there are our headlines. now on bbc news... dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline london with me geeta guru—murthy. this week, all the uk government's problems seemed to assemble at once. even the prime minister's supporters in the conservative party and the press have started to ask searching questions about the government's handling of the pandemic. as borisjohnson warns of a second wave, more restrictions and the tracing regime is clearly struggling to cope, the labour party says the government has lost control of events. also today, from the rule of six to the rule of law as brexit reappears in british politics.

the northern ireland secretary, brandon lewis, admitted the new internal markets bill will break international law. this prompted criticism from all five living former prime ministers and the man who might be the next president of the us. a compromise is now in the air but was the scale of the row deliberate or wise? with me to discuss all this are polly toynbee of the guardian and portuguese writer eunice goes. and here in the studio my colleague, clive myrie. lovely to see you all, thanks very much forjoining us. it feels like another pivotal moment on the covid front. as infections rise again everyone is asking what is the government strategy and will it act fast enough this time? will tighter restrictions come in just as the furlough scheme is due to end?

will the furlough scheme therefore have to be extended? a lot of questions ahead at a crunch moment. polly toynbee, it has been quite a week and quite a dramatic change in tone from the government in the last couple of days. it certainly has. i think people feel that they have been on a roller—coaster with this government, changing their mind and their advice all the time. it is quite understandable in a way because obviously from day to day, the situation changes how fast the infection rises, but we always knew, the government always knew and said and warned that a second wave would come. we always could see across the channel that in france and in spain, it has been rampant again for quite a while. it would be bound to be coming this way. but there is kind of attitude of mind in our government that says we are an island, we are different. it will not come here.

which is what happened the first time round and why we were so unprepared. seems to have been a bit of that this time, because they seemed to be sending people out to restaurants and pubs or urging people to go back to their offices just as it was about to hit again. and now of course they are talking about clamping down large parts of the country, possibly the whole country again in a few weeks‘ time. so i think it has left the people very confused and rather angry. and eunice goes, it was striking i think to see lockdown being lifted at the start of the summer by many governments across the world, certainly in europe, probably driven by economic concerns, and ijust wonder whether actually that was just too much lifting too fast given everyone was trying to prioritise schools returning in the autumn? i'm not sure if the question is really one about lifting too fast and too much at a time, because we have seen countries in particular, south korea and taiwan, who had very little, very light lockdowns, if any lockdowns at all, because what they had in place were really robust test and tracing systems and that has enabled those countries to have very low death rates and infection rates and keep their economies are going.

and this i think what has been missing in particular in the uk. the test and tracing system is in complete chaos. the government has spent billions in awarding contracts to private companies to run the test and tracing system and it has absolutely enabled to process all the tests that are being conducted, let alone provide enough tests to the population. so the problem is this is a government that seems to be very concerned with the economy and to a large extent seems to prioritise saving the economy over saving lives. so that calls debate again. but in reality, they have not really put the resources in place to save the economy and to save lives. and clive, there are questions obviously from the beginning about making international comparisons and trying

to work out which countries were implementing best practice. you have travelled the globe, how much comparison is it fair to make given sizes of populations, behaviour, culture? it is difficult. if you look at a country like new zealand, relatively remote from other big centres around the world, an island nation, small, low population, you could say that those things played to its advantage, but new zealand instituted a travel ban on february the 3rd. this was before they had a single case of covid in the country. as soon as they got around about 50, 100 cases, i think, they had a nationwide lockdown. they acted quickly and they acted sure—footedly. if you look at a country like sweden, much bigger population, nowhere near as big as the uk, but there they decided not to have a nationwide lockdown but instead have social distancing rules, that kind of thing, they kept the schools open, businesses open and they had a high mortality rate at the beginning, but in comparison now to other countries, that mortality rate

is looking fairly good. so you have two comparisons there with two very different countries which chose different ways of approaching this and it seems to have worked. i think what the problem has been for the united kingdom, for other countries in europe and particularly the united states is that they are trying to have their cake and eat it as it were. try to lockdown and to then open up again and then they are going to have to lockdown again. there has been a lack of consistency in messaging, but i think that point about testing is crucial. the who made that point at the beginning of this pandemic — test, test, test. and frankly, while the government has to be given credit for the way it has managed to build up the testing regime in this country pretty much from zero, it has not gone anywhere near far enough and that is probably why we are in the problems we are at the moment. sorry, it was just very striking and dido harding and neil ferguson today on bbc radio said they were not expecting this a surge in demand for tests, which seems astonishing given that everyone knows as soon as schools go

back there are the usual cough and colds and parents will be worried. of course, absolutely ridiculous. of course you knew once we went back to school teachers and pupils would need a lot of tests, because if any child gets a cough or cold orflu, then the whole school is on alert and of course everybody who has been near that child will need to be tested. it was blindingly obvious. but i would like to go back to something clive said about how countries have done it well and badly in different ways, very often according to their culture. this country has a particular reason why it is almost the worst in europe for deaths and almost the worst in terms of the economic hits and the unemployment hit we have taken. the reason is that we have had a decade of appalling austerity that has absolutely shredded our public health system and all of our

systems, our health service has had the least increases in funds in the last decade since it was founded in 1948. our public health system has been absolutely decimated because it has been put in the hands of local authorities who have had 40% of their funds taken away. this virus could not have hit this country at any time when the public sector, the public services that we rely on, have been so weak. as a result, as eunice was saying, turning to private sector companies at the last minute to hope that they cannot fix it for us. well, the countries that have done well have very strong public services. of course, those who would defend the government would say, hang on, you've got to take a longer view on the death toll numbers,

because for example, look at sweden's numbers now, they do seem to be better than some of the other comparators. of course, the key question of whether you have immunity and how long that lasts will also determine the longer term view on this, eunice. i think the big problem has to do with the lack of clarity from the part of the government in terms of its policies, for example rules on social distancing, on wearing masks, there is no enforcement of those rules. this is quite important to keep these rules enforced if we want to ensure the safety of the populations. the testing of herd immunity, i think that is quite a dangerous idea, especially because covid is a disease that we know very little about and even relying on a vaccine, that is still quite a few months

away from being offered to the population, to bet on that to happen soon, it is very risky. it is risking the health of the population, it is risking as well the economy. it looks like the piecemeal response of the british government to all of this has been found wanting and it is not working. so we need more transparency, we need clarity as well and definitely a far more robust test and tracing system. all governments are up against the most phenomenal challenges that no one has faced in a generation. clive, ijust wondered also in terms of culture, you speak to people in east asia, japan for example, when they say there is this culture of mask wearing and there has been for years, long before any of this,

because people have that sense of we are protecting other people in society. you go to india, there is much more of a sense of society. the west has developed a much more individualistic culture, freedom to go and drink if you want to whenever you want to, how much of that is playing into government responses? i think that is part of the argument, particularly in the us where you have seen are people willing to take out their guns and go down and demonstrate in front of local authority estate houses and so on, against lockdown measures and local restrictions and so forth, they forth, they believe they should have the right not to wear a mask as well as to wear a mask if a local authority says they should. i think in the united kingdom, at the beginning of the pandemic, certainly back in march, april, there was a unity among the majority of the population that these restrictions were necessary in order to save lives. i suspect however that has begun to fracture as the consequences for the economy have taken a hold, people have lost theirjobs, the furlough scheme is coming to an end, and people are thinking, "i need to start protecting not only my mental well being also my bank account as well and perhaps we need to open up a lot more quickly." but there are covid idiots out there, there is no question about that. you get on the tube here in london

and there are people who are not wearing masks, people who are not social distancing. there is one super spreader in bolton responsible for over 200 cases, asymptomatic, diagnosed, supposed to self—isolate, he does not and goes on a pub crawl. these are instances of people who are not taking the rules seriously enough and i suspect over the summer a lot of people felt, "i am making my contribution, i have done it now, i want the government to open up so i can get my livelihood back." a lot of this is about messaging, isn't it? we know that. well, covid has blasted everything out of the water in so many ways but brexit is now back on the agenda. time is running short for britain

and the eu to secure a trade deal that both sides say they want. this week the british government said it was prepared to undo those parts of the withdrawal agreement that it negotiated, to protect, as they might put it, the integrity of the uk along with the irish border. it's all prompted the resignations of government lawyers and in her role as a government envoy, amal clooney even. is too much government energy, time, focus being taken up with a political bomb that they set off? eunice, if i can just start with you. how has this appeared do you think to our continental neighbours, the whole shenanigans over this new law? i think everyone is baffled, shocked, this was not the expected behaviour of the british government. over almost five decades in the eu, britain gained the reputation of being a tough negotiator during treaties precisely because everybody knew that britain was being tough because britain would respect what had been agreed. so the tearing up of the withdrawal agreement was something seen as completely unexpected, completely out of character, and i think it will have a huge reputational damage to united kingdom in the longer term. isn't it perhaps just a negotiating tactic as the talks draw to a crunch point?

possibly, but it is like throwing a nuclear bomb into a negotiating tactic. this is the country that always says it gold—plated any european rules and regulations. we were the law—abiders and accused other people of fudging the edges. this is the first time i think in our lifetime that we have seen a british government minister stand up in the house of commons and declare they are now going to break international law. we are the ones who have always to tried to hold other countries around the world to international agreements. it is really shocking. i think it has had a profoundly shocking effect right across the conservative party, because although borisjohnson won a stupendous victory only last december, he had a sizeable rebellion, enough of a rebellion to make them feel they had to stand back. so they fudged together a bit of a compromise and said, "we will pass that law, but will will not actually use it without another vote in the house of commons", but brussels is saying, "that is not enough." that is still breaking the treaty, you cannot pass a law which allows you to break a treaty unilaterally. in that treaty it says if there is any future disagreements, we sit down together and have an arbitration. the suspicion here is that borisjohnson very much wanted to bring back brexit into the argument to try and cover the extraordinary mistakes that the government made over covid.

brexit is what got him elected and it is where he won all these seats off labour, it is his trump card in every sense and i think he is trying to return that to the news and cover up covid, but it has just multiplied the mess the government is in. certainly, clive, it has caused some consternation and upset even amongst the conservative benches. politically, people asking about boris johnson's focus, the focus of the government, theirjudgments at a time where everybody wants to be focused on getting brexit done and sorting out the pandemic challenges. how damaging does it feel to you when you havejoe biden tweeting about uk government policy? that is something that has to be remembered. one of the important points that the brexiteers put forward about the case for leaving the eu was that we would be able to get all these great trade deals outside and one of them,

one of the most important, would be with the united states, but it is the house of congress that has to rubber—stamp any trade deal that is agreed by the president. if a future president, particularlyjoe biden in this case, if he is not on board with an agreement hammered out between the european union and the uk, because of the complexities of the northern ireland and good friday agreement, then he is not going to ratify that. congress is not going to ratify that, it will not be signed. so that it is an important point which had to be made and has to be in the minds of all the negotiators involved in this, but i think

the british position hasn't been helped by the shifting explanation of what the effects of the internal markets bill might be. it was not going to break international law, then it will break it, then it might break it but only a little bit, then it is our right to do this as a sovereign nation, then it is the european's fault that we are having to potentially break international law. i think the problem here is that the british negotiators expected or hoped that they would get a canada—style free trade agreement, but one has to ask the question, why would the european union allow a rival on its doorstep that could undercut the integrity of the single market? why would any entity allow that to happen? as a result, it seems, potentially,

that britain has understood that it is not going to get the deal it wanted, the deal it hoped, it is therefore perhaps looking to a no deal and as a result it is looking for someone to blame. that seems to be the reason and the explanation for all this that is going on and it is not doing the british side any good. polly, reportedly michael gove is very keen on getting a deal, lots of people still thinks it is possible. have to remember the conservatives are still doing well in the polls compared to their labour rivals. keir starmer is making his speech in a party conference this week as labour puts forward its ideas to the nation, albeit in a virtual way, virtual forum. politically we have got to remember that the conservatives still have a 80 seat majority. they have an 80 seat majority but it turns out to feel a lot less secure than they thought, that this rebellion that happened this week, was extraordinary and enough to make them have to u—turn yet again. and they have another side of the tory party

who are the extreme libertarians who are very angry with any lockdown restrictions at all. so they have two sides of the party in a state of fury. so even 80 seats does not feel quite as comfortable as it did. also, borisjohnson won his amazing electoral victory with 26 points ahead. now it is only a point or two. keir starmer, the new labour leader, who has only been in power a few months, is now ahead of borisjohnson in terms of who would be best to run the country. keir starmer comes across, as he was director of public prosecutions, as a formidable, serious prosecutor of all of the government's failings and it is an interesting time. we have four years to go till the next election, a lot is going to happen between now and then and so i do not think anyone in their right mind could predict where this is going politically, but the labour party has transformed itself in these few months since keir starmer took over. it has been the end of the far left regime ofjeremy corbyn and the arrival of a new sober serious, unshowy, solemn labour front bench who are very good at analysing government mistakes. so far have not put a foot wrong. eunice, the whole change in british politics, as we have seen politics obviously changed globally by covid, but with a stronger labour opposition potentially, and borisjohnson looking troubled by the immense challenges

understandably that he is facing. how does that play in europe as they look at a country here facing this brexit challenge at the end of the year? as the brexit negotiations are nearing its end because the transition period is reaching its end at the end of the year, europe is essentially not paying or not much attention to electoral charismatics and so on. they do not care really the size and the shape of the debates, the majority of boris johnson, because essentially they are looking ahead. they have other problems too and are looking ahead and looking towards the future relationship with britain and that is something that should focus the minds of the government because they are negotiating with the eu 27, not with the house of commons, not with the conservative party or the daily mail.

and they should not focus too much on opinion poll and they should focus far more on what is at stake, because the future economy and the future of the united kingdom is going to suffer tremendously if britain negotiates or leaves the european union with a bad deal, so if it negotiates a bad deal or leaves without a deal. ok, much more on brexit inevitably in the coming days. brexit and covid are both eating up news time and political time, bandwidth we know in government, but there is much else to watch out for domestically and globally. what else has caught your interest this week? polly, what has not got enough attention as it should have? i'm afraid it is related, but itjust so happens a story that i had come across. i asked yesterday the headmaster‘s office of eton college, schools have had to send children home because they cannot get tests,

because teachers cannot get tests. i asked yesterday the headmaster‘s office of eton college, possibly one of the most famous schools in the world, and he confirmed that every pupil and every teacher in eton college have had tests. meanwhile, in the rest of the country, four out of five schools have had to send children home because they cannot get tests, because teachers cannot get tests. children are going home again. this for us is a really resonant thing about the state of inequality in this country, which is extreme compared with most other european countries, we're closer to america than europe in terms of our inequality. this is just an emotional issue where parents are desperate to get their children back to school and look across at eton buying private tests that no one else can get, creating... reminding people of the great inequality of life in britain. of course, yes, the private testing system is available. it is interesting to know whether the nhs can use some of that capacity. eunice, what story has caught your attention? the president of the european commission, ursula von der leyen,

has made quite a wide speech on the priorities of the european union and one of those was about reforming the dublin regulation, which essentially regulates european asylum or refugee legislation. we have known and we have been witnessing for years the shame of europe in the way that it has managed the refugee crisis and the wave of refugees and asylum seekers coming from the middle east, and i hope she is faithful to that work and that europe builds up a humane and law—abiding asylum system for the future. still highly controversial of course. it captures headlines daily, the asylum question and migrant question. clive, how about you? what have you seen? that breaking story overnight from the us

that the supreme justice ruth bader ginsburg has died. she was suffering from pancreatic cancer for a while, but this is going to add another frisson to a us presidential election if another frisson was needed. donald trump is now going to be able to go to his base and those republicans who were perhaps leaning away from him towardsjoe biden saying look there is a vacancy on the court and you need to put me back in office for another four years. i could fill that with a right—wing justice. it could at the same time galvanise liberals as well who potentially see a right leading supreme court getting rid of more environmental restrictions, getting rid of more environmental restrictions, getting rid of roe v wade and abortion rights and so on and so forth. so i think this is going to be a titanic battle leading up to the election on november the 3rd and when president barack obama had a death of a supreme courtjustice just before the election in 2016, this was in february 2016, that congress and the senate refused to hear the approach for his nominee for that seat. mitch mcconnell, the leader of the senate made it clear

it was too close to the election, the election had to go through. you have those same republicans now saying there should be a hearing in order to fill that seat. so it is going to be titanic. absolutely, it is going to be fascinating, i do not know if you will go out to cover the vote but i know we'll all be desperate to keep an eye on it. that's it for dateline london for this week. we're back next week at the same time. thanks so much to my guests, eunice goes, polly toynbee and clive myrie. shaun is here next week. bye for now, thanks for being with us. hello, we have had rather more low

cloud, mist and fog this morning, but it is clearing away at. just a few areas where it will then go. this is how it looked in bradford to start the day, but as i say, for most, the warm sunshine will come through. we still have low pressure circulating towards the south, throwing up some cloud into southern coastal counties in england, the channel islands, there is areas at risk of a future as. this massive cloud and approaching weather front that it will bring behind it. some quite big changes to the middle of next week, but today the mist and fog in land clearing away, this inland mist, cloud, will take awhile longer and may well linger for some north sea coast, but it will clear away from the east of wales and the midlands. the thick yellow card we have across the west of northern ireland is producing a bit of drizzle, sea fog in some areas. so quite poor visibility here adds another scholar died southern and eastern scotland and the north—east of england. some cloud linger. —— some poor visit visibility here.

with all that such an amount, temperatures again responding and getting into the mid 20s that we had yesterday and dropping quite overnight, as will be winds finally, as we have had a few days of quite brisk winds picked up at that is, the return of the mist and clouds but also some fog at lower levels, so but also some fog at lower levels, so quite a problem through the rush—hour tomorrow morning across the southern half of the country. northern areas as well having seen fog recently will see some tomorrow morning. once it clears, an abundance of sunshine again for england and wales, northern ireland, central and southern east of scotla nd central and southern east of scotland but the far north as they can cloud and some rain and drizzle tomorrow, is that with the fact that we saw on the satellite picture approaches backstop but for the rest of us, temperatures high teens, low 20s. but all change mid week, some uncertainty on the timings of these areas of low pressure, but needless to say, some wetter and windier weather and also some much colder weather. temperatures at the moment well above where they should be for september. as we tap into this

northerly wind, we will pull downs ami northerly wind, we will pull downs am ifrom northerly wind, we will pull downs am i from the arctic and temperatures will drop quite dramatically from below average as we head towards mid week and beyond as it looks more settled. uncertainty to the timing, but you can of course as ever keep up—to—date on the website.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the british government says the country is at a tipping point, as it prepares to introduce tough new fines for anyone in england who is told to self—isolate but fails to. if everybody follows the rules, then we can avoid further national lockdowns, but we of course have to be prepared to take action if that is what is necessary. the labour leader says sorting out the problems with testing should be the uk government's number one priority. if i was the prime minister, i would apologise for the fact we are in this position with testing. throughout the summer we were saying

prepare for the autumn.