in texas on saturday has been charged with capital murder, which means he could face the death penalty if found guilty. 20 people died in what's being considered a terrorist attack by authorities. a vigil has been taking place to remember those who lost their lives — while in ohio people have also gathered to honour nine people who were killed in a separate shooting just hours after the attack in texas. pro—democracy protesters in hong kong are disrupting the city's transport network as they urge workers to take part in what they hope will be the biggest general strike in 50 years. but there are growing warnings from authorities who say they will not sit idly by as the political unrest worsens.

now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and welcome to the programme which brings together some of the uk's leading journalists with the foreign correspondents who write under the dateline ‘london‘ for the folks back home. last week, boris johnson was appointed prime minister and made himself ministerfor the union. but might he be a latter day lord north, who won power but lost britain's american colonies? in hong kong, eight successive weekends of protest turned violent last sunday. is china preparing a crackdown? with me this weekend are us journalist henry chu from variety international, agnes poirier who writes for the french magazine, marianne. maria margaronis, who writes

for the nation, and has presented documentaries about the greek crisis and migration, and polly toynbee, a long—standing columnist with the british newspaper the guardian. welcome to you all. boris johnson's championship of the union of england, scotland, wales and northern ireland — or "the awesome foursome," to use thejohnson argot — is looking a little bruised. at the end of a week where the uk's new prime minister carried out visits around the uk, brexit contributed to some testy exchanges — on the phone with ireland's prime minister, in person with sinn fein as he urged them to restore power—sharing in northern ireland, with the scottish leader of his own party in edinburgh, who opposes a no deal brexit. and finally with the voters, when the tories lost a by—election in the welsh seat of brecon and radnorshire. much of this is explained by the growing prospect that the uk will leave the european union at the end of october without a deal on departure and without even the start of negotiations on a future trading relationship. mrjohnson has described

the prospect as "vanishingly small", yet at the same time his chancellor announced an additional £2.1 billion for no deal planning. polly toynbee, mixed messages, to what purpose? it has been the most extraordinary opening week of any prime minister in living memory, disasters have struck from every direction. first of all the pound fell two percent and then fell again. the bank of england came out and said there was a high chance we would be in recession next year and that is without a no—deal brexit. his idea of bluffing the europeans of saying "we are going to have a no deal," they have eyeballed him and said there is no chance of us moving at all. he now looks as if he has himself boxed himself in to what may be a no deal, nobody knows whether he meant it or not but looks as if he has, and meanwhile he has had a by—election of great significance because he lost a majority of 8000 but more than that the brexit party which threatens to take significant

votes of the tory party right—wing did not do brilliantly well, but enough to deny them the seat. he has to decide now, is he going to make a pact with them to make sure they do not do that on over the country and move even further to the right? but then he might lose a lot more to the more moderate liberal democrats. he is in trouble. i was going to ask at this point about why borisjohnson has packed off one of his supporters who do the hard graft effort is no chance of movement and brussels. since he is not going to travel, he has to send somebody, not at that means much.

but it is interesting he was invited to berlin and paris, and donald tusk sent a short letter saying looking forward to discussing in detail, he has no intention to go to europe. he says he is calling their bluff but europe was never bluffing in the first place. so he has been, from the very first hours of his new government, suddenly realised in campaign really, and it looks as if we are heading to a very early election because he wants to kill off the brexit party, he is not going to kill it off but his only chance is before the 31st of october and appearing as gung ho as he is at the moment and also he has a majority of one. it is all posture, he is a poseur as well as an imposteur.

all of his travel has been to the four corners of the uk which makes sense for the prime minister but at this when you are in campaign mode that you visit these places throwing around promises of money as though it was growing on trees and making promises that you think will then actually shore up the electorate in your favour. it is not about going to the eu as you think he would in these last 100 days to secure a deal, for face—saving reasons he has to send someone. but right now all of his energies are about shoring up support in this country, not across the channel. if we do have an early election then what does the opposition do and what happened in brecon was there was a pact between the liberal democrats, plaid cymru and the greens to not to stand candidates against each other and this is how the liberal democrats won the seat. the huge question is, is labour going to be involved in any such arrangements which would be the only chance of having some certain stop

to this cliff we are about to dive off. you can do that at a local level but the forces are always different and i really do not see jeremy corbyn... you can do it and you should, they may be mangled if they do not but you look atjeremy corbyn and the very small group around him they are much more concerned about hanging on to the labour party for the far left than the fate of the labour party in an election. i think we will find is an enormous amount of tactical voting, there result was a lot anyway but with the great divide now in this country being stronger, all the posters are finding between brexit and remain as a much stronger divide than between left and right. there is an election argument on those grounds before brexit because this is the great motivator. absolutely, and there will be big tactical voting and if labour

were sensible they would make a pact so that it worked in both parties‘ interests. otherwise i think they will have a cascade of votes to the liberal democrats, because so many labour voters now care more about brexit. i think the way brexit has been this great scrambler of party loyalties amongst regular voters, not amongst mps, has been underestimated. we see how polls often actually do not truly measure what is going to happen in the electorate because this issue has become such a shibboleth that it is hard to predict what will happen. here's the thing — people say politics is downstream of culture, but the brexit we are now heading for is so clearly destructive, including for leave voters in traditional

labour constituencies, and yet this thing still holds and where is the person who is going to come out and say, look this is what you are going to get, this is what you are in fact voting for, think. you are not getting it. 0k, explain it. the explanations have been there from the beginning. the facts are dire and as have been presented in this first week to borisjohnson about the disasters that are going to happen. 90% of our sheep farming, sheep go to the eu in particular to france, the sheep will be slaughtered almost on the day after because you cannot afford to feed them. the government has talked about possibly buying up... they can buy up the sheep and we are all going to eat sheep. i think if government want to pay indefinitely for 90% of our sheep farming which is bad, money we should be using for hospitals and schools, if they want to keep sheep farmers at their relatively low standard of living that is now,

all that money just for that madness — but the point is brexit is not about reality, it's about a dream and an idea and inspiration. but what makes people wake up? what does it take? the dam is breaking now politically. 1 november might be the day. if there is a snap election i think the eu will grant an extension for the new government which might be the old government. it would give them a perfectly legitimate reason to ask for an extension without saying actually needs to delay, and election, wait and see

whart the result is. and if the whole thing collapsed then we also know already he was going to be blamed which is the eu. can i go back to the semantics of the last week, it's extraordinary how europe has been portrayed by the new government. we have borisjohnson‘s father saying we are ready to crash out, we are not afraid, remember 1940. 1940, nobody was prepared then. we were not prepared, and how is dunkirk and evacuation a victory? we have this humiliation. it is much worse than that, because the idea we have the "dunkirk spirit," we would if we were being invaded by foreigners or aliens from mars, we would be brave — but what is going to happen is we will have brought about ourselves and acute shortage of medicines, panic and supermarkets, people furious and not be able to get petrol and for those things we are very intolerant.

there were almost riots when kfc ran out of chicken. we are not resilient when it comes to minor inconvenience. whitehall insiders will remind you of the fuel protests which unnerved the labour government at the turn—of—the—century and there was great panic over that, and that was a fuel protest which briefly caused shortages of petrol. this will have been all for nothing, us hitting ourselves for no good reason. i was interested in something you said about culture and identity which brings us to the question of the union specifically. jonathan powell who advised tony blair during the good friday negotiations which brought an end to the sectarian armed violence, there are still extremists who use violence but it is a small number

and certainly not the day—to—day experience that had been for a0 years before. he said that the clever thing about the good friday agreement was that it suspended the issue of identity, you could be irish or british or northern irish and favour of all these things and you could have them simultaneously in the one geographical space of ireland. all that was at risk. is that the big challenge to the union now, of brexit, that it forces people to make choices and those binary choices create conflict? it is a very frightening choice in northern ireland because the politics are very different to the rest of great britain. it....|t. it will stir up old hostilities. we have seen how near the edge it is with the tragic shooting of a journalist. all the sinn fein mps who do not take their seats are on the border and if the border comes down

with a bang, which it would do, if there is a no—deal brexit border comes down, the eu insists that is the case, i think that is really dangerous what happens in ireland, and there is not an easy escape from it. not an easy answer. northern ireland voted to remain and this has been done to them. as did scotland. wales has now changed his mind as well. polls for quite a long while there showed that wales was moving towards remain. and in terms of the english identity where a few weeks ago you had that incredible poll that showed that tory party members were willing to jettison northern ireland altogether, jettison scotland and not even have great britain any longer be great britain, but reallyjust england and perhaps wales. providing brexit is achieved. correct, and that's why i also used that word shibboleth which is a religious totem now. it is an article of faith that transends logic. i ask you this because

you're not a european. and you're not british, and i am interested as a view from the rest of the world, henry, do you not find it equally astonishing if that threat is so great, if the risks particularly in northern ireland are so intense never mind politics in scotland, which is much more developed but the physical conflict risk is nothing like they are, that it is in ireland, that the eu would be so casual about the risk of a no—deal brexit. in the end if there is a no—deal brexit, yes you can blame the british government but the eu would be equally to blame for this, because they have established this in the withdrawal agreement and they've said, no, no, this is the consequence. i don't know about equally to blame and in terms of the view from the outside certainly from the us, which, i have to say does not necessarily follow the ins and outs of brexit quite the way we do in this country, there is the sense that this is britain voting for the blitz on itself, the spirit of resisting the blitz but you voted for it

and you are inflicting it on yourself. the eu has been consistent pretty much with what it says is the case of what their red lines are in the way the british government has not. we now have a prime minister who actually voted for a very agreement he now says was terrible and he will completely scratch. so i think it's... it's a big change. ..leads to head scratching a lot. the conservative used to be called the conservative and unionist party and still is officially, but the truth is as it has moved far to the right, it is an england party, it's a party of st george and st george's flag and they do not like the scots because they think we give too much money to the scots, and for a long time now on the right of the tory party, there has been great resentment against the scots and indeed lazy welsh that is simply not much interested in the northern irish. they quite want to be just english, well that's a huge diminishment. if it makes us much less great. the extraordinary thing is that here, well into the 21st—century

the tory party and the country has effectively been taken over by a cabal of old etonians, graduates of the oxford union, who, like jacob rees—mogg who parades this 18th century fogey. the leader of the house of commons. the leader of the house of commons persona is also deeply involved in international finance and hedge funds and so on. i mean, how has this... it's really extraordinary to see where we are now in history and what we've — the kind of long leap backwards that we have taken. interesting qustions there. now i wonder what li peng, a former prime minister of china, made of the protests in hong kong, which began before he died last month. in 1989, mr li was one of the hardline leaders who responded to days of student protest by ordering the crackdown which resulted in the massacre in tiananmen square, beijing, of hundreds of young people who'd been calling for democracy. two days before the killings he told student leaders, "the situation will not develop as you wish and expect".

there's a similarly ominous sound to the words which open a video posted thursday on social media by china's army in hong kong. in it, the troops are carrying out anti—riot exercises. one soldier shouts: "all consequences are at your own risk." henry, the protesters gather again this weekend in hong kong, how great a risk are they running of a crackdown by beijing? i think at this point, not as great as perhaps it might sound from that sabre rattling video that you just cited, which is worrisome, but i don't think actually signals an imminent rolling in of the tanks. i think part of this is because we need to think about both history in the very short—term, about five years ago and perhaps a little bit longer ago than that. five years you already had pro—democracy protests in hong kong. this is not a new phenomenon there, in that city. and those eventually fizzled.

i'm sorry to say, but after about two months, beijing waited it out and knew this war of attrition, it could win. the other reason too, that we don't need to worry about, of violent crackdown at this point, is that china likes to say that it has 5000 years of history and that it knows how to play a very long game. i was there in 1997 when the handover happened, people thought that this one country, two systems agreement between britain and china would preserve hong kong and 50 years would be a long time, in fact perhaps, china would change during that time. of course that hasn't happened, but we are nearly already halfway through this agreement and after another 28 years, hong kong will be completely under beijing's control by international recognition. hong kong will also mean much less economically to china than it did in 1997 when i think it accounted for about 20% of the chinese gdp at now it's only about 3%. so i think beijing knows it can wait it out at least for a bit longer. i wonder if that's partly what is firing, agnes, some of these protesters. because a lot of the younger ones start to...

are supporters of the indigenous campign, so in other words they don't see themselves as chinese, they see themselves as hong kong citizens, hong kongers to use the phrase, and they don't like the idea that one day they will be just absorbed into china. no, no democrat likes the idea, but as henryjust said, you know, 28 years, it's tomorrow. so if i were a democrat in hong kong, i would think about going somewhere else because china is not going to become democratic, in those 28 years, and you know, compared to five years ago, the umbrella protest which we are quite optimistic, i don't know if you remember, there was even some joy, now i see the very brave protesters, especially when carrie lam and the local government seems to be renting the mafia to actually beat them up, the way the chinese do, and then of course, xijinping flexing his muscles although he's got more pressing issues

like slowing growth and trade war, so i agree with you, i don't think he's going to send the army. but in the end, and also economically, shanghai, can very well replace hong kong as sort of, top asian investment platform. so hong kong is in a very bad place and i don't see it becoming more democratic at all. i mean, at some point, for the next few days or weeks, something has to give. so perhaps carrie lam has to go. there needs to be a compromise. they are phenominally brave, aren't they? oh, of course they are! they have of course won the main concession which was on the extradition question. and that seems to have strengthened them to keep going. and then of course although it is only 3% now, of the chinese economy, partly because the rest of the china

economy has grown so much, it's still very important in the sense that it is a place that is legally trusted to do business. and people are worried for big business transactions, for if you're trying to bring a lot of dollars in to invest in your companies, you are quite worried at doing it in china because nothing is transparent. you don't know who you're dealing with, you don't know how strong those contracts will be, if they're conducted in hong kong, there is a lot more trust, financial trust, and i don't know whether along the line, shanghai can build the equivalent. so far it hasn't, it would be a loss to them. i agree that that actually is a shining beacon for trade in asia and the greater china sphere and china relies on that, it still raises... chinese companies raise a huge amount of capital in the hong kong markets, and that goes towards what i think is a hesitancy to move in too strongly because they do realise that it remains important and is a greater prize on the horizon for beijing, which is taiwan. taiwan, which they consider part of its territory, they've sometimes touted

one country, two systems... playing a longer game, a touch. exactly. so they have their eyes on another prize as well. maria, takes us back to this question of identity, doesn't it, that you raised in the context of the uk? very much so. but it's also — this is part of the long, long, long aftermath of the british empire. and as you were saying, it's almost impossible to see how this reunion of hong kong with china was ever going to work, because the two systems were so, so very different and so i agree, the protesters a re incredibly brave and have been thinking a lot lately about what it is that makes people finally say, "i've had enough and i'm going to smash my way into the legislative council and take the risk." but it seems in the long—term like a quixotic effort, and where we are now with britain, also makes it clear that there is nowhere really for the hong kongers to turn. because britain, relying on making trade deals in the future with brexit, and with the us. we will have to think very carefully about our relations with china. absolutely. and with the us.

and the us is now in a trade war with china, you know, it all gets very complicated. all of that, henry, would suggest that actually, there's not really much reason for china to hesitate. if the protesters don't get the message soon, as you've said, they did fizzle out, a few years ago. but there is a much regressive, you were referring to that, the much regressive tone to these protesters, isn't there? much more angry. the other where you could look at it, which invokes history again, is that if they did do something violent, have a violent crackdown, a mini tiananmen, as some people would say, well we also have to think, tiananmen was 30 years ago. china was in the wilderness for about five, 10 years. look where they are now. they realise that their market is so coveted by other countries, western and developed countries, that they can get away with it in the longer term. ovbiousluy there would be outrage and horror to begin with, but we see

that that doesn't last either, once the market comes into play. it's interesting to just happen now that trump moves in with ratcheting up the trade war, adding to the tariffs, threatening china but without any consideration about hong kong or democracy or anything like that. but with china, there are riots. he's not going to deflect it. members of congress, human rights caucus there, the democrats of course, on friday sent a letter saying, please stop selling crowd control measures and rubber bullets and all the rest of it. so far i don't think we've heard from the administration, none of you are particularly hopeful that they might follow the british example and suspend that kind of, those kinds of sales? i don't see that. not from this administration, certainly not. he mightjust put a big tariff on it. that's right. he's already referred to them as riots, you know? so they've already been written off. correct, yes. they were on the wrong side. there's one thing europe could do, is to grant political asylum to protesters, which they don't do for the moment. but they might have to.

that's one thing we could do. but it's symbolic. i don't think they will because of china's economic power. you seem pretty pray—tell as oui’ new home secretary. welcome... now there's a challenge. welcome all of these hong kong... i think it was one former chinese leader who said of the french revolution, when asked, how that had gone, said it's really too soon to tell. that's it for dateline london. we'll be back, same time next week. from all of us here, have a good week. goodbye. hello. the weekend ended on a dramatic note weatherwise for some parts of the uk.

we can expect further downpours, and we can expect some disruption. low pressure seizing control of our weather, and we started monday with two bands of showery rain, one moving across northern scotland, another moving across east anglia and the south of england. this area of showers should clear away, and much of england and were will be dry and bright, with a few light showers in the south and west. heavy downpours for northern ireland and scotland, and a fairly breezy day. during monday evening, heavy bursts of rain moving across shetland. dry weather and clear spells elsewhere, but the weather racing back in. overnight temperatures, 12 degrees

for stornoway, aberdeen 15, in plymouth and london. this low will drift across the northern half of the uk. the most intense and widespread showers. further south, some showers, but not as many, quite breezy in the south. further north, light winds, showers across the north of scotland, that could be quite slow—moving so some areas could get a real drenching. and a cooler and fresher feel, 18—23. could get a real drenching. and a cooler and fresherfeel, 18—23. on wednesday, a similar looking day, some heavy showers through scotland, northern ireland and northern england. not as many showers further south, temperatures of 19 in belfast, 22 in norwich. for thursday, he was showers at this stage, more dry weather, some spells of sunshine, but that dryer interlude will not last, because on

friday we are expecting some heavy and persistent rain, brisk winds, and persistent rain, brisk winds, and low pressure for next weekend so it will stay very unsettled.

this is bbc news. welcome, if you are watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: the man accused of killing 20 people in a terrorist shooting in texas has been charged with capital murder, meaning he could face the death penalty. meanwhile, a vigil has taken place in ohio for nine people killed in a separate shooting. in hong kong, a day of disruption. pro—democracy protesters urge workers tojoin their general strike. and monday's strike at heathrow is suspended, as the airport