20/04/2016 Newsnight

Returning to Britain tomorrow: the not-so-secret weapon

President Obama and Americans of all political colours say

So why exactly does the US seem to care so much about it?

The UK is an important part of being part of the solution.

If it, however, quits the EU, it will be part of the problem.

But is it right for the Americans to butt into the campaign?

Also tonight, we remember Victoria Wood.

My jacket needed cleaning, so I had to whip it

round to the while-you-wait cleaners around the corner,

and it actually had Pot Noodle all the way down one sleeve.

I didn't like to admit that I ate Pot Noodle,

Maureen Lipman will be with us to share her thoughts.

According to a poll last year, 76% of us in this country have

confidence in President Obama when it comes to world affairs.

His ratings here much higher than at home.

His ratings here also generally higher than those of

So, will he move the dial when he arrives in the UK tomorrow,

and intervenes in our national deliberations on EU membership?

The usual rule when it comes to a ballot is that

foreigners' views are either ignored or counter-productive.

So the question is, why would President Obama feel it

necessary to pronounce on the issue at all?

And let's face it, it's not just him.

Eight out of ten former US Treasury Secretaries want us in too.

A group of Republican and Democrat ones have written for the Times

arguing that Brexit would be risky for Britain and bad for Europe.

It turns out, the Americans think they have interests

at stake in our referendum, as Mark Urban explains.

We all know it's special, or supposed to be, but does this

particular relationship demand public honesty or Serena discretion?

Barack Obama flies in tomorrow, and he has already raised red flags

about Brexit, even some of those campaigning for Britain to stay in

the EU would rather he didn't weigh in. This is fundamentally a matter

for the people of the United Kingdom to decide, and the people will make

up their own minds, which is important for us to make a positive

case as to why being part of the EU will make us healthier, wealthier,

fairer and greener, and most importantly, I hopes everybody takes

of this, that we have to avoid the fear stealth tax X. -- tactics.

President Obama spoke up, but there is no doubt about what he thinks

about the prospect of Britain leaving the EU. Having been added

King in the European Union gives us much greater confidence about the

strength of the transatlantic union. The president was in Saudi Arabia

today on the first leg of his trip, so how will he balances desire to

speak out on Brexit with his knowledge that it could be

counter-productive with many voters? Obviously all of us who are not

lucky enough to be British citizens are respectful of the right of the

British people to make this decision. We understand what the

referendum is about, it is part of a democratic process that the Prime

Minister put in place a number of years ago. But our president, as

others, feels that we have a right, and even an obligation, to be candid

with the citizens and the leaders of a country with whom we have a

special relationship. Among the concerns cited are the old Kissinger

question, who does the US call if it wants to talk to Europe? There is no

easy answer still, but Britain leaving the EU would make it harder.

Good morning, all. There are possible economic concerns, and

there is the worry that Britain's voice would no longer be there in EU

Summits. If the UK through this referendum were to pull out of the

EU, the chances of the EU getting passed its current troubles, which

are many, would be less, in other words, if there are solutions to the

strains and stresses that the EU is under, the UK is an important part

of being part of the solution. If it however quits the EU, it will be

part of the problem, if I can put it that way. South of the Thames, a new

US embassy is taking shape. It's a ?600 million investment in the

future relationship. Given the depth of US/ UK ties on the scale of this

investment, you might wonder why President Obama would violate the

principal that Democratic leaders don't comment on one another's

elections or referenda. Well, the White House believed the stakes

involved in this UK vote are so big, they say it is the duty of Britain's

friends to make their views clear, and I've heard that similar

statements will be coming from the French and German leaders in the

next few weeks. Around the new embassy, whole neighbourhood of

buildings is taking shape. It's an investment in a new home for that

loving relationship, and both the US and other European allies want to

influence its shape. Mark Hoban there.

I'm joined now by Vote Leave's Suzanne Evans and by Anne Applebaum,

an author and columnist for the Washington Post.

Suzanne, what do you make of the argument you have heard there.

Clearly the Americans think us leaving is going to create

instability and problems from the beginning. Identity stand that, and

we had a special relationship with the Americans long before we joined

the EU, and we could still have it if we left. We could perhaps take

this intervention are little more seriously if America opened its

border with Mexico, if it accepted the judicial supremacy of the

organisation of American States, and perhaps even allowed the free

movement of people. It wouldn't dream of doing that, but it is

asking us to consider doing something similar in the EU, and the

UK would never dream of suggesting that America did that. You listened

to others in that report, their interest is not our interest, their

interest is the European interest, it might be good for Europe for

Britain staying, but is your point that it is not about Europe, it is

about us? I think America is over estimated the influence we have

within the European Union. We know that every time Britain has voted no

to a proposal, it has been overruled, and I don't think we have

the fluids that America things we have. And commie you have written

for the Spectator this week -- Anne, you have written to the Spectator

this week. This is about whether Britain will go on being Great

Britain, whether it will go on being a world power. We want to Britain in

the centre of world events, inside Europe, influencing Europe, and it

is not true at all that Britain has no influence. Britain has shaped the

common market, created, pushed for competition policy, made the Anne a

more open place, a better place for British and American businesses, and

we want Britain to stay. But we want a British interest in the corridors

of American power? Americans feel, they feel that Americans and the

British share values, have similar views about the world, markets,

democracy, and we want our shared values to be part of Europe, and we

want to push Europe in that direction. And you agree with that?

You are putting the Americans at the centre of your campaign? I love what

she said about wanting Britain to be at the centre of the world, that is

what we want as well which is why we don't want to be shackled to a

failing European Union. We will have more influence if we can take back

our seat at the World Trade Center, and have more say on world trade and

inward investment. President Obama has some interest telling us the

truth on that, doesn't eat? You say we will a better trade relations,

continue with the special relationship, they will continue

giving us our security through Nato, but if the guy you're pinning all of

that on says, please, don't do it, is that really not a legitimate

thing for him to say? He is perfectly entitled to say it if he

wants to, but is he really going to end that special relationship if we

leave the European Union? Of course not. If there is one lesson we can

learn from America in this it is the way in which America is fiercely

protective is democratic sovereignty, and that is what we

want to do here, too. And a new Spectator piece, you had an

interesting argument which is that we shouldn't be worried about

Americans expressing an opinion, there are a lot of Americans

including presidential candidate who really couldn't care less. What we

really need to worry about now, what we should all be worried about and

fighting against our isolationist who want to pull apart the Western

alliance, wants to end the relationships, the trans-Atlantic

relationship, and don't care at all, and we should be together, we, the

British, the EU, should be together as a Western alliance working

together, and the problem is that there are now very strong voices in

the United States and across Europe... Donald Trump basically

said, if Nato goes, so be it. Donald Trump is not interested in Nato,

there are plenty of people in the United States who are not, and we

should keep that in mind. We have every intention of staying within

Nato, and another issue is that outside the European Union, we have

more ability to control our own national security and work more

closely with America and Nato. Is it going to backfire? Is President

Obama above being a foreigner Divina? He does rate highly in our

polls, but will people say, but out, or will they be glad of his counsel?

He has a right to speak. This is one of the things that affect us. The

things that others me about the Leave campaign is that they think

this ends at their borders, but it affects all of us. And what you

think? I think most people will think that he should stay out. Your

leader, Nigel Farage, called him the most anti-British American president

in history. But we do seem to quite like him, do you like him? I think

we do have a stronger relationship with America than the EU. We all

know who leads America, do we know who the EU presents are? Let's leave

it there. Let's stay on the EU referendum

theme for another couple of minutes. Because we are going to roll out

the first in a series of short These are particularly

for the undecideds among you. What we've done is ask a number

of people to take us through their thinking as they've

made up their mind how to vote; these are folks who are not taking

a role in the campaigns. Tonight, it's the novelist,

broadcaster and journalist, I'm quite open to talking

about, you know, I'd But that inevitably aligns me

with other politicians that I wouldn't vote

for in a million years. I think that's sometimes

why people are shocked. No, I didn't really

listen to anyone. I just saw what was on the news,

I went off and did my own reading. Recently, we had the tampon tax

and I was really shocked that we have to go to Brussels

to get an agreement about getting VAT scrapped on a tax that we feel

quite strongly about, It got me starting to think

about the notion of democracy. If you've got elected

politicians in this country, we have elected them at the ballot

box, why are they going to Brussels? It is not about migration to me at

all, which I think shocks people. Because I'm black

and when I say, oh no, I think we should leave the EU,

I think people have taken that I'm making

a statement about migration. I'm not making a statement

about migration. Actually, what I'm making

a statement about is It is not that I'm not saying

we can't have a relationship I think if you really think

about Britain at the moment, we do have a bit of a semi-detached

relationship with the EU. We're not part of the eurozone,

which is another story, There's the treaty around borders

and passports and we actually were not part of that

so we do check our passports So we do have a bit

of a semi-detached relationship with Europe, so why don't we -

we have opted out a bit - so why don't we just opt out

completely, I think? We will have more of those films

over the next few weeks. Funny, but also poignant

and deeply serious. A great performer, but also

an award-winning writer. Victoria Wood sadly died

today at the age of 62, A giant in entertainment herself,

her skill was in capturing the characters and concerns

of ordinary people. It's quite a feat to take dinner

ladies, or characters called Barry and Freda,

and to make comedy out of them, And that perhaps reflected her

own self-effacing personality. She had a somewhat solitary

childhood and for her, the sun came out when discovered

that she was more comfortable Stephen Smith looks

back at her career. He did have a sad life when you

think about it, Shakespeare. He did die before he could collaborate with

Andrew Lloyd-Webber! I hate watching Shakespeare in the theatre. I hate

sitting there with those people going, "She used to be in Juliet

Bravo!" Ready to order, Sir? Jane? What is

the soup of the day, please? I'll go and find out.

Where would British comedy be without dire hotels and restaurants?

What time is your train? Or Victoria Wood and Julie Walters for that

matter. Two soups! Everything comes down to

meeting Julie in that summer of '78. It was like somebody banging a gong,

I wrote this sentence and it was constructed in such a way that it

was funny, everything I had written before was nearly funny. This was

properly funny. Ladies and gentlemen, Victoria Wood. They make

all this fuss about a Northern Powerhouse, but there has always

been one for humour. Victoria Wood was a solitary child, in love with

TV and alert in eccentricity, a recipe for comedy gold. I was

obsessed with the television. It was a disappointment when it went back

to the shop in the summer. My father bought one so we could watch it all

year-round. If anything happened in the summer, I never saw it. One

year, after he bought a set, I think it was when I was doing my O levels,

he decided I was watching too much television, instead of saying

anything, he wrapped it up in a Mac. There was a package with a belt

around the middle! One of her best-loved creations was Acorn

Antiques. How do you say in the English, to marry you? It was a

spoof of a long-running shambolic show lucky to stay on the air. I was

sitting in the garden by a hedge when I was four in our house in

Bury. I remember thinking, I want to be famous. That was it. It came to

you out of the blue? I wanted to make my mark. In what way? I knew I

was funny. I could play the piano and I thought somehow I would do

something with this. I didn't know what it would be. I had a feeling

inside that I could do it. # Children be nice to your father

# He is still alive at 35... # I saw her when she was a complete

unknown and didn't recognise her talent at all, which she used to

tease me about. She had a struggle being a woman and being accepted

because it wasn't the fashion in those days, nobody believed that

women could be as funny as men and she proved them wrong. And laid the

ground work and the spade work for all the great, brilliant women

talent, comediennes that we have today.

I give you Miss Victoria Wood. The girl from Bury who wanted to be

famous won Celebrity Bake Off. I don't like it. There is only ever

one at a time and it was Thora Hird. # Beat me on the bottom with

# The Woman's Weekly # I'm joined now by actor, comedian,

columnist, Maureen Lipman. What was funny about her? What wasn't funny

about Vic? She was a technician. But you could see from that clip that

she was having an absolute ball. I think she was a brilliant writer and

had the personality of a true comedian, which was introverted and

happy when she was out there. She clicked on something that turned

things, and she's talked about that on other occasions. You don't know

what it was? She is so pretty. She never knew that. She had such style.

In a sort of way, she reminded me of Peter Kay, there is a great,

formidable strength there. I did one show once, which she wrote. One

monologue. In the studio, I remember doing it, she sat there, where you

are, and I thought, oh no. Go away! Don't judge me. She just was part of

the process. She was producing, directing and she was a very strong

woman model for all of us... You performed that production and that

is the thing, it is the character, it is the observation of ordinary

lives and seeing funny things, whether it is a school teacher or

someone washing up, or anything? And retaining her northern roots. The

rhythm of everything she wrote is northern. It is a bit like, she

admired my late husband and we got together over egg and chips and she

had the same genius, which was to take the ordinary, just distort it a

little bit, you know, in its proportions and it was hilarious

whatever she did. There's been a little debate - she was not sneering

about ordinary people? It was always quite sympathetic? I don't know. I

think she was waspish. You have to be for comedy. You can't be

pleasant, you know. That is interesting. I thought she was

rather pleasant. She was quite edgy. Edgy. She would talk about issues,

you could imagine people sitting in front of the telly being embarrassed

about? . Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly was very much a

National Anthem. She was a great example of how if you want something

done well, get a comedian. Let's talk about the women in comedy

point. We heard Michael Grade saying it, it was assumed women weren't

funny, particularly in stand-up? You had to be grotesque in a way. You

had to be Hilda Baker. Of course, it happens. Beryl Reid was another

heroine of Victoria's. She was a great actress. It wasn't until

Smiley's People that we knew she was a great actress. That character she

played of the Birmingham... It was the same kind of talent, you know,

it just was a colour that and an observation and a delineation which

was slightly bigger than reality, you know. Last question, she was a

generous and warm personality as well, correct? She would write lines

that were for other people as well as for herself. She would give other

people good lines. Does that work in showbiz? Well, she was on the

outside and on the inside, she was a performer, a director and a writer.

There was a triple threat. It is such a shock. This year... Today, I

got a message which said Victoria Wood on my phone and I thought she's

coming to see the show. I left a message on the phone saying, don't

come tonight because we have an actress off. I read... I just... And

in fact, because there was an actress off, I spoke to the audience

after the show. I said, you know, we have lost Britain's most formidable

talent today. It is heartbreaking. 62. It is. God bless her children

because it's, I don't know how you replace someone, let alone a

performer, but a mother as well. She was a born mother. Thank you so

much. Thank you. The London mayoral election

is on May 5th, two weeks tomorrow. But while London has a lot of issues

to manage, the campaign between Conservative Zac Goldsmith

and Labour's Sadiq Khan has ventured Mr Goldsmith has used the line that

Sadiq Khan is a radical - a word that morphs neatly

from association with Jeremy Corbyn to connections with Islamists

with anti-West views. For Labour, the Tory campaign

has been Islamaphobic, a "racist scream",

as Yvette Cooper described it. Secunder Kermani has been looking

at the Conservative campaign, This multilingual Zac Goldsmith

campaign video is a light-hearted side of the prominence attached to

race in the mayoral election. The Tories have been accused of playing

to fears of Sadiq Khan's Muslim background. He has a long record of

sharing platforms with extremists... Today, it was the Prime Minister's

turn to raise the same accusation against Sadiq Khan. The honourable

member for Tooting has appeared on a platform with him nine times. This

man supports IS. The Imam in question rejects that and Labour

branded the comments Islamophobic. I'm disappointed if they want to

have this desperate, negative campaign, I will be a Mayor for all

Londoners. I'm the person, who when he stood for Parliament, had

extremists outside his mosque... In recent days, Sadiq Khan and his

supporters have accused my campaign of being Islamophobic. There are

serious questions about you and your judgment. In debates and in

newspaper columns, Khan has been accused of talking alongside

radicals, choosing to defend extremists when he was a lawyer and

some of the claims have backfired. The South London preacher had also

been seen alongside Goldsmith. This style of politics isn't what people

normally associate with Zac Goldsmith. What is behind it? Could

it be that Goldsmith has been trailing Khan in the polls? Or is it

the influence of Lynton Crosby, whose firm is running the Tory

campaign? In Croydon, this group of Muslim voters say they have been put

off by the language in this debate. I dress the way I dress. Does that

mean I'm related to Taliban? No. With the dirty politics that's going

on, it puts you off. I have voted for the Tories in the past because

of their policies. Now, looking at the dirty politics which is going

on, I think I really have to think deep and search my conscience. The

only reason that these issues have been brought up are the lack of

policy issues that the Tories have been able to put forward. Outer

London areas have been key to Conservative strategy in London's

mayoral elections. They form part of the outer doughnut, a tradition ally

whiter, more Tory-friendly boroughs. The more ethnically diverse inner

city areas go to Labour. Demographic changes to the city make that

strategy much harder now. I think that Zac Goldsmith's

campaign has had to cope with the fact that it is no longer possible

for the Conservatives to assume that outer London is a place of suburban

Tory voting constituencies. What they have to think about now is, how

to ensure that the outer London vote, which includes some of the

traditional outer London voters, but now a more complex minority

population, how they still turn out for the Conservatives.

Ethnic minorities may have been traditionally associated with

Labour, but significant number of Sikhs now associate with the Tories.

Zac Goldsmith highlighted his welcoming of the Indian Prime

Minister. Some have labelled his targeting of Indian communities

patronising and even divisive, but at this Croydon Temple, he has

strong support. We did feel a bit neglected and ignored, but since the

last election, the Conservative Party has made a special effort to

reach out to the Hindu community, and it is appreciated. Our Prime

Minister got such a warm welcome, it was just a very remarkable event.

These politics are not something most of the British public are used

to. This election could see them brought into the mainstream.

Secunder Kermani there. And you can of course find a full

list of candidates running to be For almost two years,

the Syrian city of Raqqa has served as the capital of the so-called

Islamic State. But there has been a thorn

in the side of Isis: an extraordinary group of young men

who've opposed the regime online, documenting everyday realities

at great personal risk. The group is called

Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. Today the group's leaders

are in hiding, but their full story is being told for the first time

in a film portrait of the group using real testimony

and graphicised images. Documents that are members of the

group have been victims of Isis brutality.

A fuller version of that remarkable story, which was produced

by Chloe Hadjimatheou from the BBC World Service, is available

in a series of short films on the BBC News website,

and there is also more on our Facebook page.

Before we go, the world's largest photography awards, the Sony Awards,

are being handed out tomorrow at Somerset House in London.

Now, we're not allowed to tell you who's won,

but we leave you with a few that we think deserve to.

Good evening. After the warmth of today, the cold weather by the end

of this week will come as a bit of a shock. Still some sunshine around on

Thursday, not as much in the southern half of