24/01/2014 Newsnight

Would you want a boss like this? Wearing a tie, "I value you at our

organisation Bob", it is not like that. The hierarchy is almost

non-existent. We take a work with Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots,

his actual job title, at the top-secret research centre known

only as Google X. Good evening, with the polls

consistently showing that voters prefer George Osborne to run the

economy over Ed Balls, Labour have finally decided to address that lack

of economic credibility. Mr Balls is set to make a speech tomorrow in

which he will promise that Labour will wipe out the budget deficit by

the end of the next parliament, if it wins the election. The deficit,

by the way, is forecast to be around ?11 11 billion by April, it will

legislate to make sure it does it what's more. There are no details on

tax rises or spending cuts they would have to make to achieve that.

No more Tory boom and bust, Labour said, they will balance the books

over time, they said, and then... . Came the banking crisis and the

biggest budget deficit since the Second World War. Here is the

question the Government would like you to ask yourself, do you want to

hand the keys back to the people who crashed the car? Labour's already

said it wants to get rid of the underlying deficit so that stripping

out the ups and downs of the economy the Treasury isn't spending more

than it gets in tax. But until now Ed Balls has resisted setting

himself a deadline. Tonight Labour promised if elected it will get rid

of the deficit completely by the end of the next parliament. The

difference between what Labour's promising tonight and what the

Government has promised is actually only a year. The Government said it

will get rid of the deficit by 2019, Labour is saying by 2020. But what

Labour says is new about this announcement is their commitment to

enshrine their deficit reduction plans in law. This week Labour's

strategy of attacking the Government on the cost of living started to

look unsafe. Business leaders gathering at Davos said it was in

danger of demonising business, and that wasn't all. Unemployment fell

far faster than expected to 7. 1%, figures were released by the

Government saying incomes last year grew faster than inflation, and the

polls showed a majority were confident about the economy for the

first time since 2010. We have had further good news both on borrowing

and also on jobs and we have seen the biggest increase in employment

in Britain's history, that's great news because every one of those jobs

is family more secure, and it is evidence that our long-term economic

plan is working. Labour's critics point out it is not the first time

it has promised fiscal rectitude, 20 years ago a young Ed Balls advised

Gordon Brown when he promised to balance the books, which he did for

the first parliament at least. Four years ago Alistair cap darling

brought -- Darling brought in the fiscal cap promising to half the

deficit in five years. And the new Government said they would scrap the

deficit by 2015 and the economy blew both apart. It is thought Ed Balls

wanted to avoid making a too similar announcement before the next

election. By attempting to convince the British public they are

economically safe, Labour are hoping they will be forgiven the last crash

and given back the keys to the economy.

Joining me now is the journalist Phil Collins, chief speechwriter for

Tony Blair, with him columnist and founder of the website

ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie. How significant is this? It is quite

significant, you see the arguments starting to tip on the economy.

Labour have had a really good run on the cost of living crisis. But they

have been aware some time this year that will be a less significant

question for them, as incomes start to rise. They are keenly aware they

have to address the problem they have got on credibility. They are

very good on compassion and cost of living but not so good on

credibility. This is an attempt to try to neutralise a big weakness, it

is an important moment and something coming for a long time. The big

question for Labour is when do you do the announcement. There are some

people, I'm one of them, who think that it should come much earlier and

it may be too late now. Ed Balls has calculated that you have to be

allowed to think you are responsible for the previous crisis first, and

you have to let them get over that, and there comes a point, which is

now, when you say but we have learned that lesson, that was

history and now in the future we are going to be very responsible. That

is what he's doing, it is an important moment. Do you think

voters are over that as it was put? I don't think so, I think a lot of

people still associate Labour with the errors of the past and still

haven't got over that association because there has never been an

apology for the fact that Britain did have the biggest of all the

deficits of the developed world when this crisis happened. So I think

Labour still have a credibility problem in that regard. And there is

a second credibility problem is on the eve of the election, just a year

or so to go they are now saying that they will be fiscally credible. A

through this parliament when the coalition are making very difficult

cuts they have opposed nearly all of them. All repent tenses are welcome,

but a dead -- repentances are welcome but a death bed one is less

convincing. This is a repentance out of desperation not conviction.

Perhaps that is why they have said they will legislate to convince

people. Will voters see through that? That is the importance of that

to say this is definitive and there is no getting out of it. This was

always coming. There was always going to be a moment which Labour

would then assert. Nobody has ever thought Labour didn't want to clear

the deficit, that is just a caricature. Of course there is the

job of the opposition to conclude that things the Government are doing

are wrong. I think Labour has suffered from the fact that it is,

as you put it "apologised", buff to remember Labour doesn't think it has

anything to apologise for, it doesn't think that the deficit is

the upshot of its overspending, it thinks the deficit is a result of

crisis in international banking which was not foreseeable and not a

Labour problem. That was a big part of why so many countries had

deficits, but Britain had the biggest deficit, that was because

spending rose much, much faster under Labour than any other country

in t world. Can I ask you both how they think they can achieve it

wiping out the deficit and achieving a surplus? That is the big remaining

question, what balance between tax rises on the one hand, and spending

cuts on the other, we don't yet know. Ed Balls has begun a

programme, not hugely publicised yet, which he calls the "zero-based

review", he's asking all shadow spokesmen to think hard about their

briefs and how they would find spending cuts. We don't know any

detail on that at all. Will we before an election. We didn't last

time before the election. Are they going to tell voters the details,

will they have to and will voters demand that? They will want more

detail from Labour because of the lack of honesty in the last election

that you refer to from all parties. Part of Labour's problem is up until

now the party under Ed Miliband has been incredibly united, largely

because Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have told the party what they wanted

to hear. How are the people on the left of the Labour Party, absolutely

committed to the public sector going to react if Ed Balls starts spelling

out the cuts. There is a lot of the left who really do think like Phil

has described there is nothing to apologise for. If now Ed Balls is

going to start in their eyes looking a lot like George Osborne, they

might react very badly to that and suddenly Labour have a different

problem. It might suit Ed Miliband to have another fight with the left?

It might, he hasn't had any fights with the left yet. It would suit

those of us who believe one of those would be welcome. There is a

get-out-clause where Ed Balls's promise is to borrow for the current

account not to invest. You could pledge to build a lot of house,

infrastructure, aviation capacity. Which means the Tories will be able

to say, look Labour are borrowing as they always have? The voters will

think and be very receptive to that 1992 election message that John

Major posed, the tax posters, that is what the Tories will frighten

voters with, because Labour hasn't the reputation for fiscal sanity. If

you talk about ?12 ?50 billion of tax rises to make up the gap, Labour

have a problem. Don't you think it would be good to invest in housing.

I think we do need to start switching spending on housing

benefit, which is currently expenditure. The politics of it

would override the fact that this would be good for the country? It is

good for the country that we build houses and infrastructure and

airports. But you are still against it? It is more important to cut

current spending to afford that. It would be good but you are against

it? I'm in favour of cutting current spending to finance spending for

capital. There is chatter that Ed Balls is going to say something

else, have you heard any steer of what it might be and what it should

be? If there was something else it might be some very important

indicative cut. One thing he could do to really change the conversation

is to come forward and say, for example, we will cut this big item

of expenditure. Because as Tim said Labour has been very reluctant to

spell out anything. If it were anything else it might be that. My

example that have would be HS 2, very unpopular in the country, would

release billions of pounds to spend on housing and the other things that

Labour want to spend on it. Would be very popular with the public. Thank

you very much gentlemen. Now, 100,000 people dead and 9. 5 million

displaced. Enough incentive, one would have thought, for those at war

in Syria to get together in a room and try to end the fighting. That

was the hope for today's peace talks with ebbs had of the Assad

Government and Syrian opposition in Geneva. But it didn't happen. The

two sides "might" we're told, meet face-to-face tomorrow. We talk to

Doucet oucet, after she explains how we have -- Lyse Doucet, after she

explains how we have reached this point. Tomorrow we expect, we have

agreed that we will meet in the same room. It may not sound like much,

but in Syria's brutal conflict, getting warring sides to sit in the

same room in Geneva counts as progress. Even the UN's veteran

trouble shooter wasn't certain it would even happen. REPORTER: So if

in one sentence I could ask you, do you have the definite agreement of

the two parties to sit together tomorrow? Thank you. That is a very

good question. Yeah. It has taken him three days of shuttling between

delegations of the Government and the opposition just to get that

sorted. That arm-twisting behind the scenes came as soon as the cermonial

opening to these historic peace talks ended in Montreux on Thursday.

More than 20 countries gathered to call for peace, including the

players supporting rival sides, except one of President Assad's main

backers, Iran, it still hasn't signed up to the document that

underpins the process. It is called Geneva I, a reference to a meeting

18 months ago when world powers agreed on this Road Map for peace

talks. It called for the formation of a transitional governing body, a

national dialogue, the review of the constitution and the legal system.

And the holding of free and fair elections. Transition is a

diplomatic way to say President Assad must go. His delegation

insists that's not on the agenda. The opposition says then there is no

point to peace talks. In a country shatrd by war, where half the

population needs aid, and many are starving, there is a lot more to

discuss. They may start by focussing on issues like ending the siege in

some areas, and ending local ceasefires. But Syria's most

powerful opposition force, including Islamist groups linked to Al-Qaeda,

aren't in Geneva. Today the representative said peace talks were

about nothing less than saving Syria. That may be the only

certainty in this process. Here is Lyse Doucet, who has been

following every twist and turn of the negotiations to tell us the

latest. Do you think they will sit in the same room tomorrow? Maybe.

Even if they do they have made it clear they won't talk directly to

each other, they will talk only through the UN envoy Mr Brahimi,

they can't stand each other, even at the talks in front of the world's

cameras, they described the opposition as evil, and accused them

of incest and killing foetuses in the womb. The opposition calls the

regime butchers and war criminal, that is what they say in public. In

private they are more contemptuous. It is hard to imagine they will sit

in the same room for very long. Why have they both turned up in Geneva?

They both say they want peace. And the fact of the matter is and they

will admit it in private, they have been pushed there. The moderator,

with the west's backing, they have been told if they don't go to peace

talks we will withdraw support from you. When I was in Montreux on

Wednesday, someone from the Government said they don't want to

be blamed for the failure of this process. Russia and Iran put

pressure on the Government to go. And the fact of the matter is that

the main forces, at least on the opposition side, want nothing to do

with this. They have said anyone who sits at the table will be on their

death list. What are the chances of some common ground at some points

and by when? That's some point and that is a point very, very far in

the distance. I think... Years? Definitely years. There was one of

the lessons from the Northern Ireland peace process in which

unless both sides understand that there is no military solution, that

the military option is exhausted, only then do they sit down and talk.

And neither side in Syria is anywhere near that recognition. They

both believe they can gain ground on the battlefield. Even in the

five-star hotel in Geneva where they are trying to get the talks started,

the fighting continues and the it up humanitarian crisis continues. It

has been described as the humanitarian crisis of our time and

one of the worst wars. And it will continue in the short, medium and

long-term? Seeing them in Geneva sends a small signal that at some

point they will have to sit down and talk. But so far they are talking

about talking about talks. If Mr Brahimi can get some talk about

easing the siege that either side won't use food in the war or let

women and children suffer, that would be seen as progress, that

can't come too soon for the millions of Syrians suffering in this war.

The political crisis in Ukraine deepened further today as protests

spread from the embattled apital Kiev to yet more cities.

Demonstrations began two months ago after President Yanukovychian

decided to pull out of a landmark treaty with the European Union. The

Ukrainian people are no strangers to protest, they have been taking to

the streets in one way or another for the past ten years. This is the

first time they have turned deadly. Two demonstrators were shot dead

during clashes in Kiev earlier this week. And what's emerging now, are

stories of horrific brutality and intimidation, away from the main

squares. And as we report, some believe the state is behind that

violence. Central Kiev has become a fortress

of defiance. A citadel of barricades, of burnt out buses and

of sandbags, stuffed with ice and snow. A car mechanic sprinkles met

toll on a pile of -- petrol on a pile of tyres to keep the riot

police at bay. During the orange revolution, a decade ago now,

Ukrainians showed the world that bad Government could be removed without

violence. But this week protestors were killed. So now they are

impro-sizing, making catapults and other medieval weaponry, out of

whatever they could find. This could kill something and it could change

the dynamic? People kill us, and so what. These people kill us. These

are Molotov cocktail, we have seen hundreds of them, hidden in the

tyres behind the final barricade. Beyond it wait the police, freezing

cold and nervous. This feels different now, much more serious,

much more menacing. The police and the protestors are just metres away

from each other and now there have been casualties on both sides. This

feels like a stand-off at the moment with no obvious way out. Away from

the overt antagonism of the barricades the battle is taking on a

more sinister and perhaps more brutal character. In the early hours

of Tuesday morning ignore was abducted and savagely beaten. He had

driven to hospital with a fellow activist Uri, who had been injured

during the protests. Before they could get treatment they were

bundled into the back of a van by a group of unidentified men. They

brought us to the forest, they put us on the ground and they started to

ask and beat, ask and beat. From there style I realised that they do

that like all the time. They were very experienced. Igor believes the

men who abducted them were acting with at least the tacit approval of

the state to intimidate the protestors? It will show the face of

people who have power in Ukraine. That they use such very method, very

criminal methods on pressing on the protestors. After being beaten and

interrogated, bound and hooded for almost 24 hours, Igor was separated

from Uri, and dumped in the forest, left for dead. Even with his dad

low-injured leg, Iing I managed to drag himself out and to safety, not

so Uri, he may have been unconscious or unable to walk any further.

Whatever the case is 24 hours or so later his dead body was found in

these woods, frozen solid. Uri was a father, 51 years old, a size

pollingist -- seismologist and keen sportsman. His brother told me the

death certificate, it gives cause of death as hypo hermia. His face was

covered in bruises, he told me, after visiting the morgue, he

couldn't bring himself to look at the rest of his brother's body. The

Government has denied responsibility for any of the deaths that have

occurred since Sunday, and says it is battling extremists and

terrorists among the protestors. But on Independence Square, activists

say that Igor and Uri's abduction is part of a growing pattern, the

pattern of a state losing control. People are disappearing, we have

dozens of claims of that, we have dozens of claims that people are

attacked or beaten in the street by undefined persons. If they are not

policemen, who are they and who controls them? If they are not the

policemen, it is not excluded that we shouldn't admit they are well

trained and well equipped and acting with the security at the end of the

police. With the knowledge of the authorities? With the knowledge of

the authorities, definitely. As night ball falls the temperature

plummet to below minus 20, protestors will stay out here all

night, warming themselves with free cups of borche. They talk of taking

back a country that's been hijacked by a corrupt elite. TRANSLATION:

Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. This man has been stirring

this pot of borche every night for almost two nights. He and his fellow

protestors effectively now control the centre of Ukraine's capital.

They say they will stick it out to the bitter end.

Imagine working for an organisation where you were positively encouraged

to try new things and be responsibly ir esponsible. And if you failed

then you were positively encouraged to try again. And again. Place where

you weren't hauled over the coals when things went wrong, because even

if you failed it meant you were experimenting, and taking risks was

a good thing. Our technology editor has been to meet Dr Astro Teller,

whose job title is Captain of Moonshots at the tech giant Google's

top-secret research centre in San Jose, known as Google X. Real

failure is trying something, learning it doesn't work and then

continuing to do it any way. That's my definition of failure. One of the

reasons we don't talk to the press more is I'm concerned that it comes

off, not as a genuine attempt to have a conversation, but as some

GIEND of arrogance on our part that we think we can solve the world's

problems. We say how could we make things, not just a little better,

but a lot better for a lot of people. Maybe we won't succeed but

let's aspire to that. You get a lot of people want to work

here? If I tell you, you can come here and be the best possible

version of yourself, that I want you to create and take risk, I will get

the best people, because everybody wants to do that. And then, because

I get the best people we're going to make more progress per dollar than

if I had tried to put the screws down on you and make sure you didn't

mess around. I'm asking them to be responsibly irresponsible. I'm

asking for each of the projects that we are working on, for each of the

groups to explore, to take risks, to run experiments, to learn from those

things and then repeat. And doing that really productively is

uncomfortable. Wearing a tie, "I value you at our organisation Bob",

it is not like that. The hierarchy is almost non-existent. I spend most

of my time trying to be a coach. It is like being President of the World

in a way. You get to pick the world's problem. What problem are we

going to solve today or try to solve? That is what I was saying.

That picking the problem is actually a lot of what's hard about it. So

what problem would you pick? Sincerely, we worry about this all

the time that we are not picking the right problems. You said TV, that is

a good one. That's not the one I would pick, that's the one I would

pick for my job. But you pick the ones, water, in the world, that is

what Bill Gates is doing. Getting people fresh and clean water? So it

turns out that clean water he, degeneration of clean water is not a

totally solved, but a relatively solved problem. It is actually the

corruption problem. I think being afraid to fail is almost a guarantee

of glass ceiling on the success that can be achieved. If I tell you that

you must make at least 10% progress over the next year he will only make

10% progress. There is no chance that you will be 10-times as good,

on any front a year from now. Independent of which company you

are, what you are working on, there is zero chance. This is the best

company in the world, you better succeed, you better make every

effort and win, and you have got to succeed, if you don't succeed you

are out? Yeah, I suppose that's how they could run it, but that is not

what they do. It is part of what they do. It is not what they are

good at, honestly. It takes a lot of emotional intensity and a special

kind of skill to be able to fire people effectively. That is not a

skill that Google has developed. If we expect a viper's pit of

politicalness, that is what we are going to get. And if we just don't

tolerate politics, if that's what counts as failing, if that's what

counts as looking stupid. If enough of us drive transparency in the

organisation, we try to act when any of us tries to act political it will

just look ugly and embarrassing, and you won't do it any more. You don't

have to stay with your manager if you don't want. If you are done with

the project you are on, you can go to a different part of Google. You

don't have to have your manager's permission. The result is, if your

manager an asshole, not only will you leave but everyone will leave,

you know what that guy will find himself having been voted off the

island by his own people. In a very bottoms up, very soft power kind of

way, people who aren't friendly, who aren't good managers get voted off

the island. If you feel stupid, if I make you feel stupid because you

tried something new and it didn't work out, you are never going to try

something new again. But if I create a culture, if we can create a

culture together where you feel stupid because you haven't tried

something new this week, you're going to try something new every

week. You have a lot of buildings? Quite a few, yeah. Wonderful, is

this where we say goodbye then? Sure. That was Astro Telle. Time for

a quick look at tomorrow's newspaper, the Guardian's lead

story: That's all for tonight. We leave you

with a beautiful film by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro called Enigma

of Beauty. Anwar animated film of the Old Masters.