help us fight back that the vaccines help us fight back as a society but it was a poor choice of word and i sincerely apologise, this is he returns to work, as it were, given his self isolation after testing positive for covid—i9 a week ago. we'll have more on that throughout the day here on bbc news. but now on bbc news it's time now for dateline london. hello, and welcome to the programme, bringing together leading uk commentators, bbc specialists and the correspondents who write, blog and broadcast for audiences back home from the dateline london. this week, will england pay a price for borisjohnson�*s freedom day? and a trifecta of global worry —

afghanistan, iran, and lebanon. the dateline panel trying to put your mind at rest — or not — are the sudanese author and journalist, nesrine malik, bronwen maddox, director of the institute for government, and before that, foreign editor at the times. and with me in the studio, the middle east editor for the bbc world service, sebastian usher. welcome to you, sebastian — and welcome to both of you, thanks so much forjoining us. now, the sound of an english summer. no, not leather on willow, nor the clink of ice against glass — but the electronic "ping" of an alert on your mobile phone advising you to self—isolate because you've recently been in contact with someone who's developed covid. in just one week this month, 600,000 people were notified by the health service app. what effect might monday's ending of restrictions have on that "pingdemic"? one which has affected borisjohnson, his chancellor, the secretary of state for health — oh, and don't forget the leader of the opposition. bronwen, some people would say this is quite a brave bit

of policymaking by the government, but presumably in the run—up to deciding to lift these restrictions, it will have factored in the evidence coming from scientists that there would be a third wave in the summer? you'd like to think so. i think this one is being driven by notjust politics, but the sense that the prime minister really wants to get the economy open. but it is an unusual thing, brave is a way of putting it, to be opening up atjust the point when cases are surging, albeit from a low level. and the world is looking to britain with astonishment, but also to see what happens with this experiment, which is really an experiment about whether the vaccines can break the pattern of the past, whether enough people are vaccinated to mean that the surge doesn't really take off. so, in a sense, you can argue that england is, whether it intends to or not, doing the world a huge favour by providing this giant experiment on whether the system and people can withstand the delta variant?

i guess that's right. i'm not sure it's an experiment the world is rushing to run on itself. but people are looking very closely. but you referred at the beginning to the pingdemic, and this is where the government policy looks not just brave, but contradictory because on the one hand it says, open up, on the other hand it says, isolate yourself if you get pinged. and more and more people have been because the virus is spreading quickly at the moment. yet it has this policy, which it is dangling as soon as 16 august where you'll be able to test yourself or get tested and, if you are free of the virus, keep going to work. people are saying, if you're going to do that then, just three weeks away, why not now? and there isn't really a good answer. that's where this point was raised, sebastian, byjeremy hunt, the former health secretary, who said there's a danger of losing social consent if the rules kind of appear to be

contradictory, people will start to lose faith in them orjust ignore them altogether, which presumably is a bigger risk? it is. if you remember, if we go right back to the start of this, that was a major concern of the government back when you had dominic cummings in charge was part of that was an experiment, almost, in how to socially manage this. he said there's only a certain amount of time that people will continue to obey, i think it was about two months. so we are back to really testing that again, and i think we are testing it in england, in the uk in a new way, but people have been through so much and have done so many restrictions that they've essentially run out of restrictions that they still believe in. obviously, there is a question over how much signalling by the government has really given people confidence over this. 0ne brief thing, as someone who's reported a lot on what's happening in the rest of the world — a lot are saying we have to end the restrictions, it's far worse

having those restrictions and closing the economy, it's a far worse hit to everybody in all sorts of ways. it's almost as if the uk is operating in a vacuum, and that there aren't all these other countries around the world who are constantly removing restrictions and re—imposing them. for example, israel at the moment, which was the success story in a way is now moving back with a much lower rate to re—imposing a green pass on where people can go, to all sorts of restrictions and talking of making those more stringent. in some of the gulf countries, we just had the hajj in saudi arabia. still, the hajj was down to 60,000 people. incredible restrictions there. and those restrictions are not necessarily popular. a lot of people i saw online were essentially saying, this is anti—islamic, these are people who are in control of saudi arabia who were trying to close down hajj. so these are issues that all governments are facing in different ways around the world. you mentioned dominic cummings, the former chief advisor. we heard from him yet again,

nesrine, this week. i wondered if you were at all impressed by his critique of the way boris johnson governs? well, it was a rich critique, l for a start, because the way borisjohnson governs, particularly with regard to how the pandemic was managed, was something very _ significantly determined - by dominic cummings himself. so it does seem to be the sort. of sour grapes of someone who's fallen out with boris johnson because he could no longer. keep him in line. and what dominic cummings' going rogue has shown us - is that the narrative, the suspicions aboutj the failures of the government from the start are correct. - so, in that sense, he didn't tell us anything new about - borisjohnson's incompetence, about the confusion around - lockdown, around the ideological resistancej to locking down even _ when it was becoming clear that hundreds of thousands i

of people would perish. it was just that it was now in the open and someone | from within the government i was making those statements, which supports bronwen's point from earlier that there - is a fatigue not onlyl with the restrictions, but with the sense that there isn't really a hugely, - sort of, confidence—inspiring. address from the government itself and from people who have left the government. _ and it's worth noting that on the "freedom day," . as it is called in england, borisjohnson himself- was in isolation and sajid javid, the minister of health, - sat in isolation, and - the leader of the opposition then went into isolation . as well because they were also pinged. so it does seem that- the narrative coming out from people leaking about how. the government has managed this and the way it is technically i and practically signalling how to go about unlocking - is really not inspiring a lot of confidence at all.

bronwen, our confidence might have been shaken even more in the way we're governed by the three reports this week into the lex greensill affair. this is about a businessman who seems to have had — as one enquiry put it — "a remarkable degree of influence inside government". no—one seems entirely clear how he was appointed, who was responsible for him, but he ended up employing a former prime minister who then got his reputation burned by lobbying on his behalf. he didn't break any rules, a committee said that may be because the rules were too weak and aren't as good as they should be and effective enough. have we become a bit complacent about our model of government in this country? i think so, but it's interesting — we're in transition from the old model, which was all about rules and unspoken conventions and relying, really, on a club of people to keep those going, relying a lot on trust. and we're in transition to a place where people have broken those rules, but also

people are more sceptical, the public is more sceptical thatjust because people say they are following rules, that they are. so i think we are in transition to something that is more transparent, more sceptical, more questioning and needing more things written down. but what these reports showed is the really unpalatable side of that transition where, if a prime minister, past or present, wants to break the rules or break the spirit of the rules, hejust can — and just has. and it's really very hard to reach for sanctions for that because so little is actually codified about all this. nesrine, last thoughts on this, is this something that we need to be much more aware of in a global context? because we're quite good at lecturing other parts of the world on standards of governance.

yes, that's one of. britain's specialities. i agree we are in transition, . but it also shows what happens — this happened in the| united states as well — it shows what happens - when the sort of conventions of government that were i observed by a certain type of politician — these - conventions are completely informal — when you get. a government or party that becomes a bit more extreme and positions itself— as a rule breaker. and the tory party, - since brexit, has positioned itself as a party, most _ in the case of dominic cummings himself, he dictated this line — the tory party- is going to shake up things - in the uk, and the government had become sort of. corrupt in its elitism. so, interestingly, - the conservative party is assailing these norms — - and also internally in response to the pandemic, there are huge scandals with regards _ to illegal or irregular-

commissioning of tory donors to help with pandemicl responses, being given contracts to produce ppe, etc. they have framed this as a sort of nimble and efficient way- of going about things, . as opposed to a calcified, old—school way . of going about it. so there are two conflicting narratives, and i think- despite the intense media - coverage of all these irregular contracts and david cameron's behaviour, i think the tory - address about how they are changing the way that - governance works in the uk to the benefit of the publicl is actually cutting through. thank you all very much. the bbc used to make a tv programme called snog, marry, avoid. it was supposed to make audiences think again about what constitutes beauty. well, ourforeign policy version considers whether foreign powers should intervene — so we've called it "engage, disengage, avoid". let's begin, in reverse order with "avoid".

sebastian, lebanon — people will remember the big explosion back in the summer of last year which devastated huge parts of the city of lebanon, but it seems as if somebody has almost detonated a bomb under both the financial and political systems of the country itself. it's a country that was so much shaped by the intervention, meddling, however you want to put it, of other countries. can you summarise what's going on? yeah... we're coming up to the anniversary, august 4th, that this happened, and the lebanese are saying that nobody has been held responsible, a prime minister resigned after it, a prime minister was put in place — a week or so ago, he said he couldn't produce a government after nine months. this paralysis is extraordinary. in some sense, the awfulness of the explosion was almost like the whole system for many people in lebanon being symbolised in that massive, almost nuclear blast that destroyed parts of beirut.

and i think that's why it struck home so strongly with people, people who've lived or navigated through the very difficult way that you chart your course in lebanon, because this is a crisis that goes back years and years. obviously, there was the civil war, there was an attempt to patch things up after that, the rebuilding of beirut, an attempted restructuring of the way that the political elite and the way the country was managed, but it never changed anything. the same faces were still there, the same dynasties were still there. but look at the man who just last week said he couldn't make it as prime minister, look at the man who's in power — the president — he was there at the end of the civil war fighting a rearguard action in the palace that he's now in. it seems to be this inability of the lebanese political class to make any real concessions to each other, and that's blocking the international community from giving the money they promised to bring

in after the blast. just very briefly, you talk about "go back", let's talk economically — for years and years, lebanon survived because of the money that was coming in for all sorts of reasons, partly expatriates, partly every summer they had a bonanza of tourism with people coming back and putting money into the economy, but mainly in the last few years through an incredible almost ponzi scheme to do with interest that you got on the dollar, so it brought dollars into the country but at a major cost — people were essentially holding dollar accounts that were paying levels of interest that were unbelievable. when credit got called in two years ago, when all of that closed down, that's when the protests began and it all came to a stop. bronwen, this is a country that, in a sense, the big powers created this strange political balance in the system. you had the regional powers meddling in it for years, and now nobody seems to want to get involved now that it's falling apart. are they right to avoid it? i don't think they are avoiding it.

i'm sorry to disappoint your scheme there. france is trying really hard to bring the political parties together, and the world is ready to try and help if the political class can actually try and form a government. to call it a ponzi scheme is absolutely right, the elite is running the financial system for themselves, propped up from all this money coming in, and when things happened like the big explosion, that deterred the lebanese from sending their money back to lebanon, things started to fall down. it's an extraordinary case of implosion not from war, there is plenty of war in lebanon's background, but from really terrible government. but i think other governments, more stable around the world, would be very willing to help if, you know, the political parts of lebanon could do the very basics, which is form a government. a very big if, nesrine?

even though it's not related to war, the war still casts . quite a long shadow. one of the reasons that - the political class in lebanon is so stuck is it is still- frozen in the configuration they had trying to . maintain the peace. so every kind of religious. group or sect is ghettoised both in its political powerl and almost geographically and physically in beruit and across lebanon. i and there's also a sort - of long—tail of long civil wars that if they don't _ fundamentally change the power structure of the country, they can still... - ..and the economic crisis does happen, they are still stuck. in the politics of conflictl that have not really been resolved in a way so - the country can make a clean break with the past. bronwen, let's talk about another country that we are now seeing

the world try to disengage from, which might be easier said than done, and that's afghanistan. do you think the taliban is serious about peace talks? or is this just a tactical interest in peace while it slowly strangles the cities by doing things like taking the border posts, by securing more and more control over large parts of the country? i'd go for that one. it's very hard to have peace talks when one side is making such gains day by day, week by week as the taliban now is. that doesn't mean it's absolutely impossible to have a deal, they may be less strong and less capable of holding on to cities if they capture any than their progress in the past few weeks would suggests. but they're on a roll at the moment, and that is a very hard time to do a deal. but the neighbours are serious. iran, uzbekistan, probably pakistan with a bit of british encouragement, are serious

about not wanting an implosion or civil war within afghanistan, and are capable of bringing some pressure on the taliban to at least take part in talks. it'll be very hard to make that stick until they run out of steam. it's rational then, nesrine, for whatever criticism there might be from washington and other countries for neighbours like pakistan, like turkmenistan, like iran to make nice with the taliban if they think they'll be running the country in a few months' time? yes, the political calculus changes very quickly - if they think there is going to be a surge and that taliban - will be the main party of power. i so i'm not confident i this placatory influence from neighbours to try and get the taliban to the table - and to get peace talks to force

a resolution will hold. - if the taliban make serious gains, it is in the interestsl of its neighbours not to start - a relationship in this new post—us withdrawal in the middle - of the night era as conflicting protagonists, so i agree. let's talk about the third one in what i call the trifecta of woe — that was disengage, engage is iran. and clearly the world is engaging with iran. what are the prospects looking like for talks which are due to restart in a week's time, by which there will be a new, regarded as being more hard—line president in tehran? does that matter? i don't think it matters so much. essentially, the shots are called by the supreme leader and the hardliners around him, and in a sense, not having that dichotomy between a more moderate

i wouldn't say reformist who was the architect of the iranian side of the 2015 nuclear deal. in a sense, it makes it less complex and clearer that the line is there. so i think what matters is that two people who aren't there any more, president trump in the us — his policy of maximum pressure backed up by his administration brought us to essentially where we are, brought the reflex action from iran moving away as it has more and more from the deal. without that, even with the biden administration in a slight quandary over where it goes, in a mexican standoff with the iranians, that's still a defining feature. and benjamin netanyahu in israel has gone, who was a major voice since forever. i looked at a video when he was in america — he was saying exactly the same things in the 1970s about iran then as he has been saying the past few years. there has not been a change in the attitude in israel, but it's less of a major issue for the political class there.

that takes some of the pressure off. you're also seeing the other major push against any kind of agreement, saudi arabia, which had huge influence during president trump, is also beginning to change for a variety of reasons. but it's looking to find a way to live with iran again rather than indirect hostility. so that pressure is gone, but diplomatically, we've had six rounds so far in vienna — i had been reporting that everyone is thinking the timetable is up until the election, which gives you a chance where he is still there. that went, then there was talk of the incoming president to do it. that's gone because this week we've had various officials in iran saying we won't do anything until the new president comes in, it's the new administration's position. despite all the rhetoric, despite all the pressures, it still looks like a deal is essentially there, it's been pretty much agreed.

but who is actually going to get it over the line and commit to it is still a big question. the one thing that could really change that is from the iranian perspective of saying, "under a new president, we are thinking that that deal back in 2015 isn't the deal that we really want. we want to have more wriggle room about a whole variety of conditions." if that happens, then it could all dissipate. i would say at the moment, the betting is still that a deal will be done because it is in both sides' interest, the us and iran. that's iran. there's a chance now for each of you to tell us about a story that hasn't had as much attention as it should have, or if it's had attention then we haven't been as across it as we should be — as people are interested in what's happening around us in the world. nesrine, first of all with you? i'd like to mention - the guardian's investigation into the pegasus phone| hacking/spying scandal. it has had a lot of attention.

so it's hardly an undercover topic. i think it's absolutely _ staggering the number of people whose phones have been - compromised both in the media and in politics, the threat. that this presents to media freedom and to political. freedom across the world is one issue. the second issue is _ the ubiquity of these espionage systems and software, and the penetration i that they have is, - idon't think, something we've reckoned with. and the pegasus investigation has mentioned 50,000 - compromised devices, - but that's just what we know at the moment and, having looked into it further, - there are so many loopholes even in our own devices- as individuals that can be used for all sorts of reasons. - i think this is the next .

frontier in both personal privacy and also media freedom and political freedom as well. . always check your settings. bronwen? i think the next frontier in looking at whether corruption is taking hold in britain is in local government. and it's for one general reason that local government has been under enormous financial pressure. we've got a lot of money that comes up against it in planning, developers and so on, and you've got councils really wriggling to try to work out how to get more money because they aren't getting it from central government, so they're buying property in the high streets and so on. some of that will have turned out to be a bit dodgy. there isn't quite the scrutiny there used to be, there was something called the audit commission, now councils can essentially pick their own auditors. this is not from some great wave of venality, but this is out

of desperation, i think we will see more scandals. we have seen one or two like liverpool. more to come? more to come. you have 30 seconds. in morocco at the moment, three journalists this month have been sentenced to long time injail for independent investigators. i remember back in morocco a decade ago, one of the most heartening things was the way the media environment developing. these voices were growing — these people are now injail, which is a real issue, and they are not just being accused of spying, which makes it more difficult that's trumped up. thank you all very much. that's it for dateline london for this week. we're back next week

at the same time. temperatures have been nudging down a little _ temperatures have been nudging down a little bit _ temperatures have been nudging down a little bit over recent days, and we will — a little bit over recent days, and we will continue to see that cooling trends _ we will continue to see that cooling trends for— we will continue to see that cooling trends for the next few days too. a trends for the next few days too. change of weather tight after the heatwave of last week. more heavy showers, perhaps some thunderstorms at times. let's take a look at the satellite image. you can see this zone of cloud here across parts of central, southern and eastern england. that is going to be bringing further heavy showers and thunderstorms. particularly across parts of southern england, perhaps due south east wales as well. localised flooding and disruption to transport a few do catch some of these intense downpours,

thunderstorms and lightning and hail. away from south—east england, most other places will be dry and settled with some sunshine breaking through. not as hot as recent days, but still temperatures reaching up to about 2k but still temperatures reaching up to about 2a or 25 celsius across parts of scotland. some of these heavy downpours in the south—east will continue to this evening and overnight stop still the odd rumble of thunder and surface water possible. during the second half of the night, showers ease away and a lot of low cloud easing in across parts of northern scotland, northern england and perhaps northern ireland as well. into monday, and things come and settled. that means we will have quite a bit of cloud in a few showers for parts of northern and eastern scotland, for instance. a little bit of showery rain pushing into the south—west in northern ireland. quite a lot of places

having a largely dry day. just the chance of a few isolated showers in scotland, parts of wales. 0ne chance of a few isolated showers in scotland, parts of wales. one in the south compared to sunday. and then, moving through to tuesday, no pressure. we've got this system here working in towards the west. we've got more showers in the forecast through the day on tuesday, and in fact much of the week ahead is looking pretty unsettled. some places about ten a celsius cooler than they have been. dry weather in the south towards the end of week. goodbye.

good afternoon. team gb have won their first medal at the olympics. into the men's tae kwon do medal means guaranteed at least a silver medal. 0ur sports correspondent andrew smith bryt reports. battling for britain's first medal. 24—year—old

chelsie giles from coventry in a bronze medal