13/09/2016 Newsnight

The ceasefire's holding in Syria, but what happens when the US

and Russia have to share intelligence and coordinate military

I think it's very hard to see how anyone can trust the Russians.

They have committed war crime after war crime

We'll put that to the man who, until recently, was Barack Obama's

Also tonight, if the Boundary Review goes ahead, many Labour MPs

Might the party see selection battles as

I think constituents who are not part of a political party would look

very poorly upon factions coming in to deselect

MPs go through reselection battles, we have always had that,

but to target people in a sectarian way, we don't want that.

And Israel's greatest author, Amoz Oz, on traitors,

anti-semitism and the cultural boycott of Israel.

It hardens the Israeli resistance, it deepens the Israeli paranoia,

the whole world is against us, always has been against us,

they don't even discriminate between one Israeli and the next,

they boycott every one of us, whatever we are going to do,

they are going to hate us so let's be the bad guys.

The ceasefire in Syria brokered by the United States and Russia

appears to be holding after the first 24 hours,

but the UN is yet to deliver aid because of security concerns.

Central to this ceasefire deal is the continued targeting

of Islamic State and other Jihadi groups by US and Russian warplanes.

But what is the mechanism for coordinating military action

when time and again, in events reminiscent of the Cold War,

there appear to be thinly veiled acts of aggression between the two -

most recently the news from the Pentagon that last week

a Russian fighter jet flew within ten feet of a US Navy spy

The aftermath of a Russian air strike in Syria last year. They had

been accused of repeatedly targeting American backed rebel, more than

Isis. As tensions rose between the two powers, Russian jets buzzed US

warships and planes in the Baltic. In June, Russia even bombed this

military camp in Syria, used by moderate rebels. Russia said they

thought it was an Isis camp but just 24 hours earlier your special forces

and the SNES had been there. -- US special forces and the SAS. In a

major turnaround, America and Russia are committing to work together in

Syria. If the ceasefire continues to hold for a week, they will establish

a joint intelligence committee to coordinate attacks against the

jihadist group formally known as Al-Nusra. We are trying to take

Assad 's air forces out of the equation, that is the gold. And if

we get there, we can have coordination between the US and

Russia deciding what targets are legitimate targets, Al-Nusra

targets, and then agreement on who hits those targets. I have been

speaking to a senior American official about what military

cooperation with the Russians might look like Andy said they already

have a small team talking the Russian counterparts but there would

be no shared command centre and that joint sorties between the two would

be extremely unlikely because of high levels of mistrust. What would

happen is a sharing of lists and potential target in Syria that each

could veto but he added the Americans are conscious this could

appear as if they are intervening on the side of the regime. Asad's

Edfors will not be allowed to operate in areas where the Americans

and Russians are working together to target Nusra but they will not be

totally grounded and the US is relying on Russia to persuade him

not to bomb other rebels. The agreement is a concern for many like

this adviser to the Syrian opposition. I think it is very hard

to see how anyone can trust the Russians. They have committed war

crimes after war crime after war crime in Syria, I don't think they

even have the equipment to target people effectively, they don't have

smart bombs or to not a lot of them. It seems to be that it is very

worrying to work with the Russians when they are not capable of

targeting people. What I would say is that what we need to do before we

work with the Russians is first to make clear what the consequences of

violations are. Russian intervention has been a game changer but they

don't want their troops dying in Syria and do want to boost their

international standing. Russians believe Russia to be a natural ally

of the United States, what was really problematic for the Russians

in the past 25 years was to realise that Russia was not seen as a

natural ally but as a problem, as boiler, Russia was called all those

names. Adversary we had recently from some American politicians.

Conflict and rivalry between America and Russia as defined the modern era

with tensions between the two very much present. There have been many

efforts before for the two countries to work together even before the end

of the Cold War, there had been joint efforts to identify missing

Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. There has been a cooperation between

Russia and the United States in the first Gulf War in the early 90s but

there has never been a level of cooperation of this kind. It is

peculiar because it is at exactly the time when relations between the

two powers could not have been at a lower-level. Russian backed soldiers

have lined up on a key road into a leopard that has turned into a

demilitarised zone. America says that if the deal turned out to just

boost the Assad regime, they will pull out, but it could be this

administration's last chance at securing some stability.

A short while ago I spoke to Philip Gordon, who,

until last year, was the President's most senior advisor on the Middle

I started by asking exactly how the deal between Russia and the US

There are a lot of questions about how this is going to work

and obviously you can't even assume we get to that point,

because to get that point you need seven days of calm and there will be

parties on the ground that have an interest

But the idea is if you can begin the part in which the United States

and Russia work together, the reality is that the

United States and Russia do have a common list of enemies,

adversaries, as you mentioned, the Islamic State and the Al-Qaeda

affiliated that used to be called the Nusra Front.

So there may be some disputed targets they can't agree on,

but there would nonetheless be some, in fact a substantial number

And in Syria these days you can never have everything,

but if you get something then that's better than nothing.

I think that's the category this would be in.

But if Russian strikes and American strikes do their job,

and neutralise IS, particularly, essentially they're doing Assad's

job for him because there's no sign that Assad would be out of power,

there is no plan to remove Assad from power.

Assad wins in the end if these strikes work?

This deal is about moving from the current all-out civil war

with Assad still in power, barrel bombing the opposition,

refugees and all the rest, to a middle state which is at least

a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and Assad no longer doing that.

It admittedly doesn't take you all the way to the desired end

state which is a political transition and Assad goes.

The reality is on that, Kirsty, no one has a realistic plan

for getting to that state any time soon.

And so it is a question of can you at least make things better,

in fact, much better, while accepting the reality that

for now, you don't have a plan to get Assad out of power.

But do you think that President Obama should have hit

Assad when he used chemical weapons on his own people?

I think once we have made clear, or wants the United States had made

clear that there would be consequences, including military

consequences for killing nearly 2000 people with chemical weapons,

that it was important to follow up on that.

But I want to be clear on that because I think it's important

for everyone to understand that that would not have been some magical

That would have been a way, if it worked, of deterring Assad

It would not have let him to fall from power, it would not have

brought moderates or Democrats to power.

It would have been I think an important thing to do,

but it would not have resolved the situation in the way people now

talk about it somehow as if the United States had

conducted a weekend worth of air strikes, that would have

Now we are in a situation where President Obama has got less

It just looks like a rush to do something about a legacy?

I think the administration has been working for some time,

indeed the first version of this was last February,

a ceasefire that actually did hold for some time and unfortunately,

But I think it's not about, you know, getting something to not

It is about stopping what is really a horrific

But we might be in a situation where a new White House

administration would do something completely different?

That's true, and that's obviously going to be a major

challenge for the next administration, either way.

I mean, if this doesn't hold, obviously we are back to square one,

the horrific situation that we are dealing with.

But even if it somehow does, Syria is still unresolved

and there are huge questions about how you get

a political transition even if somehow you get a ceasefire.

And being perfectly honest, nobody has any easy answers for that.

I don't know anyone who thinks that there is a new administration

that is going to be able to just come in and dictate the results

and get rid of Assad and put moderates in power.

Whether it's this administration or the next administration, working

with all our partners in the region, I'm afraid that Syria and the Syria

problem is going to be with us for many months and years to come.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight.

The Boundary Commission plans, designed to be fairer

and to save money, if passed by Parliament will cut 50

Parliamentary seats and redraw boundaries of many others

to try to even up the number of voters in each constituency.

Labour could lose half of those MPs, and are protesting, but some Labour

constituencies are of the view that every cloud has a silver lining,

especially if their MP is no fan of Jeremy Corbyn.

Here's our political editor, Nick Watt.

Jeremy Corbyn has been called on to put an end to the compulsory

reselection of MPs by matching a Tory pledge that none of their MPs

would lose out. MPs will have to jostle for seed

when their numbers are cut from 650 down to 600 at the next general

election under reforms to the UK's Parliamentary boundaries. It amounts

of the biggest shake up a parliament in a generation with noble aims and

a hint of no political cunning thrown in for good measure. The

government says it is writing an historic wrong as it finally

delivers on one of the aims of the 19th-century charters movement to

create equal sized constituencies. Labour says the reforms, carried

over from the last Parliament, amount to gerrymandering because

they will help the Tories who say they are disadvantaged by the

present boundaries. This whole accusation of gerrymandering, I

simply don't buy into this premise. It simply highlights the historic

injustice that has been there as far back as 1838 when the charter called

for equal sized representation. The chartists, who are heroes to some

people on the Labour benches, actually said at this printable and

it is a Conservative government announcing it and I find it odd that

the Labour Party wants to highlight the fact that we have seats that as

our than in Wales, 37,000 electors, against Manchester Central, 87,000

electors. When George Osborne and David Cameron dreamt up their

reforms in the run-up to the 2010 election, they could never have

imagined they would also hand a gift to the Labour left a mechanism for

the compulsory of MPs. Leading critics of Jeremy Corbyn may find

themselves in bitter battles to remain in Parliament because party

rules open up a full selection process is an MP has a territorial

claim of under 40% on a new constituency. I think constituents

who are not part of a political party would look very poorly upon

factions coming in to deselect that member parliament. That is not how

we do politics, MPs go through reselection battle is, we have

always add that but to target people in a sectarian way, we don't want

that. One Labour MP who said something in common with Jeremy

Corbyn, their nearby constituency boundaries are being radically

redrawn, says the Labour leader should do more to discover to his

supporters from talking about deselecting MPs. I think it's not

helpful for a political party to be in the state we are in now, to be

honest, and certainly it would be good if he could make it clear and I

think he has said with a couple of times, that talk of deselection is

unhelpful. The Conservative Minister charged with in permitting the

reforms has called on the Labour leader to be more supportive of his

MPs. The Prime Minister has been very clear to government MPs that no

colleague will be left behind and I would say to Jeremy Corbyn, I would

hope he would reflect that same principle of leadership in his own

party. I hope that momentum will not ensure there was no colleague left

standing on the Labour benches. In the end, the reforms may never go

ahead. Labour, along with every other

opposition party at Westminster, will oppose the changes

when a parliamentary vote is held It would only take around half

a dozen Tory MPs to vote against the reforms

or around a dozen Tory MPs One member of the government told me

he had pencilled in a severe bout of the flu on the day of the vote

to ensure he can do his bit to kill off what he describes as David

Cameron's teenage toxic legacy. MPs face an agonising wait as they

prepared to lobby against the changes. And they face tricky

conversations with their constituency parties.

Lewis Goodall is our man wading deep into Labour's grassroots and he has

been talking to local parties today to try and establish whether talk

What are you hearing, Lewis?

This review is devastating for Labour. Around 13% of the PLP will

just disappear from electoral map overnight. That equates to around 25

Labour MPs. Of those 17 are MPs who are not exactly friendly towards

Jeremy Corbyn. I spoke to their local secretaries, their grassroots,

and around 12 of the local parties told me they think there is no

chance that under these new boundaries their incumbent MPs would

be reselected. People like Tristram Hunt. I think it is fair to say that

the feeling is not entirely rosy. One former shadow government

minister told me tonight, suffice to say it rhymes with, I am up to. And

another Labour MP told me he was sure of the leader 's office would

coordinate, the pro-Jeremy Corbyn pressure group to make sure that

these contests are effectively redundant.

Nick Watt is here with some other political news.

Nick, let's start with this story about the head of the BBC Trust

Rhona Fairhead has announced she will stand down as chair of the BBC

Trust next year. She had been reappointed by David Cameron to the

role which will see change in the New Year when the trust is replaced

by a new authority. In a sign of how Theresa May wants to do things in

her own way, Rhona Fairhead was told she would to reapply for the post, a

post she has recently been appointed to. A statement to the FT she said

she had been strongly encouraged by Theresa May to apply for the post

but after much thought had decided to go her own way. What does this

tell us about Theresa May? As I understand it Theresa May was not

amused by the way in which Rhona Fairhead was reappointed on the nod

as one Whitehall source put it to me. What this shows is that Theresa

May believes when it comes to big appointments and big decisions,

there needs to be a much more rigorous process. For example she is

reviewing the increased the process and on this she has listened to the

Commons Culture Select Committee which raised strong concerns about

the way in which David Cameron had made this reappointment. This comes

just before the publication of the draft charter for the BBC and Rhona

Fairhead was at the heart of those negotiations.

Amoz Oz, Israel's greatest living author, has been

described as "the offspring of all the contradictory urges

and pains within the Israeli psyche" by another Israeli author,

His latest novel, set over winter in Jerusalem

It was published in Hebrew two years ago and is out in English this week.

In it Oz explores the idea of treachery, asking,

Oz himself has been called a traitor by some Israelis for his unswerving

belief in a two state solution, and his opposition to occupation

This afternoon I asked Amos Oz why he chose to reexamine

the motivation of Judas Iscariot through his latest novel.

I wanted people to reconsider one of the most common images

in Western civilisation, the image of the traitor.

When I first read this story at the age of 16,

It was an ugly story and from a detective point of view,

Whoever would pay Judas 30 pieces of silver,

which is roughly the equivalent of ?400 today.

Who on earth needed to pay Judas for kissing Jesus in

order to identify him, when all Jerusalem knew Jesus,

And when they came to arrest him, he didn't try to flee

He was not shaving his beard, wearing a sombrero and saying,

And yet the received wisdom, as you say, is that Judas is almost

synonymous in some places with the Jew,

Well, you see, this ugly story became the Chernobyl of Western

More people paid with their blood for this bloody story

Progroms, inquisitions, persecution, the Holocaust.

Because in the populist mind, all of us are Judas.

This is not a Nazi invention, look at the figure of Judas

in Renaissance art, the ugly little man with a crooked nose at the end

But now looking back where you have always stood

on the position of Israel, you've always been a staunch

Of course I am, and I wear this as a badge of honour on my lapel.

I've been called a traitor many times in my life, many times.

History is full of people, men and women, who happened to be

ahead of their time and were accused of treason by some

Language of course is no more crucial than it is in a conflict.

Can the word Zionist be used, do you think, as a coded

I can tell you exactly where I draw the line.

If people call Israel nasty, I to some degree agree.

If people call Israel the devil incarnate, I think they are

But if they carry on saying therefore there should be no Israel,

that is where anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism, because no one ever

said after Hitler that Germany should cease to exist,

or after Stalin, that there should be no Russia.

But then you have this criticism of Israel and particularly

from the left as well, but yet you have this idea

in the Palestinian point of view, Hamas has not to be

Well, there are many people in this country,

in the whole of Europe, in the left, who have a special soft

spot for the third World saying, well, those people have suffered

a lot, you have to understand, it's only natural they

When it comes to the Jews, they often say the Jews,

they have suffered so much, how can they be violent

Well, of course I don't like it, I think this is giving

But basically, I think you don't have to be 100% pro-Israel

You have to try to grasp the complexity and the ambivalence

of this tragic clash between right and right.

The boycott, the cultural boycott of Israel that was brought

in in the UK and supported by a number of writers

and artists in February, then there was one in

October which said no, we don't believe in that,

there were other writers that did not believe

I think the boycott is hurting the wrong people.

The idea that all Israelis are villains is a childish idea.

Israel is the most divided, deeply divided, argumentative

society, you never find two Israelis that agree with one another,

it is hard to find even one who agrees with himself or herself.

Everybody is ambivalent, everybody has a divided mind

So boycott is wrong way because it hardens the Israeli resistance

The whole world is against us, always has been against us,

they don't even discriminate between one Israeli and the next.

Whatever we do, they're going to hate us, so let's be

So you actually believe it could be counter-productive?

I think the boycott was very effective in the case

of South Africa, but you have to be very stupid to think

that the prescription, a medicine which works very well

against cholera will also cure the plague.

South Africa was bad, the Israeli occupation

of the Palestinian territories is bad in a totally different way.

George Osborne's passion for manufacturing was never fully

realised but fitted with the ambition of

successive governments - we must make more.

Theresa May has talked of a new industrial strategy,

a sentiment echoed at the TUC conference today.

But is manufacturing the right focus for the modern British economy?

Or should we be concentrating instead on our strengths,

Our business editor, Helen Thomas, reports.

From the workshop of the world, to the march of the makers.

The UK's self-image and self-worth has always been bound

At Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Park and Research

Centre, home to companies like Rolls-Royce, that means

This was once the Orgreave coalmine where striking miners clashed

with police in one of the most violent confrontations of the 1980s.

This is a site that straddles Britain's industrial past

And under Theresa May, the country has a brand-new

government department dedicated to industrial strategy.

Now, in the 1960s and 1970s, that meant crunching companies

in shipbuilding or the motor industry together to create

It meant funnelling government money into certain manufacturing sectors

So, in 2016, does industrial strategy have to involve heavy

Is manufacturing as we've traditionally thought

I think our preoccupation with manufacturing goes

Perhaps to the days when men hunted and fished and if they were good

at it, their wives and children prospered and if they didn't,

And that created our idea, deeply ingrained, both of what real

work is and of what gender relations in the workplace are about.

We still have this kind of manufacturing fetishism that sees

real work as being agriculture and mining and manufacturing.

There is of course a reason why politicians tend

It is wildly popular with the public.

A 2012 report found that over 70% of people strongly agreed

that its share of the economy needed to significantly increase.

A similar number thought the government should do more

Instead, it's been heading in the opposite direction.

In the early 1970s, manufacturing accounted for about

Services growth has outstripped that of Britain's workshops.

Manufacturing jobs have dwindled, falling from 22% of total employment

And importantly, the ones remaining are now more likely to require

a degree or higher level qualification.

That's a familiar problem in Sheffield.

Barbara Jackson was working for the National Coal Board in 1984

She says there's still bitterness about what has happened

You've sort of swapped dirty, dangerous, high skilled,

relatively well-paid jobs with good terms and conditions,

and secure, permanent jobs, for these jobs

I mean, people would go out and have a drink and they'd

Well, you don't go out today and say, "Oh, I work

for Sports Direct in their warehouse".

Or, "I produce sausage rolls all day".

With thousands of steel jobs under threat at Port Talbot,

it would be a difficult time to break our enduring affection

Still, some think that's what's needed.

I think there is a real danger with regard to manufacturing and,

if you like, all old-fashioned industries, that we've become used

to, that we kind of consider them part of the national fabric

and a vital backbone of the national economy.

Actually, although we have a reasonable manufacturing sector,

the service sector is really Britain's best proposition

And the rules of economics would state, focus on what you're good at,

don't subsidise and keep alive the things that you're

Others argue that a new industrial strategy needs a whole new approach.

I think what we need is to ask much more fundamental questions

about what our economy is really for and what we want it to deliver.

Rather than, as you say, just focusing on the question

of which sectors we should be promoting that have the potential

to deliver a sort of high-value added, high volume of exports.

We need to be asking, what actually is needed

to deliver better jobs, more viable communities

That might be manufacturing, it might be much less glamorous

sectors, whether it's care or construction, that

have the potential to employ lots of people,

but where the quality of work at the moment maybe isn't very high.

So we can have one expert looking after many engineers,

remotely from anywhere across the world...

Back in Sheffield, cutting-edge tech has a clear aim.

Rethinking our preoccupation with manufacturing may need to be

part of the next vision for the economy.

Cultural appropriation, the adoption of elements of one

culture for use in another, has become a lightning rod

in the arguments over identity politics that are beginning

Now, American author Lionel Shriver, winner of the Orange Prize

Speaking at the Brisbane Writers Festival, she said

and that without authors writing from the perspective of other

cultures we wouldn't have, for example, most

Shriver so incensed writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied

that she walked out, saying that the speech

was a poisoned package wrapped up in arrogance

Lionel Shriver joins us from New York and Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Good evening, and I warn you that is a big delay on the line to line all.

First of all, -- to Lionel Shriver. You dismissed the whole idea of

cultural appropriation as a fad so what is your problem with it? I will

speak particularly to the issue as a fiction writer. My occupation is all

about trying to be empathetic with people very different from myself,

not simply to tell my own story. That is memoir and if you tell

fiction writers that they only have to represent their own experience

and not anybody else's, they don't write fiction, they write memoir. It

is the end of my occupation. I also just think the whole spirit of

fiction is one of generosity and inquiry and it is a good side of

ourselves and not just for writers but for readers. We want to get out

of ourselves and learn about others and imaginatively project ourselves

into other people's experience and I think this is in the interest of

minority groups and people who feel that maybe hitherto they have been

ignored. It is good not to be ignored. Yassmin, you walked out of

this speech before the end. What was it that so incensed you? I think the

concept of whether fiction writers can or cannot write another person's

story is almost not, it wasn't the reason I walked out. The reason I

walked out was because the concept of saying identity is not important

or cultural appropriation is a fad was almost humiliating. It was this

kind of mockery of the fact that something could be important to me

and that actually the bit of identity that I value and the bits

of culture that I value were to be laughed at essentially. And if I was

upset or had any concerns about those things being used as a tool

for a story, that was the fact that I was too sensitive. Let's be clear,

in terms of tools for a story, do you believe, for example, that a

German writer can write about the life of a Sudanese farmer, for

example? You have an issue with people writing and developing

characters that are not at your own cultural identity? Not at all. That

is something that has been lost. I'm not saying people cannot write other

identities. However, fiction exists in a reality, not in a vacuum, so

how should people write other characters? And which voices are

missing, that is what this is about. Seems to be that it is about taking

hold of other people's voices and not allowing them to speak for

themselves. Determining what stories about different cultural identities

are the important ones. There is nothing about telling other people's

stories imaginatively that keeps people from the groups you are

representing in your book from also telling their own story. The more

stories, the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. I feel that Yassmin is

misrepresenting the whole concept of cultural appropriation which is

extremely restrictive and basically says that you cannot use practices,

expressions, whatever, from other people's cultures for yourself

without permission and I'm not sure how we are supposed to get that

permission either. It actually makes it potentially offensive to go to an

ethnic restaurant. And funnily enough, you were wearing a sombrero

at the end of the speech because what you were talking about at the

start was the idea of students hold a tequila party did not have worn

sombreros and were censored by a university by doing so. That is

their cultural appropriation has been in that space, but bringing it

on to fiction, I think what 7-3 is saying is that only certain kind of

depictions of particular groups are acceptable -- what Yassmin is

saying. And your view is that anything is acceptable that you

choose to write about? What tends to happen is that the

people whose voices are heard and to have the platform tend to write

similar stories about demographics. As a young Muslim Woodman, for

example, the types of stories that exist about me are quite often, seen

from the outside, exotic sized and steeped in history that I'm don't

have much control over -- as a Muslim woman. Those stories exist in

a reality that effect... They only exist in fiction. That is under the

own experience someone has in the demographic. -- sometimes. When it

comes to wearing the sombrero, if that offensive in itself? What is

the intent? Is it to make mockery of something somebody else sees as

important and sacred? I don't think mockery is important. I don't think

we should go out and want to humiliate people, who say, this is

important to me, rather let's have a conversation about why this is

important. Were you intent on mockery when you were wearing the

sombrero at the end of your speech? I was attempting to have a sense of

humour. I'm sorry that Yassmin took it that way, and she couldn't have

been offended because she walked out in the middle and did not see me put

on the hat. It was a bit of theatricality, for fun. And it was

illustrating the last line of the speech was that we fiction writers

need to be allowed to wear many hats, including a sombrero, and I

put the hat on and took the cue and a afterwards. There was no element

of mockery in my speech -- the Q But when you take this concept too

far, it begins to be absurd. There was a yoga teacher in Canada who was

shamed out of teaching her yoga class because it comes from India

and she tried to rename the class mind. She. I find this stuff funny.

-- mindful stretching. Thank you both very much indeed.

We leave you with Josh Gibson, who we hear is alive and well,

but who claims online that he was almost killed in a car

He apparently put photographs of the aftermath on Facebook,

whereapon, he says, he was subjected to the company's penchant for auto

creating jaunty video slideshows.