"in the us for the long run". a scientist advising the uk has warned the country was "near the limit" of opening up — and suggested pubs may have to close so that schools can reopen next month to avoid a surge in coronavirus cases. several european governments have expressed concern about the resurgence of coronavirus cases in a number of countries, including belgium and france, where numbers appear to be heading upwards. spain in particular is struggling with a surge of new infections that has sparked european travel warnings, most notably from the uk. 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? well, i'm now inside the bbc‘s headquarters here in central london 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 working on grassroots advocacy including social justice, 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 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. 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. 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 are 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 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, 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 some would 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're jacinda ardern 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 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 are 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 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 in, 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. all right, so james graham, this has strengthened the hands, then, and emboldened the strongmen in government? hasit? it's very 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 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 parliaments and governments to make sure that, once the extremities of this crisis ebb away slightly, 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. 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 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, sometimes 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. ithink, 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 tra nsformative 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 and business have operated. there has been a report by a special rapporteur tabled in 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 an extraordinary 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 level of accountability and oversight from citizens. you are living in brazil and, of course, president bolsonaro has attracted a great deal of attention because, after 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, as everybody knows, in 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. 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 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, that 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 their jobs, 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. 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 earlier 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 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 or ethnic minority 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, but i feel 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 and i would say from the responses we have had that, arguably, 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 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 accept that the pandemic has 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 a little 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, it 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. even 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 strangely isolated us 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. 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. 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 or to create hefty 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, 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 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. hello there. the heat and humidity ebbed away there during the course

of saturday and resulted in a much more comfortable night for sleeping. but again, as we know, on friday, we werejust shy of 38 celsius. we had our third hottest day on record. just to show you the contrast, just about everywhere was ten degrees down on that on saturday. so it felt a little cooler, but it most certainly felt less humid, so more comfortable for sleeping — and we'll keep that fresher feel around for the day ahead — but there will be scattered showers around. we're under the atlantic influence again. low pressure to the north throwing in this weather front, which has given some fairly heavy rain across the northern half of the country through the night. still around, i think, first thing, but look at those temperatures. a much cooler start to the day for many. and what we have in the north, that cloud and rain, will tend to break up, but given we've got that moisture, that will be the spark, if you like, for some heavier showers as we go into the afternoon. now, we're not expecting that many showers across the southern half of england, across wales and the midlands and east anglia, but they can't be ruled out.

and temperatures will be a few degrees down saturdayjust because it will be a cooler start to the day. still a fairly fresh breeze through the channel. after fairly few showers in the morning across northern ireland, they will tend to become more frequent in the afternoon, and there'll be some sharp ones for the north as well — but equally, some spells of sunshine in between. and, of course, it's the british grand prix race day and it does look as if she will be mostly dry. there's just that small chance of a shower. just a small chance. and through the evening and overnight, those showers will tend to ease away, as you can see, with the risk still of a bit of rain brushing close by to the south. but another fairly fresh night for most parts. as we go, then, into monday, we've got a slight ridge of high pressure building in, but it is only slight and we still think there will be the odd shower around. and already looming large in the atlantic, the next low pressure system. so, if we do see some of that rain, it willjust be rushing southern counties, we think. then, we may well have some slow—moving, sharp showers into the afternoon, but feeling quite pleasant in the sunshine with the light winds in between. however, as we go into tuesday, we've got the atlantic low potentially coming in,

bringing us some more significant and persistent, quite widespread rain to the north and west. it will tend to peter out, we think, as it heads southwards and eastwards, but a fair breeze with that as well and some significant rain. that's certainly one to watch. as ever, you can find out more information from our website.

this is bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: tiktok says it's there for the long run, after president trump says he'll ban the chinese—owned video sharing app in the us. across europe several governments express concern about a resurgence in the number of coronavirus cases. a uk scientist advising the government on coronavirus says pubs and bars across the country might have to close if schools are to open. and pierre—emerick aubameyang scores twice as arsenal beat chelsea to win the fa cup. as arsenal beat chelsea to win the fa cup.