21/11/2015 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers

With me are political commentator Jo Phillips and Nigel Nelson, political

The Observer reports security chiefs are warning Britain's counter-terror

forces must be boosted if they are to cope with a Paris-style attack.

The Sunday Telegraph says Britain looks set to join air strikes

against Islamic State targets in Syria by Christmas.

The Sunday Times says action could be taken as early as two weeks

The Sunday Express also leads with Syria and says senior generals

believe a full-scale offensive would wipe IS off the map in two weeks.

And the Independent on Sunday asks, 'Where do we go from here?'

Britain's response to the threat from terrorism.

Beginning with the Sunday Times. What do you make of this? PM's push

to bomb ISIS within a fortnight? As you say, it varies between before

Christmas and a fortnight. We are just working out the maths. David

Cameron has got to put in a report to the defence committee by

Thursday, so that's going to be, according to this story, a 7-point

plan. Always a bit worrying, but he will put out his plan for what we

would do, how we would engage and whether we take airstrikes against

Syria. In the meantime he is going off to Paris tomorrow to see

president or mind, that a mere platoon is going as well. --

President Hollande. Everyone is checking across Europe. It is clear

that he could then leave a weekend to think about it and call a vote

next week. Yes. There is the possibility. If authorisation were

given, that could lead to pretty swift action. I think you would. You

would hear about it. Tomorrow morning we would wake up and the

strikes would be taking place. However, there's quite a lot of work

to do before we get to that point. Presumably a lesson that David

Cameron should have learned from two years ago is that this kind of fast

paced decisions sometimes means people aren't in the same place as

you when you ask the question. You have to make sure you know where

everyone is. He only has a majority of 12 and there are at least 20 Tory

MPs who are unhappy. It doesn't mean they won't vote with the Prime

Minister, take the SNP, you will probably vote against airstrikes and

Labour are all over the place at the moment. Labour frontbenchers are

pushing Jeremy Corbyn into a free vote. They can decide what they will

do. Jeremy Corbyn seems to be fairly clear from the speech today that he

is still against airstrikes themselves. The question is whether

he whips his MPs. We also have a complete change in public opinion,

which has been reflected in some of the polls. That is massive. I mean,

wobbly if you did it two weeks ago before Paris it would have been

quite different. There's really no significant shift public opinion.

That is what MPs will get when they go back to their constituencies.

Some of these stories in the papers today are quite chilling. If you

look at the Sunday Times, we talk about intelligence officials saying

ISIS has set up an international attacks unit to conduct mass

atrocities in Britain, there are talks about chemical attacks. We

have a very frightened... We have been here before, haven't we? That

is very much what has been suggested by Al Qaeda, after 9/11. It didn't

come to anything, but it is in the minds of the security services. The

possibility exists. Eventually medical -- Middle Eastern terrorists

will get their hands on a dirty nuclear bomb. If they have long in a

fall of these things will happen. There's a general agreement now that

the only answer is to defeat and wipe it out. The Sunday Telegraph.

You are talking earlier about the sorts of slightly grim tone to some

of the coverage in the papers. It couldn't be more blunt. Absolutely.

It is a very evocative photograph of an RAF tornado jets, pictured here.

Not least because of the black skies behind it. Yes. It is chilling. I

mean, this is echoing what the defence chiefs and former defence

chiefs have been saying. In the Sunday Telegraph, Lord Damon says

that it could even go so far as bringing Syrian refugees into

forces. You need groups -- troops on the ground. To go back to getting

David Cameron to have people on board, there will be a reluctance

for just airstrikes. There has to be something else. The question is how

quickly you can mobilise ground troops, because you can go in with

airstrikes within hours, but how can immobilise them? If you are going to

work with these different factions you have to talk to... It has to be

one step at a time. First of all we have the RAF in action. That would

be the first stage. Then let's see where it goes from there. We leap

ahead of ourselves if we assume there will be a ground war, just

because... This is presumably in the run-up to any parliamentary vote?

Exactly. Some MPs will say their reluctance to vote yes is not

necessarily because of the airstrikes but because of what it

could then take from this. Effectively they would say that they

have been authorised to do whatever. The vote will be narrower on

airstrikes I think. It sounds like that's what this paper will be. It

doesn't sound like the UN Resolution has shifted Jeremy Corbyn's view,

given what he said in the speech today. It is weird. He seemed to

save the day before that what he was looking for was some kind of UN

Resolution. It is a bit confusing, the legality of that. But it seems

Russia and China are onside. David Cameron didn't think Russia would be

and now they are. We now have the makings of an international

coalition, which we didn't have when we went into Iraq. We didn't have 24

hours. It is suggested that there has been a shift in parliamentary

opinion? Yes. The Express and the Sunday Mirror and the Independent

have all got opinion polls and there has been a significant shift in

people going into action together. But I disagree with you. I think he

will have to reassure MPs what the plan is. That has to be in his

7-point plan, or 5-point plan, before he can go to the comments

with a vote. He would say he would vote with, but he wants to know what

happens after. It would be tricky to ask them to vote on ground troops. I

mean, from the humiliation of 2013, when he couldn't get Commons

approval to go and bomb Assad, which was supposed to be a punishment.

Yes. The use of chemical weapons. I do also think you need to send the

planes in and find out where we are. We all seem to agree that we cannot

win this war from the air. But at least he started that. You also have

the different thing that we said last time, this is not intervention,

this is defence. This is defending Europe and Britain. But the

significance. On the Independent story, it is an interesting survey

of attitudes to world leaders and whether they are trusted and whether

people regard them favourably or unfavourably. Barack Obama has got

quite a hefty lead. I suspect these figures are not just people in the

US, but more globally how people view these different leaders. This

particular one is here, in the UK. Forgive me, my eyesight isn't good

enough! Everybody is wonderfully divided. As far as the European

politician goes, she is far in a way that most adept of any of them and

it would look like the public thing... We are just not quite sure.

She gets a favourability and an favourability rating. When did they

do this? Last week. Two weeks ago President Hollande may not have been

so good at it. I will rush you through the Sunday express.

Optimistic message from generals. We can beat jihadis in 14 days. It is

united across all of the papers. These are clear messages from the

military. Going back to the Sunday Times. One nice story at the end.

Very dapper bottom. A story about Sir David Murray the bra. David

Attenborough is classic. Very successful. Still at it in his 80s.

89, in actual fact. 60 years ago he went on his first scuba-dive to the

Australian Great Barrier Reef and he has gone back again, which I think

is absolutely fabulous. He has gone with the cameraman and a pilot. He

has been down there to record staff for a BBC One programme. In 1957 he

made his first trip to the Reef, we probably don't remember that, and it

was shot in black and white. Imagine what it was like in 1950 72 film

underwater? Just astonishing. What isn't that great? He has done it.

Followed a group of fish all the way down. It was a 6-foot group. Where

would you go if you could? I wonder where you would like to go. If you

could go anywhere? If somebody gave you a camera crew and said it could

go anywhere? The great big about this particular one is he is going

somewhere that nobody, no human being, has gone before. That must be

incredibly exciting. Yes, I think underwater is fascinating. I have

done a bit of scuba-diving. I still think you can't beat the oceans.

There is a fantastic photography exhibition about the Endeavour.

Franklin's doomed trip. I think you can't beat that.

Thank you, Jo Phillips and Nigel Nelson.

Thank you for putting the oceans in our minds.

Coming up next, it's The Film Review.