prime minister barak johnson installs another arguable yes man into the heart of british politics is barbara factors favorite t.v. show yes minister still writing the rule book about the british civil service from coronavirus to the economy we speak to the co-creator of yes minister of the humphrey appleby jonathan lynn about whether politicians have given up speaking truth to power and in the week of that it may have putin's fundamental constitutional referendum victory across a 65 percent passed her mouth in the russian federation is russia really a democracy at all we speak you know and he praised author of the putin paradox professor richard stockwell told us of all coming up in today's going underground but 1st the most famous publisher in the world julian assange and wiki leaks turned 49 in a london high security prison yesterday despite having been convicted of no crime and the united nations accusing the british government of torturing him and its global demonstrations against the u.k. government's human rights record prime minister boris johnson chose this week to attack china over human rights we stand for

a group of obligations and that is the sound of space bases for our international relations and be an absolute position of this national security law constitutes a clear and serious breach of the sign of british joint declaration so what is the coronavirus recovering british prime minister going to do about a new ongoing national security law that arguably echoes britain's own anti terror legislation albeit after arguably illegal british wars from yugoslavia to iraq libya and syria let alone its imperialist record against china we make clear mr speaker that if trying to continue down this path we would introduce a new route for those with british national overseas status to enter the u.k. granting them limited leave to remain with the ability to live and work in the u.k. and thereafter to apply for citizenship and that is precisely what we will do now except of course 2 and a half 1000000 chinese citizens would presumably. we have to be quarantined before

getting limited rights in a britain where corona virus has killed exponentially more than in the whole of the people's republic of china but as the united states continues to encircle china with military bases on today's u.s. independence day questions are being asked about democracy in britain this comes after britain's top civil servant from mark sedwill announced he has to quit amidst widespread weapons to go off of the boris johnson's top adviser dominic cummings has something to do with it. he was the 1st to give boris johnson a welcome to downing street that has said mark sedwill state is a well good morning everybody a man who sits beside the prime minister as his most senior civil servant will soon serve no longer arguably the greatest television series about civil servants and post-war british democracy is a comedy called yes minister praised for its authenticity by prime ministers it is set to return this year in a fashion 40 years after its 1st episode joining me by skype from new york is its

co-creator the multi award winning film director producer writer and actor jonathan lin thank you so much sure java coming on so for those who have seen us minister around the world hacker would be boris johnson so mark sedwill would be so humfrey up will be what did you make of the head of britain's civil service quitting this week of course well i'm not sure that he actually quit him out of his intention to you know as an injection to get i mean what history has pushed about bill and about it because yes minister and the instruments or was about the project between politicians and civil servants who was going to run the country and politicians dude civil servants elitist. non elected people who are running the country in what they thought was over their own interests or the country's largest. and that they were not responsive to the politicians who

represented the electorate and the civil servants to do that the politicians were short term grabbers who would do anything to win the next election. those are true those fuser true. both i tell you what though in one of your episodes and she doesn't merge in the series dorothy wainwright who is a special advisor now i have to tell you going on the guy was one of the few programs invited to an event read only cummings spoke relatively recently dominic cummings presumably is the dorothy wainwright character what have you made of dominic cummings is role in government and his ability seemingly to be much better than your special advisor character well i don't know i mean our special advisor and that of the wainwright is based on marcia williams later lady folk and who is harold's political secretary and who had an extraordinary influence over her wilson and it was very seldom that he wanted to guess or advice. she wasn't

really interested in policy she was interested in the mechanics of government. i think that's rather like dominic cummings though he is a bit interested in polls who police mainly interested in. gettig powerful. even more civil servants but it not even those who have been trained in the job so people like him or come in from the outside albeit as a clos dimension presumably we have the creator of downton abbey on this program a while back who is talking about the mocks astelin prints to downton abbey what do you make of the accusations this is an oxbridge class of the special advisors that are influencing democracy here in britain as a humphrey who you know was oxbridge so as bernard woolley. it's changed a bit over the senior civil servants and now not all oxbridge but a lot of them still law and of course our politicians at the moment are dominated

not only by oxbridge but also by 8 our government. so it's really want to elite dealing with another elite and all struggling for power off it's a question of whether you believe that the politicians but they are on the side of the politicians because they represent those as if they do oh you're on the side of the civil servants because they can handle the politicians arrogant and ignorant behavior even though there are 2 opposing opinions about the very heart of what is what it means to be a democracy what it means to be a democracy is to have the legitimate collision of vested interests. if we all agreed there would be no need for democracy there would be no need for voting if we all agreed i think you tell a story about how your series is yes minister yes prime minister were seen as anti british and and t. o. western democratic when they were taken to the u.s.s.r.

and to china when in fact you are affirming actually these are serious about power and democracy and government i think the reason why the soviet union in those days showed us minister was because the to people in the government thought it was anti democratic and the people thought it was actually bureaucratic western democracy has many faults but it is nonetheless the best system that's been arrived at as compared to any sort of authoritarian government in my opinion of course i'm sure people watching in iraq syria libya afghanistan across latin america and africa have a beg to differ maybe though given the wars the illegal wars by these western democracies yes clearly the wars by everybody and mean the the russia or it usually

invaded ukraine and took crimea russia invaded afghanistan at the time we were doing yes minister. everybody has illegal wars i'm afraid i see no intrinsic difference my father used to how to great distrust of politicians and he always used to quote from the bible the song of solomon. and the quotation was put not by trust in princes more than faith in chains i think this show that i mean i have a distrust of people who want to have power over their fellow citizens i think that applies to just about every country in the world i hold no brief for all the illegal wars that america britain and other western countries have been involved in but i hold no brief for the illegal wars that many of the rest are going to countries in the rest of the world to be involved in either but of course the skepticism of power is often seen as crucial to journalism i have to tell you that

the dominant cummings has been briefing the murdoch times apparently saying he has never been briefing against the mark sedwill so how does the press relate to these different issues because i'm i mean some free was often briefed against sometimes by a hacker in there yes minister everybody briefs against everybody else and yes minister and in the real world. the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top what do you think some free would have done if acker had tried to dispose of him well i think he would have pointed out. the politicians have no idea that how to get anything done without civil servants on the top of them all by getting were by this demonizing of the civil service. they're losing one of their main alibis which is you know that they need an excuse every 3 or 4 years when there's

an election as to why they didn't keep their promises and the city services that we've been a very good media excuse for that. in the last 48 hours or no if if if they castrate the civil service they will lose that excuse and then have to actually account for why they don't keep their promises you think prime minister boris johnson realizes he's lost as well if you read my letter to the times he said so then yes otherwise no. it well. obviously yes minister explained in detail the problems the illusions the contradictions of the european union as is now. what would you have done then if the civil service was sabotaging a democratically voted for bracks it as there's been. many m.p.'s have told us on this program that that's what was going on for the past 4 years. i think that's an

oversimplification i think. in one sense it was democratically voted for bret's it but there was no plan it was simply a yes or no vote nobody who voted had any idea of what they were voting for in reality. the most asked question on google day after the referendum result was what is the e.u. a small majority of people voted in favor of gregg's it and they were voting for all kinds of things they were basically voting against the government it would be against big left out they were voting against unemployment well many beg to differ about that in your show hacker regularly invokes churchill as being the iconic. politician and now we have boris johnson quoting f.d.r. when it comes to coronavirus what do you made of his grand gestures as it were of him comparing himself to f.d.r.

or boris yeltsin wrote a biography of churchill and would like to think of himself as a great bad. those are divided views about how great a man churchill was when he set a very great from 194-2944. and boris sees himself in that light or would like to or would hope to. from there it's a short step to see himself as resolute. there's there's no shortage of delusions of grandeur on the part of people who governance i mean your fictional prime minister and minister i mean he's often free infuriated frustrated do you think he would have handled coronavirus differently i mean birth johnson he said in public he would shake hands with infected coronavirus patients not something the hacker would have done presumably oh no hachim was far too timid for that. and probably

most sensible. i think forest didn't handle it well whether or not that's a question of how much bad scientific advice he got from the stuff i mean they say that if he hadn't stuck to the lock on in britain we thought to earlier there would be many fewer infections and deaths but i don't know i mean the the interesting thing to me is that the 3 countries the whole country is with the worst coronavirus problem other than china or started of britain america russia and brazil. they don't have a lot in common politically. they all just. made mistakes about how to happiness would appear all those countries say their handling handling the crisis that well given that any one of them all of this donald trump says he's hardly well well you know it's a catastrophe jonathan i'll stop you there more from the co-creator of yes minister

after this prank plus is russia really a democracy given nato nation media is all but damn vladimir putin as an enemy dictated to be threatened with the full force of its nuclear conventional forces we investigate the alleged putin paradox after this week 65 percent plus turn underwhelming victory for the president in the russian referendum only small coming up to him going underground. you cannot be both with the yeah you like.

join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back i'm still with us mr co-creator jonathan and given that prime minister since not sure what your program as far as we know loved it so its authenticity. why do you think more prime ministers didn't take to heart some of the. refrig contradictions that set out in it i mean for instance trident nuclear weapons local governments in education and health care have absolutely no idea politicians love

love the program because politicians like seeing themselves on television all versions of themselves and they're really only interested in politics of them everything the shows are the true all certainly could have the. and i think this is actually thought of that for the politicians was fair but the portrayal of the civil servants was dead accurate the civil servants felt the exact reverse. what do they think now well i don't know i always thought crime was a complete waste of money. and if that money had been spent then many of other britain's economic problems for the been so but that wasn't a right or left position i mean sure if you know he you know power who i thought was despicable a number of ways was also against the british independent nuclear terror it's very easy for all of these issues to be boiled down to is a labor of government or opposition but there are always nuances you know proud of

course the right wing conservative politician in ulster unionists it's 40 years on i understand that there was supposed to be a revival of something called i'm sorry prime minister i can't quite remember just tell me a little bit about that project whether it's going to be this year well no that wasn't a television that's a stage play. that i wrote late last year on which was going into production which i'm very pleased with it's about jim hacker and humphrey and the eighty's. and jim is now a lot happier and master of half a college oxford. and he got endowment for the college from our russian oligarch. many years ago and nobody thought that would be a problem and now the college is trying to push him out because he's been saying all kinds of things that are politically incorrect so he funds a humphrey who is now a resident and sent him from his home for the elderly drainage and

he gets home free to come over to try and help him keep his job it's about these 2 old men who used to have power. and used to be at the center world events and now a completely ignored nobody cares what they think and they don't understand why the world of business upside down well what happens when you get to be old and trickle and powell us john. and here. in the past 72 hours russia amidst a pandemic voted in favor of president let me put its biggest shake up of the constitutions in 1903 and as russian relations of nato nations remain tense it comes as no surprise that its main stream media is focused on the extension of a presidential term despite the reforms package containing over $140.00 amendments joining me now as zoom from canterbury is a professor of russian and european politics and author of the putin paradox prezza richard sakwa thanks so much richer for coming on i'm going to say there's wall to

wall us coverage of the kremlin putting bounties on u.s. soldiers heads in afghanistan here in the u.k. we've got continuing coverage of a russian kweisi control of major nation politicians and now this referendum which is being ridiculed widely right across nato countries what's really happening as always it's a mixed bag quanta to show you are free and certainly as a political exercise it was impressive i personally have always been a constitutional conservative and though i can understand why a changes to our constitution took place now which changed actually 10 percent of the text in this year and so the way it is chief there are a number of purposes so. the idea of simply being about an extension to rule i think is misguided he said impressive if you watch any british television here television news it's far from impressive it's not

a democratic vote at all putin has a the lowest support ever and this is all about him retrenching his dictatorship credentials well i must say that the out both good turnout and the years old were impressive we're talking about a 65 percent turnout and with 81 percent. more voting figures voting in favor 21 percent against but i. ultimately i mean we do need to ask tough questions about changing the constitution to achieve a political outcome yes i accept it wasn't just about the political outcome of the removal of immediate term limits for the incumbent but it was about other things a package of social reforms a package of political reforms which give marginal more powers to the parliament over the appointment of the prime minister and minister to 8000 it is actually giving away power to the legislative part of the governed. to

a point but the language itself of the constitutional change is so obscure that i think there's going to be plenty of debate over exactly what it means yes so balancing there's been much talk of that but at the same time the other packages the legal reforms are in my view very disturbing because it gives the federation council their right to remove judges and so i think it's a question mark about the degree to which it can ensure going to do independence of the courts which is always an aggressor not always been as independent as they should be so it's as i say it's a mixed bag and when mixing up constitutional issues with political issues i think it's never a good idea so what have you thought of the coverage here in britain i mean the iraq war supporting u.k. observer newspaper suggests that johnson bracks it trumped the taliban they're all the work of putin is there

a degree of mccarthyite the hysteria oh well here i think are dollops of it i think that what's going on now. is of course all seeing all powerful all controlling from this perspective but of course it's completely nonsense the idea of an organized objects it vote just like the allegation that he do organize the election of 2 in 2016 this is not just mistaken but the way in which it is presented as fact and closing down debate on these issues i think is fundamentally disturbing so yes your show is accused of subversion of the west but i think that what's going on is more disturbing and that is the self subversion of the west to have seen it in some of these extraordinary ringback campaigns against disinformation which too often is simply attacking alternative policy viewpoints of course newsrooms in arguably monopoly media in nato nations rely on reporters on the ground is there a class dimension. into the analysis that is mean characterizes mccarthyite in that

the journalists hanging out in moscow only meet the metropolitan elites that do not support that amir putin yes i think this question of you know journalistic bubbles is that not just is that they meet people who want to meet is that then this is amplified and this it becomes an echo chamber i think that's extremely worrying and i think it you're flecked ing in some to gaze the worsening of the professional standards of major some leading western media outlets the new york times coverage recently off the afghan bounty question immediately comes to mind what was your reaction when you when you heard that apparently the taliban and people who have lost relatives because of u.s. u.k. airstrikes i don't know they need bounties from russia to kill american soldiers as the taliban said itself you know we don't need extra and encouragement but at the

same time it's much more disturbing because this new york times story then picked up by the washington post and other newspapers including the guardian in new kay taking a very uncritical view of it it's obvious that it is clearly to do with a lot of things including the concern about a withdrawal rule of u.s. forces from afghanistan and also it's about discrediting to them because of the fact that allegedly he was briefed about it but didn't react to it so it's a classic classic washington bubble which i used to be against spectacle newspaper like the new york times should have double check because the source cain explicitly from interrogation off and afghan prisoners who then of course which is dubious and we've got any corroboration and but published as fact now this has been the whole story of you actually great and it's your petered now because the context.

the wider context is we have nuclear missiles trained on russia in nato countries and it's more than just a media bubble in that the frontrunner to win in november at the u.s. presidential election joe biden says he will be threatening immediate economic warfare with russia or of is elected and will threaten putin personally that he didn't quite explain how i think this is exceptionally dangerous. biden is the leader in taking the russia gate story and these you know fear x. seriously he after the bounty question he immediately endorsed it as if it was a fact so i think it will make an exceptionally dangerous leader i said this the same about hillary clinton in 2016 where a choice between. bad and bad or in 2016 and i think we're faced again in the united states a choice between but i didn't buy into and i don't know which is the baddest out of

them who is you know clearly an eccentric figure at least for example when they were planning to attack on your own after the german came down to pull the plug on it you know didn't want $120.00 odd unions to be killed out of it so where biden's language is exceptionally dangerous in the fact that it is indorsed by the washington security establishment is exceptional if no one in europe questions that sort of bad judgment it's clear that beijing has lost all patience with what it calls british imperialism how do you see russia and the superpower of this century arguably china coming together because of the kind of russia gate fake alleged fake stories they were aligning long before they were coming together because they both have a similar. your point about international politics both your leisure and china and

india one has to say in some other countries they're good old fashioned soviet internationalists again one thing you could say about is that he had a strategic vision after 2016 it makes sense to get on with your extra and the idea was to peel russia away from china now this couldn't happen because of you actually great but the i did it so it was not a stupid idea but the way that things have developed is that the russian chinese alignment now is moving into a quasi alliance of course russia is always keeping the door open to improve communications with the european union and with the united states so it's not slamming the door by any means well no sign of that you have written but aside from hong kong just finally and briefly remind us. about the fact that russia has been accused highly likely that putin ordered the killing of people in britain using chemical weapons head of the world cup in russia do you not think that

that is reason enough of why there should never be a warming of relations between london and moscow well the script our case our souls we're poisonings to which you refer clearly know and he really knows what was going on i think that never is quite long but i think that we have to work for google ations there's no sign of it anywhere in fact you mention nuclear weapons i think that we're heading towards a period of intensified conflict and i think we're going to head trigger for nuclear weapons as well no one wants it but an accident is just waiting to happen professor richard thank you and that's it for the show we'll be back on monday to speak to legendary german knew a film director and actor verna hertzog who with inventors revolutionized cinema filmmaker friends are true for once called him the most important film director alive until then watch air join the underground on you tube twitter facebook found out and it's very.

the world is driven by a dream shaped by one person of those. who dares thinks. we dare to ask. i don't know crap. no shots. actually use the belt. well it's true

both of those 2. points your thirst for action. i am x. kaiser this is the kaiser report this is the 4th of july special that's why states you look so great wearing red white and blue red white and blue and the purple of course is the shoes that blends it all together we're in a purple state here called north carolina which is a blending of the democrats and the republicans you know as we're getting ready for another year a year.