- Verity Murphy
- Mon 13 Jul 09, 03:19 PM
Here's what is coming up on tonight's programme:
From the web team:
Why are we in Afghanistan?
A poll carried out for BBC Newsnight and the Guardian suggests public opinion is split over the UK's mission in Afghanistan.
Of 1,000 people questioned, 47% said they opposed the British operation, while 46% said they supported it. A similar poll in 2006 found 31% backed the UK's action while 53% opposed it.
The UK forces death toll in Afghanistan has now matched that suffered in Iraq, and tonight in a special edition of Newsnight we'll be examining the government's Afghanistan strategy.
Our Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban will be scrutinising our objectives in Afghanistan - what is it our troops are fighting for? And he'll be analysing the British military's tactics - do our troops, who face a determined enemy in the Taliban, have enough resources?
One of the brigades badly hit in operations in Afghanistan is the Welsh Guards. Matt Prodger will be visiting South Wales to speak to some of their relatives and friends ahead of the
battalion's return to the UK in the autumn.
And Jeremy Paxman will be speaking to the government who claim the UK's Afghanistan mission is key to preventing terror attacks at home, and to relatives of those who have died in the fighting.
Do join him at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
- Michael Crick
- Fri 10 Jul 09, 09:46 PM
The government has been forced to agree to a new law banning people who do not pay UK income tax - or are not liable to do so - from giving money to political parties.
Threatened with a huge rebellion - and possible defeat - in the Commons on Monday, the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has made a dramatic U-turn and withdrawn government opposition to an amendment to the Elections Bill recently passed in the Lords by an alliance of Labour rebels, Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers.
The leader of the Lords rebellion Lord Campbell-Savours has confirmed to me that ministers have now accepted his plan, and this has also been confirmed to me by a senior government source.
The measure is clearly aimed at the Conservative Deputy Chairman and election strategist Lord Ashcroft who has given the Conservative Party millions of pounds in recent years, but who has aroused considerable controversy over whether he pays British tax.
But it is likely to have a significant effect on donations to both the major parties.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are thought to have taken large sums of money from wealthy supporters who are non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.
Mr Straw has held a series of meeting with Lords and Commons rebels this week but has finally conceded on the issue in the last 36 hours.
Ministers claimed they were sympathetic to the measure but told rebels there were various legal and technical reasons, and issues of principle as to why it was unworkable.
Some rebels suspected however, that Labour may have been hoping for big donations in the immediate future from supporters who do not pay UK tax.
Ministry of Justice officials will be working frantically over this weekend to overcome these obstacles.
- Verity Murphy
- Fri 10 Jul 09, 06:08 PM
From Gavin Esler:
Hello,
With more deaths of British soldiers reported in Afghanistan we will be assessing whether the UK and US are pursuing the correct strategy. Is there any alternative? And has it become the classic guerrilla war in which all the Taliban has to do to win is not to lose ... and sap the morale of the outsiders who have come to pacify them?
Peter Marshall investigates the case of Nico Bento who was convicted of murder on the basis of CCTV evidence which is now being disputed by forensic experts.
And The News of the World - what was it like working at Wapping? Richard Watson will be reporting.
And then on Newsnight Review at 11pm:
Martha is the only straight in the village on Review tonight as the playwright Mark Ravenhill, columnist Johann Hari, author Stella Duffy and fashion writer and man-about-town Henry Conway join her for a very gay Friday night Review.
As the flamboyant fashion TV host Bruno unleashes his outfits on middle America, the panel will look at whether Sacha Baron Cohen's new film critiques or panders to homophobia.
And how did he get Paula Abdul to talk about human rights while using a Mexican gardener's back as a chair?
Mark Ravenhill makes the case that recent British TV comedy has dumped political correctness in favour of jokes about gays. Is he right? Or is the ability to laugh at a community a sign of its strength?
The National Portrait Gallery's new exhibition offers up a range of faces under the headline Gay Icons from Graham Taylor and Nelson Mandela to Princess Diana and The Village People.
Is there such a thing as a gay icon in this day and age?
And we look back at the documentary Before Stonewall which shows the secret life of homosexuals in 20th Century America. Forty years on from the riots at The Stonewall Inn, which started the gay rights movement, is gay culture now mainstream?
Join us at 11pm for all that.
- Michael Crick
- Fri 10 Jul 09, 09:01 AM
An interesting account of the atmosphere at the News of the World during Andy Coulson's editorship can be found in Peter Burden's book "News of the world? Fake Sheiks and Royal Trappings".
Mr Burden says that on the day the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for four months for hacking into the voicemails of palace aides, Mr Coulson called a staff meeting to announce his immediate resignation, and told colleagues that he thought Goodman had been treated far too harshly by the judge.
According to Mr Burden, Mr Coulson "took the opportunity to vent his anger at the sentence, railing that just that week the Home Secretary, John Reid, had advised judges, in view of current prison overcrowding, that only the most dangerous criminals should be sent to prison".
It would be interesting to know if Mr Coulson still takes that view.
And still supports John Reid's efforts to reduce prison overcrowding!
- Verity Murphy
- Thu 9 Jul 09, 06:03 PM
Here's Gavin Esler with what is coming up on tonight's programme:
Hello,
Heard the one about the leader of the Conservative Party and the former editor of the newspaper affectionately known as "The News of the Screws"?
Well, as of writing this e-mail David Cameron is standing by his press adviser Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor linked today with allegations that reporters on his former newspaper may have been involved in a pattern of telephone bugging and "blagging" - in effect, lying - to obtain stories.
We'll be devoting most of the programme tonight to this bizarre tale.
Why did the police not alert all those whose phones were bugged? What was the Press Complaints Commission up to? And - whatever he is supposed to have done or not done - how exactly does the former editor of the News of the World fit into David Cameron's new Tory party?
And there was much made of the US-Russia talks this week aimed at reducing the two countries' nuclear stockpiles.
But despite all the hoopla in Moscow doesn't the real nuclear threat to world peace come from Iran?
We'll be speaking to the man President Obama calls his "nuclear guy", non-proliferation adviser Dr Gary Samore, about the harsh reality of post-cold war nuclear security.
Join us at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
Gavin
- Michael Crick
- Wed 8 Jul 09, 06:54 PM
Senior Labour sources in Scotland tell me the voters of Glasgow North East may have to wait until November before they get a new MP in succession to Michael Martin, who left the Commons when he stepped down as Speaker last month.
If the Labour whips were to call the by-election right now it would occur slap-bang in the middle of the school holidays. Labour thinks doing that last summer helped ruin their chances in the by-election in neighbouring Glasgow East, a supposedly safe Labour seat famously won by the SNP.
Under the rules Labour can't issue the writ for the by-election whilst the Commons is in recess. MPs won't come back to Westminster until 12 October 2009, which could mean an election on Thursday 12 November 2009. Technically they could hold it on 5 November 2009 but that's unlikely given the religious sensitivity of bonfire night in the West of Scotland.
"We want to hold the election quicker than that," my senior source says, "but there's nothing we can do about it. We can't hold it in the holidays again. We got a lot of criticism for that."
At the moment Labour is pretty confident of success. They claim that on the basis of the local figures in the constituency in the recent European elections - which were disastrous for Labour across most of Britain - they actually won in Glasgow North East.
But can Labour keep that up? The general rule in by-elections is the longer the sitting party waits, the more time it gives the challenger to gain the momentum to win.
A small footnote about my former Newsnight colleague David Kerr. He took voluntary redundancy from BBC Scotland last week to try to become the SNP candidate for Glasgow North East. But then last night, sadly for him, the SNP picked someone else, perhaps because Kerr was seen as Alex Salmond's preferred man.
I first came across Kerr when he was the SNP candidate in the Falkirk by-election of 2004, when I said in my commentary, rather cheekily: "David Kerr used to be editor of Newsnight Scotland, so he should be used to small audiences."
My producer was having kittens during the editing of my film, and begged me to change the line, fearing the wrath of humourless BBC bureaucrats in Glasgow. In the event, nobody complained, partly because my film didn't go out in Scotland... but also, of course, because there are no humourless BBC bureaucrats in Glasgow.
- Sarah McDermott
- Wed 8 Jul 09, 03:19 PM
From Emily Maitlis:
The task ahead of us tonight, viewers, is to get through the programme without using the phrase 'macro-prudential regulation'. In fact, we are providing an office swear box. 5p goes in every time it slips from the lips. And as you can imagine, it already feels heavy enough to bail out a small building society.
But enough of that. I have just returned from Number 11 Downing Street where I have been interviewing the chancellor. We talked about his plans to stop 'kamikaze bankers' and a future market crash, and what he really made of that £9.6m RBS bonus. As we discussed financial regulation, I also asked him about that other curious 'tripartite system' - Brown/Balls/Mandelson - which appears to be trying to make decisions without him. Watch a clip here, and if you'd like to read our Economics Editor Paul Mason's reaction to today's banking White Paper click here.
The full interview with Alistair Darling will be in tonight's programme, when we'll also be asking the head of the OECD what he makes of the economic position Britain is in.
As yet another major company, this time IBM, announces that they plan to close their final salary pension scheme to existing members, we discuss whether we are witnessing the death of retirement. Will we have to work until we drop? What are the cultural implications of an army of young working to support the elderly and infirm? And should we be looking at an entirely radical new way to work and save?
And it's 25 years since Bob Geldof sent Band Aid to the top of the charts in the name of famine relief. But what has actually changed in Ethiopia since then? Can aid ever cure a country? As the G8 pledges to put Africa high on the agenda this week, we have an indepth report from Ethiopia. Read more about it here.
Join us at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
- Paul Mason
- Wed 8 Jul 09, 02:38 PM
If you are feeling underwhelmed by the Banking White Paper, produced today, you are not alone. Her Majesty's opposition has described it as a "white flag not a white paper"; the Libdem Treasury Spokesman Vince Cable called it "a living will" for the government.
What I take away from it, at first reading, is the limited scope the UK government sees for itself in the prevention of future crises and re-design of the global financial system.
The underlying philosophy of this White Paper can be paraphrased thus: the banking crisis was created by banks, there is only so much governments can do through regulation; here is our best shot - and a lot of it will rely on having an effective and enthusiastic regulator instead of the one we had before - but much of the detail is so international, and so long-term, we can't really decide much now.
Concretely the government is trying to resolve/bury the row over who should police the systemic risks by creating a new Financial Stability Council, with Alistair Darling in the chair, and "minutes" to ensure transparency. If you have ever read the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee you will understand why financial journalists are unenthused by the prospect of more minutes.
There are two proposed economic measures the government intends to use to prevent banks driving themselves to the brink of collapse.
It will in future let the FSA force individual banks to hold larger amounts of capital, above the 4% minimum set by the FSA. This will be done bank by bank, as a kind of tax on overwieldy size, or risk taking or bonuses deemed to high. But there is no system or public criteria or sliding scale of capital quotas laid out.
It is a very British arrangement. One member of the great and good will meet another, in the shape of a bank CEO, and say "your risks are too high"; what then will the bank do in response? They will lobby. Not a single episode of lobbying or the numerous private meetings and social engagements will be publicized. What we will know, at the end of it, is the amount of capital bank X is required to hold.
It is more concrete when it comes to "leverage".
The White Paper recognises that, despite there being a capital adequacy regime, banks were able to fund themselves by overborrowing. So the Treasury has opted to support a "leverage ratio" - so banks can only borrow a certain amount compared to their capital. This will be set in Europe later on, so there is no way of knowing what it will be.
How would the typical British taxpayer, currently exposed to 680bn worth of toxic debts from banks that were over-leveraged and had to be nationalized, influence what that ratio should be. Answers on a postcard please to the unelected president of the European Commission.
Three concrete ways of preventing a future crisis have been rejected. Breaking up complex banks so that their "casino" part and their "piggy bank" part are separate, as in America in the 1930s, is ruled out.
Doesn't work, says Alistair Darling. Breaking up banks that are too big to fail, as implicitly called for by Mervyn King, also ruled out.
Finally, the idea of using interest rates to lean against the wind in an asset bubble is ruled out on the basis of the "Bank of England's successful record of interest rate setting over 12 years".
This, remember, is the Bank that raised interest rates during what we now know were the first two quarters of recession.
Of all the measures ruled out today, I think this is the most significant, because it basically says monetary policy should not be used for "macro-prudential" - ie crisis busting - ends, only to target inflation.
The problem is we already know that any recovery is going to be highly inflationary; no regulations are in place to stop speculators piling into oil and commodities once again and therefore, long before the Basel Committee and the European Commission get around to telling us about new capital ratios and leverage requirements, the Central Banks will be facing another "scissors crisis" where the inflation graph is rising and the growth graph not, or falling.
Leaving aside the party political differences I could not help noticing how sparsely attended the White Paper announcement was in the Commons. Even senior Labour ministers outside the tight circle of finance and business policymaking are said to be nonplussed by the economic crisis.
Clearly the majority of MPs could not be bothered to come and hear the government announce its first comprehensive answer to the financial meltdown - or take part in the debate. The 23 backbenchers who tried to question Alistair Darling were from that school of professional finance watchers that has struggled to inject heterodoxy into the political debate. They struggled again today.
I feel a horrible gloom descending on the process of decision-making in the face of this crisis. The Conservatives signaled they will rip up more or less every measure proposed today, should it make it to the statute books before the election (and there is not much of that).
A lot of work and discussion went into the White Paper, and you can feel the hand of civil servants and economy wonks in large parts of it. But so many of the key decisions will be taken in Brussels or Washington, or in the bank boardrooms, there was a sense of politics being overwhelmed by economics today. It had the sense of being the start of a "long goodbye" from the government.
- Sarah McDermott
- Tue 7 Jul 09, 06:01 PM
From Emily Maitlis:
A small, deeply unscientific poll in this office has revealed that most colleagues start laughing when you mention the Italian PM's name. Which is probably the least of Silvio Berlusconi's problems right now, but it does suggest - if this is in any way representative - he may struggle to get people to take the G8 seriously when he hosts it, in the earthquake struck town of L'Aquila tomorrow. For its duration, world leaders will be housed in an "austere police training school", which may come as a disappointment to anyone expecting a Sardinian villa, with all conceivable extras laid on. The agenda for the G8, it's being reported, is in such disarray that the Americans have had to step in and sort it out. Meanwhile, three Italian academics have written an "appeal to the first ladies" asking them to boycott the summit in the name of women everywhere. Will Signor Berlusconi be put off his game by this? We'll be joined by his communications chief tonight.
Our Economics Editor Paul Mason asks if the unrest coming out of China's north west has been fomented by its economic problems - at what point does nationalism re-emerge as a response to poverty and instability?
Plus we'll have the latest on the 10p tax fiasco, as Gordon Brown faces a Commons revolt.
The nearest most of us get to understanding the dire state of US healthcare is when we repeatedly see US TV networks going to adverts for incontinence and impotence drugs during their commercial breaks. While nothing President Barack Obama does with his healthcare plan may cure this particular ill, we'll be analysing the scale of the problem across the pond and what the White House calls "The McAllen problem", as politicians here squabble over how best to preserve the NHS health budget.
Join us for all this and more at 10:30pm on BBC Two.
Follow Newsnight's Twitter updates by clicking here
- Sarah McDermott
- Mon 6 Jul 09, 04:39 PM
From the web team:
President Barack Obama's new foreign policy comes up against its hardest test yet tonight - the masters of cold hard diplomacy - Russia. In Moscow talks today Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev struck a deal to cut back their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past". There is plenty of room for improvement - under the previous Bush administration relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated to levels not seen since the Cold War. But how likely is rapprochement given their differing perceptions of issues such as Russian military action in Georgia and the planned US missile defence shield?
Also tonight, we have the last in this current run of the Politics Pen in which candidates go up against our panel of political animals to pitch ideas on how to slash public spending. Items on the chopping block tonight include civil servants' pay and the Houses of Commons. Watch a sneak preview here.
And talking of Politics Pen it seems David Cameron must have been watching the first edition in which deputy editor of the Financial Times Gillian Tett called for a 10% cut in quango spending. Today Mr Cameron pledged to cut the number of unelected quangos to save money and increase accountability. Tonight we will be discussing his proposals and whether they go far enough.
Do join Jeremy Paxman for all that and 10.30pm on BBC Two.
- Verity Murphy
- Fri 3 Jul 09, 06:38 PM
Mark Urban is away on extended leave and will not be updating this blog for now.
- Verity Murphy
- Fri 3 Jul 09, 06:31 PM
Here is what is coming up on tonight's programme:
From the web team:
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said he is "urgently seeking clarification" of the announcement by a senior Iranian cleric that local staff working at Britain's Tehran embassy will face trial.
Nine embassy staff were held in Tehran last weekend. Britain says all but two have now been freed. Today Ahmad Jannati from Iran's Guardian Council said of the still detained members of staff: "Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions."
Tonight we will be discussing the British-Iranian relationship and why the UK has replaced the United States as the bete noir of Iranian hardline rhetoric.
Also tonight, Palin for President? Not if some in her party have anything to do with it.
We report from Washington on the Republicans who want to destroy Sarah Palin despite her popularity with the party's grassroots.
And Andy Murray's Britishness - is his relationship with the English just a marriage of convenience?
And here's Kirsty Wark with what is coming up on Newsnight Review:
And then on Review, is the Iran of our imagination the real Iran?
It is one of the oldest civilizations, has an extraordinarily young population, is one of the most literate countries in the world, and is a cultural cornucopia.
In the UK the cultural response to the post-election uprising was swift.
On Wednesday the Royal Court theatre mounted a powerful short "scratch" production distilled from the millions of Twitter "tweets" from Iran and beyond.
We'll be talking about the impact of technology in closed societies with our guests Jonathan Freedland, Baroness Haleh Afshar and Iranian writer Azadeh Moaveni.
We'll be revisiting two of the most powerful accounts of modern Iran, the Oscar-nominated film Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, based on her graphic novel, and Azar Nafisi's bestselling Reading Lolita In Tehran.
Shirin is the new film from the Iranian arthouse director Abbas Kiarostami in which we watch 100 Iranian women as they watch a filmed performance of a 12th Century Persian poem about Shirin the Queen of Armenia.
And more on the impact of the net when revolution threatens to destabilise closed societies.
The film Burma VJ is the account of the pro-democracy uprisings in Burma in 2007 as told by citizen journalists with forbidden cameras.
Do join us for all that and more.
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