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tv   Dateline London  BBC News  February 2, 2020 11:30am-12:01pm GMT

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come with the north and wales, could come with the odd rumble of thunder but generally a mild day for many and with the wind lighter than yesterday you will notice it when the sun is out. cold air pushed out of the way as we go into the evening so any snow still around will turn back to reign with lots of showers to come through the night over the northern half of the country with the breeze picking up. then something drier further south but as we go into tomorrow morning it will start to turn fresher during the day because of a dry and bright start through central and eastern areas, showers in the north and west, more persistent rain in the channel islands later. later in the day and into the evening rush hour, the potential for damaging and disruptive wind across parts of central scotland. hello this is bbc news. the headlines: as the number of cases continues to rise — the first death from coronavirus outside china is reported, in the philippines. meanwhile ii more british nationals
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are on their way back from wuhan, the chinese city at the centre of the outbreak. they will go in to quarantine at arrowe park hospital on the wirral. the prime minister reveals his demands for a post—brexit trade deal. we'll be looking ahead to tonight's bafta awards. joker leads the way with 11 nominations but it's the first world war epic 1917 which is tipped to take the top prize of best film. now on bbc news it is time for dateline london with carrie gracie. hello and welcome to dateline london.
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i'm carrie gracie. this week, goodbye to the european union. having got brexit done, the uk is in search of its future. and deal of the century or slap of the century? does president trump's peace plan for israelis and palestinians offer a path out of an ancient tragedy? my guests today — bronwen maddox of the institute for government think tank, political commentator and broadcaster jonathan sacerdoti, abdel bari atwan, writer on arab affairs author and veteran correspondent thomas kielinger. to some an act of self—determination, to others an act of self—harm. after years of anguished debate, the uk is out of the european union. and now it must build a new relationship with europe, with the world and with itself. why don't you start us, did you get thejob done commemorative t—shirt? none of that. there are not an awful
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lot of them around. but the job is not done. we now know what the job is, at least part of it, there's this whole long year that will go by very quickly, when we see whether the uk can do even a tiny little trade deal with the eu and then there's the whole business of putting the stuff to work, setting up regulatory agencies, competition policy, getting the borders to work, all this stuff, and all that is going to take years. so, from our point of view, we just know what thejob is. before we get into more of the detail of the job that is still to do, jonathan, you were in parliament square, around downing street last night, some triumph from those who worked hard to get it over the line, quite low—key from the prime minister, that facebook message, no speech outside downing street. what did you make of that? it was interesting being there, i was covering it for work, i popped in to downing street and down the road to parliament square and that was a good vibe there. it is very easy sometimes watching coverage to focus on the negatives and complications and negotiations going wrong because that is where the news lies, but in reality i saw
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many thousands of people who presumably represent many millions of people around the country who are actually extremely happy last night and in a celebratory mood, as you say, towards downing street, boris johnson was apparently locked away, wasn't seen all evening, it was left to nigel farage to give the rousing speech to the thousands who were there in parliament square. and it was interesting, i thought he release that will speech he did, the pre—recorded one, as you say, on facebook but then, interestingly, the bbc didn't run any of it. sky ran a tiny section of it, i believe itn, itv, also didn't run it. it shows a change, i think, in how the prime minister is trying to speak to the nation. going to the european reaction, there was not a mood of good riddance that i could detect, it was a sad, contemplative mood. a sort of melancholic resignation, almost. that you cannot change anything about it,
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but it is an unfortunate moment in history for britain to be leaving right now because the eu is developing in a direction that brits always wanted it to be, we wanted a more intergovernmental relationship, greaterfreedom for individual states, it is not the superpower federal power any more, so why leave at this moment? but we have to do without britain and when you ask what is the new role for the uk, it's going to be the same question for the eu, what is your new role, without an important member like britain, and so forth. and so we are in an uncertain stage, yet more uncertainty, what else is new? so when boris johnson talks about global britain, in the global market and global world, there is imponderables up to the hilt. it is very hard to define your new role. let's put that to barry. the view from outside of global britain, now that brexit is done,
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is it something that is understood in your part of the world, for example? you know, thank god it is finished, a sigh of relief, no more talking about brexit, because every time people phoning me they said, explain to us, explain to us. anyway, i believe britain, when it was within the european union, it was more influential. i believe now it is a very ambiguous state for them. maybe they will regain their sovereignty when they go out of the eu, but whether they will keep it when they sign this deal with the americans, for example, trade deal. many people are saying that britain could be a satellite state of the united states, simply because it will lose partly or completely its sovreign position in the international community. other people are saying, 0k, britain lost its empire, now it
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is losing europe. i don't know whether this will be accurate or not. so i believe it is a very ambiguous state we are going to. whether... i haven't seen any commemoration, i haven't seen any celebration. it is a historic day, everybody is saying it's a historic day but we cannot see that. i believe difficult days are coming. to be fair, jonathan was there and did see some celebration, in parliament square. but not millions or hundreds of thousands. no, but there was a pretty emphatic general election. that's not flags and fireworks but that was pretty emphatic statement. and that emphatic general election gave borisjohnson a big parliamentary majority, which gives him the power to pursue a vision, so how can he put to rest the rather bleak description of affairs we have just heard from barry, and tell the uk, europe and the world that this is a nation with a renewal, as he put it?
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well, i think if the economy is all right he's probably going to be all right. that is not a completely independent question from the things you just raised because the economy will be affected enormously by trade deals he now does, but it is even more how he positions britain, whether he looks like america's poodle, he has gone a long step this week to say no, we are not, by signing the deal with huawei, american diplomats this week very clearjust how fed up they were. and they've had delegations here for months arguing for the opposite. so he put down that positioning saying we are not going to sign up to everything america wants, just because we want a trade deal. equally, with the eu, he has got this very tight timetable, 11 months, and, actually, the trickiest deadlines probably come in june, when a deal on financial services and fish are supposed to be done, and he has got to decide whether he
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wants an extension to this transition period. by the end of the year. he has said, no, the transition period must end in december, a trade deal is a bonus, it's not a goal but these next four months are going to fly by. and i think he will probably have to compromise on fish in order to get the financial services where he wants. we shall see. thomas, looking at it from the european point of view, obviously they were fine words about the friendship over the water, but they need the uk, isuppose, to be fairly successful, because they need to trade with it, but they don't want it to be such a big success that it puts the idea of frexit, grexit and all the rest of it back in other european members' minds. that's another important question. what will happen to the experiment that britain is launching itself into now? i was a remainer by nature but i've now accepted that brexit must happen because the proof of brexit lies in the leaving. you have to see for all concerned whether it is going to be a success
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or not. if it is a success that will put thoughts into people's minds europe, wow, there is life outside the club, it isn't like hotel california, you can check out but you can never leave. you can leave. and that's the good thing about it. the eu must not be seen to be a club from which you cannot leave. it's a democratic institution which allows you to leave if you want to. and if it is a success, well, there are some countries in the eu who are not totally committed to it, poland, hungary and so forth, altogether, the eu is in flux herself. and very much rests on the question, how will it all pan out? we don't know. it's about uncertainty. that's all i can say. but we are desperately hoping it will not become too successful order to give people an idea in europe that other countries might follow suit and copy the british example. we are a little bit between a rock
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and a hard place, as they say. yes, we want britain all the best and so forth but we can't afford for this experiment to end up so successfully as to create uncertainty whether the eu has a life beyond short—term. it is desperately important. success is in the eye of the beholder because we saw the prime minister go to sunderland with his cabinet to make a point about the levelling up that he said he wants to do, how can he achieve that? he has a tough task, notjust in relation to brexit, he is relying on this huge majority, a vote of confidence, but he also needs to hang onto the seats which are new to his party and i think the sunderland stunt, and there will be plenty others like it, are on one hand unfortunate political posturing, but also utterly essential, and it remains to be seen whether he will carry them through. will he make a success of brexit,
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and in parts of the country outside london, especially in the north, and if he can deliver on those things and brand them as boris successes, conservative successes, then he may hang on to those votes, but every prime minister has the best of intentions, we heard what theresa may said on the steps of downing street when she went in, she didn't manage to deliver any of it, so whether boris johnson will be more fortunate remains to be seen, and it is down to luck as much as his abilities. i don't know that it is down to luck. it is also down to what you do and she was not in a position to do anything, he does have this majority, there has been a decision that it matters a bit less if you if ramp up borrowing to spend it it on infrastructure, and it is clear a wall of money is headed towards the north and midlands, whether it gets any return on that is a different subject. 0k, to go to sunderland, the base of brexit, the first
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city which supported it, is good but i believe he should go to scotland, for example, because the european flag is still flying there, and he should go to northern ireland because those people voted against brexit. i think he should change his priorities now. is he going to unify the whole of britain? is he not going to be the last prime minister actually ruling the whole united kingdom or a part of the united kingdom? this is the biggest question which should be asked. about the american trade deal, i do not believe it will come free. we know how trump deals with his allies in canada, dealing with the eu, imposing trade sanctions against them, so we should not be that optimistic. i believe it could be extremely difficult to sign this deal, and also to sign the same
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deal with europe. definitely europe will suffer because of britain's exit. britain is the second biggest economy in europe. so i think it is a very ambiguous period. on that this dis—united kingdom point barry was making a moment ago, of course we saw the union flags flying at 11 o'clock on friday night but we also saw nicola sturgeon pledging to, first minister of scotland, pledging to end the union. how can borisjohnson head that off? he can for the moment try and store the scottish question, and she will try to ramp up the pressure, very organised and noisy, there are scottish parliament elections next year and if the snp are successful she is really going to try and put up the pressure, but constitutionally he can try and ignore it. to me, the more difficult problem is northern ireland. his deal has really aggravated a lot of people, even those who describe themselves as unionists. in quiet ways, demographic and politically, i think pressure for reunification
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is just ticking up. that is actually a harder but quieter pressure for him to contain, i think. we are now talking about the real issue which matters which is the domestic agenda of politics in britain which has been hugely neglected of the years of warfare about brexit. there is building sites all over about the nhs, housing, social care for the elderly and so forth, and the centrifugal forces that work against the unity of the kingdom. and so before you want to be a global power, make sure you have domestic power and you can deal with these problems and really remove the rather rotten state you find in many areas of british domestic politics. and there we will leave that. we will leave the prime minister to get on with that and return to it when we have something to witness. now, president trump called it the deal of the century. but he unveiled it alongside a smiling israeli prime minister and without any palestinians present. his deal would give israel undivided control ofjerusalem, all existing settlements on the west bank and an effective
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veto over the creation of a palestinian state. in exchange palestinians would get a patchwork of territory, a freeze on future israeli settlements and an economic injection. well, israeli — palestinian peace initiatives are thin on the ground and the trump plan has been two years in the making, but the palestinian authority immediately said it was destined for the dustbin of history. barry, you grew up in the gaza strip, you are palestinian, was it really wise to reject this out of hand? yes, because there is nothing left to the palestinian, we are not invited to this celebration in the white house. when trump gave them jerusalem, when he said there is no right of return, when he gave netanyahu the annexation of all the settlements, more than 500
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settlements in the west bank, more than 30% of the territories there, when he actually take the whole of the water resources, no palestinian border withjordan, no oslo agreement even, so why they can say yes to this? i believe he gave netanyahu a lot of political gifts, and he gave iran the biggest gift. iran is waiting for this, they will mobilise the arab world against this deal. against america, against the israelis and all the radicals will be in their hands. this is the problem. he buried the two—state solution, he buried international law, and all un security council resolutions, which were very fair to both sides. we will come to that in a moment, but first, thomas, you have served in washington and have seen us efforts to bring these parties together,
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was it, in your view, to watch president trump with netanyahu, without the palestinians, was that an odd way of going about this deal? it certainly was. when it began in camp david in 1978, i happened to have been there when i was covering america, you had at least all the leading participants. you had them all together trying to come to some kind of solution, at the exclusion of the settlement issue, i agree, we knew at the time if the settlements were not dealt with satisfactorily. over time the peace progress will not go anywhere, it will not solve anything because that is the central issue. at least you had the visible presence of the main players and trump, i agree with barry here, trump's omission of palestinian representatives, it's very difficult, by the way, to have a palestinian representative because abbas has cut off relations with america, diplomatic relations, and yet trump could have tried
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in the running up to this peace deal to get some sort of cooperation, andl wonder where he gets this courage from to think that such a deal has a chance in hell to fly. when brazenly it cuts out the party which he thinks will benefit from it, which is the palestinians. it is not to their benefit. and so since the beginning, since1978, they said, we've been going in circles and i am more saddened at the moment about the issue of the middle east than i am about europe and britain, i must say, because it seems to be a riddle inside an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, as churchill famously once said. there is no visible solution to be had. am i wrong, jonathan? well, i think there are some interesting bits of this conversation, for me, underline what is perhaps most fascinating about trump's plan, and that is to say
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there weren't any palestinians there because they didn't want to be there. mahmoud abbas said he proudly didn't answer trump's call when he phoned him. and unintentionally it was symbolic of what has happened over the decadess, palestinians have rejected every deal put to them, often deciding to launch catastrophic suicide bombing attempts, and i think they have showed that because that of course this policeman in israel but i think he is trying to shift the story of how the sort of talks work. do you think it was evenhanded in the design of its or the unveiling? ido the design of its or the unveiling? i do not think it was evenhanded. i think it was perhaps trying to say over the years it's been very on
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evenhanded the other way round and eight years of barack obama pushing for freezes and concessions from israel, territorial concessions, did not get anyone towards peace and i think the attempt here was to say, 0k, instead of seeing you can gain and get gains from israel was saying i'io and get gains from israel was saying no to every other plan perhaps it is time to make a deal by saying if you say no to this and you have four years to think about it, it is not brief, if you say no to this you will start losing things. this is a different method of negotiation. it is very high risk, that is donald trump all over but i think there is some validity in saying it is a new attempt to see if palestinian rejection is that often results in more violence, whether or not this will actually push things the right way and some of the other things trump has done, for example, recognition of jerusalem is trump has done, for example, recognition ofjerusalem is the capital of israel were said to be things that would kick off an
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enormous wave of things that would kick off an enormous wave of violence, they did not, this has had some support, quite a lot of arab states, not all of them, they are all independent countries that speak independently but to have managed to gain that much support and gain quiet support from countries around the world, and also promise of various things to the palestinians, not everything they wanted, but 50 billion investment... we've had quite a lot of that point of view which has given me quite an out of body experience. this is not a negotiation. this is trump... imposing something that is in every respect what netanyahu wanted. it gives nothing to the palestinian side whatsoever. i am very struck by how past israeli negotiators have come out and said this shows contempt for palestinian aspirations and humanity. past american negotiators have come out and said this could backfire on
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israel by leading to one state but it is absolutely clear it is the end of the two state solution which has represented decades of world effort as well as american effort. two portraits is simply part of a narrative of palestinian rejection is is exactly what israel would like this to be but it is something palestinians simply would have to reject because it does not give them a country. and yet what can palestinians now do and where is the leadership to do it? first, donald trump has no right to impose solutions on the palestinians. he has no right to give the israelis are 30% of the west bank. he has no right to kill the two state solution. it is not american territory to give to the israelis. barry, understanding that you think
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this is an illegitimate peace plan, and has no future, what can palestinians do? i would like to remind everybody that the palestinians accepted all un resolutions. they signed the oslo agreements with the israelis on the white house. and the sponsorship was the american administration. and they have been talking to the israeli negotiators for 26 years. what is the outcome? more than 100, sorry, 800 jewish settlers were settled on the west bank. israel clearly said in the past that israel isa clearly said in the past that israel is ajewish clearly said in the past that israel is a jewish state, so it means other christian or muslim persons have no rights at all to be in this territory. so what shall we negotiate at? what is left?
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that's my question to you, what will you do and what can the palestinians do? white with the palestinians accept international legality because the west and the americans it said stop the armed struggle and listen to your enemy, talk to your enemy and reach a settlement. we will help you. the palestinians believe that and they stopped their struggle, armed struggle. they renounced terrorism and accepted the international legality and they signed the oslo agreement and disagreement they give the israelis 80% of historic palestine. i believe they will go back to violence now on at least some of the palestinians would not submit to this imposing a solution on them. it does not give them a state or recognise their legality. this will treat more problems in the region. they will go back to instability and violence because they lost faith in the
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international legality. we are running out of time. is there for some palestinians an opportunity to look ahead to the outcome of the us presidential election and think there might be different white house policy. there might but i would not put lots of white on that. trump has a good chance of being re—elected. they can certainly begin to argue, some of them are, this is one state now, give us the vote within israel, which could begin to give israel trouble. jordan has come out very strongly, and jordan is important for any kind of israeli peace going forward. they can argue with countries like europe, saying this is playing into a narrative, the reason many arab countries tacitly support at this very quiet in objections, at least, is that they accept america's notion iran is the big regional enemy are beginning to line up on that. and dialogue with the europeans about whether that
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really is the best way ahead of the middle east, they do not have an awful lot... trump has given them for years, the end ofa trump has given them for years, the end of a second term, that would be, they could hope for a new president after trump they could hope for a new president aftertrump might be they could hope for a new president after trump might be more amenable to their ideas. but they will have lost one third of thejordan but they will have lost one third of the jordan valley in but they will have lost one third of thejordan valley in the meantime. that is surely the question, much more immediate than four years is four weeks we will get another is really a selection —— another israeli election and there is talk of formalising the annexation. netanyahu did say that and i think it was quite shocking to happen so immediately, that is not being voted on tomorrow in israel as might have happened. the americans will not let him do that. jared kushner said so after the press conference. the palestinians could start negotiating and trump and jared kushner made clear this is not favourable to them it is meant to be an opening part of
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conversation. about what? 0n about what? on that question we are going to have to leave it. i'm sorry, barry, but we are out of time. that is it for this week. we are back next week same place, same time. thank you for watching. goodbye. hello. brighter afternoon for part of england, wales and northern ireland but heavy showers developing. after a chilly start in scotla nd developing. after a chilly start in scotland is that front what's northwoods, snow could cause issues over at central scotland, the higher roots in particular. here we could see thundery showers. more sunshine
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for a central and eastern areas and far north will be dry it with sunshine. lighter winds than the past few days but staying chilly a0 north. that mild air winds through tonight, any snow turns back to rain, rain coming and going through the night, showers for northern ireland. 0ne the night, showers for northern ireland. one or two further south many will be dried for the bulk of the knights, temperatures well above freezing as we start monday. rain very close to the channel islands and southern coastal counties. frequent showers, some heavy, potentially destructive winds in scotla nd potentially destructive winds in scotland later.
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this is bbc news. i'm ben brown. the headlines at midday... the first death from coronavirus outside china is reported — in the philippines. in china, the number of cases continues to rise. meanwhile, 11 more british nationals are on their way back from wuhan — the chinese city at the centre of the outbreak. the prime minister lays out his demands for a post—brexit trade deal. we'll be looking ahead to tonight's bafta awards. joker leads the way with 11 nominations but it's the first world war epic 1917 which is tipped to take the top prize of best film. england hope to kick off their six nations campaign with a win against france in paris this afternoon. and coming up, bbc click is in bangladesh to see how global advances in automation could impact the lives of millions

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