator yasmin ali—bhai—brown, and thomas kielinger, for many years the german paper die welt‘s man in london, now a biographer of both angela merkel and the queen. by any measure, the british conservative party is among the oldest and the most successful of political parties in any democracy. it's also one of the most brutal — when a leader is failing, it generally doesn't let sentiment cloud itsjudgement. on wednesday, having pulled the parliamentary vote on the brexit deal because she would lose, theresa may faced — and survived — a vote of no confidence in her leadership. she remains prime minister of brexit. one third of her 300—plus mps wanted her to go. the next day, this most effective of vote—winning machines, these ruthlessly pragmatic politicians, were taking lumps out of one another. the chancellor called the brexiteers in his party "extremists", they accused him of "turning on your own party". a former attorney general said brexit "is at risk of tearing us apart". a minister in the foreign office ventured that "after the apocalypse, all that will be left will be ants

and tory mps complaining about europe and their leader". that same day, theresa may went to brussels asking for help. she got nothing. tim montgomerie, the spanish daily newspaper posed this question rhetorically, i expect. why should brussels concede anything to a prime minister who lack support back home? indeed. and why should brussels concede anything when perhaps a concession doesn't even guarantee the withdrawal agreement passing? this is the great problem. normally when i come on programmes like this, we may be in a mess but i have a clear idea of something that will make a difference, that will take us all forward, but i'm getting to the point now where i don't know what the obvious solution is to this problem, and i'm sure brussels thinks exactly the same. theresa may is sticking doggedly to her withdrawal agreement, but even if she got the legal guarantees she is seeking on the backstop, she called the vote off this week because she was probably 100 votes short.

100 votes, that many? even getting a lot of those back, she would even lose the vote on her withdrawal agreement. liam fox was quoted as saying, "i'm not even sure cabinet will agree to it being voted on again". are we at a point where the other ministers in her cabinet will start flexing their muscles? the rules of the conservative party mean that if you challenge your leader and fail in a vote of no—confidence, you are safe for a year. there is no way backbench tory mps can challenge the prime so, there will be much more expectation on conservative mp5 or cabinet ministers to be more difficult, if you like, to theresa may and to start asserting themselves much more aggressively, because we are nowjust two or three months away from having to resolve something that, at the moment, looks unresolvable with theresa may's current plan. amber rudd, who was home secretary and came back as work

and pensions secretary, said, "we need to reach out, find a consensus in parliament, notjust within our own party". she will not get it. actually, it is difficult for me, as a feminist, to say this because at times before i felt the way mrs may being treated by this gang of hounding men of extremists was not good, but i am reaching the conclusion that the problem is theresa may. she can't reach out to anyone. it is extraordinary, she is not a collegiate person. she leaves her own cabinet out. i'm not talking about the hounds here, i'm talking about ordinary normal conservatives. she sounds to me more and more likejulius caesar, i have to say. all consuming, i know what is best for the country, i am the voice of state. we will see the ides of march coming on her soon, i think. she was awful in the home office, she created the "hostile atmosphere" towards immigrants. it is all about her. i would say, i understand this argument, but structurally she has

been asked to deliver something that is impossible, this is the real problem. fundamentally, the referendum means that parliament does not know what to do because we have to honour the people's vote, even if it wasn't entirely overwhelming. that is the philosophy. she has to try and deliver a brexit of some sort. even a brexit compromise that you can cobble together, which is the most that the european union will ever possibly go for, the conservative party never

would go for. i don't think talking to people and being nice to them would square that circle. what i'm saying is she is not a political pragmatist. she shouldn't have called for the election for starters. iama i am a passionate, fundamentalist remainer. to think she could pull off an election was one of her biggest mistakes. then showed her weakness of not calling for the vote. she puts herself across... she even wore blue and said she would handbag the europeans! we have lost such respect in europe and across the world. i am tempted to disagree, yasmin. on many issues i am your ally, especially about what you said about these men folk ganging up on theresa may — i felt

exactly as you did. there is something in her determination which makes me think that she wants this whole exercise to fail. she was an original remainer. she inherited a toxic charge to put brexit through and she is leading us through all these hoops to prove that this is an impossible proposition for this country to leave, all other options remaining will fall by the wayside and by default there will be one option left — which is to have a people's vote. she is a stubborn woman. stubborn all right, but in the pursuit of the impossible. every time... every time she said she wouldn't do something, she does the opposite. where is the grand plan? it is a machiavellian idea thinking she wants to fail. she may have no option anyway. we will either crash out or see some kind of system that we can't see any parliamentary majority for.

the only thing that makes any sense is a second vote. thomas, let me ask you a question that i haven't heard a satisfactory answer for. the backstop is not on the table, leo varadkar has said. we believe that is the reason she can't get this thing through. the purpose of the backstop is to prevent a hard border. if there is no—deal brexit, there will be a hard border. so why is the european union not prepared to concede on the backstop? i don't think the european union knows what they want or not. they have so far decided to leave it to the british people. this country made up its mind. i'm sure they are as unsure as people in this country as to what to do next. they are hoping...

the idea you could have negotiated a trade deal between the eu and britain within three years is out of the question. you can't get trade deals that quickly. even though we are already aligned in so many ways? it took seven years for the deal with canada. i don't think that is the answer. it is doubly ironic for theresa may to go looking for a wet nurse for brexit in europe of all places. my hunch is she wants to see it fail and then go to a people's vote. i'm not sure she would trust jean—claude juncker with a baby! in terms of the conservative party, what happened this week? the vote was triggered, the no—confidence vote. she has lost support amongst the brexiteers, but also quite a lot of other mps who don't fit in that camp of strong brexiteers, yet she is still in office. she is, but the rebellion she suffered this week, ii7 conservative mps voted

against her, a third of her party, that was when she promised to step down before the next election and she promised to get legal guarantees for the backstop. if she didn't get that, i think you would've seen the rebellion of nearly half of the party. this is a woman who called an unnecessary election and lost the tory majority. so why do conservative mps believe her when she says, "i can get these assurances", when there was no evidence for that? i think they are desperate. like a lot of us around this table, seeing any way forward is incredibly difficult. it is gridlock. one of the things that my industry

need to take some responsibility for, the way we tell the story — the eu is bullying us, it's being uncompromising. as i think the prime minister of luxembourg said, "brexit was your decision, not ours". we are recollected, we believe in what you're doing. it may be difficult... we have negotiated very badly, though. agreeing to the divorce settlement before... britain brought this on to herself, no foreign foes stared her down and challenged her. it was all by her own wanting. the country has always been united when it comes against some foreign foe, now you have a domestic issue. this is a civil war.

it has been ripped asunder, it is shocking. in some ways, it depends how you analyse the brexit vote, i don't think people who voted for brexit understood the strange things about backstop and trade deals. if they feel that they want to be part of this organisation, but the majority didn't want to be part of it, everything else is details for the lawyers. everybody says it all has to be legal, but poland is support to join the euro, nobody believes they will. we should be careful not to fall in with this thing that is happening here, it is all about emotion. this country more than others has never fallen in with emotional politics. i grew up in an african country and if you want to see emotional

politics, theyjust beat each other up in the ugandan parliament! let's be rational and talk about this in a sensible way. the problem has been over the emotion of it on both sides. the point i wanted to make was people thought they were voting for something, but the result is so different. it is the same in the united states about voting for donald trump, there was frustration at the system — he is a breath of fresh air, we can get something radically new. it turns out that the details don't work out that way. in a mature system where you don't kill each other in the parliament, it can step back and say, maybe we have made a fundamental mistake. if i can inject a note of optimism! i am pessimistic in the short term. this will be a very difficult transition. in the long term, i am optimistic, notjust because of the fundamentals

of britain, but because of the fundamentals of the european union, as well. this is an organisation that will be 27 member states and they can't agree on very much. there are political cycles, economic cycles, they all run on different cycles. they clash all the time. i think it will be an organisation that will be increasingly dysfunctional. as we transition out of it on this bumpy period, we will be better off to be not part of an organisation that struggles to make decisions and is declining as a share of the economy of the world. we are in difficult times, but will be ok. but, tim, they are discovering themselves they are on the verge of dysfunction themselves, they have begun burying the idea of an even closer union. a more grown—up group of society

your argument is that the uk is leaving at the wrong time? we need to have good intergovernmental relations which flies in the face... the bigger danger is facing up to russia. it has not done a good job so far. all the russian assertiveness has happened since we have been part of the european union. the idea that the european union could stop this is nonsense. the western democracies need to come together to oppose this. nobody has mentioned the power of china. it's only by having a big international block... nobody's mentioned what china is doing. i was in uganda — actually, china is everywhere there. as an individual country, as i think a norwegian politician said, there are small countries and countries which don't yet know they are small,

and we are one of them. i'm glad you mentioned china. and russia. the love affair between a russian woman and a donor to the us republican party isjust one more thread in the web of influence woven by moscow in its attempts to affect american policy. on wednesday, michael cohen, donald trump's former personal lawyer, was jailed for breaching the law on funding election campaigns and for lying to congress about it. prosecutors say that during the presidential election, he paid off two women claiming affairs with mr trump. mr cohen says he was acting under the president's instructions to cover up his "dirty deeds". the president says he never directed his lawyer to break the law. meanwhile, marina butina, the russian gun activist, pleaded guilty to conspiracy. the week before, us media was abuzz with the revelation that general michael flynn, donald trump's first national security adviser, had given 19 interviews to the special prosecutor examining the alleged russia connection. what are we to make from what we have heard over the last week or so about

the progress that the mueller investigation is making? i think we can assume there is progress. my hat is off to him, because in this very difficult environment, he has played it absolutely buy the book. they do not leak. they are not giving columnists a peak in advance. the way we find out what he's doing is when the lawyers of the people he is targeting end up talking to the press. that is an uncertain few of what is happening. it appears that the russia connection, the russian farms, the connection between wikileaks, and people close to his campaign meeting in trump tower, but what was interesting about some of michael cohen's revelations last week was that from wanted to build our hotel in moscow through the campaign, even though trump said he wasn't doing it.

when trump lies, you can find him in the lie, it is a sign of what he is worried about covering up. the washington post came up with a new category — there are one, two, three, four—star pinocchios, then a bottomless pinocchio. so a lie that is repeated so many times, there is no relationship to fact checking. he is the only holder of the bottomless pinocchio. we are talking about the leader of one of the most important countries in the world, terrible. adam schiff, the incoming chairman of the house intelligence committee, says he will follow the money, go after tax returns, go after deutsche bank. there was always thought that money—laundering going on. there was a new legal problems, which raised four times as much money as obama's did. a big slush fund. looks like foreign donors from the gulf, saudi arabia and russia. these are all allegations

that mueller has to try to prove or disprove. is there a sense of who is most useful to him in digging into this? i don't know. this is the classic investigation technique of a mafia organisation or white collar crime in general, you go after the little fish, you see what they produce. it looks like michael cohen's papers and tape recordings in a raid six months ago seemed to be useful for this inaugural committee slush fund, and then there will be somebody else who will turn. i don't think it will be all tied up in the next month! this one is going to run and run. like our brexit in britain. the most fascinating thing that michael cohen said is that this president does not deserve loyalty. how much longer will american people give him loyalty?

a much longer can use suffer the ignominy of a man like him, so much in disgrace by his own words, even his own people say he is a liar. you can't go on feeling loyalty towards your chief executive when he is under such accusations. we have a very split system, a separate media environment, the fox news world think he has been set upon by liberal media interests, the democrats and a lot of it is lies and made up. yes, he has mistakes, but that it is basically unfair. that is a third of the electorate, basically. those are the ones still dominating the republican party. the only way you can get rid of trump is impeachment, he will not be indicted, it is department policy. it will not happen from the justice department. that means he can't get brought out of office while the republicans aren't willing to turn on him. why did michael cohen

do what he did? it is something i have never read explained. i don't know entirely. i think he felt he might spend a lot of time injail. reduced the sentence, yeah? he also realised that trump sold out, and he gave his fealty and almost a juvenile way. he believed in this guy, he said he would take a bullet for him. he threatened journalists with killing them if they didn't run better stories. when you are not any more useful to trump, you get sold down the river. you raise this question about the amount of influence russia is attempting to exert. isn't there a danger that in our collective media obsession with trump and exposing the flaws of the man, that we are missing the bigger story. donald trump could be gone in 18 months, two years even if he survives his full term.

president putin is likely to still be in office. one of the great derelictions of duty by trump is to say all those intelligence reports saying there was russian interference in the election were all lies and covered up, and he has done nothing to safeguard elections. they need to come to terms with this new media world, and it really requires high—level attention and energy. this administration is much tougher on russia in various ways. i completely agree with you on the election. but a whole new round of sanctions might be about to come in against russia as well, partly because of the aftermath of the attack in salisbury. also, after obama really tolerated russia, not abiding by international arms treaties, donald trump has said that he is willing to take america out of that if russia doesn't start behaving. so, it's not a uniform picture, a picture of appeasement.

talking about china in the last segment, i don't know whether donald trump will sustain it, but we have, compared to previous administrations, compared to the european union, we actually have an american president finally saying, "you are ripping off our intellectual property, "you're behaving badly and international "currency markets and we have had enough of it." but the other countries weren't doing anything anyway. and this is why i don't actually think the character think will bring trump down. maybe it should, but i think people knew before he was elected he wasn't exactly somebody who treated women well, for example, but they wanted conservative supreme court justices, they wanted tax cuts and they wanted things like that. so long as he keeps keeping his promises, which might be harder now the democrats are about to take over the house of representatives, but i think that's what keeps is linked to his base, rightly or wrongly. i think some of the focus on china is that he doesn't really want to do

anything about russia because there is an underbelly. but he is doing some things about russia. but he is not doing what he should be doing on russia. i don't know these stories, if they were true. that would undermine his presidency, that would... that is why he is not going that way. are you optimistic that the american system will correct any faults? in the long run, we are all dead! apart from the ants! i think there is something very unsettling about the hollowing out of the norms. it is notjust the laws, it's the expectations that people have of how systems should behave, and trump has ridden through so many of them, and he is being followed by other

politicians in his wake, that is the most dangerous thing. it is notjust being nice to women, the allegations are atrocious. let me leave you with this thought. australia's federal parliament has been on holiday this week. it won't be back until the middle of february and is off for the whole of march. a pa rt—time parliament. has anyone told theresa may? dateline london is here every week. next time, i'll look back at the events of 2018. until then, goodbye. hello there. good morning. the weather for sunday looks very different to saturday. things are improving now. we had everything really on the picture on saturday, including some freezing rain,

which is rare in the uk, but also very dangerous. the worst is now over. for a short while, we've got this amber snow warning from the met office for scotland, north of the central belt. but even after the early hours, towards the end of the night, even here, the snow should tend to ease off. the main belt of cloud that brought that mixture of rain, snow and freezing rain, sweeping out into the north sea. that curl of cloud behind bringing some wet weather for a while in northern england, pushing into scotland, increasingly snow up over the hills as the storm moves away, leaving us with more of a south—westerly airflow. and these are the temperatures we're looking at at the end of the night. a little bit milder, still some icy patches for northern england and particularly in scotland, where there will be some further wintry showers around, but the winds will be lighter by this stage. we will see those showers in scotland becoming fewer, more sunshine arriving with sunny spells for northern ireland, and the morning should be dry and sunny for most of england and wales. but we'll see this showery rain gathering across western parts of england and wales, moving through the english channel. some heavy bursts of rain in the afternoon,

but it will be a better day on the whole. lighter winds, much milder air across the uk as well. really cold air is still across scandinavia and across the north—east of europe. but increasingly, we're getting south—westerly winds. so, atlantic winds, drags in milderair, unsettled, changeable weather, yes, but on monday, we're in between two weather fronts, so most places will have a dry day, with some morning mist and fog, i think, for scotland, after that earlier snow. plenty of sunshine elsewhere. we'll see the wind picking up. it will introduce a few showers into western areas, ahead of the main rain band, which isjust holding off to the north—west even by the end of the day. but it's the southerly winds, south—westerly winds, so mild, even some double—figure temperatures for belfast and the central belt of scotland. the main driver of the weather is going to be that area of low pressure, which pushes ahead this weather front here. but it is moving very erratically eastwards, there's waves on it, that means there's pulses of heavy rain and with some snow melt, and some heavy rain likely to be some flooding. how quickly east it moves across that's open to doubt.

we may see the weather improving in northern ireland. double—figure temperatures everywhere on tuesday. whilst that rain moves away overnight, we're then back into sunshine and showers through wednesday and possibly into thursday, but we've still got the winds from the south—west, so for all of us, it should be a bit milder. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: cheering. a last minute deal at the un climate conference — critics say it doesn't go far enough — but the delegates are delighted. an ambition that will ensure that oui’ an ambition that will ensure that our children and their children look back at our legacy and recognise that their parents and grandparents took the right decisions. several thousand yellow vest protesters take to the streets again

in paris — but the numbers are smaller than on previous weekends. ukraine's president proclaims the creation of an independent orthodox church — russia denounces it as a political move. and... cheering