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tv   Global Questions  BBC News  August 1, 2020 2:30pm-3:01pm BST

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the chinese video—sharing app tiktok, from as early as today. now on bbc news, audiences from around the world question their leaders on global issues. hello, and welcome to london for this edition of global questions with me, zeinab badawi. has coronavirus changed our view of what we expect from our leaders? uncertainty still grips many nations and people are looking critically at how politicians have responded to the pandemic. will this usher in a new social contract between citizens and governments and help reframe the role of the state? that's coronavirus crisis: will it change our politics?
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well, i'm now inside the bbc‘s fi fig a g l: g ftgfé fi is e ifi'fiéffi: eifjfiffi?§'?§1 and as always to bring you this edition of global questions our two panelists, and our audience members join us via video link. let me tell you who is in the hot seat this week. james graham is an acclaimed british dramatist and playwright. political discourse has been central to his work since his first big success in 2012 with this house which was a critical insight into the workings of british politics. he's gone on to produce many film and television dramas on contemporary culture. and lysa john is secretary—general of civicus, that's the world alliance for citizen participation, and she's based in johannesburg in south africa. and civicus is the organisation that's dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world. lysa has spent more than 20 years
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working on grassroots advocacy including socialjustice, human rights, and poverty. great line—up, welcome to you both, and also to my audience members. and remember you too canjoin the conversation at... solitary round of applause from me to you all. now, let's get through our first question straightaway and it is from borneo in malaysia and dylan jordan tan. dyla n. hi, there. so, with the current health crisis that we are in, unemployment and hunger have increased. so, how do world leaders regain the trust of the people? how do world leaders regain the trust of the people? before you answer that both of you, james, have world leaders lost the trust of their people? i think a great many of them have. of course, it's not uniform, every different country has a different relationship with its populace. but i don't think we can pretend that prior to this global outbreak of this pandemic that the relationship
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and the contract between citizen and state, certainly in a lot of western democracies felt particularly healthy. speaking to you now from great britain, i think we had really felt we had arrived at a crossroads after the financial crisis of 2008, after the deep divisions of brexit and including up to the proroguing of our parliament in 2019. it really felt like ideologically, domestically, politically, economically, intellectually, we had reached a tipping point. and of course there's nothing like a virus, a global pandemic to demand that you have to reset certain imbalances within that relationship between citizen and state. lysa john, do you agree with james that governments have lost the trust of their people and therefore, they have to regain it and if so, what do they do? i would love to agree with him but evidence actually shows otherwise.
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so, you saw that the edelman barometer of trust data earlier in may showed us that people are in fact now relying very heavily on governments to do the right thing, so trust in governments increased this year but it has to be followed up by some bold and decisive actions, and that's where i think the crux lies and the ability of people to continue to trust their governments will depend on whether they actually take on the decisive and transformative changes that people want to see from their governments. there is again reports from established global think tanks for this being the one moment in time where we have unprecedented high levels of public expectation from governments to do the right thing. so, to really change what responses have been so far, particularly in tackling inequality and climate change. all right, let's go to just outside durban in south africa to our next question from caitlin michael.
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caitlin. hi, my question is pretty simple, it's with regards to female leaders and how well they've handled the pandemic and whether being a female leader and being selected in a female leader is actually a sign of progression of the society as a whole which has then in turn helped the ease of the pandemic in those countries. right, lysa john, you've got a smile on your face. is it going to broaden? because you agree with that, that women have done it better throughout this coronavirus crisis. absolutely and of course, caitlin is in durban, i'm injohannesburg, so i'm going to agree with her. i think there two trends here. one of course, we have seen huge attention in the media at what women leaders at the global level are doing well. so, whether it's germany or new zealand or taiwan, you are seeing women heads of state responding differently to the crisis than particularly their authoritarian counterparts. and i think what this really means
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in relation to how governments respond is a move and a demand for less of the aggressive masculine tendency of win and lose, domination and aggression, and more of the feminist principle of leadership where you're not only listening to diverse views but you are actually engaging with dissent and therefore able to create more resilient and adaptive ways of responding to an unprecedented context. so, james, do you think then that voters and people are picking up on this kind of more caring, emotional intelligence aspect that lysa says women leaders have? well, i hope they're picking up on it because it's impossible to deny. statistically, you cannot escape how effective different countries and different leaders have been in tackling the coronavirus. and it mayjust be that there are certain kinds of men in traditional western democracies who tend to rise to the top,
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particularly at this moment. we are coming out of a moment where populism was raging through europe and america, where a certain kind of libertarian masculine leader who often tried to sell very popular and actually quite aggressively simple messages were those who people responded to because they felt like they were anti—politics. they were not traditionally seen as politicians with a great level of expertise or who had worked in the establishment and had been embedded in the system. whether that be borisjohnson who was a journalist and someone say a television personality, or donald trump who was a reality television star. they were elected, we are told, because they were anti—politics and they were presenting these quite clear but very simple narratives and then into this comes a very complicated problem that requires a very complicated solution. and the evidence speaks for itself whether you look at jacinda ardern
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in new zealand or angela merkel in germany, who has a background in scientific data analysis, they acknowledged the complexity of this problem and weren't afraid to take unpopular decisions that in the long run benefited their country. but aren't you all being a bit tough? i mean, men can be compassionate and caring, and some have really put their best foot forward, haven't they? i'm a bloke and i'd like to think i'm incredibly intune with my emotional side, not because i'm a playwright. and of course these are vast generalisations. ijust think we are coming out of a particular cultural moment where strength was perceived in politics to be a certain kind of, as you identified, a certain kind of masculinity where changing your mind or for a second admitting that things were complicated and are going to be difficult was not the prominent political characteristic that we had in our leaders and it's exactly the moment where we needed that kind of non—binary, non—simplistic, non—arbitrary
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and grey thinking. caitlin, what do you think about what you've just heard both our panelists say? i agree with everything everyone is saying and i feel like also this idea of a softer side, being feminine or masculine and just this continual binary view of characteristics which i think we should start stepping away from but what i was really interested in is whether that's actually a reflection of the society and how that society, or how the woman leaders have been chosen and, whether it is a reflection more on the societies. all right, thank you very much indeed. now, let's go to east africa and uganda to bidi. bidi, to your question, please. yeah. some governments are using covid—i9 to crack down on dissenting voices in their country and therefore, this has emboldened the dictatorships and ruthless rulers.
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all right, so james graham, this has strengthened the hands then and emboldened the strongmen in government? hasit? it's interesting, considering the last question and the difference between the approach of certain governments. there can be no question that in a crisis the inclination of some governments towards using this as an opportunity to increase their powers or leaning towards more authoritarian response of government over their people has always been the case, historically speaking. there is a spectrum of that, i'm not comparing the response of the uk to what we just heard but the passage of legislation through the british parliament, in terms of increased powers for the government to be able to respond to the crisis and also whether it be issues around data and surveillance needed by our health organisations and our bodies need in terms of tracking, tracing
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and monitoring us. there has been a significant lack of scrutiny understandably given the urgency of the response but across—the—board i think it is not uncommon to see normal standards of scrutiny she and checks and balances slightly disappear. it is obligated on citizens and you as a journalist and members of our pariliaments and governments to make sure that once the extremities of this crisis ebb away slightly that those checks and balances return and hold our governments more to account. lysa john. the trend really of using the pandemic as an excuse to restrict civic freedoms is really worrying. all the directions or the evidence is of governments not just enforcing temporary measures but finding ways to make the dilution of democratic systems more permanent. in a lot of countries, journalists are not being allowed to ask questions, citizens are being punished for speaking out on social media or questioning the methods of government.
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the attacks on civil rights defenders and journalists have increased exponentially. being a journalist now is one of the most dangerous professions in the world, as it was in previous years where we've tracked civic freedoms. and i will end with one more fact. in over 68 countries around the world this year, governments have postponed elections that were due to happen at national or subnational levels and that means we really urgently, as citizens, need more substantive ways of engaging with governments rather than just the exercise of our vote. this has to be a moment in time where we're also reinventing how democracies work and how we are able to then reinforce the kind of collective good that publics need from governments. let us now go to brazil and andre 0livera. hello, i would ask if they
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think that free market liberalism has weakened the cooperative ties of our societies and has made politics more selfish? something that that coronavirus pandemic has highlighted. james, how would you answer that? that's a really good and important question. certainly, in the first instance temporarily, by default, governments had to put back up borders and cease engagement in a physical sense and a diplomatic sense and changing how we operate and i think psychologically it does feel like a natural extension of a trend that we are seeing borders being rebuilt literally and discussions being rebuilt between nations and a sense of certain governments, certainly donald trump's administration, in engendering or trying to engender distrust and mistrust in our global bodies and our global expertise.
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i think, naturally, there is something about the nature of a global pandemic and the speed in which it travels and the universal way in which it travels that i think is forcing a new culture and governments to see themselves as part of a global society that will require huge and ambitious and transformative global solutions, notjust in rebuilding the global economy post—pandemic but also in the challenges we all face as a world. the climate crisis that has so dominated our discourse and our headlines and protest movements in 2019 has not gone away, it's been exacerbated. we need to come together with our global institutions to find ambitious solutions. lysa, has politics become more selfish and inward looking? i think it has in the past decades and there is a clear nexus between how politics
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and business have operated. there has been a report by a special rapporteur of the human rights council recently which pointed to three trends that have grown exponentially since the 19805. one is aggressive tax avoidance. the second is the deregulation of labour markets. and the third is the privatisation of public services. and all of these three have been combined to put us in the situation we are in now where we are not only dealing with and extort new health crisis but we are also doing with a crisis of employment, social protection, and a crisis of inequality that is coming up to the fore across countries. and i think that really calls again for us to be examining very clearly how our economic and political systems are unfit for purpose at the moment and need to be redesigned with a much stronger gravel of accountability and oversight from citizens. you are living in brazil and of course president bolsonaro
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has attracted a great deal of attention because after you the united states brazil is the country most affected by covid—19. are you seeing a more selfish politics as you put it there? yes. here in brazil, we are living in, as everybody knows, a country without any kind of leadership during the pandemic. each state of the country has adopted politics to face it. so it is everything very uncoordinated around the country and it makes the situation even worse. so, it's something like the president has said, "you do whatever you want, "i have no responsibility over anything." each to his own is what you say is going on in brazil. ok, thanks very much indeed for that perspective, andre.
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let's now go to the capital of sweden, stockholm, and layla. thank you, my question is what kind of policies or change in politics do you think are needed after going through a pandemic that unproportionately affected working—class people as well as people of colour both health—wise as well as financially? lysa john. there is this urgent sense of desperation of being left behind by our economic systems that you are seeing across the world. we know that 70 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty with a large portion of them from the african continent and this should cause more business and governments to step up and provide the kind of leadership the world really needs right now. but in addition to that, i would say the ability to protect civic freedoms, because our mechanisms to hold governments and businesses accountable are directly linked
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to how well we are able to articulate our concerns, our questions, our ability to express dissent and to assemble and organise ourselves, we need better institutions that will hold governments accountable and which will represent the interests of we the people rather than the narrow interest of individual countries as we emerge from this. james, do you think the conversation about the change of politics and policies has already taken place when you see the trillions of dollars that are being spent in stimulus packages by western governments to help people who have lost theirjobs, people at the bottom of the pyramid? it's kind of reframing the role of the state and what people expect governments to do, the kind of spending that you would associate mostly with socialist policies. do you think that transformation has already ta ken place? you are right.
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certainly in governments like the uk and in europe and across america, the level of economic intervention has been on a scale we haven't seen almost since the second world war. but i think the question is as a result of that and the levels of debt that will be amassed by these governments as a result, who will be forced to pay for that? is that going to result in new waves of austerity? will that result in therefore people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnic minorities having to pay the price later down the line because of high levels of public sector cuts? i would hope not and i would hope that actually the word that lysa john was using area about the scale of ambition of how we transform our politics is really key here. it's no bad thing to use the postwar settlement as an example of that, as an example of the scale of ambition we should be aspiring
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towards in terms of socio—economic, political and cultural reform to meet the huge challenges. and in terms of how you can make sure that people from working—class background and ethnic backgrounds get a seat at the table is representation, amplifying those voices and making sure that they have a seat at the table. layla, how would you answer your own question? i think this pandemic is putting a highlight on pre—existing differences when it comes to health and finances and i believe this is an extreme situation and although i believe there are stimulus cheques and different benefits going on right now, i also see they're being distributed in a very unequal way. people responding on social media about whether coronavirus has been a game changer for the way we do politics. it seems that a lot of people felt that it was going to have a change
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and i would say from the responses we have had that argue more people think it would bring about positive change. to give an idea — "maybe people will move away from right—wing "authoritarian change of politics and more progressive ones. "i think that we will love more after this coronavirus and become "more aware of a lot of things." other people disagree and think it's making us more selfish and there will be more poverty. 0thers again think that health care is going to be promoted much more by politicians and that it is going to lead to governments to have a more hands—on approach. so that's the kind of testing the mood as it were on social media so it gives you an idea. all right having said that, let us go tojudith who is in the uk in england. judith. hello. my question is can world leaders except that the pandemic has
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to change the way governments work and are they prepared to do so in order to work with public opinion and each other? thank you, we have touched on that point a bit, james graham. i think we have no choice. i think the scale of the challenges facing countries domestically and globally are of the scale and because of the interconnected nature of our economies and our governments now will require a global response. i really like hearing some of the things that people are saying on social media, i am glad that somebody use the word "love" there and though you can get sentimental about it, there is something about the scale of this crisis and the unique nature and that even though it is strangely isolating and put us behind closed doors, i'm feeling for the first time in a long time it has forced us to see ourselves as part of a collective.
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because we have had to exercise this level of self—sacrifice for the collective endeavour whether that is staying at home and making sure you're not spreading the virus and becoming aware of the great economic levers of government that are still there and the great action that governments can do in acting big and ambitiously to solve a problem. the levels of funds that we didn't imagine, in the uk you will be aware there was a phrase often used that there is no magic money tree to solve certain problems when it comes to inequality. and suddenly we found this magic money forest! and we were able to generate money when we needed it to solve this huge—scale problem. i think most citizens having seen the scale in which governments can act and the speed in which they can act when they are forced to, i think our ambitions for how a government can work together to solve these challenges ahead of us have been raised and they need to be met.
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lysa john, the magic money forest as james graham has put it, doesn't really exist though for lower income and middle income countries. and we are not seeing lots of money being thrown at people who are losing their livelihoods in these countries. they can't borrow at the same level that the richer countries can. there is quite a strong call right now from the international community for wealthy nations who have thrown in a lot of money to bail out their own communities are to create economics relief packages for their own businesses and workers to also understand that the same needs to be done by the developing nations if we're going to get out of this together. it is not going to work for one part of the world to save themselves and the other part of the world not to have the ability to do the same. and therefore, there are calls being made for the immediate cancellation of debt payments from developing countries which would release a lot of money for countries to domestically step
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up their support and protection towards their own communities is really important at this time. and i think we really need therefore governments to walk the talk in terms of their commitments to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and find a solution. because they are not going to be able to do it in a piecemeal or isolated fashion. thank you very much indeed lysa john from civicus and also to you james graham, young distinguished british playwright and also to my audience who've been asking questions from all over the world, that's all for this edition of global questions coronavirus: will it change 0ur politics? i think we have brought you quite an interesting discussion on how we think it is actually transforming politics one way or another. remember, we are the programme that brings you the trend lines behind the headlines. thank you to you wherever you are watching or listening to this programme but from me, zeinab badawi, and the rest of the global questions team, goodbye.
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for many of us the heat if yesterday was a bit too much. the last day of july, we saw those temperatures well above the seasonal average. heathrow seeing 38 celsius three friday afternoon. that isjuly out of the way. today, indeed, for all of this weekend, cooler and fresher conditions but sunshine and showers. the cold front has spread eastwards, pushing the heat out into the near continent, allowing atlantic air to moving with a mix of showers. this
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evening, the showers will become heavy and more widespread across northern ireland, spreading into southern scotland and northern england later on in the night. scattered showers across northern scotla nd scattered showers across northern scotland but southern parts of britain will tend to stay dry, some clear spells and a cooler, fresher night than last night. showers and long spells of rain across northern england, they will tend to clear away, then another afternoon sunshine and showers. most of the showers in the north and the west and they could be some heavy ones dotted around. central and southern areas deign dry altogether in places. top temperatures in the cell east 2a degrees. sunday night, showers oppose northern areas, lengthy, clear spells across the south. a chilly night to come. 0n monday, we are in between weather systems but this system could bring some wetter weather, just a very extreme south of the uk, perhaps the channel islands seeing rain at some times but many parts of the uk will
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stay dry with good spells of sunshine. further north, a bit more clad around from scotland and northern ireland. a breeze in the north—west. temperatures disappointing in the north, mid to high teens, further south, not as 22 degrees. tuesday and warm, 22 degrees. tuesday and wednesday, alan tate low pressure oui’ wednesday, alan tate low pressure our way, windy sweeping our way, bringing windy weather. outbreaks of- it weather and outbreaks of rain. it could be quite wet on tuesday and wednesday across more northern areas, vertically over the hills, littlebit a brightness further south. we start next week with the wet weather, certainly for the first half of the week, then high pressure building backing across the near continent with conditions turning much warmer later on.
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this is bbc news with the latest headlines: one of the government's scientific advisers suggests england may have to consider closing pubs if it's to re—open schools as planned. from today, more than two million people considered at high risk from coronavirus, will no longer need to shield in most parts of england. 0n the day when facial beauty treatments were meant to be back on the menu, they have an postponed for at least another due weeks due to a rise of coronavirus cases. we are in west london talking to people who have been affected. from today, companies whose staff have been receiving up to 80% of their salary through the government's furlough scheme, will have to start making a further financial contributions. a crack in the murdoch media empire? one of rupert murdoch's sons, james, resigns from the board

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