george osborn was britain's chancellor of the exchequer, a grand name for finance minister. the editor-in-chief of "the evening standard." and ian bremmer the president and founder of the eurasia group of global risk consultancy. ian, big picture, most presidential incumbents win their second term. donald trump was presiding over an economy that seemed in pretty good shape at the most fundamental level. what has happened? >> in very good shape, fareed. trump has been ahead of biden in the polls on who better handles the economy. he also had some significant foreign policies wins with allies around china tech, trade deals in the middle east. let's be clear. coronavirus is by far the biggest crisis of our lifetime and it's happening right now, right before the election on president trump's watch. i mean, heck, you just wrote a book about the ten lessons on it. he handled it badly. the second wave is happening right now. we have record case numbers literally right now a week before the elections. hospitalizations are way up. even deaths are coming up again. so the timing just c

help to buy scheme by george osborne which covered it we said mother loved it he thought she thought it was a great program his mother loved it and at the time we thought you know this is just going to boost the price of homes because you're injecting all this ersatz money and that'll just actually make the situation won't more make it any easier for people to get homes because the prices go up by the exactly the same amount of the cash or injecting and sure enough that's exactly what happened and it ended up with price bubble and it ended up with a lot of money in the u.k. economy that would have gone into different types of industries of a diversified economy in a robust economy it all goes into housing so now covert hits of a bubble bursts and he said. they don't have a diversified economy or contingent upon the success of only one industry housing and the banks that made all those loans are in time terrible shape but that was the antecedent to this and now covert hits and they're saying ok now what we're going to do is we're going to boost the economy with all these more free mon

and george osborne is here.ng hi—vis or a customised hard hat, but looking fine as it is, definitely. right, there is loads of stuff to talk about the economy today, because rishi sunak announced what i am going to call the pre—midwinter economic programme, having announced the economic winter programme before and now changing it to basically make it more generous, to help businesses who are in areas where there is lots of coronavirus restrictions and also to make his newjob support scheme a bit more generous. yeah. in other words, he has come back again, because the first one did not do enough. shall we have a listen to how he described it? we have an economic plan that will protect the jobs and livelihoods of the british people, wherever they live and whatever their situation. and just as we have throughout this crisis, we will listen and respond to people's concerns as the situation demands. and i make no apology for responding to changing circumstances. and so today, we go further. george, what do you make o

did when george osborne excused a range of measures in the budget of the budget which really went wrong even from the pasty tax to the caravan tax to all sorts of other things that time and again had to be reformed because that he had made mistakes and i believe he's going to look like a really troublesome chancellor who's failed to understand the scale of the problem he's facing and austerity which is his subtext is. the last thing that people in this country want so peter over is that our air of unreality about the severity of the economic output very much so i'm afraid alex i'm reminded of the i used to what's the malaki leap lutetia road runner cartoons you remember when road runner would be chasing or be chased in the hurdles over attrition is that all legs keep him up up in the air for a little while then he looks down and sees and then he just looks all the way down to the bus and i'm afraid when i greatly fear is we're now in a moment where those little legs are getting him above where the situation where we're a little legs k.p.s. slopes but we're going to fall big big fall dow

westminster and this was kind ofan spent in westminster and this was kind of an initiative of george osborneeron's conservative government to decentralise power and it's coming back to bite the conservatives. the guardian has got hold of a leaf report saying hospitals in the north are running out of space. particularly in salford, stop war and bolted where they are already at maximum capacity. this documents some of the region's 12 hospitals are already full and obviously there is some concern about the impact of the virus according to these stats that 211 of 257 critical care beds in greater manchester which is 82% are being used already for people with covid—19 or other particularly illnesses and it's a real concern, a major problem. and the danger of course is it's going to get worse. there is only so much capacity and they are going to have to find a way if nothing changes of i don't know how but obviously a nightingale style response, another sort of emergency stand up hospital may be required to look after the other serious intensive illnesses that need to be cared for as well. it's a

are you now ready to say you were wrong when you, advising george osborne and david cameron in 2015 asith osborne. you talked about, "a golden relationship with china "that is going to foster a golden decade "for this country." you said it's an opportunity the uk can't afford to miss. looking at that now, it seems outdated. it seems naive. that is not the way the world is going to work going forward, is it? the world appears to be in camps and the west and china appear to be now locked into an economic and geopolitical struggle. well, it does appear to be the fashionable view that that's exactly the case and the kind of ideas that i suggested back then indeed appear to be very out of fashion. but i would... maybe they're out of fashion, because as several key figures like nigel inkster, who used to be deputy chief of mi6 and britain's secret service, say, there was, "a misapprehension and a whole lot of wishful "thinking about what china really was and is." well, i don't agree with that. i think a lot of security people are always going to think in the way you just gave that example fr

and positive but my head tells me that it will be much like we saw in the great recession where george osborne comes ian impose austerity and says we're all in this together which is precisely that was not true that was precisely not true and so the question is once with through this kind of damage and we through this phase will it be back to the old will. and i don't know i mean i do think alex that perhaps what's different this time is that this pandemic will change people's with behavior in the long run the great recession didn't it didn't it was back to normal pretty quickly but i think this thing what old people are doing i mean them in america the big thing with trump in 2016 was the old people with it today they're not he says go out come to a rally go to the store and their doctors are telling them not to so the question is is this is there a long run change in behavior and if there is then the scope i think it will see fundamental change and that when you're holding you know you'll soon tutorials are the. present moment with the students of college what is the question that they are a