i'm kasia madera with bbc news. our top stories — the us house of representatives is preparing to vote on whether to impeach president donald trump. the democrat—controlled house is expected to vote in favour, which would lead to a trial in the senate. mr trump is accused of threatening to withhold military aid from ukraine unless it investigated his leading democratic rival, joe biden. the pakistani army has reacted angrily to the death sentence given to former military ruler, general pervez musharraf. the penalty is unlikely to be carried out as he lives in exile in dubai. doing well on our website is the la premiere of the latest star wars film, rise of the skywalker. it offers an epic conclusion to a cinematic saga that's spanned four decades. that's all. stay with bbc world news.

now on bbc news, it's hardtalk with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. britain's election provided binary clarity. borisjohnson has the kind of parliamentary mandate the conservative party hasn't seen since the thatcher era, to take the uk out of the eu and roll out a tory vision for the country. and the labour party? well, after one of the most crushing defeats in its history, it faces an existential crisis. my guest is alastair campbell, close adviser to tony blair in the new labour years, passionate opponent of brexit. where does the left go now if it's ever win again?

alastair campbell, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. i want to begin with that election result itself. when you saw it, as a tribally labour man, labour all your life but who has run into a series of problems withjeremy corbyn and his leadership, how did you respond to that result? i wasn't wholly surprised. i had privately predicted about 50, 60. majority for the tories. yes, and the reason for that is, i think, the country decided some time ago that it's not electing

jeremy corbyn as prime minister. you can argue if that's fair or unfair but i think that was something i sensed just going around the country. ifelt really sad, to be honest. i felt sad for lots of reasons. i felt very sad that borisjohnson, who i've known for a very long time and who i really don't think is a suitable guy to be prime minister of one of the great countries of the world, is going to be in power with a lot of power and having seen what he done with a little bit of power, that is alarming, and even though, as you say, i've been kicked out of the labour party for voting liberal democrat in the european elections as a protest vote, i feel very, very labour and i was really sad just to see what is described in the introduction as potentially an existential threat to the labour party, it's very scary. a word that you didn't use in that answer was brexit, but the tories made this a brexit election, it was a decision on brexit and it was a slap in the face for you personally.

why? because you were one of the arch advocates of the labour party adopting a remain position or at least adopting a second referendum position. yeah. the british public, but not least most importantly perhaps that element of the public that lives in labour heartlands, white, working—class voters in the north and the midlands, clearly did not support your position. well, just a few points on that. the first is that if the labour party had adopted a pure leave position, that i guarantee you that genuinely would have been existential. don't forget, far more... and we talk about labour voters as though they are a homogeneous mass and they only thought about brexit. there are lots of reasons why people voted in the general election and that's why i thought it was a huge mistake of falling into johnson's trap of falling into an election and getting it defined by brexit but as a matter of fact labour lost far more votes in this election to what you might call purer remain parties than they did to the tories.

that may be true across the nation but in those particular seats where labour was annihilated, where, and i could list some of them. you know them very well — in the north—east of england, seats like sedgefield and stockton—on—tees in the north—west where you spent some of your young years. leigh, never been tory before, or not the generations. i was in several of those seats during the campaign and while it is true, sedgefield for example and i was in buryjust before the election and it's true that you might meet the occasional person who was absolutely adamant that because labour was notjust saying, "leave means leave," and we're out, that they were no longer voting labour. they were dwarfed, and we have to be honest by this, they were dwarfed by people saying, "i'm not going to vote jeremy corbyn downing street." let me quote you the words of dominic cummings, in many ways the intellectual

architect boris johnson's campaign. on the day after, he poured scorn directly on people like you. he said this election result is a lesson for, "the educated remainer who need to realise the conversations they've been having in london are a million miles away from the island." there are many myths that develop. one of the myths is that all of these mps up north who, let's be frank, most of them spend as much time up there as they do in london and everyone lives inside this m25 bubble. the whole country is divided. london is divided. one of the reasons...we talk about the north as this homogeneous match all gagging to vote to get out of the european union. some were, a lot weren't. when you boil down why those seats have gone in the way they have gone and by the way, i don'tjust blame jeremy corbyn,

i think a lot of this had been bubbling up for some time, a lot of it to do with the consequence of the crash and a lot of it to do with issues of identity, a lot of it to do with issues, and again, this does relate tojeremy corbyn about this sense of patriotism and this feeling that maybe you are not quite patriotic in the way i would define it, they would define it, and all of these things build up so what happens after any election, and we were as guilty of this back in the day as well, is when you have a big win, as the tories have done, you embellish the reasons of your success and you try and rub your opponent's noses in the diet. it's more complicated than that. it is more complicated and will come onto a consideration ofjeremy corbyn and his brand of left politics and we will come onto other issues which maybe even come back into the blair years and your culpability. but let us stick for now with this question of labour's response to the referendum in 2016. the bottom line is, 52—48 in a once—in—a—lifetime referendum, that's the way it was sold and billed, the people of the united kingdom voted to leave. the proposition from dominic cummings is that you and many people like you could never,

did never come to terms with that. and now that we look at what has happened in this general election, are you prepared for a little self reflection to perhaps allow that cummings may have had a point? no, look, ido. it's very interesting to hear in the labour party that jeremy corbyn has said there has to be a period of reflection on virtually everybody who's come out thus far has essentially said we need to reflect and conclude whatever it was i thought in the first place. i was always conscious of the fact that if you have a referendum and don't immediate implement that, then you will have a democratic problem. we never found a way to address that. but the reason for that is, i was part of the people's vote campaign, i was trying to get a second referendum. now, i think that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. the parties, they're in a very different position and i think if the labour party's position from day one, instead of being swept along with will of the people, will of the people, no criticism can

be raised against brexit, had said, "ok, this has happened, we have to respect the result, the government has to now go on negotiate the best terms of agreement and we are entitled to judge that on its merits when they bring it back." instead of which, labour got dragged... then again, you're wanting to say in the end whatever the government does in terms of brexit has to be thrown back to the people. but there was one moment in this brexit process... they could have won the argument, if the labour party at that time, had set that out as a long—term strategy. let me quote you, and i don't want to get too stuck on brexit but let me quote you the son of lord kinnock, neil kinnock, who led the labour party in a time of crisis, his son stephen sits in the house of commons, he said the decision to back a second referendum rather than ultimately go with theresa may's deal, perhaps finesse it a little bit to ensure the customs union was very much a part of the deal, make it as labour—friendly as possible, but ultimately work with theresa may to get the deal over the line — he said the decision not to go with that but go

for a second referendum was the worst political decision in the history of the labour party. this is exactly what i mean, by people who want in this aftermath to say that whatever it was they were advising way back, if only we listened to them, and i don't accept that. if the labour party had been ‘the‘ party viewed by the public as having delivered theresa may's deal, the idea that would have been electorally sensible politics for labour is utter fantasy so i'm afraid, stephen's a very old friend of mine, we're very old family friends, but i think this is a self—serving nonsense. well, let's talk then aboutjeremy corbyn and his style of politics. you have made no secret of your, frankly, your contempt of much of what corbyn has done over the last couple of years and yet

jeremy corbyn, in 2017, led a labour party which, as many of his left—wing friends point out, got 40% of the vote, saw labour actually surprise you, surprise all of the pundits with its relative success. the samejeremy corbyn that you're saying today, "i knew that he'd lost, he couldn't possibly win." i've been fairly consistent. i don't have contempt, by the way. i think that he was elected leader, he made the decision to take the labour party in a direction that i have always felt will never win. now, i've never budged from that opinion. that doesn't mean that in 2017, i couldn't say, "yes, he fought a much better campaign than i expected him to," but that became one of the seeds of the disaster that we now have because 2017, no two elections are the same, 2017, he was up against theresa may, not boris johnson — theresa may, possibly the worst campaign we've ever seen in a election battlefield. borisjohnson, whatever you say, i've got a lot to say about him,

he knows, he is a campaigner. the second thing is, i think, back then, for a lot of people, you and i, we live in this world and jeremy corbyn was a known quantity. for a lot of people, he wasn't. and he did a lot better, in part, because a lot of people thought there was no chance of him winning. you had labour mps going around saying, "vote for me but don't worry, he can't win." this time, the conservatives successfully framed this election — this is why it was such a disaster for labour to fall into the trap of having it — they made it as the brexit—corbyn election. "corbyn‘s the guy stopping brexit, we are about getting brexit done," and that became a mix that labour couldn't resist. len mccluskey, one of the most important players in the labour movement as the... that's one of its problems. ..the unite union, says the people who have been sniping at corbyn for years, and he has you in his sights, do it because they are constantly hankering after a new labour past. they will not and have not accepted

corbyn‘s leadership of the party. i've spent this campaign, and i'd rather be able to be honest and look in the mirror and speak, rather than... it's time to do that because the labour party that you claim to have loved all your life is an existential crisis. exactly. so when i look in the mirror, i can say to myself, honestly, i've always had doubts about jeremy corbyn, i've always had doubts about this route... and i spent this campaign going around the country trying, we failed, trying to persuade people to vote tactically because i felt it had reached a point where labour couldn't get a majority but the only possibility now of any hope of a second referendum was to actually stop johnson getting a big majority. now, did that therefore play a part in his majority? maybe it did. none of us know because elections ultimately are about millions of people, but for len mccluskey to come out as he's done and say this is all about the second referendum. for stephen to say — he's always backed a version of theresa may's deal — "if only we'd done that,"

that is nonsense. the public make up their minds over lots of things and one of them in this election, without a doubt, was the state of today's labour party underjeremy corbyn and the influence of momentum. what we need to return to, though, is the massive disconnection between the labour party and its bedrock support, these working—class voters that we discussed earlier. a lot of these voters would no longer classify themselves as working class. the middle classes has expanded across country. let's call them the more economically disadvantaged, let's call them those socio—economic groups that belong to the poorer rather than the richer. 0k. no use there's a statistician who works for the financial times who's just run the numbers since the election. he says it's wrong to suggest this

disconnection between that group and the labour party began with the protracted brexit crisis. he says labour has been gradually losing ground with the working class for decades and that actually the period that you and tony blair were in charge of the labour party was a crucial part of this gradual disconnection. i'm aware that's a narrative and one of the tragedies for labour, and another of the reasons why we're in the mess, is that is a narrative that the current labour party leadership has pushed itself... with respect, it is not a narrative, it is based on statistical analysis. no, it isn't, it isn't and let me explain why. so for example, take to take the politics, you take 2005 — i am not pretending by the way that this is not an issue butjust to put facts into it — 2005, we won more than a0 seats in scotland. we're now to one. that was after the iraq war. the middle classes, with people — this sort of caricature of the working class and the middle class and their relationship to labour — we lost a lot of middle—class support in 2005 because of tuition fees and because of iraq. working class people — tony blair's majority in 2005 in sedgefield was over 20,000.

in most of these seats that we have now lost, it has gone like that and it may have started... it is notjust about the numbers, it is about an attitude, it's about complacency, and taking people and places for granted. i'm sorry, stephen, i'm going to pull you up on that because that is a narrative and it is a myth... let me put a quote into the mix, which actually comes from a former ally of yours, a guy who worked closely with tony blair, just as you did — he probably wasn't quite as close to him as you — but peter hyman, you know him very well. he reflected on what happened during the blair years, actually a couple of years ago, and he wrote, "we failed to develop talent, we failed to cement organisational and cultural change in the labour party and we failed to secure our legacy." he's talking about the party and its failures... i agree with all of that. ..particularly in those areas, farfrom london, where labour drew most of its vote. peter hyman, who is a very, very good friend of mine, of the brightest guys i have ever worked with, i agree with every word of that. when he talks about "we failed to secure our legacy" that is illustrating

the point i am making. if you have the labour party, today's labour party, basically going around saying that new labour was some kind of aberration, that tony blair is a sort of swearword within the party, that we neglected the heartlands, where did we put the biggest investment in schools and hospitals? why did we do sure start? why did we do the minimal wage? why did we look after some of these former industrial communities in the way that we did...? why didn't you invest in the infrastructure of the north? why didn't you develop the railways, the road links...? sure, more we could have done. much more. much more, however, the idea that it was neglected compared with london and the south—east — and let me say something else... hang on, you are now making a speech. this is an interview not a speech, and we need to move it on, because where labour is today, and we both agree it is in crisis, is labour has phenomenal support amongst the 18—24, with young people — it far outstrips the conservative

party, even in a disastrous defeat — it still has a major support in metropolitan areas, particularly london, the big cities seem to like labour. what it does not have is an ability to weave those constituencies with the small towns, the post—industrial areas and so i'm asking you, as a political strategist, how now it moves forward and begins to weave those different constituencies together? right, now, len mccluskey says that we're all sitting here, harking to the days of new labour. there is no point thinking that we just have to sort of rediscover what we did. that never works. however, if i say to you that, if borisjohnson serves five years, which he is almost certain to do, before the next election, by the end of that firstjohnson term, it would have been half a century since any labour leader, other than tony blair, won a general election in this country. now, all i say to people like len is, yes, let's learn lessons from defeat but learn lessons too

from victories in the past. and when you say, how do you do it? you have to build that coalition between, if you like, the labour part of labour, and the liberal side of politics as well. the progressive values have to be brought together under policy programmes which the majority can accept. so who? let's talk about leadership because right now, runner and riders are gathering at the starting line for a labour leadership race. the prevailing view in the party seems to be it has to be somebody from the north because of all the problems we've just discussed. most people say it has to be a woman because it has to look different from the past. 0k. so who are you backing? i'm not — at the moment — i'm nota member, right. unless i'm allowed back in the party... well, that's an interesting question. many people are saying, "rebuild rejoin" — that has become some sort of social media... cross talk. so are you going to try to —

whether by legal means or any other means — persuade the party to let you back in? look, the idea that i am going to go down in from of people like seumas milne and andrew murray, these sort of posh boy revolutionaries who have helped destroy the labour party and persuade them that i am labour, is nonsense. does the left progressive party need a, let's say, a working—class — you don't like the phrase these day — but a working—class leader because there is much discussion about how a relatively posh person or a person in london who's done well or themselves... borisjohnson. no... they've just voted for borisjohnson. the people we're talking about have just voted for borisjohnson. so is this a canard, you have to have a working—class leader for the labour party? look, what you have to have as leader of any party in a general election campaign, is somebody the public look at and think, "i can see them as prime minister". now, where they come from, i think, is less important. i saw yesterday lisa nandy — i like lisa — but i saw she was talking about, you know, we need take the headquarters of the party outside london. the idea that that is going

to somehow make people in the north say, "we've got to have our party conferences back in the northern cities." well, maybe but, in the end, what i think the country wants is a labour party that has leader, team, policies that they say — and we're not talking here about people who sort of spend their times obsessing about politics — people who occasionally dip in and out, they look at them and think, "yeah, i can imagine you in number ten." and i'm sorry but with jeremy, they didn't. so let's look around the world at the travails of left progressive politics. you know, look at the united states, where a form of nationalism and populism seems to propel trump still possibly to a second term. who knows? possibly. in this country, borisjohnson has just wiped the floor with the labour party. across europe, left of centre progressives are struggling to connect. so how are the left of centre politicians and actors and campaigners, such as yourself, how are you going to find what is missing? well, i think you've got to — one of the problems we have had i think with the current

labour party, there is always a danger that you address the world as you want to be rather than as it is. and so i think the first thing you have to do, this analysis of defeat, it has to be honest. take back control was the 2016 message about the referendum. get brexit done was the winning mantra in this election. they weren't philosophies, they were slogans. ok, but they were slogans people could connect with. the idea that the labour party can defeat that by thinking of a cleverer slogan at some point — a slogan has to speak to some sort of reality that is strategic and that connects with people and you can only build that over time. so i think, for example, if you look at the issues that were absent in this election, there was next to no discussion about issues like artificial intelligence, the impact of globalisation, downside as well as upside we were talking — there was next to nothing about the technological revolution and the changes that was bringing to people's lives. you had from labour a sense that... so you're saying move away from the left traditions of redistribution, possibly nationalisation...

that may be part of it. ..which was a big thing forjeremy corbyn. you are saying, focus on al, technology, climate change, a whole raft of issues... definitely climate change. when you look to the plans that were discussed by either side on climate change, i don't think you had any sense of the urgency or the challenge or any real kind of intellectual depth in what was being said. it was a "green jobs revolution", it was a "green new deal". there was no sense — and that sort of thing, you can't just sort of suddenly spring that in an election campaign. you have to build it over time, otherwise you will fall victim to, my view, a chancer likejohnson coming along with a very, very smart slogan. do you see any sign anywhere in the world of this sort of politics actually winning elections right now? that's the question. i remember bill clinton always used to say, it is always harder for the left because the right have the best tunes. if they are kind of waving flags and they can do the military side of stuff, and they can do the patriotism and all that, that is why it is so wrong

for the left of centre parties to lose that. when we built new labour, it was saying, yes, socialjustice but you have to also have to be able to speak to aspiration and to patriotism and to these things that the right for too long have held onto. i think if you look to the election recently in denmark, i think it was interesting that there was this fear of the right going away with it. if you look in france, i mean, you can — i think macron, people can say he is right, he is centre—right probably, but actually i think he spoke a lot of people on the centre—left as well, and he built that coalition in a slightly different place to where we might have done it, but you have to reach beyond your base, you have to reach beyond your tribe. we have to end, but is the labour party going to be the vehicle for that

or are you actively thinking about a different kind of political movement over the next five years? you're going to have to be quick. i hope the labour party is the vehicle for that but nothing — i do not think you can take anything for granted. no party has a historical right to existjust because it has been around for a long time. labour has got to move way beyond its base and what i have seen in the debate in the days since the defeat has not filled me with much hope. alastair campbell we have to end there. thanks for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello. well, wednesday morning is going to be quite foggy across some parts of england so the advice is to take it steady on the roads almost anywhere in england and the fog could linger right through the morning and possibly into the early afternoon, particularly across

northern parts of england but as i say, but the south, the midlands, the north are at risk of getting the fog. at the moment, we are in between weather systems. there is a band of wind and rain heading our way but that's not going to reach our shores until a little bit later on wednesday so in the short—term, it's quiet out there, the winds are light, that fog is forming, you can see it here across the south, the midlands as well, patches in the north too and on top of that, the temperatures are around freezing or below, particularly across northern parts of the uk so the risk of some icy patches early on wednesday as well. so here is that fog again, you can see it across the midlands but it could in the south too but basically that fog will drift a bit further north into northern england and it will do that because the winds will be blowing out of the south, will it should disperse some of that fog so there will be sunshine around eastern areas but you can't miss this in the west, this is our wet and windy weather sweeping into many western parts of the uk during the course of wednesday afternoon and wednesday night. low pressure, that here spells gusty

winds as well around western coasts, we could see winds gusting to 16mph and these are warm southerlies as well, the orange colour blowing out of the southern climes and that can mean only one thing, temperatures will be rising so we are in for a very mild, wet day on thursday, almost anywhere, rain likely across the uk and the temperatures could get up to 13 or 1a degrees across the south—east of the country, really mild for the second half of december, and then double figures with the rain in scotland as well and we keep those southerly winds through the course of thursday night into friday. there is an indication, as we head into friday, the temperatures will ease just a little bit or rather they will drop away back down to maybe 10 degrees or so. you can see around about 9 there, for example, in liverpool and there will be some rain around. so i think really unsettled run—up to christmas at least this week

for many of us and those temperatures up into the teens across the south of the country. let's have a sneak peek of what the weekend might bring. so temperatures back down to around nine, 10 degrees and it is going to remain unsettled but details as far as the weather goes this weekend are still a little uncertain.

i'm kasia madra in london. the headlines: the us house of representatives prepares to vote on whether to impeach donald trump. the pakistani army reacts angrily to the death sentence given to the country's former military ruler, general pervez musharraf. also in the programme: under pressure from mainland china. we speak to taiwan's foreign minister who says the free world should stand behind his country as beijing becomes more assertive. and, a long drought in south—east asia has shrunk the mekong river to its lowest levels in more than a century.