the children will one day carry the torch of freedom and finally gordon says chill is an inspiration what a strong woman it's horrific that is come to this that we're trying to catalonia next week but today we're back in blighty covering the progress of the christmas election the u.k. general election takes place on the 12th of december that are the number of parties standing including the conservatives labor liberal democrats change you key the greens the brics party and ukip and additionally in scotland the s.n.p. in wales place country i didn't or than arland the d.d.p. sion fein s.t.l. p. ulster unionist party and the alliance party as well as a number of candidates standing as independence but 1st to scotland and to alex. and i'm joined from glasgow by the doyen of scottish political journalism a woman who's been covering scottish elections since alaska with the tunnel action of 1904 i'm delighted to be joined by refreshment i'm not sure i'm delighted to be

carbon dated clay that alex ruth the party the main party leader says gemma carbon boss johnson the both been in scotland on last week but neither of us that was an annoyed success no a toll in fact boris johnson has taken a leaf out of the tories i'm a pre-book and he's been going round in kind of hermetically sealed pore c.c. i mean he went to enter distillery but or only air only journalists and author of people were allowed in there was no punters unload into completions and when somebody remonstrated with them from the press corps he said well you're a voter aren't you so he sees is being kept well away from anything resembling the electorate and jeremy corbyn well jimmy coburn came up and there had a lot of difficulty 1st of all he changed his pitch on a 2nd independence referendum 3 times the space of 2 days which was never much of a good look and then he is using terrorism so no i don't think they'll look back with fondness and they're scottish so john but then of course scottish political

journalists have something of a reputation and i seem to remember that even the formidable our stock combo was a bit watery of scott his journalists. yes not without due cause i don't think i listed a terrifically good press up here either but and tony blair certainly didn't so this so this says suspicion of english leaders coming over the border for a quick search on as his gov very checkered history but have a joyous one son i mean previously when there's been scottish leaders of the liberal democrats one thinks of the late charles kennedy that's been quite a liberal bone so as a result of that is that any sign of a swenson balance i don't really think so you know i'm trying to be fair here but charlie kennedy as we both know was an enormously popular figure on both sides of the border i mean he was a he to greet their personal charisma and charm juice winson i don't think can emily that also she's i mean she's still very much a title party leader and i think people are recalling from the suggestion that

she's put yourself forward as an alternative for prime minister after 2 minutes in the job and have been there the green hills and the but i accept party as i am is saying that they're going to cut the mustard in any seat in scotland i can't see or certainly in the case of the of the breaks that party there is absolutely nor we whatsoever that they're going to be lucky to get into triple figures in some of the places they're standing i would guess just like you can't they hardly you know they hardly resorted to here in scotland the greens atlas lately different position they do a little bit better in hollywood relations because we have proportional representation of a canine here which hello some of the smaller parties to get in with the shoat on a 1st past the post i don't have any chance to toll they have interesting lee been persuaded to stand down from 2 of the seats where the s.n.p. incumbent has a very tiny majority on the grounds that there's no point in damaging the pru independents food so what problems for the other parties the s.n.p. writing high of the on the saleable for the rest of the scamp it i don't think so

although i do think one of their great problems know who is going to be managing expectations people keep talking about them we would be more than 50 seat. which of course they did in 2015 and when they lost 21 of the seats in 2017 people thought it was a great setback and in some ways i suppose it was but considering that previously the jury had ever had 6 swiss minister seats i think that they were doing well their proper my thing as i see is to money takes pictish and the current polling suggests they might get about 46 seats which is which is not too shabby at $100.00 to me the truth i thought and i'm effect of it and to play in scotland that as a potential european referendum attracts a laugh and i'm on a scottish and the pan the sapphire and the how do these 2 issues and match together and terms of the election debate well it's quite interesting actually because and both the lib dems and the scottish national party are both in favor of referendums on europe breaks that referendums and it's the kernel issue of that

that will prove interesting for the scottish national party however the liberal democrat party are in a bit of a plane because they're very much in favor of a 2nd breaks at referendum but very much opposed to a 2nd you care for internet of course that leaves them open to the charge of hypocrisy i think the s.n.p. have got problems it is much as a 3rd of the s.n.p. voters are partly voted leave who are as nicholas sturgeon and the scottish national party have put forward a very positive prudery mean stance and they've also put forward a very positive desire for a 2nd breaks at referendum i don't know whether that will harm them or not public forecast what do you expect to happen in the 2nd half of this march well unless things change dramatically from who they are at the moment i would expect the conservatives who have 13 seats no to lose. a proportion of these perhaps a 3rd of them because of course ruth davidson is no longer the leader of the tory party in scotland i would expect the labor party to lose some seats as well and they'll be a lot of interest in the 2 s. and p.

seats which have taneytown huge or it is it would be good to be quite close attention i would imagine to these 2 constituencies professional for vasco thank you very much my pleasure. there's been no shortage of control of a scene north or south of the border but if any of it shifted the dial on the strong 20 lead and were bars johnson the principal boys through this whole punts among season i put the panel where on any accurate through the backs of parliament to jamma can they sustain their predictive powers for the final stages of the christmas campaign and then by last time out they were in shock disagreement about likely outcomes but what did they think night over to the panel in conversation with alex where you join me refer prestigious panel of political pundits if anyone knows what's going to happen in this christmas election then they will we've got people all born professor much of buffy and of course leben opec they're people all but you said last time you were on at the start of the election campaign you

thought bob was johnson might be heading for a bit of trouble doesn't look like that so far no i as ever i miscalculated. i felt that the the liberals and labor would get their act together much more that they're fighting each other they obviously hate each other more than the they hate the tories which is quite unusual. and to the left there hasn't been anything like a romane or alliance which i thought might develop and then on the other side we've seen what i'm quite convinced although this conflicting signals that there's been some form of deal between the british fire arjun and the tories which means that the brits threat to the tory voters is really capsized a little bit that was your point you said that if there was such a deal there would be plain sailing for boris johnson but i says it was a you know a lot of the deal with the soup to much of a deal when he withdraws these candidates and doesn't get anything for it well i was right about the deal and whether it's you know lunch or or behind closed doors

it doesn't matter what far as has done as gives is given the tories a clear run in 317 seats now the still a slight problem here because in some of the other marginal seats. the firearms threat could still be something of a problem but by and large they've got that clear run there is another deal as well which we've forgotten about the lib dems the greens and clyde coming to us nationalists but that's virtually irrelevant i don't think like country we're expecting to win many seats and can't for example and so as a result of that we've got the exact deal i thought was necessary to get the conservatives the overall majority was i predicted the last time. when the one policy which is perhaps cut through the fog has been the british broadband policy by labor but that commanded the agenda at least for the deal so why hasn't more people rallying to it started where it isn't it it's one of the cheapest things that labor could have announced compared to the big plans on infrastructure

spending and so on and yet it called attention because it was universal and that does appeal to a lot of people and i suspect the ease working in some constituencies why didn't it go better because it wasn't sold as a job creation tool this isn't an incremental business policy which some people put it that it's a pro-business policy or you what you're saying is that during a carbon should have gone to barnsley or said it's a british broadband for bums lee and several 1000 jobs i still don't understand why he doesn't say this is a jobs in every constituency policy the problem with this though is it's going to happen anyway commercial demands will eventually make this occur and as you said yourself it was big for a day but however hard core been is trying to divert the election away from the other succeeded so we get back to the problem that they haven't really got a policy and that writes them out of the script i think there's another issue here which is very important is that the is a massive media bias against corbin and in favor of jobs and so

called been comes up a brilliant idea by the way you're wrong it was going to happen anyway there was no universal free broadband there we're talking about the euro but so you think the. so liberal democrats you know that you know what are you that the only way to tackle. that it was a brilliant policy and of course because the these are not playing on a level playing field that the ref is on the other side it's very very hard for corbin to get his messages across but actually of the last election that that was a signal and yet the momentum started for carbon couldn't we in the 2nd half a carbon revival i think it's perfectly possible because we are now getting to the stage where the there are regulatory reasons why the all the media the broadcast media have to be fair it anyway. so join us after the break we'll have to stay just follow on so the key question of who's going to buy the tucker demo i'm off to make

do with the left all those joining us a. good food descriptions sound up a tasing even for the owners so how to choose just pet food industry is telling us what to feed our pets is really more based on what they want to sell us than was necessarily good for the pet turns out and pick food may not be as healthy as people believe and we have animals that have you know diabetes and arthritis they have auto immune disorders they can't allergies we are actually creating these problems it's a huge epidemic of problems all of them i believe can be linked to very simple problem of diet and some dog owners so heartbreaking stories about their pets less

treats the larger corporations are not very interested in proving or disproving the value of their food because they're already making a $1000000000.00 on it and there's no reason to do that research. is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe. high salacious community. are you going the right way or are you being led. away. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted. you need to descend. to join us

in the depths. or a maybe in the shallows. always still good humans are too tight a duty that's when the clueless need. to call over the intercom a description of. what. could we want to think about getting out of your mates in each of them to look at them as all. of them do eat or target to be a good tall you could fall under your thumb to get those people to fail when i'm not good children tell them with all that you can tell when a family don't come follow the law.

welcome back no our panel are going to answer the key question of who is going to win this christmas election but just imagine for a 2nd you've been reconciled to the liberal democrats and you're sitting in the walled room at this half we stage in the election campaign what would your advice be to his advice 1st of all stay out salute the resolute on remained this time they've got traction that clearly the remain party for england and the 2nd thing is get the leaders and media training she's coming across as a lightweight it might be fixable but she just looks like she's winching and that isn't effective so she needs to build that gravitas but keep the message but what's

the contrast we've had some constituency polls which showed blue flatlined or even going don't work there's no mystery there the liberal democrats simply aren't going to poll well across the country they're going to get a relatively small percentage but it's concentrated that's how they're going to make some gains and i think they will make some gains but they'll let lots of those no hope see to crash and burn and that suppresses the national poll it doesn't really matter what they got nationally what really matters is what they get in there maybe 20 or 30 seats they hope to when the professor virtue of buffy you'll know reconciled to the labor party they want you back in as a advisor you're sitting in their ward room at the halfway stage of this election campaign what would your advice be get off the fence say yes we're going to have a 2nd referendum we are going to ask you again because the facts have changed and we respect that that gives you the chance for another vote but we're going to recommend remains because leave is going to cost you money so labor has to actually

say we believe in remain but we will listen to you again and if you disagree we'll do what you want but we're not going to sit on the fence which jeremy corbyn is there which is say i'll stand by and watch whatever it is he's actually going to come into a position of john mcdonogh. and many others in the shadow cabinet would agree but that of course it's generally called and he doesn't so he's got to listen to his key colleagues and go with them and do you think this is solvable the campaign that is the is the lead of the tories probably unbridgeable or could be momentum for labor in the next few weeks i don't think labor is going to get a majority of seats in this election i think that beyond their reach do i think the labor could form a minority administration with support of other parties without necessarily going into coalition with them yes i do i think that is plausible because i think that there is actually a long way to go johnson is a proven gaffe maker and at some point he's going to be let sufficiently off the leash for things to go wrong badly and corben doesn't tend to make that big

a mistake in the election campaigns so overall he's got everything to win and the tories got everything to lose the momentum will be towards a much closer result than we've had predicted so far peter oborne of parts the most surprising of all let's think that dominic cummings or her boss 2 of the says so for obama that is the one we need for the vote what would you advice be in the tory world it would be very simple piece of advice which uses time just stop lying it's terribly damaging not just to him but to politics and to british public low. a 7 lovable vaporous about the prime minister on occasion use a lovable vagueness to deliberately to create a video which is meant which presents kish dharma the spokesman for labor as somebody who's completely at a loss for words and they do that by manipulating the facts belittle 80 creating fake a fake video that's terrible but why do you say the tory party are so different from

labor of the liberal democrats or the s.n.p. or any other party why i've been studying the other parties it's always been a level of political deceit in all election but trouble for one is just a similar to the way it was not over as you rightly said that but. but let's just see that labor feel to close the gap. carbonless i'm loses another election is will that mean a swing away from the left in the labor party or will somebody else from that wing of the party really replay this germy corp and what's the what's the future of labor under these circumstances i can't see labor moving back to its all belair style that's over that supposed center ground which frankly from the point of view was never center was right is not going to return in labor history so there is going to be another left of center person and the reason why is the young members will not let it go back right woods and they want some of the very clear policies

that jeremy corbyn does associate with things like the green new deal the green industrial revolution as it's called by labor but i would call the green you deal for my own personal reasons that is key to it and i believe they're going to stick with that line and they're going to stick with a line that we can afford it because bluntly we can't and therefore and. columnists like yourself must be looking with wonder that the selection campaign will instead of the parties competing on a stealthy they're both competing on who can spend the most well i'm delighted they are i mean there's a chance of accountant and as an economist you would have expected me to be saying be cautious actually i've just read an article in the financial times it's commonplace talk the world wants more government bonds the only way in which the world can buy enough government bonds to meet the demand for them is to for governments to borrow to death or spend to therefore create the infrastructure that we need in this country and elsewhere around the world the u.k. government could borrow 100000000000 pounds a year easily to fund

a green new deal and therefore create for the huge drug. bridgeboro and a tiny part of this cost but they could literally fulfill their promise but my boss would do a liberal democrat school coming back from the coalition government lords of the last 2 election. would be dissatisfied with incremental progress a few seats sealed a few seats there or will the thing that's not good enough for the leader a new approach they won't be satisfied with incremental growth but they should be i think the party's been and tiley unrealistic about thinking they'll be some massive sweep to power i genuinely think that joe swenson and some of her colleagues believe it's possible so it's going to be incremental growth what they've done right is being really clear about standing is to remain party but the leadership isn't plausible and that's a problem just once is a perfectly nice person but he's just not cutting it in the premier league so let me get this correct as he born again but execute like yourself you save the liberal

democrats to be the absolute of 8 to be clearly proud of it yes because you asked me what they should do not what the country should do and for those people who are listening and watching and want to express remain perspective it's the only place to go labour's completely confused on it and we know where the wrecks upon in the conservatives are so if you want a remaining party then it's an advance but the momentum just isn't there for that they're not going to win more than an incremental growth that they could then get a lot of those disaffected one nation such as joining the lib dems after the election and then we could be back in your studio talking about the next election well i have lots of fun in this discussion because i had 3 votes for respect to parties and i've tried to work out what would happen in election if all the parties followed your advice but now we come to the come to the meet we come to what's actually going to happen richard murphy you look half way through the campaign what's going to happen the same turf labor is going to have a considerably better 2nd half and 1st half will that mean it wins outright no i

can't see that doesn't mean it will have significantly more seats than polls currently forecast yes will the dems pick up 30 seats yes will the s.n.p. pick up more seats and they got now in scotland yes does that imply. therefore the tories are going to have as good a time as they currently think they're going to i think that's highly likely to will they be the largest party yes will all they form the government still not convinced that the conservatives will make it into government again i think it is a chance that there will be a government put together but under a jeremy holden leadership with support from s.n.p. and liberal democrats with a short term life expectancy which will go through the process of transforming the electoral system considering the issues around scottish independence referendum thinking about issues that the lib dems are most concerned about like a 2nd referendum perhaps as a way of solving the problem and then going back to the country once more and in 2 years time at the most will be back here again listening to roach of bit of that's

what's the what you said at the start of the campaign but if i detect the signs regular but what pessimistic in the sense that your brand of conservatism has been pushed out a little borders johnson brandis is reeling supreme what do you think is going to happen at the start of the campaign we had a discussion here in the because predicted that boris johnson would win quite easily and i said no i think it's quite likely to be a hung parliament and i have to say that so far he's been true ved more. and more gifted and the forecast of the me i mean the 2 things which are of happened to change my mind is one the failure anything like you remain alliance the retina let the left is fighting each other and secondly the the substance of the bread party and so. the chances are you have a fairly easy boris johnson majority and then we'll leave the european union a few weeks after that but could you be wrong again could there be a could it be

a good move to half your of course i could be wrong again. are you hoping to be wrong again i think what would be best for this country is a hung parliament yes well bore but no you've got the accurately. of looking glass for. yuba the mystic meg. what do you think is going to continue as we think or as a christmas cracker of a surprise lying in a wheat healthily without when i predicted my own victory in 2010 i was wrong so with that caveat i stick by my original guestimate that the conservatives will get an overall majority with boris johnson a little bit of figure on that i'm guessing a majority of 40 and that's at the cost of labor primarily i think the s.n.p. will make gains in scotland i think the lib dems will make gains in england but want to watch is just winston's own seat she needs to remember what happened to nick clegg in sheffield hallam when he was leader and he lost and therefore is a supposed to say if the tories get $320.00 seats all above happens.

$100.00 comfortable majority $315.00 we're going to be back here in the new year for another way action and 3 term of bill or you're talking about a rainbow coalition or perhaps a tartan turns red bull coalition is it as simple as that those are numbers of seats no personals needs to have a majority in the overall majority to push through otherwise we're going to be powerless just as we have been and will be back in a few months the lib dems have made another mistake they said they will not go into coalition with anybody else clearly starting from the last time which means they've written themselves out of the script they're no one can depend on their support so it's really down to whether the boris johnson has enough of his own allies in his own party to push through and for that he definitely needs a big majority or gentleman i don't know if the electorate are desperate for another election but i'm sure the desperate for another discussion of this perceived just bottle of political pundits figure what's in the. this was to be the

election which finally decided britain's u.d.p. in care if the tories when will be out and if they don't will be and that's far i told the flight plain sailing for boris johnson. even much of yorkshire under water and the most calamitous health statistics in history to don't seem to have dented to progress to working majority nigel father seems to conveniently self combusted while the other leaders are struggling to lay a glove on him indeed the locals on the s.n.p. will claim they were tonight that opportunity by being excluded from initial t.v. debates not so much damage to that prince but acidified without the sailors so well the bar to sponsor a place through the christmas season to full house is not necessarily that is many a slip between cup and lip and then you have this cast has the ability to fall headlong into the orchestra pit despite cut into pieces this christmas pantos climax might still be decided on very narrow margins if boris johnson makes it to

$320.00 seats or above that it's a full house and breakfast delivered if he stuck continues in these 315 from the last election then the parliament is bought and it's well hung state and we may even be heading for a new your own corps in the shape of yet another election 310 or below for potus than the forward to a quarter minority government not so much rain book coalition as perhaps you talk to one another with a taint over yet it doesn't all get pantos the main protagonists would be well advised to be heat to that well worn warning look behind you. next week alex returns to catalonia to interview the minister of digital policies and public administration he says the spanish government moving towards a club side on the social media of the belly is province it's an extravagance for the catalan independence movement going to be maintaining their presence online as well as on the streets but until then from alex and me and all the show it's good

bye for now and we hope to see you they. have a handle on the planet i use to my fellow waiter both to subsume colo sabbatical to move it to about 5000 this way down to dog so hard not to feed the mother despite the so will but the work life that i want and i know you start than i could. only think that we do is music because everybody fights in his way.

to. the floor to look out of his golf is what it called the ability to put it on the. what i think is this is the founder that is a compliment. what explains the bipartisan commitment to an ending wars in foreign military interventions recent polls show the majority of veterans who fought in this century's foreign wars say it wasn't worth it in 2016 gained traction for doubting foreign adventures today is doing the same why our view leitz so much.

over the last 3 decades the european union has seen its enlargement as a way of helping its neighbors democracy keeping them. as the mantra the bigger the proven to be the case. a new report by amnesty international accuses the tech giants google and facebook of violating human rights by employing the surveillance of the business models. who is charged with bribery fraud and a breach of trust it is the 1st time an israeli history that a sitting prime minister has faced indictment in criminal investigations. and there is a backlash.