we want to talk to some of the brains that are actually shrinking inside the skull gets taken in the brain still small. the pain is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscles down to the bone. there's no really. we're not sure this is. the headlines here an arch international still friends of donald trump looks to maintain america's partnership with saudi arabia despite accepting that it's crown prince that may have known about plans to kill dissidents and journalists jamal khashoggi back in october.

mass protests over the french president's tax reforms on fuel leave one person dead and five hundred others injured including dozens of police officers. there's an outcry in western capitals as a russian official looks set to take over the reins at the international criminal police organization. and flying high for twenty years the international space station celebrates two decades of pioneering research we go behind the scenes and take a look at its achievements both in orbit and on earth. you can check that out on line for those stories and more at our team dot com i'll be here again with the headlines in an hour's time right now though stay with us.

hello and welcome across top floor all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to briggs it or not to briggs that that is the question to resume his plan to exit the e.u. has been roundly criticized from virtually every quarter and with a looming deadline the u.k. could face a hard brigs that without an agreement even early elections how did it get to this point. talking brags that i'm joined by my guests in london marcus papadopoulos he's the editor of politics first magazine we also have alexander mecurio he's a writer on legal affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com and we have our share donald he is an associate director of the academy of ideas all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and

i always appreciate marcus let me go to you first i'm titling this program broken brags it is that an appropriate title for this program do you think go ahead well allow me to say this i do not like the european union and i never have lights it but at the same time i don't like the i don't like the remain can why because both camps are two sides of the same coin they share the same politics the same economics and the same foreign policy objects and they are inherently and russian and they support western global moni however let me say this as a member of the parliamentary press gallery i have a front row seats so to speak and i can assure people watching this episode of crosstalk that. extraordinarily complicated. it is not simple it is

not black and white and anyone who says otherwise is not to be trusted to research may has struggled over two and a half years of premiership regrets it but no one should be under the illusion that if corbin or if someone from the conservative party. johnson or dominant club was leader it would be any more effective than theresa may britain is in unchartered waters and i would also say this peter that there are that brick cities wrought with risks and dangers one of them for example concerns and often islands now i will make this point so it is absolutely imperative that there is a soft border between northern ireland and the republic of ireland awful why is if there is a hard border that could potentially undermine the good friday agreement and if the good friday agreement is undermined that could result in an eruption of

violence in northern islands the likes of which you know we haven't seen for a great many years so i do not like i do not like the european union but this is unbelievably complex hours to let me go to you did to wrestle me get the best deal that she could get because i'm i have to really question i you know she repeatedly said briggs it means bragg's it so is her deal doesn't really mean briggs it because just about everybody has a negative opinion one way or another about how she understands would brags it's all about go ahead allister. yeah well greta the extent. and raveling forty years of being a member of a super national organization is not going to be easy and there's lots of complexities about the whole situation that anybody that was charged with negotiating bricks it is going to have to deal with but the fact remains that.

we're in a situation now where the deal that's on the table is one that will see britain in a formal possibly technical sense leave the you but it will remain bound by the rules of the you for the forseeable future with no apparent mechanism to get out of the i mean in a way those that say that it's a worse situation than currently being member of members of the e.u. are to some extent correct because we will be in a situation where we are whether it's in a transition period or potentially into any sort of backstop agreement if we don't have a kind bespoke agreement we'll be in a situation where we don't actually have the mechanism to leave because we will need the european union's agreement to do that while still in all sorts of areas of life whether in social policy or environmental policy economic policy or under the jurisdiction of the law courts and the european court of justice will be still

forced to subsist under under european union rules so i think it's it's not it's not bret's it is the bottom line of this we have a deal that is not brics that alexander i guess you know to be a purist in looking at what was voted on it means leaving the european union and i suppose now considering all of the questions and criticisms of means plan is hard bracks it a real law option right now in if it is what does that actually mean because it's looming my friend did salumi go ahead. well i think it is if you like more a default position than an option because of course pretty says that they wanted what might happen if the parliamentary and arithmetic is such that there is no agreement are there on breaks on on to raise a maze breaks it plan or on anyone else's i mean at that stage britain leaves the

european union in march two thousand and nineteen without a deal here's all the problems that go with that now can i just go back to a point which marcus and allister were making i think a lot of the trouble as be the great secrecy with which theresa may has conducted this negotiation she could have said right at the beginning that what she wanted was to keep britain in a customs union or a customs regime and with the with the european union negotiated with the european union on that basis and i think there would have been support for that both in the european union and in the house of commons all she could have said we want to completely leave the european union entirely and all its institutions and then go she ate it on that basis looking for a timetable perhaps of period of five to ten years while step by step we design

gauged but with the eventually destination clear she didn't really do why there of those things she gave the impression that she wanted a complete no clean break but in the end because she conducted the negotiations so secretly she ended up with something else and it is this which is creating our think a lot of the feeling that we're talking about and he is this which is creating issues like possibilities of a no deal breaks it all alternatives. really we're seeing now people talking about a second referendum which it seems to me is really an attempt to rerun the referendum which is the wrong that the e.u. strategy when the people fail have another vote here marcus believe it or not i'm actually a little bit sympathetic to resume i know i'm going to get a lot of flak for this but if we go back to the election in two thousand and

sixteen i don't really think people understood what breaks that actually entailed i mean it's kind of easy to say well we leave the european union but as you said it's far more complex than that and the common market i mean i think most common sense people would say yeah we don't want to stay in that maybe the immigration thing and all these things could be talked about here but i mean it's really about the economy and the i can see how the deal is being could have been foreseen then after what we've seen for the last two years because i like the point that was made any politician had to resume position would. end up paying. a heavy political price because of what was decided in two thousand and sixteen which was not particularly obvious then go ahead marcus well i'm going to have to disagree with you pay to ok it was sympathy for theresa may. but i do think it is wrong

and it's all and unintelligent for people to be single in her rounds for this for criticism because i said moments ago would it be any difference if the minute or your small were later what they would satisfy are parts of the conservative party but they wouldn't satisfy the other parts of the conservative party in the so let's just say to resume is forced to resign and let's say someone from the right dominick rob becomes the leader of the conservative party well the city is going to be delighted but then the other parts of the conservative party who are act. supportive of the european union or passively supportive not be happy so we will be back at this stalemate but you know i think ultimately what it comes down to is this all i personally do not believe in referendums wilson never believed in referendums. never believed in referendums there was some subjects and i do not

mean to sound condescending but there was some subjects they are so difficult to understand that the person cannot well i don't know you and i find what i find economically so i don't you and i disagreed on this one one could make the are going to leave go to alistair on this here is that there are some issues that are so very important that you must have a reference to marcus's idea point upside down here allister go ahead. yeah i mean i mean i think there are some very important issues of constitutional matters that you do decide to have a referendum on and it is not as if this referendum is just an instant decision it's been agitated for among sections of society ever since well at least since the master deal in the early ninety's and and certainly around the time of the lisbon treaty and and onwards so i think people wanted to have a say on this this very important issue and it's i think it's

a little bit sad than in the time since the referendum that one of the things that's come forward quite a lot of the time in order to call the referendum into this disrepute is the idea that people the nation's people are not in a position to judge what the future of society should be on these very important issues because i think you know when i look back at the referendum campaign everybody everybody was engaged. to trying to understand all these quite difficult and complex issues everybody had something to say about you never barely met anyone throughout that time didn't have an opinion they were doing their best to kind of understand the detail but also the the big sort of overarching implications so i think it was a very important thing to have in the morning hours or all the halls out and i thought i've got to go to i've got to go towards better i have to get a hard break here and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on break that stay with.

i've been saying numbers. matter you have over one trillion dollars of debt more than ten dollars. eighty five percent of global will be loans to the rich eight point six percent market saw thirty percent just last year some with four hundred to five hundred trees per second per second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china is building a two point one billion dollar a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only number you need to remember is one one just shows you can't afford to miss the one and only.

that. is what do. we care the music with us. with a drag here. by. going to get rid of those who are not go away we will not die quite. real the hard work we do is the true.

welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing bragg's it. ok let me go back to alexander macarius in london it's already been mentioned as fargo and i think we need to put some shed some more light on it let's let's say that some may lose. loses a vote of confidence in her deal doesn't pass parliament. this deadline remains it doesn't really matter about to resume anymore i mean because whoever replaces her is going to have the same dilemma in india making of appeasing or why variety wide a range of our groups and ideas i mean this is what you guys call it a sticky wicket i don't know if you can say that on television but it's a mess. it is

a very complicated situation indeed and if to raise them a falls and if this deal is rejected by the house of commons then in some ways it becomes even more complicated because the time or even more in common i want to manage even more exactly construct. who take who in this situation takes over from to resume i mean there is no consensus within the conservative party on who the replacement to her would be there are difficulties of her holding a general election and having a new government hasn't even if the new government even even if there is an election and a new government is called the new prime minister will need time to try and sort all this out now he keel she whoever they are could ask the european union to extend the deadline by a couple of months and they might agree to that but again coming back to

a point allister was making earlier it is the european union not britain that will decide that question so i have to say this only thinking this kind of situation. m.p.'s in the house of commons looking at all of this are going to say to themselves well however bad this deal is or appears to us to be better to keep theresa may better pass this deal because the options of doing all the wise. i'll so complicated and so difficult to judge that we would rather have what looks like the status quo continuing then resolve this issue before march and perhaps trigger a political crisis and in the case of some concern that is risk the possibility of jeremy called in becoming prime minister you brought up the topic or i want to go markers that's that's to resumes final card final high card isn't it the specter of

a labor government and the specter of jeremy becoming prime minister is he using that as a poll as a political point go ahead marcus or with any doubts that who play a very very influential role amongst the on the conservative benches when the vote comes about three some may still because even so even though some conservative m.p.'s are not happy with the deal the greatest fear of course is germany corbin become in prime minister and i think there would be a backlash among against many conservative m.p.'s if they were to vote against the deal and if that was to end up in a general election which at the moment. corbin would win so no conservative m.p. wants to hand the keys to ten downing street to cope in but let me just say this of

peter i make no pretense to be an authority on economics because i'm not but i would say this that what is the worst thing for another for an economy it's not a bad deal it's uncertainty now i speak with a lot of diplomats over here especially chinese diplomats and they have told me this they would draw for have a bad deal than uncertainty because if you have a bad deal with the world of business you know where you stand and you can do something about. it chinese diplomats have told me that if they no longer see britain as a bridge to the mainland of europe to re-explore their goods about pain tavist then they would have to seriously reconsider whether they have a presence in britain but if this uncertainty if there's no deal that's what i'm joyful not pates if there's no deal that's the worst of all alistair you want to jump in go ahead. yeah yeah i do because i just think it's very important to

understand what breakfast is about and the fact is that for the people involved or for breakfast it wasn't primarily a case of economics i'm not saying that everybody was happy to have economic chaos but i think there's a series of social and cultural factors that framed the decision and framed a vote for bricks that are more important than economics and i think that people have been prepared to suffer a little bit of economic disruption on the basis that in the long term will we'll have something better and that the whole point of brics it was to change things change means disruption that's that's the whole point and we cannot allow breck's it to be undermined by the fears of people having a fear of disruption because in a way that's that's what it's all about and i just think that where we are just now and where we've been for the last couple of years is that effectively we're having a break that moment in which the people have demanded breakfast and the band that we leave the european union but we have no breaks that political leadership or

brecht's that movements as it were that is able to lead us to that situation and that's why we've got so much chaos just now because you know that even the even amongst the european research group or the brics tears within the conservative party in parliament they're kind of numb and don't you know they have no real clear idea of how to move on this their breakfasts years yes possibly but they have no real inclination as to how we resolve this situation so for me the really big thing just now is that we have to create a situation where the dynamics are shifted to some extent i think whether it's to raise them a been deposed or whether it's a general election you know i leave that openness to what's the best solution but for some whoa there hoss to be a shift in terms of what's. name because i think it's very important this point to reengage the british people in the decision as to how we best get breaks that not

having another vote as to whether we get breaks it but how we actually secure it because the people rather than the politicians are the ones that have driven this process and i don't we badly need them back on board i think are so it's a very very interesting point about alexander mackerras but how do you do that i mean how do you translate that into into action because i think it's fair to say that theresa may never had her heart and i mean actually she was against reg's before she became prime minister i mean you never saw her the chair and had her heart in it i mean she was a mandate and she said she would go through with it and that's what her plan is what is the result here i mean if what she'd do you think genuine in her attempt to get the best deal possible i mean if it is or is that an impossible question to answer go ahead well i actually think in in her own mind she was genuine i say that in the knowledge that of course she voted remaining in the referendum but i didn't

think to raise them made intentionally so as this thing only think that she didn't really understand some of the aspects of negotiating this thing properly but coming back to a point that list of mate and indeed marcus is also made one should not put all the blame for this debacle on to raise the may when david cameron the previous prime minister who called the referendum resigned the brick city as fail to organize properly and take the leadership of the conservative party and the country and take control of the negotiation and then into the vacuum to raise them a step in and again it is the same group of people who have alone to conduct negotiations in this way sidelining her bra. exit secretaries nor forming the cabinet regularly if they had wanted pressed

volved it's difficult to see how she could have refused so it is a crisis of the political class at least of the conservative part of the political class that they have failed to lead this process through to any conclusion i want has to say it's probably because going back to two thousand and sixteen none of them expected to find themselves in that position because none of them expected that the good people would vote leave and that they had never really sorted themselves out since then marcus reflect upon that because i sometimes get the impression that i and i think the this storm that briggs it has created is own is not going to be over for a while here is there briggs it fatigue now among people is that you know it is the the they're not even halfway through all of this we could see new elections we

could see. the specter of of hard briggs i mean there's a lot of unknowns out there and they've been going around this for two years go ahead marcus i think it's fair to say that the average briton even if those remain voted for the main actually wants this issue to come to an end they want to see britain leave the european union after the for the first of march two thousand and nineteen because it has dominated the political and economic scene in britain for the last two and a half years and britain is going to leave the european union after march two thousand and nineteen i mean that is going to happen i would also say this about some a she is a genuine politician she's not lead to she doesn't have leadership skills and that's one of the translation regrets. you have to give her credit for that but she is a very conscientious home. all that work in a ball is let me just i'll see what it is true it is true that

a lot of british people did not just vote for bret so on the basis of economic reasons they voted for masses of sufferance a but what i say to the camp is they said they never answer my question i say well if we're going to have britain is going to hold a referendum on regaining its independence from the e.u. fine i don't like the e.u. well how about britain holding a referendum on reagan in its independence from the united states of america ok well if you're going to give me the last word what's next. yeah i mean i think it's very interesting just the way that tourism is presenting things i mean the one thing that she's latched on to is immigration which is about the only thing within her withdrawal plan. she can say achieve something that some people wanted i mean she's always been completely illiberal on immigration and you know as someone who's very liberal and wants freedom of movement i've always been against that. you know quite likes freedom of movement so it's you know i'm not particularly pleased that

that's the thing that's been seized on to the other thing i think there's interesting is the way just now that she's constantly portrayed as a politician resilience i'm sorry i think if you got the house to journals then she hasn't had resulted but i mean you know we're of run out of time ever since frank underwood died on house of cards i suggest everyone to turn to the briggs it channel now because it's going to get really exciting many thanks to my guests in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember.

join me every thursday on the alex salmond shore and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business. what politicians too shy to. put themselves on the lawn to get accepted or rejected . so when you want to be president or injured. or somehow want to be preached. to the right to be first this is what the for freedom for can't be good for. i'm interested always in the waters of the cowardice. question and.

the last thing the became the place where my dream i felt like my dream could be realized and i would like to stay here. i was twenty seven when i came here. i was inside me and my girlfriend we had a we had a place together so i was ok and have the rainy she was paying to have to wait so we were inside for three years.