25/07/2016 Newsnight

Owen Smith wants to save the Labour Party from Jeremy Corbyn.

Does he now have any chance of succeeding?

As one of the women who resigned her place

in the Shadow Cabinet unresigns, what can the challenger do

Emily travels to the Democrat convention in Philidelphia,

sounding out the anger of the American rust belt

I dislike Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is... He's a joke. My mum and

my grandma tell me about back when the town was a nice place to hang

around and be at, when all the businesses were here and the steel

mill was up and people were thriving.

At the convention itself, Bernie sanders' supporters aren't happy.

We've got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. BOO

Newsnight has learnt that Government guarantees,

supposed to underwrite London's latest project, are in

A month ago, by his own admission, you probably hadn't heard

Indeed, he was barely a household name in his own household.

Tonight, he lays out the credentials and the policies he believes

will see him successfully challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership

Before that, though, Newsnight's political editor,

Nick Watt, joins me to discuss the scale of that challenge

and the wider travails of the Labour Party.

And the challenge just got a bit bigger, Nick.

The verb "to unresign" might not be in the dictionary,

It is indeed. We think of you as an erudite person. The curious

spectacle of Sarah Champion resigning and unresigning. She wrote

to Jeremy Corbyn saying she would like her job back, thank you very

much. A pointed response from Jeremy Corbyn, a source in his office told

the BBC that this was like the miners strike, when the first miners

went back to work and we'll see where it goes from there. As I

understand it, that is signalling that when Parliament comes back in

September, you may well see a few more of not these ex-Shadow Cabinet,

but middle and lower ranking former Shadow ministers saying they want to

come back. The coup was a failure. They were sold a pup and now it's

time to knuckle down otherwise the SNP will end up as the main

Opposition at Westminster. What does the broader picture mean for both

contowarders, for Mr Smith and Jeremy Corbyn. He's had a difficult

few days. It's got to be good news for him, because somebody who

thought he was no good says it's right to be back in his team.

Eyebrows are being raised Al-Attiyah comparison with the miners strike.

That's a provocative thing to say, some people are saying. For Owen

Smith, at one level it's not very good. He's the beneficiary this

afternoon coup, and Sarah Champion is now saying, perhaps I should be

back on board working for the person that Owen Smith wants to replace.

But I think Owen Smith can distance himself from this. This decision was

made ten days ago. It was held back to allow Sarah Champion to lead a

backbench debate about online child abuse and crucially, Sarah Champion

was among a number of Shadow ministers whose offices were

carrying on supporting their Shadow teams, the sort of work we don't see

behind-the-scenes. Nick, thank you. We'll see more of you later.

So we'll hear from Owen in just a moment, but before then,

a little reminder about his journey to the leadership contest.

I won't be entering a contest against Jeremy Corbyn or anybody

else. So proud to be addressing you,

launching my bid to be the next leader of the Labour Party, and more

importantly than, that the next Labour Prime Minister of this

country. I would serve you with great humility and respect, you'd be

a good leader of this party. I think I could also be a good leader of

this party. I'm with drawing from this race and supporting Owen. He

dialled 999 to get a quote from the police. Instead of the police

themselves or the press office. And they then complained about you, what

does it say about your judgment? We all do daft things when we're young.

The country has to say, we can imagine these people running this

country and do so better than the Conservatives. Tags the task I'm

setting myself and everybody in Labour and I expect us to achieve

it. Owen Smith joins me now. Let's begin with today's local difficulty.

This was your ace in the hole, the desertion of ministers from Jeremy

Corbyn and the vote of no confidence from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Sarah Champion's actions suggest a crack in the facade. Sarah's a

friend Ayrad great MP. To be honest, we've gone beyond MPs now. The MPs

are rather irrelevant other than Jeremy and myself in standing to

contest the leadership. It's the members who count now. Sarah's vote

is one amongst 500,000 members of the Labour Party. She'll get to cast

that vote. She has to decide whether she's going to vote for me or Jeremy

or whether she serves in the couple of weeks when Parliament comes back

is neither here nor there. That's not quite right, is it? It must have

been a huge part of your decision to stand that the Parliamentary Labour

Party was pretty much voting, over 70%, no confidence in the leader and

these ministers, both Cabinet level and junior, were deserting in their

droves. This is, even if unresign isn't a word, this is the opposite

of desertion, one of the foundations of your leadership bid is shaking.

Well, no I don't think it is. The truth is that the reason I stood was

in order to try and unite the Labour Party. We had a massive crisis of

confidence in the Parliamentary Labour Party in Jeremy. The job of

the leader of the Labour Party is to lead a united Opposition at

Westminster or to lead a Government at Westminster. He couldn't do that.

Most of those MPs now have nominated me, overwhelmly, to challenge

Jeremy. Sarah deciding to go back in is a minor part of this story. Why

do you think she's done it? I think a lot of people will feel that they

want to fight the Tories. A lot of people will legitimately feel as I

do, that we've given them too easy a ride. Perhaps she feels she can do

that better on the frontbench. You're on holiday for the next few

weeks. That's the point I was going to make. In reality, there are only

two weeks in September and the ballots will have long since gone

out by then. We're right in the last knockings of the leadership contest.

In reality, Sarah going back in isn't really much of a story either

way. When does it become a story? If other people follow? If 150 members

of the Labour Party decide they all want to rediscover... I'm thinking

more three or four, of a similar level, junior ministers,

unresignations? I suspect that too won't make any difference

whatsoever. We are still in this position where there is a crisis.

And the Labour Party is disunited. One or two MPs decided to go back.

Doesn't really change those basic facts. I think it's now for me and

Jeremy to lay out our stall to explain what it is we think we

should be doing in Opposition, what we might do in Government. I'm glad

you said that, that is after all what we're here for. Before we lay

out that stall. I wonder if Sarah Champion has responded to the siren

call of John McDonnell on television, did you see that strange

interlude when he spoke down the camera. You saw that, what do you

think he was dog? I think he was trying to say, as I've been saying,

that we need to - Hang on a minute, let's remind people who perhaps

missed it, exactly what happened on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. Let

me just say this, to Labour Party supporters, Labour members, members

of the Parliamentary Labour Party, we've got to stop this now. There's

a small group out there that are willing to destroy our party just to

remove Jeremy Corbyn. We've got to stop them. We're on camera six,

Owen. I don't know if you want to direct your response to that

straight down the barrel of the camera lens as well, but tell us,

either to the camera or to me, what you think Mr McDonnell was doing

this? I'll tell you seeing I think it would look slightly peculiar, as

it did with John to speak down the lens - John can say that if he

wants. I went in on that Monday after lots of colleagues had

resigned, I went in with five colleagues in order to say, we're

not intending to resign, but we want to hear Jeremy, what you're going to

do to save the Labour Party. How are you going to compromise in order to

bring us together? John McDonnell pushed into that meeting, not having

been invited. I put it to John directly that I feared he was part

of the small group of people on the far left of the Labour Party who

were prepared to see the party split in order to protect his project. His

answer to that was to shrug his shoulders and say, "If that's what

it takes." That is why I left. That is why I resigned from the

frontbench. Ultimately, that's why I'm standing. I do think there is a

very real danger that the party will split if Jeremy doesn't move over,

that the party will be destroyed. The Tories and other forces on the

right of British politics will fill the gap that Labour leaves. That

will be a disaster, because we have been the greatest force for social

good for 116 years in this country. It would be a tragedy if we were

wiped out. Parties can be wiped out. It takes a long time for parties to

rise, but they can be snuffed out just like that. That is what I fear

could happen to Labour. Let's look, then, at your stall, your manifesto,

if you will, particularly looking for clear blue water between you and

Jeremy Corbyn. If we started with defence. Would you, as a Prime

Minister, be spending more or less than the current GDP percentage on

the defence budget? We should be spending 2%. We should be renewing

Trident. Security of the British people has always got to be the

first order of business for any Government, Labour or Tory. We've

got to be serious about that. One of the weakness that's we've had

recently is that people worry that Labour isn't serious about security,

that it's a lesser issue for Jeremy, as it were. I'm not sure that is

right, but he's got a different perspective on some of those things,

on patriotism, if you like, on security and defence, I think I've

got a more traditional Labour perspective on that, an old

fashioned Labour perspective, that's a big difference between us. What do

you mean by a different position on patriotism? I don't think Jeremy

really understand, sometimes, the way in which people have a strong,

perhaps socially conservative, with a small C, sense of place, sense of

where they're from. I'm not sure I've heard him talking much about

Scotland, an identity, Wales and identity or indeed England and

identity. I suspect Jeremy has a more pet row poll tan sense of that.

That's not what I think is central to the Labour tradition. Are you

calling him unpatriotic? I'm saying I don't think it's core to his set

of beliefs. I think he's got a set of liberal per specktives and left

per specktives on things and nationhood and nationalism and

patriotism aren't really part of his make up. Staying with Trident, you

mention old Labour values, I think Tony Benn said, in reference to the

nuclear deterrent, that we had the best protected homeless people in

the world. It's the membership of the party who support Jeremy Corbyn,

they're sceptical about Trident. Aren't you supposed to win them

over? Yeah, but I've got to be honest about what I feel. I'm

someone who used to believe that getting rid of all our nuclear

weapons unilaterally was right. Now I feel the world has become an even

more unpredictable, volatile place. You said a moment ago, before we

went on air, it's the first time you've been presenting for a while

now without some awful news being broadcast. It does feel, to lots of

us, that every day there is a new, extraordinary piece of news around

the world. That doesn't feel like, to me, a moment when we should be

divesting... When did you change your mind? In my mid-20s, when I was

a teenager, I was a member of CND and believed in unilateralism. In my

mid-20s, I started to see there was a real case for hanging on to our

weapons and Labour's traditional position of multilateral disarmament

using ours as a bargaining chip to get other countries to get rid of

theirs too. Treeza May was asked whether she was prepared to hit the

nuclear button, would you be prepared to press the button? I've

been asked that question a couple of times and I've said yes. If you've

got a nuclear deterrent, you have to be prepared to use it. It's a

terrible, terrible necessity. Obviously, one would hope that you'd

never get anywhere near that and truthfully, I don't think we ever

would get anywhere near it. The point is you have to be prepared to

do it in order for it to be effective. Let's move on to health.

This is obviously an area in which you've worked. There's been some

controversy recently. In the context of health, is there room for more,

you've called it choice in the past or private sector involvement in the

NHS as it currently stands? Truthfully, no. My view - Changed

your mind about this as well then? No. There was one press release that

was written by the company that I worked for back in 2005, about a

report that kaz commissioned not by me but my predecessor. That's been

spun into a suggestion that I'm in favour of privatisation in the NHS.

The truth is I'm incredibly proud of the NHS, Labour's greatest creation.

100%, publicly owned, free at the point of view NHS should be our

position. More than that, we opened the door to the Tories taking our

language, that language of choice that was the Labour Party's language

in the mid-2000s and using it as a Trojan horse for what they want to

do, which is to marketise the NHS piece by piece. I fought the NHS

Bill that has privatised parts of the NHS, line-by-line, on the

frontbench as the junior spokesperson for Labour. I

fundamentally believe we should get back to a period where we have a

clear sense of what our public goods, public services and we should

be very clear that public service ethos is undermind by allowing it to

be diluted. I think we made mistakes in not realising that you - You'd

row back on this? This is private sector provision in the NHS as it

stands that you seek to reduce? I would. I think we need to be clear

that Labour should understand what collective ownership of public

goods, what the value of that is. It's one of the very few things, if

you like, the NHS, that exemplifies socialism in practice. It's the

greatest institution in Britain that illustrates what we're all about in

Labour - pooling our risks, sharing our rewards, having a service that

is universal and used by everyone paid out of everybody's taxes. It's

the essence of labourism. Labourism? What would we be looking at?

What sort of areas could be reduced or removed? Very bluntly, we should

always think about public services being held in public hands. For

example the commissioning practice, lots of it is now done by private

sector providers and that's a real mistake, it allows profit and cost

to become the principal driver of services and not clinical decisions

or need. Introducing the profit motive to the NHS, like in other

areas of public service, both dilutes the sense of public

connection to it and undermines the essence of what Labour is all about.

Beyond that overview, the principled overview, what would the detailed

look like? Commissioning. That is one area but there would be a limit?

You would put a limit on it? We had a cap with the last Labour

government but that is a mistake, we should simply say, we should go

further, we want public services to be provided in the public sector by

public servants, that should be the overriding objective of Labour

because as I say, we do not want to risk those things being subverted or

the underpinning ethos, the ideological purpose of them from a

Labour perspective being eroded. You would grow the state in this

context? I think we do need to get much bolder about what the role of

the state is and I will be doing a couple of big speeches in the coming

weeks spelling out what I think we got wrong as new Labour,... Give me

a preview. I have just given you one about the NHS, but I will talk about

taxation, I will talk about the way in which we expand public services,

and allow public services to be properly resort. I will talk about

funding across the UK, rights at work and the way in which we protect

individuals at work through collective means of arguing for

better pay and conditions and I've already outlined we should

reintroduce sector wage councils as an extra ball work for workers

especially women in low-paid sectors. We must move on to the I

word coming immigration. Are there too many immigrants in Britain? The

way in which we saw a rapid influx of particular Eastern Europe and

migrants after the accession of those countries to Europe definitely

caused downward pressure on wages, definitely caused changes to local

terms and conditions for some workers in some sectors. We have to

acknowledge that and there are ways to mitigate that with public service

resources and extra money for doctors and school places. My wife

is a schoolteacher and we have had significant numbers into South Wales

of people fleeing the Middle East. That is something that we as a

government at the centre should be acknowledging in extra funding for

those areas. Today you have criticised Theresa May's decision to

do away with refugees minister. That is an extraordinary decision. Would

you not be in the business of numbers regarding refugees in

particular and immigration in general? With refugees absolutely

not, we should be honouring the great British tradition of being a

place of sanctuary for people fleeing persecution, across the

world. We have all seen these terrible pictures over the last few

summers, we are in the foothills, I think, James, of a global shift of

populations and in the foothills of the debate about that, about Howie

Roseman on. Our country and other European countries. This debate will

change a lot over the coming years. To be clear, it was in the manifesto

where you won your seat, to have a migrant impact fund. Ed Miliband had

that in place. It is still a good idea. The migrant fund not

withstanding, if there were a surge in the number of people coming to

Britain to work you would be comfortable if the resources were in

place? We should be honest about it because part of the way the service

and retail sectors, part of the way that is bounced back a bit after the

recession, although it is looking parlous again now, has been because

we have had an influx of effectively cheap Labour. Should we want that?

It has some economic advantages, no doubt, but what is it doing to

squeeze people out of jobs who are living in this country already? All

of these things, we have to be much more honest and upfront with the

British public about the scale of the challenges we face. If the

overall number goes up you would be comfortable with that if all of

these are the conditions were in place? The Tories have illustrated

perfectly what a boneheaded way it is to go about making policies to

set targets that you know you can't meet. Cameron Phelps completely but

Theresa May is frankly making a gross mistake in getting rid of a

specific refugees minister, that is a really bad thing. Equally

reintroducing detention for child refugees as they are effectively

dead last week, what an appalling thing that is to do. You referred

obliquely to the referendum result and most people now accept there is

a relatively binary choice regarding freedom of movement and access to

the single market, if we continue to do business as usual with the

European Union, it would probably involve freedom of movement staying

in place and everyone restrictions on freedom of movement we will have

to do less trade. We have to be much tougher and more vigorous in

rejecting the notion that it's a binary choice, because the message

we were sent with the referendum was fairly simple, it was one that

people wanted to retain the benefits of trading within Europe and two,

retaining constraints about laws being passed in Europe and on

immigration. We can choose to do what the Tories are doing which is

to say, there we go, that's that. Hard Brexit. I will be fighting much

harder to talk to all of the European parties in power and out of

power about how the debate is evolving because if Germany and

France and Spain, they have exactly the same discussions. -- in Germany.

You are rejecting this tension between freedom of movement and free

trade? I am rejecting the fact it is a binary choice, that is a false

choice and we should not be lying down and simply saying, these are

the terms of the debate, we accept it. That is the worst thing we could

possibly do. I am clear we should negotiate much harder, our leaders

should demand a seat at those tables, we represent nine or 10

million people who vote Labour in this country, Labour has a mandate

to debate these things. Most Labour voters voted to stay in. You

mentioned the mandate, Mr Corbyn's mandate is huge. He keeps telling me

that. He keeps telling everyone because it is true. 50% of members

voted for him, he goes on about how overwhelming it was but of members

only just over 50% voted for him. 378,000 of them right now, I will

talk to as many of those members as I can about what I believe in

witches essentially that Britain is becoming an incredibly unequal place

where people don't feel they get a fair crack of the web, where people

do feel angry and frustrated that we've had a sense of loss and

decline in this country for individuals and communities for a

long time, but it's not enough to just moan about it, you have to put

on the table what you will do to change. If you win will there be a

job for him? For Jeremy Corbyn? Absolutely. He does not want to be

president. I said President or chairman. There are many ways...

Does he have the confidence to have any brief? -- competence. I would

absolutely welcome him to the Shadow Cabinet, he should be thanked for

having helped Labour to rediscover a bit of radicalism, but we need to go

beyond just slogans, bit of hard solutions, we have to be practical,

we are practical socialists in the Labour Party, not just debaters.

Thank you very much indeed, Owen Smith.

Construction hasn't even begun on London's

In fact, there's still no agreement on where precisely on the North bank

of the Thames the bridge will begin or end, I suppose,

It was championed by Boris Johnson and even designed by his favourite

architect, known for those snazzy new route master buses.

His successor, Sadiq Khan, seems considerably less enthusiastic,

and support for the project elsewhere at City Hall

It was all supposed to start this summer but has just been pushed

back to at least the Autumn, prompting Nick Watt

to wonder whether it will ever be built at all.

To its fans, the Garden Bridge would show the world that London is a

world-class city with a spectacular place

for contemplation across the

If Manhattan can have the High Line, why can't London have

To its detractors the bridge is a vanity project,

reminiscent of, yes, the Millennium Dome.

The bridge has had significant ambassadors, Boris Johnson as London

mayor championed the project and the London-born George Osborne

thought it would showcase the best of

British design and attract visitors from across the globe.

Of course Joanna Lumley, who has known Boris

Johnson since she was four, dreamt up the project

It is the juxtaposition of something strange,

gardens in strange places, that is paradise for me.

The bridge now feels unloved in Whitehall and at

London City Hall after the sacking of George Osborne, and the departure

Sadiq Khan, the new London mayor, was a reluctant convert and was

recently given a taste of opposition to the project.

Do I cancel it and waste ?40 million or

The future of the bridge could be decided this week when the

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling decides whether to extend a ?15

million government guarantee until September next year.

A no would spell real danger for the Garden

My understanding is that they have spent ?38 million already.

And bearing in mind they haven't got a

To put that into context, the Millennium Bridge,

including fixing the wobble, cost around 25 million.

We could have effectively built a bridge and a

half with the money they have spent just on planning and preliminaries.

No doubt ministers have thought through the consequences of crossing

Joanna Lumley is no slouch when it comes to

So, Nick, what have you learned today?

Well, we are reaching a decisive moment for the Garden Bridge, with

that decision I was mentioning by Chris Grayling, whether to extend

?15 million government underwriting of the project until September next

year. We are told he is looking at all of the options with an open mind

but I sense he will have two big thoughts. With the challenge on

public finances at the moment is it right to press ahead? One source

said to me, we need bridges people can cross, not that you close for

parties. The second thought is the fear about ongoing liabilities, the

government could pony up the money and find that the bridge actually

never happens and it feels to me that this bridge really now has few

friends in Whitehall after the sacking of George Osborne. One

person said that the only wholehearted supporter of the bridge

in the Cabinet is Boris Johnson and his mind is on other things. Don't

forget about Sadiq Khan, the numerical London, a late convert to

the bridge, who has been saying there can be no more public money

from London. He has his mind on bridges to the east of Tower Bridge

because that is about economic regeneration. You have heard from

the Garden Bridge asked? Hannah Barnes has heard from the trust and

it does not sound as though they are wholly confident it is going their

way, a bit late in the day but they have sought a meeting with Chris

Grayling and hope the government will continue to support the

project. Crucially the trust have told us tonight that only the

government can underwrite the project, and they say that is not a

job for the private sector, so it is a note from Chris Grayling, and if

it is, that 15 million has to be provided this week because they have

to file it in their accounts. Troubled waters. Bridge over...

Thank you a much indeed. Even a House of Cards script

editor would have balked at the implausibility of this

American election plot twist: Russian hackers,

apparently backed by the Kremlin, were behind the leaking

of confidential e-mails exchanged by senior Democrats,

showing that they wanted Hilary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders,

to win the nomination. And in case, that weren't juicy

enough, Sanders supporters today booed their man's suggestion

that they should vote Hardly the ideal backdrop

to the first day of their convention On the plus side, though,

Emily Maitlis is there. Thanks, James. Good evening from

Philadelphia, where the democratic national convention has opened

amidst the back drop of drama, accusations, conspiracy and now

apology. The party chairman has resigned, following leaked e-mails

which seemed to suggest she was behind a plot to back Hillary

Clinton over Bernie Sanders, for the nomination, something which goes

against party rules. Donald Trump has used this occasion to call

Hilary, corrupt. His nickname for her is "crooked Hilary". The Clinton

campaign has blamed Russia for the leaked e-mails. They say Putin did

this and timed it to help Trump. The party itself has offered a deep and

sincere apology to Bernie Sanders' supporters. Make no mistake, they

are angry. What kind a problem will they have with Hillary Clinton now,

at a time when she so desperately needs to unify the party? And are

any of them open to an offer from Trump? We took a road trum to find

out. -- trip to find out.

The journey from Cleveland to Pennsylvania is a good

ten hours of open road, we will pass golden farmland

and abandoned steel towns, rolling hills and deserted wasteland.

These, though, are the craved electro battle grounds

-- electoral battlegrounds of the 2016 election.

Our first stop is the village of Volant - home to many Amish.

They live are very different lifestyle to most Americans,

Buggies instead of cars, no electricity, bails of hay

There are people who have managed by and large to stay

immune to America's fee brow political atmosphere.

Yet their self-sufficiency, working the land, producing

all that they eat, wear and use can seem rather appealing to a nation

that keeps being told it is no longer great.

There's is a lifestyle that predates globalisation,

-- theirs is a lifestyle that predates globalisation, a curious

blueprint for the many Americans who now feel left behind

by the speed of change, who feel that too many products

are now being made overseas, or that the link between worker

and product is now irreparably broken.

Americans like those who live here, a town that could once boast

Concerns about globalisation, voiced in the States

by Trump and Sanders, or in the UK over Brexit

are often traced back to the financial crash of 2008,

but of course their roots were down decades ago when all of the heavy

My mum and my grandma tell me a lot about it.

The town was a nice place to hang around and be in, when all

of the businesses were here and the steel mill was up

Let's hope we can get it back to where it is.

I asked Bill Bird which way he thinks he'll vote in November.

I dislike Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is a joke.

Pretty much, I would not say I hate them but I strongly dislike them.

Pennsylvania hasn't voted for a Republican presidential

candidate since 1988, but there are counties in the state

that are getting redder, and here's why, the JNL Steel

complex that used to employ 10,000 people in this rust belt town

of Aliquippa has gone for good, and nothing, nothing

The protectionist policies of the 1960s are gone,

the workers blame globalisation, there might once have chosen

Bernie Sanders, and they are the challenge

This was downtown Aliquippa in its heyday, buzzing

Now that same road barely functions, we see no one

This used to be a dress shop and my mom worked

Except this one, a cafe that doubles as a church community

Sam worked in the steel mills for 12 years until he was laid off

and he found a new job but then lost it last year.

Has it been hard to find more work here?

I'm not sure, sometimes you try and look hard and make it happen

and sometimes you just slack off and don't worry about it.

The cafe is run by Evangelist Herb Bailey.

He believes blaming globalisation is wrong.

We are not players in a global market like we could be.

We don't need to bring industry back that was lost,

There are great innovations that could be done using the same

physical labour and the same intellect that captured

the imagination of the rest of the world.

Sandra Gul runs the Dreamers Project from this cafe, inspiring the young

They don't want to be the norm of having kids,

hanging out on the corners, everyone is doing positive things.

You are going to vote in November, are you?

She was in the background when her husband was

Clinton polls well with black Americans and college

graduates but when it comes to the white working class,

Trump is leading her by an astonishing 40%.

Bernie Sanders might have brought many of them in but the e-mail

leaks allow them to voice what many had long feared,

her nomination was a party stitch-up.

In other words, it's no longer Bernie's problem, it's Hillary's.

If the shrinking industrial heartland and all of this bucolic

battle ground in between doesn't feel she played fair there may

Ben Smith the editor in chief of Buzzfeed joins me now. He's just put

away his BlackBerry. In terms of how much damage this has done Hillary

Clinton's campaign, as she opens the convention, what's your sense? This

certainly isn't what they were going for. They wanted a harmonious

contrast to the Republican Convention last week. This is not

that. This is a lot more, there's openly expressed conflict here than

in Cleveland. Terms of the protests on the streets, Bernie supporters

saying, "Anyone but Hilary now" Or they'll stay home. Do you think

they'll withdraw their vote or could they put it towards a Republican

ticket? I think probably electorally this is overstated. There's really

no suggestion that Bernie supporters in any kind of numbers will vote for

Donald Trump. There's a worry that young voters will stay home and

there's a worry that the activists in this room will derail Clinton's

stage show a little bit. What does she have to do now? What is the most

important message? We've heard from Bernie Sanders asking for, what was

the phrase, to be gracious in the hall towards his opponent. I think

she would like to use the convention to talk to swing voters, to talk to

people in the middle, in the suburbs, college-educated women

thinking about Donald Trump. She does not want to use this convention

to talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters. She wants to take them

for granted. They're saying to them, look, get in line, whatever your

problems are with Hilary, you should be terrified of Donald Trump. One of

the statistics in the film was the huge gap for the white working class

where Donald Trump has a 40% lead over Hillary Clinton. What does she

have to do to close the gap? Republicans have for decades, since

Reagan, had working class voters. Bernie Sanders looked like he's a

product of the white working class, but his supporters are young and

diverse. They're the traditional American new left. So I think for

Hillary Clinton, college educated white people are the ones who moved

towards Donald Trump in the last couple of days and are the reason

he's up in the polls. Those are the people she's trying to get back.

What was very evident at the RNC in Cleveland was just what a strong

presence unwittingly Hillary Clinton was there. All the banners were

aimed at her, all the chanting aimed at her. I think if Donald Trump is

present here, it has the opposite effect. He wants to be part of this

convention. I think at a convention where you see a lot more people

holding Bernie signs. The party is united around her but with no great

passion for her, the way some people love Donald Trump. They are hoping

that Trump will be able to motivate voters that Hillary Clinton can't.

That is going to be essential, in a sense, Hilary has a marketing

problem. She's not new or novel. People know what they've got. She's

got a safe VP choice S she just going to play this safe? Or does she

have to do something dramatic and exciting? Until about today, and

probably still, the Clinton campaign plan still thinks he can't win. Like

in football, when you're up 2-1 with 15 minutes left, that's the game

she's playing. The latest goals are making people in the building quite

nervous. Maybe you can't just run out the clock on him. Great of you

to join us here on Newsnight. It's worth saying that the party

chairwoman was going to kick off events here and was going to speak.

There was so much protest after the leaked e-mails she has pulled out.

We will hear from Bernie Sanders later this evening. His slot has

been moved even later. He becomes, as it were, the prime-time guest.

There's a lot riding on this. He has to speak to his supporters but also

speak to them and tell them to unify the party and get behind his former

owe pon ept, Hillary Clinton. -- opponent. Hillary Clinton.

Everyone over 70 should look away now, or have the illusions

We leave you with the work of Marni Nixon, the most famous

In the 1950s and 60s she worked behind the scenes in Hollywood

providing the vocals for some "quite well known actors".

# Getting to know all about you

# I could have danced all night # I could have danced all night

# And still have begged for more

# I feel pretty, oh so pretty, but I feel

Hello there. Last week's heat a fading memory. The weather getting

back to normal now with westerly winds bringing normal temperatures

and some sunshine, some