17/02/2017 Newsnight

Tony Blair urged the population to rise up against Brexit -

One of his most trusted lieutenants says it was electrifying.

But a leading political commentator tells him to butt out.

This is the way the American mainstream media see

the leader of the free world - howling in the wind, out of control.

But today a different Donald Trump took the stage.

Focused, even disciplined, chanting the mantra that

America is going to start winning again.

Away from all the sound and fury, a month into the job, is he actually

Also - back from the wilderness, will a hybrid mammoth and elephant -

a mammaphant - soon roam the permafrost again?

Tony Blair today set himself up as the lightning rod

for anti-Brexiteers, exhorting them to action,

that we could end up with Brexit at any cost.

In a speech today the former Prime Minister said,

"This is not the time for retreat, indifference or despair,

but the time to rise up in defence of what we believe."

He also said that a hard Brexit gave more legitimacy to the argument

He did not specify the mechanism for resistance, nor whether he

would lead any campaign, but scorn came swiftly.

Nigel Farage called him yesterday's man, while the Foreign Secretary

urged the British people to rise up and turn off the TV the next

Well Tony Blair isn't here tonight, but his former political secretary

and sometime speechwriter John McTernan is, along

with the columnist Simon Jenkins - who says Blair should butt out.

I'll be speaking to them in a minute, but first here's

Yes, the British people voted to leave Europe and I agree the will

I accept right now there is no widespread appetite to rethink.

But the people voted without knowledge of the terms of Brexit.

As these terms become clear, it is their right

Our mission is to persuade them to do so.

Is he just feeling left out, a man without a mission, trying to

re-engage? No, Tony has stood back, and I think it was finally seeing

the three line whip getting Labour MPs to vote to invoke Article 50 two

lead him to say that Labour becoming a handmaidens of Brexit at any cost,

and some needs to speak up for nearly half the country that voted

to stay in the European Union, and many people that are worried, in

many sectors, but the consequence of Brexit. At one point he says that

Brexit was the will of the people, but the people have the right to

change their mind. That doesn't make sense? Why not? If you believe in

democracy, you believe that people, if they are mature enough and

intelligent enough to be consulted about leaving the European Union,

they are mature enough and intelligent enough to change their

minds. If it becomes clear there is no such thing as a frictionless

border, if you have gone to Turkey to look at the border, or a country

in the customs union, there is no such thing as a frictionless border.

Once the reality comes in, people are allowed to change their views.

You said he should butt out, but he is a former Prime Minister, he has

some skin in the game and it seems to be he is the only one that is

going to hold the government's fee to the fire? I found it

extraordinary. This is a man who made fame and fortune from being

elected on the wisdom of the population, he certainly doesn't

believe in that any more when it doesn't agree with him. It is

undignified, beyond anything else. It is clearly the case that there

was a referendum, they voted, it was a good debate, a tedious debate will

stop a 72% turnout, more than Tony Blair ever got. At the end of it,

they decided they wanted to come out of the EU. To say they are ignorant

or ill informed, with a ignorant or ill informed when they voted for

Tony Blair to not go into Iraq? Well, there was a manifesto, but it

didn't contain the war in Iraq. You could say that we didn't know the

nature Brexit. We had a Conservative manifesto saying we would be in the

single market? There is a totally different debate about what happens

at the end of negotiation. It could be that it is sensible to have a

referendum on the final deal. At the moment is, he is saying you have got

it wrong, I want you to change your mind. He doesn't say how he will

change your mind. Does he want to tear it up and start again? It is

daft. What is he actually wanted people to do? Saying rise up, did he

want people to take to the streets, what actually would be the

mechanism? It is genuinely not very complicated. He said a lot of people

like me, many people I know that voted to stay in the European Union,

we are intelligent people and have questions. I really don't understand

how you can, when every car company in Britain has a single factory

floor, across many territories, how can you have frictionless importing?

European parts are coming in. Those are the arguments, I'm asking you

what the mechanism is to rise up. The question is really

straightforward. We need to keep asking us questions. We got a white

paper from the government, which is a D/E in terms of effort, not in

terms of quality, it is a U in terms of quality. We have to ask them

questions. The Government say it will all be OK. What if it's not?

What if we see the costs... Well, let's take Simon Jenkins's point,

that a second referendum might be legitimate in the future. It's

interesting, Tony Blair didn't even specify what the mechanism would be.

The next general election? 2020, some kind of cross-party campaign?

It could be as simple as the polls start to show that the Beau Sandland

do actually want to have a car industry in Sunderland. -- the

people in Sunderland want to have a car industry. But Nissan have

invested in Sunderland? On the basis of promises made by the Government

which are as weak as the ones they made to the Northern Ireland

Assembly. Do you recognise that maybe this is just an exhortation

for people to question their MPs? To take more of an interest in it than

they have been taking? Or do you think this has to be through a

referendum or general election? I voted Remain. Blair was saying you

got it wrong, I want you to do it again and change your mind. Go on

doing it again. He is basically saying you are stupid. Ever since

the vote, all of the Remainers, I and I am on their side, they have

gone on about how the people are somehow ill informed, stupid. They

weren't, they genuinely believed they wanted to take back control.

They might be naive, but they made a decision. It was clear what the

decision was, he should just get a life and realise it. Do you think it

is legitimate to raise the possibility that a hard Brexit will

give added legitimacy to Scottish independence? Yes. That is a

different discussion. He is raising a point about hard Brexit, which is

fair enough. But he's not saying that, he is saying you got it wrong.

I don't say how you can save you got it wrong after an election. His

point is that it gives legitimacy to Scottish independence, and the

likelihood has increased. Would you rather see Scotland independent in

Europe than out? There are no circumstances under which I would

like to see Scotland independent. For Scotland to leave, to leave a

fiscal union that transfers 10% of GDP every year, to join a customs

union were it would have to pay 2 billion a year, that is ridiculous.

They are playing with fire with the constitution. The Northern Ireland

question is not marginal, it is at the centre of this. Once Northern

Ireland goes, the whole of Great Britain falls apart. You have other

Remainers, leading Remainers, thinking it is the wrong person to

do this, he is asking the wrong questions and it is anti-democratic.

Well... Chuka Umunna, for one. When our voices being heard? If Gordon

Brown had spoken about this, we would not be an Newsnight talking

about it. Tony Blair still has a way of capturing the imagination of the

country. He made this speech and got us talking about it, that is a good

thing. The next step is to build the movement. Does he want a referendum?

He wants a chance for the public to have a second thought about this. A

referendum? It could be through a general election, it could be

through a referendum, it will not be through Jeremy Corbyn's Labour

Party. I am with Simon that there is a strong case for a vote on the

deal. That is not what he said! After the extraordinary verbal

fireworks of Donald Trump's White House press conference yesterday,

followed by the news that his pick to replace Michael Flynn as national

security adviser had declined the job, the US President

attended to business. He signed a measure to roll

back a coal mining rule of the previous administration -

a promise made in the campaign. Today he travelled to Charleston,

where he unveiled the latest Boeing Dreamliner,

the biggest to date. Donald Trump, accused of chaos,

insists that his administration is a well-oiled machine,

putting election So, four weeks in, away

from all the noise, is he actually getting anywhere with delivering

on his promises? For a man with a fresh election

victory, Donald Trump seems to have an urgent need to compare

himself with his predecessors, I don't think there's ever been

a President elected who, in this short period of time,

has done what we've done. Some of the President's posts

are easily disproved. I guess it was the biggest electoral

college win since Ronald Reagan. A quick glance at the facts

shows this is nonsense. This kind of howler,

Mr Trump's battles with the courts, and intelligence services and,

of course, the media, have rather But are we missing

significant progress I have to tell you,

I spent a lot of time Once you get out of the Washington,

DC bubble, there are a lot of people in the United States who are very

happy with Trump, happy with his style, happy

that he is really disrupting and doing what he said

he's going to do. So, it's something I would say don't

pay attention to all the media and all the polls, wait a little bit

longer to see what the American people have to say about his

presidency at this juncture. One month into his 48 month term,

Mr Trump already claims numerous In terms of changing Washington,

he has nominated a new Justice He's imposed a hiring freeze

on nonessential federal workers and a temporary halt

on new federal regulations. And he says he's negotiated

and saved money on US In trade policy, his withdrawn

from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, he says, eliminated regulations

for some US manufacturers. On immigration, his travel ban

on seven majority Muslim countries has come of course,

been spectacularly overturned, though he has introduced a four

month ban on new refugees. He is reaffirmed his commitment

on a wall on the Mexican border and brought in a crackdown

on so-called sanctuary cities who refuse to comply

with US federal law. There have, of course,

been spectacular upsets, too. Losing his national security

adviser, Michael Flynn, and a failure to answer straight

questions on his administration's - and before that his campaign's -

contact with Russia. There are elements of this

transition that have I don't think that's unusual for any

presidential transition. If you look back to 2008,

when President Obama was first elected, there were some bumps

in the road there. So, clearly, there have

been some challenges. On the other hand, I do think that

some of this is probably overblown, in the sense that the President

is still engaging in executive action, he does still

have a functional relationship, functional at the very least,

certainly, with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell,

the Republican leaders So, I would say that the overall

assessment is that, you know, things could be going better,

but they probably could The President was in

South Carolina today at Boeing, A technological marvel,

no doubt, but nothing to do Nevertheless, a neat

backdrop for him to restate I campaigned on the promise that

I will do everything in my power to bring those jobs

back into America. We wanted to make it much easier,

it has to be much easier to manufacture in our country,

and much harder to leave. I don't want companies

leaving our country. The details of exactly how

he's going to do that, just one of many key areas

where details are still sketchy. For example, repealing

and replacing Obamacare, the new infrastructure plan

and the new tax-cutting plan, are, as yet, still just

campaign promises. The infrastructure, I still think

that there's a lot of disharmony amongst House Republicans

regarding the size If you're going to look at what's

really going to come down the pipe next, I think it's immigration,

tax cuts and Obamacare. Mr President, you've been in office

for just four weeks... The people who've always laughed

at Donald Trump have certainly had But they are not who the President

needs to worry about, And for them, perhaps,

it's still early days. Does the American media give Donald

Trump due credit for what he means? We were hoping to be joined by a

member of Trump's administrative team but with me, we are delighted

to have the former executive editor of the New York Times, Jill

Abramson. Good evening. You have seen three administrations come in

with the complexity of that. How does this rate in terms of chaos?

It's disorderly. That's for sure. I'd put it on the upper end of the

scale, but there have been bumpy beginnings. I remember covering the

new Clinton administration, in the early 1990s, and he had to go

through two failed Attorney General nominee is. And finally he got his

appointee confirmed on the third try. So that isn't that unusual, but

yet, this amount of confusion and leaking and plotting against one

another already visible inside the White House this time, I would say,

is unusual and the tholin that matter, I think, is quite a serious

one. -- and the Flynn matter. As a former editor of the New York Times,

is it hard, does it stick in the crore, of the liberal media, to give

him any credit for what he has done? Is it easier to jeer from where they

sit? I think that that is really nonsense. I think that the New York

Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal have given extensive

coverage to everything from the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the

President's meeting with Wall Street bankers last Friday. To what has

happened at the State Department, to the trade treaties. I mean the

substance of what is happening is being covered by the media. And I

would argue that Trump himself is causing tremendous distraction with

these ceaseless attacks on the media, and I think those are

overblown. Isn't it the case that it has -- that it is because the media

finds what he's doing objectionable and makes that clear, and that is

out of touch with the many millions that voted for him, that there is

now a disconnect between the liberal media in the cities and what is

going on in the rest of the United States? Well, it is clear that many

people in the United States have a lack of trust in the news media,

that has been true for a long time. That is not something new with the

election of Donald Trump. But I certainly don't agree with you that

the coverage of the substance of what is happening in the White House

is being covered by the liberal media in an unfair way. I think the

facts are being told, as they should, and the news media, the best

part of it, including the New York Times, are doing what the first

Amendment asks the press to do, which is to hold power accountable.

And that is what they are doing. I wonder, in the end, if you look at

these White House briefings and press conferences, whether actually

plays to Trump's on agenda, actually, as you were saying,

because the media is unpopular anyway, to go on the attack, and

then what happens is the media plays into that? I totally agree with

that. I think what the media has to stop doing is covering itself, and

the battle between the new president and itself, and it needs to just do

its work, follow the news, get behind the news and inform the

public. Stop being self-referential and self obsessed. Thank you very

much indeed. Since the EU referendum,

news about the economy has been seen through the prism of Brexit -

and on the whole, so far, it has Unemployment is down

and the FTSE is still strong. But inflation is up and the retail

sales figures are pretty sluggish. But the biggest change

to the British economy since Brexit The lower value of the pound

has winners and losers, Many believed that Brexit

would wreck the UK economy. But, so far, it's held up better

than the Remain camp warned. Not so for one of the more

tangible measures. Sterling has tumbled, at one point

by a fifth of its value. It sounds like a negative,

but it isn't for everyone. At the luxury end, like this boat

manufacturer, a lower pound is attracting foreign consumers

whose dollars and euros are now People have taken advantage

of the exchange rate, our boats have been cheaper,

relatively, than our Italian About 30% of our material costs,

we buy in foreign currency. So our costs, in that respect,

have gone up, and we have had to price as a result of that,

to offset it. But it's been nowhere near as much

as the devaluation of the pound, so we still remain very competitive

against our foreign competitors. The value of the pound

against the US dollar has dropped by around 17%

since the EU referendum. Currency markets don't

like uncertainty. And politics has played the most

part in sterling's movement. In early October, the Prime Minister

announced at a party conference that Article 50 would be triggered

by the end of March. There was some brief respite

when the High Court ruled in early November that a parliamentary vote

was needed to trigger Article 50, bolstering hopes in a nervous market

that a soft Brexit could be pursued. Miss May's speech at Lancaster house

in January made clear that she intends to undertake a hard

Brexit. Some speculate that the

triggering of Article 50 Top end businesses

are powering ahead. But they're also very mindful

of a lower pound feeding into higher raw material costs and,

of course, the great uncertainty surrounding a Brexit deal

that is yet to be struck. So they are still very much

dependent on high-end, luxury and discretionary spending

continuing. A day I will never forget,

the 24th of June. Straightaway, from that day, we have

noticed an increase in traffic. There was no doubt that some people

were ahead of the understanding And because of the currency that has

changed, we have seen a massive It has been a very great

and interesting story, I think you can use the analogy

of perhaps the swan. Clearly, with London luxury you have

lots of very positive noises above the surface in terms of public

realm investment, in terms of tourism, tourism continuing,

spend continuing, footfall rising. But underneath the surface they are

going to have to paddle harder. From a consumer credit perspective,

interest rates is the key thing that I think we are predicting 2.7%

inflation for this year. I think it could go

higher than that. That is going to impact

the domestic shopper in the UK. Most likely to affect our spending

habits - food prices. Suppliers and retailers are trying

to figure out how to pass on rising We're seeing already a number

of suppliers in trouble as a result of this,

unable to pass on the extra costs. So, eventually, I think

we are going to see a number but also I think we're going to see

prices in shops going up even more. It's something that businesses

all sizes are grappling with. Since June, this company has seen

the price of cocoa rise 3%, peanuts move 8% higher

and sugar is up 21%. Price rises for the key

ingredient of this business Corn prices, so far,

have been hedged. Our prices certainly

won't be going down. For us, a lot of our contracts

for raw materials come In our situation, and many

other companies like us, we're very nervous about passing

on any form of price increase. The fall in the value

of the pound has affected both And, yes, Brexit has played

a significant part in this. Pretty much the week

after the referendum we started getting the famous letters

from suppliers and Some suppliers did sort of a big

hit at the beginning. Some have kind of continued

to review every few months and send us another letter saying,

your prices are going up This week's rising inflation numbers

are unlikely to be matched So the fear is that the once buoyant

consumer is going to shy Today's retail sales show

that the pinch is being felt. So the economy can no longer rely

on the shopper to keep it growing. Finally tonight, scientists

from Harvard believe they're just two years away from bringing

the woolly mammoth The great beasts died out 4,000

years ago but they're only bodily extinct -

they're not genetically extinct. The Harvard team hopes to use

a powerful gene editing tool to splice together elephant DNA

with mammoth genes they've found The Harvard team itself are keeping

pretty schtum until they've actually But joining me now from Salford

is Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology from Manchester

University. Good evening. What is it that these

scientists are actually trying to achieve? They are trying to do a

number of things. They are using this incredibly powerful technique

which George church, one of the key research is involved, has been

involved in developing. This enables you to change single letters in the

DNA code to alter it in any organism at will. This is going to change

biological discovery and medicine. It is already having massive

effects. They want to introduce into the elephant genome, the Asian

elephant, some of the genes which they think help the man is to

survive in colder climate. Make them hairy, for example, or have greater

subcutaneous fat. But they only claim that they will be able to

create an embryo with these genes. At the moment, they have no timeline

on when they would actually have an elephant with proper manner genes in

it wandering around the steps. We're not going to see herds of mammoths

wandering along the Siberian Alps any time soon. But the claim that

has been made, having what they are calling a mammaphant, because it

will not actually be in an effort if it ever gets out there onto the

permafrost. What it would actually do would help counter global

warming. What did you make of that case? There are far better ways of

countering global warming. Who knows what they are going to do, Professor

Church thinks they will dig into the soil and that will help bring called

a to slow down the melting of the permafrost. I think we would be

better off dealing with the release of carbon dioxide which is

increasing temperature. That is the key issue. This is incredibly

exciting work at some level because it shows the power of this

technique, but really the ultimate thing, an elephant or a mammoth, it

is not just a bag of. It is an animal with a history under social

life than this thing would be completely separate from anything

else like it. -- bag of genes. Nothing else like it would have ever

existed. But scientists like that challenge. Yes, but ethicists and

bottle community, this is just one example of the questions that this

gene editing technique will pose us, major ethical issues we will have to

come to terms with. What are those ethical issues? For a start, an

elephant and a mammoth, it is a social organism. At the moment they

are suggesting that they will not be doing IVF on an Asian elephant. That

is possible but they are clearly concerned that if they manipulate

the embryo and implanted into the elephant, something might go

horribly wrong, it might grow too large. So they are planning, and

this is where I think it gets into the realms of science fiction, they

are planning to have an artificial womb in which they will grow this

elephant for 22 months, up to a weight of 100 kilos. I think we are

a long way off that. The problem will be that even if you are able to

do that, and Church is a pretty clever guy. Anyone who has been a

mother, or who has been close to someone who is a mother, knows that

a baby is not just a thing that is being fed. It is alive and

interacting with the mother, learning things in the win. The same

is true of an elephant or a mammoth baby. So you would end up producing

this isolated and strange organism which would have no social

connection with its kind. It would have no other kind. If you tried to

introduce it into a herd of Asian elephants, they might reject it

because it's not funny, because it behaved funny. I think given that

these are elephants and not mice or rats, there is a major ethical issue

as to whether this is the right thing to do. Thank you, Professor.

Tomorrow morning's front pages, Tony Blair gets the front page of the

Guardian. Blair's Brexit speech sparks Labour fury. And the suspect

in the Korean killing, thought it was a prank, on the right-hand side.

In the Telegraph, Blair's EU campaign is insulting, says Boris.

The former PM calls for a new movement to make the case against

Brexit. Angela Merkel defies Trump over defence budget, is also at the

bottom of the Telegraph. And then on to the Daily Express. Get us out of

the EU. As arrogant Tony Blair tries to lock Brexit, a new poll reveals

an increasing number of voters demanding to get out. And arrogant

speech sparked outrage and even some Remain supporters were aghast at his

bid to reverse the historic decision to leave the European Union. Well,

before we go ?750,000 for a stag? That's how much the national

galleries of Scotland need to raise to buy Landseer's Monarch

of the Glen and put it on display. To raise awareness for their appeal,

they brought the Monarch to life and projected him onto the outside

of their gallery. They've got until the 17th of March

to meet their target. Hello. In a moment we will look at

some other European city forecasts for this weekend. Here is a look at

how Saturday develops across the UK. A wet started Northern Ireland, the

rain clearing and into