the headlines: new trafffic restrictions have been imposed in delhi, as millions of people in india's capital are told to stay indoors to avoid the toxic smog. drivers will only be admitted on alternate dates based on their number plates. schools have been closed and flights to the city have been diverted. lewis hamilton, racing in the us, has won his sixth world championship title. he is now the second most successful formula one driver in history, and aims next season to equal the record seven titles held by michael schumacher. mcdonald's has fired its chief executive, steve easterbrook, after he had a relationship with an employee. the company said it had been consensual, but mr easterbrook had violated company policy and shown poor judgement. in an e—mail to staff, he said the relationship was a mistake.

now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week, one of the world's most wanted men blows himself up in a suicide vest to evade us capture, but where does that leave the terror group he led? and yet another brexit deadline has passed without brexit. can a general election now resolve this crisis? my guests today — abdel bari atwan, a writer on arab affairs, the veteran new york times foreign correspondent

john fisher burns, broadcaster maria margaronis, and political commentator adam raphael. welcome to you all and thank you forjoining us. now, how much does one death disrupt a terror movement? in 2014, abu bakr al—baghdadi, the leader of thejihadi group islamic state, declared a caliphate in iraq and syria. by the time of his death last weekend, the territory had been lost. his caliphate had crumbled. but is has already declared a new leader and vowed revenge. so barry, you start us off. tell us what we know about this new leader. the new leader, abu al—hashimi al-qurayshi al—baghdadi, who is actually an ex—saddam hussein man. he could be more brutal than abu bakr al—baghdadi. he is very influential. his name is giving a lot of meanings. when he says al-qurayshi,

it means that he is from mecca. when he says al—hashimi, it means he is of the prophet mohamed. it is a deliberate move from the remnants of isis. they would like to say baghdadi is gone, we have another baghdadi, so that they have more legitimacy, islamic legitimacy in particular. isis is not al-qaeda. it is not a one—man show like al-qaeda where osama bin laden was everything. when he disappeared, they weakened completely. isis is about the ideology and very strong ideology, and they managed actually to create a precedent in the middle east and the islamic world, to create first a state with a population of more than 7 million.

the size of this state is bigger than britain. it used to have about $1 million income from the oil and gas of syria, so they still have branches in afghanistan and north africa. isis is still there — the corruption, the lack of good governance, the sectarianism, the anarchy. now, if you see, there is an uprising in iraq and lebanon. we'll come back to all of that, because there's a lot to unpack there. butjust on this individual, john, the us president says he knows everything about the successor to al—baghdadi. what do you think about the role that he has played here? well, i was going to say, if we ask ourselves the question

of where does this leave isis and its affiliates, the question of almost equal importance leads to trump, who managed, by the way in which he handled this, to some extent to grab defeat from the jaws of victory in the sense that his account of the whimpering al—baghdadi is not supported by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, not by the commander of central command or by the commander on the ground. all of them said that they do not know where this account comes from. it seems to me that... by the way, an excellent story in the new york times, which quotes liberally from the washington post, quotes a washington post survey saying that it had tallied 13,000 incidents in trump's administration where he made false or misleading statements. it says that 41%, if i remember correctly, 41% of the poll

respondents believed that trump almost never told the truth. and i think this is going to turn out to be a sort of epigrammatic version of this. because he seems to have invented the whimpering baghdadi out of whole cloth. it would be a very great relief to find he didn't, but at the moment the evidence suggests he did, and he turned what could have been a triumphal moment for the american armed forces and the american people into a personal issue about his own credulity. and yet, do you not think it is a signal and triumphant moment nonetheless, that as far as the us military and government are more widely concerned, this is a moment where they did get their man? well, they got their man when they went after zarqawi when i was still working in baghdad,

and bin laden, and how much difference has it made? i think the point where the circumstances that created these leaders and movements are the same. they have not changed. so we cannot hope that the killing of yet another leader is going to make that much difference. it might have the opposite effect, by creating legends. maria, a thought on isis succession? i don't know very much about a successor to al—baghdadi. what i would like to add to what john has said is that this moment comes on the heels of the disaster of the american withdrawal from syria, opening up both syria and the middle east to assad, russia and iran. i sometimes wonder whether the timing of this killing had anything to do with that, and whether it was in fact a deliberate timing in orderto reverse... the other bit about timing was the location. he was killed in idlib. what was he doing in idlib, al—baghdadi?

it could be very significant. he may well have been trying to form alliances wider than isis, with al-qaeda, with other groups there. so i agree, like us all,thatjust picking off one man is not going to actually defeat isis. and in fact, the americans continue. whoever the leader is, they will go after them. if they offer enough money, in the end, they can probably kill whoever is in the leadership position. but they will not kill the group. you can pick off the leaders ad infinitim. it will still continue as the circumstance which has arisen and has given birth to it. there is a point that has to be made in fairness to trump's role in this. it did follow from his disastrous move to remove american troops

from the syrian—turkish border. but he made that move, in effect saying that he did not want to spend, pointlessly spend, any more american military lives in pursuit of unattainable objectives. and you'd have to say that this whole circumstance rather makes that point for him. but in doing that, he betrayed the kurds, who had been — who have been betrayed so many times by so many powers that it almost doesn't bear thinking about. bari, sorry, you've been trying to get in. i want to come back to this question of is resilience. before we move on to the fertile ground for them to recruit in,

let's talk about their ideological structure post—baghdadi. i have three points here. the first one, i believe that trump is telling a lot of lies about the capture and the death of al—baghdadi. he is trying to portray himself as achieving exactly what 0bama achieved, to assassinate or to kill osama bin laden. the second point, you know, 0k, we managed to kill osama bin laden. and what happened? you know, we actually ended with two more radical, more bloody, more brutal organisations, which is al—nusra, another branch of al-qaeda in syria, and we have isis. so what will happen after the death of al—baghdadi? which radical organisation will we have? the third point is that i am really surprised, the americans are now changing the equation. now they are burying these mujahideen, all those terrorists, in the sea. in the beginning, they used to parade them. for example, the sons of saddam hussein, when they were killed,

we saw their dead bodies. the same thing, when gaddafi was killed, 0k, they paraded his body. so we have seen him. now, with the americans a new diversion, we can see that they killed hamza bin laden, the son of osama bin laden. and we have not seen his body or al—baghdadi's body. and they are burying osama bin laden at sea. why are we not seeing those bodies? are you suggesting that they might not have in fact... you do not parade bodies on sticks. i think acted very wisely in not doing that. you can bury them, but why in the sea? you know, iwant trump to answer that.

if we step back from the particulars of this rather awful encounter, in the deserts of northern syria, it may be that trump could be proven right in a certain sense, which is that the american public is clearly exhausted with its military adventures in the middle east, and if this is part of a waystation to getting the troops home, it might play well for him in next year's election. at least, i don't think it's going to be costly. there will be some net gain and he can claim some credit. forget getting rid al—baghdadi, and if he continues to pull back american troops, however we are aware of what the benefits of the pax americana have been. we're going to have to get used to the fact that america will not any longer be expending the lives of thousands of its own troops in pursuit of unattainable objectives in the middle east. so getting back to the question of the resilience of is,

post—this, we have — and this ties back to maria and adam's points. the question of these prisoners. the us already believes that there are lot of is fighters out there in iraq and syria. we now have a lot of prisoners, theirfuture uncertain. presumably, in fact, is have already said it, there is a duty on muslims trying to spin these fighters from their prisons, however informal, in northern syria. there are 12,000 of them, and they were under the protection of the kurds. now, the kurds are completely demoralised. they were let down by the american and by the western governments, so they don't know what to do with those 12,000. if they release them, you know, it will be a disaster. it has a mini—army here. so i believe that there are also more than 12,000 who have managed to escape.

we don't know where they are. they could be sleeping sales now, waiting for the new leader maybe of isis to ignite the cells. in the short term, yes, isis is weakened by the death of al—baghdadi. but in the long term it could be disastrous, and those people could regroup again. there is also the sense in which terror is being exported to the global south, because american security systems are much more powerful. so are european ones, to a certain extent, but we've seen terror attacks in afghanistan, nigeria and the philippines, which are not such a problem for president trump. i think it's emblematic that the late mr baghdadi was a prisoner of the united states, which i visited at a time that he was there. none of us knew who baghdadi was then.

but if you take 12,000 of these people and release them there's going to be a new leadership cadre among them. you are familiar with the middle east and also you, adam. the middle east is boiling now. anarchy is everywhere now. there is uprising in iraq. iraq is supposed to be a model, according to the american narrative, after saddam hussein's death. look at iraq now. there is a revolution in iraq. the same thing, there is a revolution in lebanon, in one way or another. and we have seen two prime ministers resigned this week. exactly, so that is the best environment for isis. this is the best environment for terrorism to actually start again. so it is actually true political islam is receding a bit. it is true that maybe we do not have the same wave of political islam as ten years ago. but i believe this kind of anarchy, this kind of dissatisfaction and, as i said, the same problems out there, and maybe getting worse.

unemployment, and equality, sectarianism, frustration. corruption. the withdrawal of these powers from the region has increased the destabilisation. we have a responsibility and the fact that the british government has refused to accept any of the women and children back from these camps is a sign that we are abdicating — the country is pulling out of this region. it isn't just trump who is an absolute disaster. european governments and particularly the british government have a responsibility here, which they have not lived up to. but also trump, in a few seconds. what he said to us last week he said, i am actually sending so many oil companies to go and run the syrian oil. the syrian gas. this is occupation and will give

ammunition to these radical organisations. to control oil and sell it, and we had a lot of reports that american troops are facilitating the smuggling of syrian oil and selling it and earning $3 million a month and they want to compensate their losses when they financed an armed the kurds. this is also playing into the hands of the successor of al—baghdadi. we are going to have to leave it there. it is also worth mentioning that at this part of a discussion that in the audio, in which isis announced the succession, it also said that it was expanding "east to west." as we have heard, that is in some ways, to some of you, a credible claim and the risks are there. we have to move on now because we are coming closer to home to look at the domestic political situation in the uk. halloweenjokes aside, it is no laughing matter

for governments to keep setting deadlines and breaking them. for all his "do or die" promises and national no—deal planning, a british prime minister has been forced into a third brexit extension. he hopes that this is an extension with a difference: a general election to transform the parliamentary arithmetic and break the brexit paralysis. but will it achieve these things? adam ? 0bviously boris is in trouble on his promises. but he has broken promises all over the place. the fact that he has failed to get us out by the 31st, i do not think it will damage his prospects with the electorate. however he has embarked on a fantastic gamble and the idea that somehow the tories are going to emerge with an overall majority, when they have abandoned the dup, the northern irish allies,

and got rid of ten of their most loyal and prominent tory supporters and alienated the scottish nationalists and so they are likely to pick up another 20 seats in scotland, so they begin a0 seats down right from the beginning almost. if they're going to get an overall majority, that requires a huge swing in these northern labour seats at the moment. and ifrankly do not see it at the moment. and i think, despite the polls showing the tories way, way ahead, i think the opinion is very, very volatile. i think boris may make it but i suspect he won't, and we will have a hung parliament. and as bad a mass as we're in now. just before we look all the way to december the 12th, just looking at the last few days, we saw the interview with nigel farage and president trump. president trump criticised boris johnson's withdrawal deal with the eu. how damaging is that,

that he got the deal, the bit of paper that he waved and now his american ally is saying it wasn't worth it? well, i think it's incredibly damaging. the number of people who really want to be closely associated with president trump in this country are very, very few. the impact of farage on the conservative vote, particularly in tory/labour marginals, could be very considerable and the tories could lose several seats with that intervention. i think boris‘ campaign, despite his huge poll lead at the moment, is potentially in serious trouble. i don't think we have quite come to that. so many things can happen in the next six weeks. which can change the landscape totally. but at the moment, i think he has embarked on this gamble and — through his political career, and his personal career too — he isjust a gambler and he has that

knack because in london he pulled off two elections, a bad place tojudge british politics from. he may appeal to a london electorate, but does he appeal in places like hull, in north shields and on tyneside? that is quite a different area. what do you think, maria? we have heard trump say in the past few days that boris johnson and nigel farage together are an unstoppable force. johnson claims he is unstoppable alone and won't do a pact. what you think of his gamble? i agree with adam. i think it is really a gamble and anyone who makes predictions at this point is a fool. i also think it is important to remember why this election, which i don't think anyone in the country is really tremendously enthusiastic about in the middle december is happening. that is because borisjohnson decided, ratherthan submitting his withdrawal agreement to proper parliamentary scrutiny, he pulled it. he could have let it go through the full parliamentary process, but i think he was afraid

it would be watered down in his way, which would lose him his right—wing support in his party and give fodder to the brexit party, which is why i think we are having an election now. i think once again brexit is a metaphor for so many different things, for different people, whether it is about watering down the european union's environmental and working and labour regulations, whether it is about taxes, whatever it is about, it cannot... brexit and all the other issues at stake in the selection do not map onto one another and i think we're heading for a great confusion here. i think it's important, i do think there is an event asa stake. i think the real issues that have affected people's lives, austerity, welfare cuts, the crumbling of the nhs, education, all of these things are at risk under a right—wing tory government, which is what we may be getting if boris johnson does pull it off.

at the same time, i don't think it's clear enough for people to vote on those issues, where we are now. borisjohnson says vote tory or getjeremy corbyn. we have not talked about labour enough. do you think that is going to be a compelling enough message to some voters? you would think they could hardly be a more propitious moment than for a tory prime minister to face the neo— marxist mr corbyn. the reading i take, which is very pedestrian of the public mood, is that people are tired of this unhinged world we have talked about, the distant world that is unhinged. our own world here at home is deeply unhinged. people are absolutely exhausted, divided and there is a real risk that instead of rallying to the tory

flag, and the brexit flag, that borisjohnson foresees, it could well be that there will be millions of people in this country who are so fed up with this that they come down on the opposite side of this and say, let's go back, let's scrap the whole thing, which would of course empower the liberal democrats more than anyone else. and in turn, lead possibly to denying johnson the majority he needs. whatever comes of this, it's not going to be an end of the division, the confusion, the unhinged nature of the state. because even a sanctioned, agreed, withdrawal agreement only takes us about 100 yards down the road in this marathon race. we have then got years and years where these same issues are going to be thrashed out and i find the whole situation very discouraging. barry? to be honest, the international

community is fed up of this brexit. if you mention brexit three times to them, they will faint. look at the british media, if you look at it, there's only one subject. we thought maybe we are now heading to an election, we will have more real concentration on the real issues, which actually are very important to the british people. i have been in this country for a0 years, usually every election campaign, usually national health, education, law and order, immigration. none of these issues are actually major or have the priority in this coming election. and it could be a hung parliament, meaning that brexit could be with us for another ten years. it is awful. these issues will come through and an election. i agree that the london media are obsessed by brexit, but you may be absolutely sure that

in large parts of the country the issues that you have mentioned are the issues that they will want to talk about and the politicians will respond. i have no doubt about that. and yet, adam, surely if everybody talks about them, but in the way that around the table people are saying, a divisive way, that creates more confusion, and we do not get a clear outcome on this huge brexit crisis that we face, are we any further on? we're probably not. the difficulty that i see is the conservatives have always done best as a one nation party, ie a moderate centrist party appealing across the political spectrum. but borisjohnson has appointed the most right—wing cabinet that i can certainly recall in my time and you have had large numbers of moderate tories, particularly women, deserting politics as they cannot abide the abuse and the way that the tory party is moving. matthew parris today, a long—time conservative,

a thatcher aide, decided today that he is going off as well and i think that is damaging to boris. that is why i really wonder whether he is going to secure the sort of majority he is going to gamble on. we shall see. but i'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. i'm sorry that we left it on a fairly sombre note. i'm not sure we could have avoided that sombre note. that's it for dateline london for this week. we're back next week at the same time. goodbye. hello. 0ur weather will turn colder this week but what won't change is there will be further rain at times, and this is how your monday is shaping up and the wettest weather will be

across eastern scotland. the rain keeps on coming here and strong easterly winds gusting up to 50 mph along the coasts, a soaking day here. average speeds elsewhere, the winds won't be as strong, heavy showers affecting southern england into south wales and could be thundery in places with temperatures around 10—13, and there will be some sunny spells here and there. through monday evening and night, we will continue to a feed of rain coming into at least south—east scotland but that will ease in intensity with a few showers to be found elsewhere, some mist and fog patches, especially in southern parts, into tuesday morning and on tuesday it's the eastern side of the uk seeing most of the showers. west is best for drier, brighter weather and it begins to turn chillierfrom the north later on tuesday.

this is bbc news. welcome if you are watching here in the uk, on pbs in america, or around the globe. i'm james reynolds. our top stories: india's capital, delhi, imposes new traffic restrictions as millions are told to stay indoors to avoid the toxic smog. lewis hamilton wins his sixth formula 1 world title. he is nowjust one short of michael shumacher‘s record. mcdonald's fires its chief executive after he had a relationship with an employee. the video game that is looking to build bridges, not blow them up.