24/02/2017 Newsnight

She came, she saw, she conquered - is this Theresa May's imperium?

Theresa Maia Brigantibus subiectis rempublicam hodie dominatur.

Quis igitur est factio potens contra hoc imperium?

And what I think we've seen from this victory is that this truly

is a government that's working for everyone and for every

Have you, at any point this morning, looked in the mirror and asked

yourself this question: could the problem actually be me?

We'll be asking the shadow Foreign Secretary if,

with Corbyn at the helm, Labour can really march on Rome?

Ukip tripped up spectacularly in the Stoke by-election -

are they a party now looking for a purpose?

Our political panel is here to discuss what Theresa May should

do with her victory, and if she wants Jeremy Corbyn

Theresa May was on the losing side in the referendum.

She's an unelected leader, with a small working

majority of 16, one up from yesterday,

having to lead the most complex constitutional negotiations perhaps

since the Act of Union in 1707 - negotiations she never

Not a great position of strength, you might say,

but this morning she led her party to victory in an area that's been

held by Labour since 1935 - the first time a governing party has

Her personal approval ratings are far and away ahead

of Jeremy Corbyn's, who today insisted that he was determined

to carry on and appeared to joke that the situation was catastrophic

So this was the Prime Minister's day -

she spent it in her new Tory-held Cumbria seat.

Our political editor Nick Watt reports.

For the moment, our unlikely Prime Minister reigned supreme, a

by-election win in an area that had been beyond the reach of the Tories

since the interwar years leaves Theresa May surveying a political

landscape with few credible opponents. Theresa May once likened

herself to Queen Elizabeth the first, a woman who thrived in a male

dominated world by knowing her mind. But she's never seen herself as a

glory on a figure and she is one of the least assuming occupants of

number ten. She's more like John Major, Paire Margaret Thatcher in

her imperial pomp and just like John Major, who secured the highest

number of votes of any Tory leader, Theresa May is not the slightest bit

complacent and knows that around every corner there are bear traps --

than Margaret Thatcher. Theresa May has been shrewd in her position, she

has a huge amount of authority and the Conservative Party believes

she's an election winner. Those three things give her a lot of power

and so at the moment she very strong. You always have to have a

strategic view of what's coming next. The economy has been very

strong for a long time, what will happen with that? Brexit is

difficult but if you have those three things, and you have that

authority, if you're seen as a winner, you can make a mark on the

scene. Theresa May doesn't have any opposition, everyone has fallen

away, the Labour Party can't deliver votes in its core seats, Ukip has

shown that they cannot organise a campaign, they can't turn things

into success locally, and the Lib Dems are regaining their seats after

a devastating loss, so the Conservatives have the political

landscape to themselves and the only real enemies they have placed to

Theresa May's advantage because they are slightly unpopular Europeans

that she can go to war with. As something of a diffident figure,

Theresa May rarely shows much emotion but there was no mistaking

her joy when she turned up in Copeland this morning. The Prime

Minister even woke up her husband in the middle of the night to tell him

the news. If you extrapolated the swing from Copeland which was 6.7%,

and put that on top of the results of the last election, you would see

a uniform swing across the country, depending on the boundaries and the

decisions of the smaller parties, you would end up with Labour on

about 150-160 seats, the Conservatives on something like 400,

so a very substantial Conservative majority. Jeremy Corbyn made his way

to stoke to celebrate his party's win in the potteries but this did

not have the feel of a triumphal march. Labour's share of the vote

had fallen in each seat. Internal critics mostly kept quiet, his

allies were less restrained as they laid the blame for the party's poor

showing at the feet of Tony Blair for criticising the leadership last

week over Brexit, the issue that is bedevilling Jeremy Corbyn. The great

irony is that Jeremy is losing a lot of support among the people who

flocked to the party not over Iraq, austerity, or nuclear weapons, the

things that define him, but on Europe where many younger supporters

are very pro-European and he and -- at best is anaemic about it and that

is the issue, combining the issue of ratings and popularity has. The Ukip

leader hopes to break up as the MP for the seat he described as the

Brexit capital of Britain but instead Paul Nuttall faces a fight

to restore his credibility after managing a modest increase in his

party's vote share in Stoke. One expert said that perhaps all is not

lost for Ukip. In terms of Paul Nuttall personally, he had a

difficult campaign in Stoke-on-Trent. I'm not sure I'd say

yet that the idea of Ukip going after Labour in the heartlands

businesses assembly the wrong strategy because Labour has a

weakness in an area where Ukip have strength, so clearly there will be

some potential upside there and it doesn't seem like a bad strategy,

but the problem is that they aren't executing on it. Theresa May will no

doubt allow herself a modest celebration this weekend. But one

admirer says that when the going seems easy, a wise leader makes

preparations for more difficult times. The biggest problem you have

when you are very strong is that you can't imagine a moment when you

might not be and therefore you don't plan for it. The long-term strategic

challenge for the Conservative Party, with younger voters and more

diverse voters and urban voters because you are doing so well

because you're winning, you forget that you have to keep renewing your

appeal, you have to keep modernising the party. You can do that by some

extent with instinct but you require deliberate strategic moves. Our

Prime Minister is for the moment Britain's unchallenged empress. She

will need no reminding of the role of the Roman slave who whispered to

the triumphant general to be wary of hubris, remember, you are mortal.

The shadow foreign secretary is Emily Thornberry and she joins me

Good evening. You've held Copeland since 1935, widely due lose it? It

has always been a marginal, it has always been a fight, we had a

majority of 2000 and there were particular factor is happening in

the constituency. The biggest employer was Sellafield and the

Tories were putting out leaflets saying that Jeremy is against

nuclear power. That came up on the doorstep all the time. Even though

we had conversations and said we were in favour of nuclear power: we

couldn't have enough conversations to allay peoples fears, so that was

a major factor. The health service came up. I don't want to burst your

bubble, I know you've had fun with that clip, but come on, Theresa May

was raised on the doorstep by people who pointed out that when she

visited the constituency she had been asked four Times about the

future of the hospital maternity unit and failed to answer. The

concern is whether she sees it as a green light to close the maternity

used it -- maternity unit at that hospital? That's leave that aside.

Jeremy Corbyn, there is this big thing about him being a man of

principle but the point is, in his leadership campaign in 2015 he said

was he -- he was against new nuclear because it created Dicko problems.

-- eco problems. Is he saying he is pro-nuclear now? The people in

Sellafield didn't believe him. It wasn't fake news, they didn't

believe him. What he did, after the nuclear disaster in Japan he said

that if we close down the nuclear power plant and invested in new

energy, renewables, then we could fill the gap. That hasn't happened

and that's why he says now we need to make sure that we keep the lights

on, we have a commitment to closing down our carbon emissions, we need

to be able to cut them down so we must invest in Sellafield and

elsewhere, which he committed to add Theresa May didn't. And now whether

the result was a disaster for the party. Was it a disaster for the

Labour Party? I think it was really disappointing, we had a really good

candidate and we had a good ground campaign and we lost and we are very

disappointed. Dave Prentice, the Unison boss who is traditionally a

bit supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, called the result disastrous. Is he

wrong? I think it is disappointing, disastrous is too high a bar, I

don't think it was a disaster. There were particular factors, the

confusion about Jeremy's attitude towards Sellafield was important. A

lot of people rely on it for their jobs, high skilled jobs. Even though

we try to make it clear what the position of the Labour Party was...

The candidate's husband works in the nuclear industry, we tried to cut

through the false news and stories being put around about the Labour

Party policy but we weren't able to and that's disappointing. Would you

say that Jeremy Corbyn is the problem? I would say that the

messages we have are absolutely the right ones and we must make

ourselves sharper in terms of getting the messages out. Jeremy

Corbyn said there was no question to answer when he was asked whether he

was a problem. Is that incredibly arrogant when the people of Copeland

clearly didn't believe he was on their side and he didn't allay their

fears? He didn't seem to take any responsibility at all for what

happened in Copeland. I think it was down to local issues and it was down

to whether or not we could convince local people that we were in favour

of the major employer of the area. It's quite and the standard ball. We

ran a good campaign on the house service -- quite understandable. My

concern is whether Theresa May sees this as a green light to close down

the maternity unit, but if she does she will have problems in Copeland

because people are loving arms about it. You had five by-elections and

you have dropped votes in every single one. Corbyn's personal

ratings, -40, with every age group and region and social class, net

unfavourable to Labour Party voters as well. How bad does it have to

get? We have to fight on the issues and make sure that we make it clear

to people that the Tory government don't have the answers to the

problems that we face today. But if Jeremy Corbyn your leader can't do

that, then he has a problem because he's been in his position for quite

some time and if he can't make it clear, who can? If he doesn't think

he's a problem, perhaps he is deluded? If you think politics is

down to sop up, one person against another, quoting Latin that one

leader, you are playing it in this way. I would like to talk about

issues and what makes a difference in people's lives and what makes a

difference is having the sort of government that will address the

concerns of people, has some solutions. This government does not

and we must make clear that we are the alternatives and we have

alternative solutions that will work. It must be not laid at the

door of one individual. But he is your leader. David Miliband has said

that Labour is in the weakest position it has been in in 50 years

and it doesn't get much more damning than that. We need to make sure that

we have the answers to people's problems now. But you don't,

clearly. We must make clear that we have those answers and we must keep

working at it. You keep repeating that, when people in Copeland are

listening... You keep asking the same question. You say you have to

work at things but this was a major by-election for you come in a seat

you've held for 35 years, albeit the majority is 2500. You would think

that this is a seat that is naturally your territory and you

couldn't hold on. And you say Jeremy Corbyn has nothing to do with the

result? The whole picture, there were two by-elections and in Stoke,

where Ukip said that this was a moment when they were going to win

the Brexit capital of Britain, they were going to use it as a launch pad

to attack Labour in its working class seats in the north of England,

that's what they said, that's how it was built, people said Ukip were

going to win, or the Tories... The Labour vote went down in Stoke. And

we won the by-election, Kirsty. But that is naturally your territory.

And Copeland... And Copeland was a marginal, it was a marginal with

local factors. We've discussed Sellafield and the problems we had

in relation to Sellafield and that is the picture, that is a truthful

picture. You can quote Latin and put on as many silly programmes and

clips as you want, but let's look at the issues and the difference

between the two seats and the fights we had. We had a pivotal moment in

Stoke and I think you should talk about that too. We will, thank you.

Labour drew some comfort in Stoke - where the Labour candidate Gareth

Snell saw off the new Ukip chairman Paul Nuttall - albeit

Cut their majority in half and we've unified the party like never before

But Stoke was dubbed the Brexit capital in the referendum,

where working class voters had voted in their droves to leave the EU.

So why did Ukip not do better, and with their new leader at the helm?

With us is Neil Hamilton, Welsh Assembly member,

Could you explain why you did so badly in Stoke? We didn't do badly.

As you said, we had a modest increase in our vote. We got 25% of

the vote and beat the Conservatives into third place. But that was an

area where you did strongly in the referendum and you were not able to

capitalise on the, even with your new leader. It is a mistake to

believe that just because people vote for Brexit, they will vote for

Ukip. There were people in our own party

who made that mistake, and expectations were raised

unrealistically. We could have won in Stoke if there had been tactical

voting by the Tories to defeat Labour. That is what happened in

Copeland, because the Ukip vote in Copeland was squeezed and went to

the Tories, so they won the seat. It didn't happen in Stoke, so we just

failed to win it. We made a modest increase in our support and we

fought on the ground the biggest campaign Ukip has ever fought in a

by-election. Let's just say that Ukip's finest moment was when you

drove a vote on the referendum. You might say that your finest moment

was when you got the Brexit majority. No shame in saying job

done. But Ukip is far more than just a pressure group to take Britain out

of Europe. In the Welsh assembly, we fought an election last May and we

got seven members elected. We hold the balance of power in the Welsh

assembly, and all the issues we debate our domestic issues. Ukip now

has to refocus itself, because after we leave the EU in two years' time,

we will be operating in a domestic UK context. What will the focus of

Ukip be to separate it from the other parties come and do you have a

problem given that you have one spinster MP in Douglas Carswell that

you don't talk to? I talk to Douglas a lot, actually -- one Westminster

MP. We have policies, such as, we would like to take 8 billion out of

the foreign aid budget and put that into the NHS. We would like to cut

300 quid off everybody's household electricity bills by stopping

subsidies for wind farms etc. We would like to democratise the health

service and we want a return to grammar schools. We have a range of

policies which we think will be vote winners. Labour is clearly in

terminal decline. To have lost a seat like Copeland, to have

converted the content -- Stoke-on-Trent Central from a safe

seat to a position where they got only 37%, Ukip had no votes 25 years

ago and now we have 25%. Would you accept that going after the Labour

vote doesn't work any more? Of course it works. Stoke-on-Trent

Central is one seat, but it was number 72 on our target list. There

are 71 seats that are higher on the target list. In different parts of

the country, Ukip will do better or worse. Labour are obviously very

catering a position in the political system -- they are vacating the

position they have traditionally held, and Ukip are ready to move

into that void. Few would demur from the idea

that this was a critical day for Jeremy Corbyn -

even if he resolutely denies it. But what about the man

who was one of the first What shape does he think

Labour's in now? Here's a Viewsnight

from the New Statesman The by-elections aren't

the end of Corbyn. Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected,

commentators on the right and the left have lined up

to predict that this event that We're joined by John Rentoul,

who is Chief Political Commentator at The Independent, Ava Vidal,

who is a comedian and writer and Fraser Nelson,

who is the editor of The Spectator. First of all, how healthy a state do

you think politics is in at the moment? Pretty healthy. An effective

opposition? Well, no, but that is not how you judge a healthy

democracy. You can see parties changing to the circumstances. The

Conservatives have reoriented after Brexit. Theresa May is less popular

the further north in the country you go. -- she is more popular the

further north you go. You are seeing some sign of life in the dead Lib

Dem body. And the Labour Party is is it's own personal agony right now.

Ukip, you see them trying to supplant Labour as the party of the

working class, but failing in Stoke. But it is interesting, this idea

that the 48% of the population voted to remain. But who is the effective

innit effective voice for them? It is not Labour. It was Tony Blair.

But his position is not the position that the Labour Party can adopt. He

can articulate it well. And take the blame for Copeland? Well, no. They

have tried to blame everything - the weather, Peter Mandelson, Tony

Blair, all the rest of it, all events in the Labour Party going

back to the 1950s. Copeland was a disaster. And the Labour Party is

going to have to deal with that. How does the Labour Party deal with

that? Jeremy Corbyn resolutely, even in the face of John McDonnell and

Dave Prentice, refuses to think that this disaster is anything to do with

him. It is partly because of him, because of the way he has been

treated. From the minute he stepped into power, he has consistently been

undermined within his own party and by the press. Even tonight, when you

introduce, you said the Corbyn supporters are still clinging on to

hope. The way you framed that is the way it is constantly friend when it

comes to Jeremy. You just lost a massive by-election. He has not just

lost a massive by-election. The figures for Labour were going down

in Copeland. Lee Young wrote a fantastic piece in the Independent

today. He pointed out that the figures for Labour were going down

in Copeland since Tony Blair's days. And Labour had not done anything

about it. That is the point. A Labour minister called it a great

position to be in. Said what? Kat Smith said the result in Stoke was

an extraordinary achievement. I was talking about Copeland. But I do

think that was a good achievement, because the way that everybody was

speaking, everyone had believed that Ukip stood a chance up there. So the

fact that Labour held onto the seat, but how they did is a -- another

matter. Jeremy Corbyn has led the fight starts here, and it obviously,

he voted in the lobbies with Theresa May on the question of article 50,

so it is a bit late to stop the fight. People don't think

necessarily that this behaviour shows someone ready for a fight. But

if you look at the results, take Stoke, a very pro-Brexit

constituency. They had a very pro-Remain Labour MP who actually

won and Ukip hardly did very well at all. He's talking about the fight

starts here. It is not as if Brexit has completely changed politics. It

has shipped it a bit, but if Brexit was the defining issue, Labour would

not have won in Stoke. So from the two elections, we can see a more

nuanced picture. I think the Tories would be happy if Labour clung on in

Stoke, because they suspect we will cling on to Jeremy Corbyn for

longer. Does he want to stay? I don't think he does. He does. All

right, he does. But I think he feels a sense of duty.

The fact is that people love to paint Jeremy Corbyn as this week

leader, clinging on. I don't do any one of us on this panel could take

the amount of criticism that Jeremy Corbyn has to take, the amount of

backstabbing within his own party. It is made out that he is a weak

person. He is a very strong person. You have to be to tolerate what he

has had to tolerate every week. He was a complete maverick on the

backbenches. He did vote against the Government, but he did it in a

respectful way. He's not doing it in the way that people criticise him

for. He is not sending around snide e-mails and calling people names. I

think Jeremy Corbyn should be stronger. He keeps talking about

nicer politics. If he doesn't know politics isn't nice by now, I'm

sorry. I agree with you. There was no moderate saying he has got to go

now. They have been very quiet, because they have worked out that

the hard left in Labour hasn't just taken over the leadership, they have

taken over the membership as well. So even if you were to come up with

the perfect candidate, then the Labour membership as it is now would

not have it. The unions are beginning to say Jeremy has to take

responsibility for what happens now. A couple of caustic comments do not

show that they are losing patience with him. And a lot of Labour Party

members would rather that Jeremy Corbyn or someone like him captured

the Labour Party and got into power. Not everybody judges Corbyn's

success by whether he is knocking on the door of Number Ten. The most

important thing is what will happen to the 300,000 members and

supporters who voted for Jeremy Corbyn just five months ago. I think

a lot of them are beginning to be disillusioned. It may take a long

time, but I think they were very upset about Jeremy Corbyn whipping

his MPs into the Conservative lobby on the Brexit bill. But not actually

chastising those who didn't. But that doesn't matter, that is

politics. But losing Copeland was such a serious blow. There will be a

state of denial, where Emily Thornberry will say it is a marginal

or something. But that was the Government gaining a seat from the

opposition, and that doesn't happen in British politics. I think he will

go... Before Copeland, he could have survived until the next general

election. Now, I don't think so. Either he gives up all the people

around him will lose faith in him. It will have to be the people around

him that lose faith in him, because while he has the support of so many,

he is not going to let them down and go. Thank you all very much.

Before we go, the Government announced today that it would be

providing an incentive to universities to offer more

The move has sparked criticism that students will be rushed

through the course material and not have the time and space to really

Well, Newsnight has been given a sneak peek

at what the new condensed history courses could look like.

MUSIC: We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel

# South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

# Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television

# North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

# Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom

# Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye

# Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen

# Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye

# It was always burning since the world's been turning

As promised, much calmer today. Having said that, the weather is

going downhill for the weekend again. We are not predicting any

storms, but the winds will be picking up once more and there is

cloud and rain on the way. After a wet morning, it may brighten up

across Northern Ireland and Scotland. There will be a few

showers around, but the weather is looking better here for the second

half of the day. The further south you go, the thicker the club will

be. Most of the rain is on