joe biden and donald trump are preparing for their final us presidential debate, which is being held in nashville. after the bad—tempered first event, moderators have been given the power to mute the candidates‘ microphones if they feel it is getting out of hand. the nigerian president, muhammudu buhari, has called for, an end to protests against police brutality, for an end to protests against police brutality, and for "the people" to work with the government to find solutions. several people have been killed in clashes with security forces, and there were reports of gunfire in the centre of lagos. poland's top court has tightened the law on abortion, making terminations only legal to save a mother's life or in cases of rape or incest. judges ruled that ending the life of a deformed foetus is counter to the country's constitution.

that's it from me. christian and katty will be here all night with the coverage of that presidential debate, but before all of that, here's newscast. chris, shall we kick off our new policy of introducing our special guests by dressing up and having appropriate props? i think we should, shouldn't we? and you and i have always gone for subtlety, in this particular department, hence my current attire which will be very obvious if you are watching on the telly and less obvious if you are listening on the podcast. let me just describe, i have a high vizjacket on. a fluorescent yellow jacket about my person. that is the first clue, second clue, you're going to get it after this one. i have got a battered old red box, the sort of which you would see on budget day, with the budget inside it. and are you getting warmer? you are in possession of a final clue as well, aren't you? a fine newspaper, the evening standard.

and therefore, it is pretty obvious, i think, to keen newscasters now, that our first guest this week is george osborne, the former chancellor. hello, george. hello. even i can get those clues! when was the last time you were in a fluorescent jacket? they rather went out of fashion on the right of politics after the giletsjaunes in paris started to use them. two years ago. boris has started wearing them, which is a sure sign that we are in economic trouble. you had your own custom made hard hat, didn't you? i had a few on various building sites. you know, when the economy is in trouble, the best thing to do is put the hi—vis on, put the hat on and, you know, you persuade people that things are being built. the more hi—visjackets you see on politicians over the next year, that is a good index for how much economic trouble we are in. i varied it a bit and started wearing various restaurant

outfits as i went round cooking, you know, tandooris in wolverhampton and pizzas in brighton and all sorts of... oh, so even the restaurant photo op, that has been done before? we did get into making things on camera, and it then enables the likes of you to put a clever voice—over. you made a steak for me once, actually. in sherwood forest. oh, yes. with the person who is now the government chief whip! exactly! at least one of us is doing well out of that dinner! george, thank you very much forjoining us on newscast. we have got lots to talk about tonight. great to be on. newscast. newscast, from the bbc. hello, it is adam in the studio. and laura, in the same studio, two metres apart, slightly breathless. and chris, 20 yards down the corridor in my socially distanced lair of news as usual. and george osborne is here.

not wearing hi—vis or a customised hard hat, but looking fine as it is, definitely. right, there is loads of stuff to talk about the economy today, because rishi sunak announced what i am going to call the pre—midwinter economic programme, having announced the economic winter programme before and now changing it to basically make it more generous, to help businesses who are in areas where there is lots of coronavirus restrictions and also to make his newjob support scheme a bit more generous. yeah. in other words, he has come back again, because the first one did not do enough. shall we have a listen to how he described it? we have an economic plan that will protect the jobs and livelihoods of the british people, wherever they live and whatever their situation. and just as we have throughout this crisis, we will listen and respond to people's concerns as the situation demands. and i make no apology for responding to changing circumstances. and so today, we go further.

george, what do you make of the sequencing of all of this? there was a plan and now the plan has been tweaked quite significantly before it even came in. you know, as someone said, when the facts change, you know, i change my mind, what do you do? i think it actually shows some political courage from rishi that he does not feel embarrassed to come back, sometimesjust a week or two later from some of these announcements during this crisis, and saying i need to do more and that is much better than the alternative. i think there is a broader point over which i would say the government needs to watch for, which is a kind of optimism bias. i know borisjohnson is the great person who is supposed to cheer us up and he is in to boosterism and all of that, but you also have to be realistic and i think this constantly telling us the crisis is going to be over soon hasn't really worked for the government and they are having

to sort of get back into the much tougher political message, which is, it is a long hard slog and essentially reintroduce the furlough scheme, although they are not calling it that. do you think they were kidding themselves, then? because it is not so long ago, in the summer, rishi sunak was off to wagamama, not even wearing a mask in the restaurant, and even when he announced this plan, cases were already rising at that point. you can call it sort of optimism bias, but do you think they have been kidding themselves? well, ithink, to be honest, they are guilty of what almost all governments, as far as i can see, certainly in the west, have been guilty of, which is, constantly hoping that the central biological facts, which is that we have got this very dangerous virus, we do not have a cure for it at the moment and it is spread by people getting together, is going to somehow change, and they don't change, those facts, but, you know, i guess i was a little bit surprised at the british government, but this is also true of the french government, the italian government

and so on, they have been caught by surprise by the second wave, you know. surprised by the fact that this disease has come back and i think, throughout the last few months, there has been this kind of british quality of thinking somehow we are exceptional and of course, we are not. so we keep thinking, we are going to avoid the trouble that is coming to other countries and, of course, we have been caught out by it. it has a lot of echoes for me of what happened in march and april. you will remember, laura, there was a budget, and then that was sort of torn up two weeks later and it was a new package, which essentially did work, the furlough scheme, we were told that quarantine was going to be for three weeks, we were told that we were doing better than other countries, and it ended up being worse. that, i don't want to be depressing, but actually i am quite optimistic about the kind of long—term, but i do think

this disease is going to be with us and these restrictions, or variations of these restrictions, are going to be with us through most of 2021, sadly. 0k. it is interesting, you know, because you sound as if the government has been so hoping it would just go away, it would all go away, that that has actually meant they have maybe not been taking the right decisions. i mean, it is leadership to be realistic, isn't it? ithink, you know, they are not easy, these decisions, laura, and i think what is quite interesting is normally the kind of commentary from the opposition, quite often, or you know, observers of the situation, is that boris and co are not communicating things well, or, you know, they are not being transparent, these are all code in politics of "i'm not actually getting into the central decision," which is, am i shutting the pubs? am i shutting the restaurants? he should shut a few more of those things down? i do think we are going to find more and more areas of the country, you know, going into

tier 3 as we now call it. this tiering system is kind of rapidly, you know, i don't know what the word is, sort of like a pack of cards. it isjoining up, isn't it, yeah? falling in on itself, isn't it? and, so, it is only about less than two weeks old, the system. i think we have to be prepared and look on the first and say it is most frustrating thing for many people, of course, doing huge damage to their lives and to their livelihoods, but i think we have to be realistic, we are going to be living with this disease for a very considerable period of next year, and we have got to stop hoping that the cavalry is coming over the hill. in the kind of cameron government, when we were setting out the kind of harder things that we had to do, in the beginning, we kept saying, it is a long road, it is going to take several years, it isn't all going to be over by christmas. i think that sort of served us well. i am not drawing direct

parallels, because we didn't have to deal with anything quite like this, and we were more in control of events, if you like, because they were our decisions, but that would, to my mind, be level with people and if things turn out better, great. let's hear a little bit from the news conference earlier on with the prime minister and the chancellor and the chief scientist, not least george, because of the question that has been swelling over the last week, about regional devolution within england and metro mayors, which you were a big fan of when you were in government, let us hear the exchange when laura asked her question of the prime minister. prime minister, to you, this week, you have been to war with leaders in the north of england, you're still leaving some workers on two thirds of their wages and telling them to claim benefits and cases of coronavirus keep on rising. is this really the kind of leadership you think the country deserves? laura, i must, lam afraid, strongly reject what you say about me being at war with local leaders. that is not the case. i am grateful also to andy burnham in greater manchester,

where he has agreed to help bring the r number down with a package of measures in tier 3, and as patrick hasjust said, thanks to the efforts of people across the country, we are starting to see some progress. now, borisjohnson was trying to suggest that, actually, his conversations with local leaders have been fantastic, which of course some of them have been saying, on the record this week, that they have been sort of bullied. they have had stuff imposed on them. the northern powerhouse working out quite how you imagined? i know it is all felt a bit like an episode of game of thrones... by the way, we are fighting over the kingdom... well, exactly, that is the thing! do you know, i helped create the mayor for manchester, you know, i pushed it from the centre, i faced a lot of resistance among the conservative members of the cabinet. i wonder why. well, one of the things

they said was, we are never going to win anything on any of these places — that was an argument i remember the then home secretary making to me. you know, then we were celebrating the victory of the conservative mayor in the west midlands and in teesside. some people saw it in very kind of partisan terms, government departments hated giving up power, including institutions which you wouldn't think of as government departments, like the nhs, but you know, there are, the nhs was very resistant to giving power to manchester. you know, ifeel this is the week where the mayors came of age and, you know, one of the nice things about having retired from politics is you can look back at some of the things that worked and think, yeah, we have created mayors who have become national political figures and get to be interviewed by laura. except that they haven't actually had the powers here. they have had things imposed on them, right? and they have not got as much money as they wanted and they

haven't actually had control. so they have said, they have been advocates for the regions, no question about that, but do you think it is really working out? because, at the end of the day, a lot of upset has been created, and it is also, for a lot of tories, made them think, all those new votes and new voters we got in the north of england, maybe that was all a bit flimsy. what is going to happen to them when we have got this kind of north—south battle raging? i think first of all, the next election is a long way off, and i will tell you, you're going to have a lot more of these podcast between now and then and a lot of things are going to shape whether the conservatives can hold those seats in the north. ithink... you are basically right, laura. what i would say has happened this week is that they selected local figures, like andy burnham, steve rotherham, dan jarvis, they have become national players and that is great. i think that has contributed to our politics, it builds on what was done in london, by a labour government,

before me. of course, we have got the former mayor of london as our prime minister. you loved having him across the water when you were in government. that was really happy, that relationship! there was one moment where he almost pushed me into a giant hole at a building site in battersea. .. we were both wearing hi—vis at the time. no, i did work well with him and we were able to deliver some real things in london. i agree with you, laura. the problem at the moment is that the devolution is kind of half baked, if you like. it is sort of in the oven, but only half baked in a mad way, i mean, half baked in the way that they have got the appearance of some local power, but when i hear the prime minister say today, every region must get exactly the same, and that was his argument for not giving manchester 5 million quid more, well, then, what is the point of all the negotiations?

lots of people have said that public health england didn't have enough money and it was a bit thin, so it couldn't handle the virus when it struck. is that something that you feel you bear a bit of responsibility for, because you were in charge of all the budgets for those things for a long time? i honestly don't think people have said there was a sort of lack of money meant that britain handled the situation... people have said that there were very severe cuts to public health, which there were. that's definitely the case. but there is absolutely no evidence that britain did worse than lots of other countries with much more generous public health budgets. i think it's fair, and this would be for the inquiry, whenever it comes, britain was preparing, and i can remember sitting in quite a few meetings on it, fora pandemic flu, not for a pandemic coronavirus, and so, you know, some of the things we prepared for, war—gamed for, did work. those nightingale hospitals, that was an idea that's been around for many years, that we could build these hospitals very quickly, but everything was sort of predicated on the idea

you'd be able to find a vaccine for this flu, and here we are approaching the end of this year and we haven't got a vaccine for this coronavirus, but nor has anyone else. i definitely think there's lots of questioning about that. the only thing i would say is i was very lucky to work with brilliant civil servants in the treasury who i think have done an outstanding job this year, producing schemes like the furlough scheme and the announcement today. we've got these prime ministers, both borisjohnson and theresa may, who have been at war with the treasury, or don't like the treasury or don't like having treasury civil servants around them in numberten, and what i would say to them, and i've said this to them in person, is, why don't you go out of the front door, which you stand outside, laura, so often, look at the nameplate on the door and it says, first lord of the treasury. you know, a prime minister who makes use of the treasury, where you really do have a lot of policy— making capacity, is a prime minister who is going to be more powerful, so i would go and tell boris to embrace his first lordship.

you said you already have done that in private with him? i have. i'm telling him again in case he's watching. we are on very late. just finally, chris, i know we are very short of time, george, but we were chatting earlier about the effect on the tory party at the moment, about everything that is so difficult to handle about coronavirus. yeah, and you hear from backbenchers, george, some of them will moan about the mayoral model and the rows that have been going on in the north of england, others will be much more pointed in their criticism of the leadership. i know this kind of happens with every party in government at some stage, but we are not that far into this parliament, are we, and the noises are pretty loud. it doesn't always feel like it's the 80—seat majority that it is. does the prime minister somehow need to sort of reset with his own party and, i guess, with the country — you were talking about the kind of optimism bias earlier on — and do something, a national address or whatever, that says, this is a long slog, it's going to be a really

hard winter, and takes us all along with him, tries to reset that kind of conversation, as opposed to this sort of one week, a big change, another week, a change to add to it, and just a sense that we are sort of living week to week. i think real leadership is about being realistic, and i know boris is a great fan of winston churchill and wrote a book about him. winston churchill did not say in 1940, we are going to beat the nazis in the next few months, we are definitely going to win. he said, i've got nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat and tears. it wasn't very optimistic, but it was realistic, and i think it played a very important part in national morale at the time. as for the tory mps, i can't help looking at the list of some of the people who are causing trouble, and they are the usual suspects. indeed, they used to be borisjohnson's friends when he was enjoying causing a bit of trouble. so there are some people who are very difficult to manage, whatever the issue is. for the rest of the conservative parliamentary party, of course, like for the country, it's a troubling time.

i do think, when you cast forward to that general election in 2024, it's all going to be about the economy. it's all going to be about handling the recovery from this disease. it's all going to be about tough questions, notjust about keeping people in work, but balancing the books and all of that, and so we are going to have a very economic—dominated parliament. the last parliament was very dominated by brexit and the kind of constitutional crisis, and the economy didn't really feature, but this feels much more like a parliament where the economy is front and centre. george, you've got to go. thank you for your time today. next time we speak to you, will we be calling you boss, because you will be chairman of the bbc? i don't think so. i think that's highly unlikely, put it that way. because you're not going to apply or because you won't get the job? i've read that boris's banker, i think, is number one place. what's that guy's name? richard sharp.

but i note you are deftly avoiding saying whether or not you... all speak at once. to avoid the non—denial denial, for aficionados out there, i am not applying for the job. definitely not. 0k. thank you so much for your time. thanks very much. now, what are you both doing after we record this podcast? any plans? i am going to go and do some more work. 0k. and i'm going to wear a facemask for two and half hours on a train to yorkshire. 0k, well, i am actually doing something i haven't done hardly at all this year, which is to go to the theatre. that's so exciting! yes, i'm going to the apollo in the west end, because they are one of the first theatres to put on a show in the west end, and tonight

it is adam kay, the former doctor and author of the book this is going to hurt, who is doing his one—man show, and it's to an audience mostly of nhs workers, to say thank you to them, and me, not to say thank you to me, but i will be in the audience. i was going to say... well, you lucky thing, that's really exciting. i'm very much looking forward to that. and it's going to get even better, because adam is here now, live from his dressing room! hello, adam. hello, how are you doing? i hope you don't have any first night nerves, because now we are doing a whole interview with you just before you go on stage. if i do, this will mostly distract me. what do you think it's going to be like in the theatre? i imagine it won't be totally packed, and we've all got to wearfacemasks in the audience, which i imagine stifles the laughter a bit. yeah, i mean, it's going to be a very different type of theatre experience, i daresay, for the audience, but we are living in a slightly different world at the moment, aren't we? itjust means that it's safe. there are going to be lots of gaps. i mean, i'm obviously used to having lots of gaps, but this is a deliberate one in between groups of people,

so each household obviously has to be on their own, temperature checks, everyone who is in the building, on stage, backstage, has had their covid tests, everyone in the audience will be in masks, one—way systems, ordering drinks on your phone rather than going to the bar, so lots of changes, but at least it means that theatre can get back on its feet again, which is a lot better than where we were. without spoiling the show, for anyone who is about to see it, is there any covid content? did you put any covid content into the show? yeah, i mean, lam wittering on for an hour and a quarter about being a doctor, and it would probably feel a bit weird if i never mentioned it, but i don't want it to be a particularly depressing evening, particularly as tonight is the first night of the run, a gala performance, free for nhs staff. they probably want a bit of a night off from hearing about ppe and pressure sores. you talked in your book about the mental and physical toll for doctors, for people in hospitals, of working in normal times, let alone these kind of times. i wonder, when you speak to people who are still

in what was your line of work, how they are finding this, particularly the grinding prospect of the winter ahead, where all of the indications seem to suggest things are going to get worse? i've obviously got a huge number of friends who still work in the profession. i've got nothing but the hugest respect for all the 1.5 million people who are basically holding the nhs together. nhs staff have always gone above and beyond the call of duty, but now more so than ever, truly, and i've got friends who have moved out of their homes, or did during the first lockdown, to live at the hospital, because they've got vulnerable people back home and didn't want to send home a potentially fatal disease, and people working with inadequate ppe, and of course i mustn't forget the 600—plus health and care staff who have lost their lives caring for other people. so it's clearly never been a more difficult

time than this year. adam, it's laura here. what do you think about the difference between now and at the start of this? what are we, six months on now, going into the winter? how do you think the mood has changed among nhs workers? i think there is a feeling of impending doom, much like there was in the foothills of the first wave of it. i think there is a lot of frustration. everyone was shouting very loudly that the basics of public health, the basics of sorting out a pandemic are testing, tracing and isolating, and it's clear that testing isn't up to scratch. it's clear that the contact tracing isn't up to scratch, and fewer people are isolating than should, and, you know, you can quite easily point to very public government and associated figures who seemingly ignored their own advice, and that obviously makes it harder for people to want to isolate, so there is frustration.

it's interesting you say that, because we've just been talking to george osborne, former chancellor, and i don't know if you heard our conversation, but one of the things he said when we asked him, look, public health had been very severely cut in his time in charge as chancellor, he said, i don't really think that's made much difference. what would your view be on that? my view is it has made a difference. in fact, cuts across the nhs meant that the country went into the pandemic with very little fat on its bones in the health service. there wasn't the slack, there wasn't the buffer, a mattress. it was already pretty much full, so that made it harder, but the nhs didn't buckle, and that is all to the credit of the people who work there, and less to the credit of the people who make the decisions. adam, other adam will be in the audience later tonight, but our audience listeners and viewers probably won't,

and chris and i won't. if we get him to kind of mr and mrs, put his hands over his headphones as if he can't hear, can you give us one of your best lines or best gags, for people who aren't lucky enough to be able to get to london to see it at the apollo in the next few weeks? absolutely not. they've got to pay like adam. you should enjoy the show. it's probably the safest place in london, because it's an entire theatre full of nhs staff, so you can relax. if i've got any illnesses, turn to the people in the audience and, could you have a look at this? could you have a look at my rash? lucky them! blimey! adam, don't get him started. thank you very much. break a leg tonight. great to see theatres opening again in the west end. and, if adam heckles you, come back and we'll tell him off on your behalf. i'm going to be applauding and laughing along with everyone else. thank you so much. thanks, adam. thanks for that, guys, and thank you to you for listening. we'll be back with another edition of newscast very soon. i don't know if i mentioned, we're going to do a quiz with a newscaster.

oh, yeah, we mentioned it loads. bye! hello there. thursday brought us a break from the rather unsettled run of weather we've seen. there was some sunshine to get out and about and enjoy some of the rather spectacular autumn colours on offer, but it was just a short weather window because, looking out in the atlantic, this swirl of cloud you can see here is the next area of low pressure that's going to be bringing rain across our shores for friday. and then further west, a developing area of low pressure. that's going to rapidly deepen to bring some strong winds across the uk this weekend. so, before we get there, a lot of cloud around at the moment. we've got some patches of rain working across from southwest england into the midlands, east anglia,

probably see some in the southeast as well, and then this more general area of rain that's bringing some wet weather to northern ireland. that's moving into scotland, western parts of england and wales early friday morning, before pushing eastwards. notice, though, the rain band does weaken significantly. there might be some areas across the midlands that escaped the rain band altogether. same is true across east anglia and the southeast, with just perhaps a few patches of rain here and there to take us through the afternoon. it is an improving weather story, though, because for most of the northwest of the uk, we'll see some sunnier weather with just a few showers, mainly confined to the west coast of scotland through friday afternoon. the winds then start to pick up as we head through friday night. areas of rain begin to spread in and that really is what's on the menu for saturday. a very gusty day with some heavy rain moving its way eastwards. sunshine and showers will then follow for many of us as we head into the afternoon. here is our band of rain. notice some pretty gusty winds to start the day, then, for scotland and northern ireland, but it's actually on and ahead of this weather

front that the winds will get really strong for a time across wales and across england. it's going to be quite a short—lived, squally band of rain, so intense downpours and some strong gusts of wind. they could be strong enough to bring down a few tree branches. we could see some localised disruption out and about, the weather getting cooler into the northwest as those sunny conditions arrive across scotland and northern ireland but with some showers packed in as well. it stays quite windy, really, on sunday. generally a day of sunshine and showers, but close to the low pressure in the northwest, those showers will be frequent. showers won't just stay around coastal areas of england and wales. there's actually a trough moving through, so those showers will be blowing well inland. most of us, i think, will probably see a downpour or two.

this is bbc news: i'm christian fraser with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. donald trump and joe biden are just one hour away from their last presidential debate — with new rules to stop them talking over each other. iam laura i am laura trevelyan i live in nashville, tennessee or the excitement in the atmosphere are building and the candidates are building and the candidates are about to arrive. nigeria's president buhari calls for demonstrators to end their protests — after several days of violent clashes with security forces — and reports of shots being fired in lagos. poland's top court tightens the law on abortion — making terminations only legal to save a mother's life — or in cases of rape or incest. and — as europe struggles to contain a new wave of coronavirus infections —

the uk announces billions