this is bbc news, the headlines: for the first time the irish nationalist party sinn fein has won the largest number of seats in northern ireland's assembly. sinn fein want to see the country reunited with the republic of ireland. its president said that the momentum for change across the island of ireland was now well—established. ukraine and russia say a humanitarian operation to evacuate civilians from the besieged azovstal steelworks in the city of mariupol has been completed. ukraine said that all elderly people, women and children had been taken to safety. president zelensky said they would now seek to evacuate wounded soldiers. the taliban in afghanistan have ordered all women to veil theirfaces when in public, returning the country to the dress code enforced

during their previous time in power. now on bbc news, dateline london with shaun ley. hello and welcome to the programme which brings together leading uk columnists with the foreign correspondents who write, blog and broadcast to audiences back home from the dateline london. joining us at the end of a busy week of uk electioneering, and ofjudicial controversy in the united states, are camilla cavendish from the financial times. she was head of the prime minister's policy unit when david cameron was in downing street.

as baroness cavendish, she is in the house of lords, but doesn't sit for any political party. isabel hilton is the founder of china dialogue, which seeks to promote understanding of china's environmental challenges. isabel has been a foreign correspondent and is a regular columnist in british newspapers. henry chu is the london—based editorfor the la times, a role he has also performed for variety magazine. whilst the us west coast sleeps, he helps to edit the newspaper. welcome to all of you, thanks very much for being with us. now, in a democracy, who is thejudge? well, in much of the uk this week, it has been the voters. so what sort of verdict has been delivered on boris johnson? the united states is a democracy too, but one where the supreme courtjustices get to decide whether or not a law is constitutional. are they about to declare that the nationwide right to abortion is not? and monday's victory day in russia, a day country where vladimir putin is thejudge. what will his speech to crowds in moscow tell us about the war in ukraine?

isabel, let's start there if we can. how do you think this year's victory parade is likely to be? well, one of the difficulties about this year's victory parade is that there isn't a fresh victory, which i'm sure was the ambition when this whole terrible war started. what is actually being celebrated is the victory over germany, over the nazis in world war ii, in which tens of millions of russians died. so it's a bit of a holy day for russia. that enormous sacrifice, that victory. and it seems to me that the dangerous thing for us, in what putin might do with this, is that in the absence of a victory, and he has lost 11 generals, 10,000 troops, a lot of kit, that he will seek to link up his claim that he is denazifying ukraine with a victory over the nazis in world war ii, and that is a further escalation i think, a further mobilisation of russian society

and perhaps an escalation into adjacent geographies. he has to come up with something, from his perspective, positive and that only means, i think, he is not a man that backs down, that means going further, so that's why it's a very worrying moment. camilla? itjust seems to me that it's the ultimate irony, isn't it? that he is celebrating victory over a nazi aggressor, when he himself is really behaving in exactly the same way and this is the real tragedy of the situation. what i wonder from over here is how many russians actually see it like that? we know that about telegram, we know about some of the underground media, but what is the general view of the russian public? do they still believe in him and in this war that he is promulgating? i think though we have known that most russians it- seems to get their view i from television and that is controlled by the russian state at this point. - the independent outlets i are all gone, they have fled to other places or have just

completely shut down - altogether, and therefore l alternate messages are not getting through and as isabel was saying in terms - of the message he wants to put out there, perhaps there might| be a victory to celebrate, if the russian forces cani finally rout those final- holdout defenders in mariupol, but absent that, it has been almost a disaster for- russia in many ways, - but you are not going to see that, idon't think, l in any of the russian propaganda that gets put out. will there be an actual. escalation of hostilities? that, i think also is unclear, l i think putin, as unpredictable as he might be, also is not. completely mad, and knows that continued losses, - which will be harder and harder to hide, would be difficult to sustain and so i think. we will certainly see a lot . ofjingoism and nationalism on display and it is, - as you say, a central point of russian identity, _ in terms of overcoming nazism, but whether it really means we will be seeing a greaterl

escalation of armed - hostilities, i'm not sure. on that question of overcoming nazism, all three of you have now mentioned the analogy with the �*30s and �*40s, have we learnt the lessons, do you think, from the �*30s? do you detect in the response to putin's actions towards ukraine a sense of that history and of not allowing the mistakes of the past to be repeated? obviously it has taken a while, hasn't it? we are now all feeling that the end of history has not arrived and i think particularly for germany, whose position has been fascinating in this period, that has been a big wake—up call and i do actually think that although the germans have been quite sluggish on oil and gas, where they are really exposed, because they have spent 20 years unfortunately ignoring the possibility of this threat, actually scholz has reversed quite a lot of merkel's policy quite quickly. so i think although we can all complain, i think the eu and europe have galvanised

themselves in a way that they should have done after crimea, but... well, indeed. the tragedy is that we didn't learn those lessons in 2014, and had we, we might not be in this situation. in a sense, this takes us rather neatly into domestic politics, because energy is just one aspect of the cost of living crisis, and everybody seems to be using that term. we have inflation, running quite severe, even the prime minister says it could be 10% in due course, we have interest rates going up, both in the united states, dramatically, first time in 22 years they have gone up that much in one go. similarly, we had an interest rate rise in the weekjust gone from the monetary policy committee at the bank of england. this is the issue now, isn't it, for domestic politics? regardless of election results, this is what will determine the shape of politics in the next couple of years, is that fair, would you say? um, i think it is slightly more complicated than that, shaun.

i think clearly this is the issue of the moment. people are really worried about the cost of living. we don't know how temporary this inflation spike will be, and a lot of economists until now have been saying this is only really about energy, it's a huge supply shock, but it's very transitory. because a lot of it was to do with covid. all that. covid recovery. covid recovery, exactly. i think the fed and the bank of england's actions and other policymakers actually suggest they are now worried this is not quite as transitory, and that inflation could really take hold. but in terms of the political landscape in the uk, having just had the local elections, i think funnily enough what we have seen is we have not seeing a big backlash against this government and we have not seen labour doing as well as it ought to have done, the liberal democrats and greens have done a bit better, but the truth is, actually, keir starmer has not broken through in the way... the labour leader. the labour leader, in the way that you would have expected, and that raises a whole series of questions now about personality and conviction. it's notjust about policy.

it was interesting you use the word conviction, because he now faces a police investigation into a so—called lockdown event, exactly what he criticised the prime minister for. i mean, that doesn't help, henry, does it? it will be a distraction, whatever message labour was hoping to get out this week and... and it will defang some of that argument they would make - about partygate, how this . is a sign of government that does not obey its own rulesi and isjust gripped by sleaze now, as well. but in terms of the costi of living, if it's a durable issue, as we have seen in the us and britain i and in all democracies, - when it hits the pocketbook, that's what really matters. and partygate, if that can be weathered, if in a couple - of year's time when the general election rolls around, _ that will be almost a nothing, if people can find that they i cannot heat their homesj or thnot able to put food on the table as they have before _ the food on the table is something that actually we need to remember, because that's the other big issue around ukraine, nobody is planting.

staples have already gone up significantly anyway over the last couple of years. absolutely. and a huge supplier of wheat to the world. but also india, which is another major wheat grower, had 45 degree temperatures this already this year. so the spring planting in india has gone extremely poorly. we are going to have a real crunch on grain supplies, which will last at least a year, and that is going to destabilise a lot of poorer countries and it's going to hit people in this country who are already rather marginal on affordability of food and energy. just on the domestic politics, camilla, absolutely hear what you are saying about keir starmer, labour will be disappointed not to be further ahead than they are clearly, with what could be no more than two years and might be a lot less, until a general election. is there a risk for the government in that strong performance from the liberal democrats? because the �*97 result was terrific for labour, even keir starmer�*s closest allies would not claim he is a tony blair, he hasn't got that star quality,

but part of that story was also how will the lib dems did and the combination of that absolutely devastated, decimated is a better word, the conservatives. yes, there is clearly a possibility of a lib—lab pact, the liberals are certainly not going to ally with the tories, so the tories have nowhere to go. liberal and labour are both saying that they are not going to enter into a formal pact, but of course that's a possibility and it's probably the only way that the numbers would stack up. and the south—west, i mean, it's interesting, the south—west went largely blue at the last election, it was a liberal democrat stronghold, it does seem to be coming back, we have to see what happens right across the board, but clearly you are right. there is a lack of confidence in this government. but i think what we have seen today is that we are not going to see the tories themselves moving to oust borisjohnson. i think there is a more profound lack of confidence in the british constitution and democracy. i think people are

really, really fed up. the possibility of a lib—lab pact perhaps bring back the idea that finally this dog's breakfast of the british constitution and an electoral system might get some serious attention. because if you look across the elections we have just had, it's only in england that the first—past—the—post system operates. in local... in local elections or indeed... not in westminster elections, perhaps, is how i should put it. but every level of government except westminster, outside of england, people use a one kind of proportional system or other. when scots are sending mps to westminster, it's first—past—the—post, when they are sending them to the scottish parliament, it's proportional representation. and the same with councillors. so everywhere except england, that is true. and the result of this is that, since 1922, we have had two governments in this country elected with a majority of the popular vote. one in 1931 and one in 1935. laughter.

every other government has been has held power, despite the fact that most people who voted did not want it. now, how, why is this a good idea? nevertheless, when they held a referendum on that question on a coalition, the public resoundingly was either totally uninterested... that was more recent history than what you are looking... | the lesson of that is do not hold referenda on constitutional issues, and there are more recent examples of how that can go wrong. i wonder if a referendum, henry, might be the way out of the current crisis potentially engulfing the us supreme court. tell us what has happened this week and why it's so significant. well, in the us, of course, - we have a written constitution, unlike what you have in this country, an unwritten one, i and that gives powers to three branches of government - and we have, at the top of the judicial branch, l the supreme court. they are presented with a case that would allow them - to reverse a ruling that has i stood for nearly 50 years that has allowed women to have | abortions legally throughout

the country, notjust in a particular state, j but nationwide. the arguments for this actually came before l the courtjust a couple, about five months ago, and it was already apparent then that this conservative i court, because it's now 6—3 in favour of conservative i justices, it was going - to strike it down, but once that draft opinion goti leaked this last week, which was actually quite - a major event in the court's history, because it has rarely ever happened, it was like i the difference between knowing something is going to happen . and the emotional impact of it actually becoming i or seeming reality. and has nowjust exposed this incredible divide that we havel in the us on abortion. and i think is also beginning to call into the legitimacy. of this high court, _ because it is so stacked in one direction, three of whose justices were appointed i by a president we just had i who did not win the popular vote, who were confirmed| by a senate who represent

a party that also - have a minority support in the country, - this is really bringing up fundamental- questions of democracy. changing it, however, - whether through referenda or trying to amend that constitution, i is incredibly difficult. it's a very difficult situation, though. the judges, five of the judges on the supreme court in the confirmation hearings were asked about precedent and about roe v wade and none of them, none of them gave any indication that they would do this. in fact, the opposite! they said, "we respect precedent and roe v wade is settled precedent." now, hang on a minute, this is the supreme court and if thejudges had not, were not prepared to be honest in advance, i think the discrediting the supreme court is really a possibility. this is fascinating, i feel incredibly strongly, i have been on pro—choice marches in washington, the whole thing, in the past. and i feel very lucky to live in a country where this is not politicised, but the alitojudgment,

which is the thing that has been leaked is actually legally very sound. so this makes it much harder, i mean, i think it is sort of, if you take a dry technical view of this, there was, the right to abortion is not in the constitution. well... no, no, but this is how they are going to win this is what i am trying to say. is they are able to say, this is a legal argument, it's not political, and i think it's quite important to look at it, because as i remember, roe v wade was brought in under, there isn't even a right to privacy in the constitution, but it was stitched together under various headings. now, actually, what should have happened is it should have been in legislation and the tragedy for america is you won't be able to get legislation through the senate on this issue. but of course that is where i think the conservative right will take this to say, "well, of course this should never have come to the court, it should have been legislation. " but there was an intent to legislate immediately after the roe v wade judgment, because it was a woman senator who saw that this could be...

that's what i mean, it's not practically possible, but i think the question for biden now, if we know there are probably 22 states which are either going to ban or restrict abortion as a result of this ruling, the question for the white house now is, what can they do to help those 27 million women who are going to be affected. interestingly, biden never use the word abortion - until this last week, - since he became president. it is a vexed issue for him as a roman catholic, - as is now a majority of those on the supreme court, - which is not a problem, - people are obviously allowed to have their religious viewpoints. _ i would differ with youl on whether it's actually jurisprudentially correct, this alito ruling, - because he says that this is not going to affect - any other precedent, it's really only about| the right to abortion, - but actually, if you are going to knock down something, i that itself sets a precedent. now killing precedence is not necessarily- a bad idea, because... we would still have - segregation, in the us.

however, when precedents have been overturned in the past, - mostly it has been to expand rights, to restore rights, not| revoke them, which is the case in this particular case, - and also when you look. at popular opinion, public opinion still supports a legal right to abortion. _ the us, if it does this, is going tojoin countries like congo, i mean, there is almost no country in the world that would have this kind of... indeed. there is also, since this is part of a very vigorously prosecuted culture war, the question of what will they come after next? what about gay marriage? gay marriage sure as hell wasn't in the constitution. there are many other rights. contraception, yes. which are not in the constitution, so were that argument to be deployed, this is a disaster for american life. there are a lot of people in america who would dispute that, wouldn't they? would take a different view. now, i would not want to quantify its numbers, but even if you think it's a minority, it's a significant minority, otherwise presumably

we would not be in the kind of debate we are now. yes, but once people start dying, and if this passes, people will die, then this argument will not be over. presumably, women who have more resources will have the ability to travel elsewhere and seek an abortion? yes, indeed, but a lot of states will enact... actually, in poland, where the law and justice party has done something similar, we have already seen two women die. so you are completely right, and that will become untenable. what about the argument, i opened this programme by saying, you know, who is the judge and in a democracy, it is usually elected, people who are elected, clearly the justices in supreme court are not elected. that presumably could become a problem if you have the unelected organ effectively determining very fundamental issues like this about personal freedom. isn't this, though, a more, less of a rebuke of the justices, than of the elected arms of government in the united states, whether it's a state or federal level, that have not grasped this nettle and have not established the kind

of framework on which those individual rights could be built? it was the political side that appointed the judges and, but the judges are there to protect people from the abuses of politics. and this is their failure. i think we talk about democracy and majorities and minorities, i there should neither be - a tyranny of the minority nor a tyranny of the minority. unfortunately we are tending l towards the latter with the way the electoral system| and the legal system in the us is set up, i so that has put up this incredible dilemma we havej now that is really only again polarising the country still further. - what's the danger for the court itself, do you think in this, if it goes through with this judgment? regardless of where people's views are on the question of abortion? it seems to be one of biden's only options in this situation would be to pack the court with his own people. essentially, if you think that trump has packed the court with his people, and this was never supposed to

happen, because as isabel says, these people were supposed to be the check of executive power. but one of biden's options would be to expand the court, pack it with people of a different hue, possibly bring in term limit, because of course it's actually an appointment for life, but again, that relegates it to a different status, doesn't it? and you lose that whole independence that it was supposed to guarantee. they talk over each other. fdr was going to do that in the �*30s, wasn't he? he kept getting new deal things kicked out by the court, but never actually did it. and the composition of it now is nine, it wasn't always nine. j this has actually changed over time, there is nothing - sacrosanct about this particular number, i but as i wasjust saying, j the more you expand it, it will become unwieldy, . and just becomes a political instrument and is no longer serving the function that. originally the founders had expected it would. j henry, what do you think it means for the mid—term elections? well, of course the democrats, i who are by and large, not 100%,

but by and large in favour of preserving abortion - rights, are going to| make hay with this. they are already campaigning message going out saying, i if you want to find a way - to preserve a woman's right to have power over her own body, you need to turn out _ for the elections, - because all indications were and still are that republicans will takel over the house, possibly. the senate in the election, so this could be a motivating l factor and even biden himself has already gone on television to say, "we are now looking . at a radical movement - trying to reshape the us." so i think definitelyj it's going to be part of the political conversation. is it going to be the number. one issue for a lot of people? not when inflation l is at 10% or higher. you raise that question of inflation again, so it takes us back to where we were a few minutes ago and i wonder, henry, how big a deal is this potentially forjoe biden? because some people have even blamed what the fed is doing on his stimulus, the money he injected into the economy to try and help to bounce—back from

covid. yeah, he is caught between a rock and a hard place, - because also at the same time| you have for example oil prices partly going up with what's happening in ukraine, - but also the public - is overwhelmingly in favour of what he's doing for ukraine, yet really upset about what's . happening to their pocketbooks. so it's very hard - to square the circle. so he's going to have to reallyj confront that in the midterms. he tries, but it's a tough- defence to make when somebody is opening their wallet - and discovering they cannot pay for staple goods or even find . them on the shelves any more. but the stimulus was wrong—headed, wasn't it? the truth is i think there was groupthink around the president, there were other voices like larry summers, who actually, it's really interesting that he took such a strong position so early on. he is a former treasury secretary. he is a former treasury secretary and he was, you know, very much, he is very much a prominent member of the democratic party, but he was willing to get out there and say no, this is going to risk inflation, that's exactly what happened.

they unleashed an inflationary monster. and i'm afraid i do think it's impossible to say the stimulus wasn't part of that. the other question it raises of course is, because it's raising it in the uk as well, is the question of how far people are going to be willing to accept all the things they talked about back in glasgow, at the summit debating climate change, and all the things that we're going to have to take some hits, expensive hits in the short—term, in order to get to a less carbon—dependent future. and a future in which the planet, we are able to survive on the planet, i won't go on. how difficult is that question now going to get, as things like basic costs of energy becomes so much more expensive? well, there are a couple of problems there. it does depend where you look. if you look in europe, it's actually reinforced the rather sound european green plan. and they have drawn the conclusion that, if you want energy security, build renewables. you do not have to import the sunshine. and you kill several birds with one stone.

in the states, there is an added complication that there is, at the moment, a trade embargo on solar panels, which means lots of... because they are produced in china? 0r it's more complicated? a lot of them are imported from southeast asia but, the argument is whether they originate from china, so we have got a complete problem there. and in this country, you have an extreme wedge within the tory party, it includes the delightful mr farage, who may not be in the tory party, however... i'm glad you said that, because otherwise i may have had to... they are mobilising around opposing climate action. and although they have stopped denying that climate change is real, they are going on the, "oh, but we can't afford it, it's really too expensive." as though this whole argument rests on the fallacy that if you change nothing, nothing changes. if you change nothing, life gets very dangerous very expensive and more people die. so it isn't a sound argument,

but it's an argument that plays into the current political anxieties. and we will see, we will see what this government makes of it. and it is difficult for a prime minister who has been under the kind pressure for years, who has taken this stance, just as the prime minister you fought for, take this kind of green stance and tried to defend the decision and then found they were put under quite a lot of pressure within the party. yes, that's true. i mean, funnily enough, borisjohnson is, you know, pretty solid on green issues. zac goldsmith, ben goldsmith, very, very influential neighbours of the conservative party, strong ecologists, i don't think, funnily enough, i'm not terribly positive about these things, but i would say with borisjohnson in power, you won't see the sliding back. where i think we have made unbelievable mistakes as for example to close down the biggest gas storage facility we had. i mean, the lack of even medium—term planning is really extraordinary. we do have to be honest,

though, as someone who, i have been campaigning on these things for 25 years, we have to be honest about the real costs. the baseload costs for power and i'm afraid we have sold the public, we have, politicians have been too glib about telling the public you can have net zero really easily. we are out of time. i wish i could give us more time, as i wish i could give as more renewable energy, but there we are. isabel hilton, camilla cavendish, henry chu, thank you all very much. more of the same next week. goodbye. hello, after a few showers on saturday, particularly in the east, sunday looks drier. high pressure in charge of the

weather through the day, largely dry, some spells of sunshine, could see one or two isolated showers. a fresh start in the morning, temperatures in mid—single figures in the east, early morning mist and fog clearing quickly. cloud bubbling up in the afternoon, perhaps showers in the south—west, wales, northern england and central scotland. temperatures 18—20, always cooler around the east coast, most places the showers. into monday morning, we see the rain arriving across northern ireland and scotland, cloud thickening, breeze in the north—west. clear and drier further south and east, where we will have the coldest start to monday morning. more sunny spells on monday in england and wales, temperatures up to 22, turning wetter and cooler across northern ireland and scotland. for now.

welcome to bbc news — i'm chris rogers. our top stories. the united states has called for northern ireland's leaders to return to power sharing. it follows sinn fein�*s historic victory in the election to the northern ireland assembly. it is the first time a nationalist party in northern ireland has won the most seats. 0ur correspondent chris page reports, and a warning — there is some flash photography. smiles, flashes and cheers, were the sure—fire signs of sinn fein�*s success. cheering the party has retained its 27 seats, and that is enough to top the table.