05/02/2016 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers

With me are Sue Matthias, the Senior News Projects Editor

at the Financial Times and James Millar, the Westminster

The Daily Express leads with the words of the president

of the European parliament, aimed at Britain ahead of the EU

The Financial Times says Britain's biggest companies are unprepared

for a possible British exit from the European Union.

The Times says private schools are in crisis, because of rising

It quotes the publisher of the Good Schools Guide, saying independent

The Telegraph says the Moroccan-born daughter-in-law of Abu Hamza can't

be deported from Britain because of a ruling by the European Court that

She served a prison term for smuggling a SIM card to

The Daily Mail has the banner headline, "Exodus".

It says another 70,000 people are fleeing the fighting and heading for

the Turkish border, "just one step away from Europe", as it puts it.

We are going to start with the story about private schools. It is in the

Guardian and also the Times, a slightly different slump in both

papers. -- slant. Results and behaviour see big improvement. Good

news and bad news, depending on where you send your kids? Good news

for most people, because most people send their kids to state schools. It

is a slightly odd story, because it is a good news story that state

schools are getting better. Yet both papers have gone with, this is a bad

thing for the private sector, rather than the possibly more positive spin

on it. It is based on the good schools guide, put together by Ralph

Lucas in the Guardian, Lord Lucas in the Times, interestingly. Justin on

Twitter says that if that kind of story slows down the extent of long

run above inflation school fee rises then good, but I doubt it. Supply

and demand, I suppose. Will they drop their prices? It is picked up

in the Times, which does report on two decades of above inflation rises

in fees, which is pushing private education beyond the reach of the

middle earners, and that is really the nub of the story when it comes

down to it. The private schools are pricing themselves out of the

market, combined with a massive increase in standards across the

state sector. And not just in London, interestingly, where that is

received quite a lot of attention. It is not confined to London. In the

Times, private schools in crisis, hundreds face closure as parents

teach fees and opt for state schools. About a year ago, in the

aftermath of the crunch, some schools were having to look at the

idea of going into the state sector, perhaps as academy schools or free

schools. Exactly, and another thing I think it is a pattern is that

parents who choose independent schools will stick with it up to

secondary level, and then find that often they have a very strong sixth

form college education, which is really strong. It is slicing away

from the top as well. It is a bit rich, if you will excuse the pun,

that these schools live by the capitalist system, you have to pay

for them. A lot of them do, many of them have charitable foundations.

Most of them, you have to pay for the education. I'm sorry, and I know

this for sure, a lot of them offer bursaries and scholarships. But that

is replacing the fees, somebody still has to pay the fee, and now

they are having more competition and they are worried this is putting

them out of business. The deal is you improve your standards and then

you survive, that is how the capitalist system works. There is

also a line in one of these reports that says that despite this, private

school pupil numbers have never been higher. So this effect is obviously

going to take a while to come through, so we mustn't shed too many

tears right now. I don't think the independent system is going anywhere

in a hurry. I am shocked at the lack of balance, the pair of you. The

Independent, why are you laughing? I will provide the balance! I think

this is probably the best of the front-page stories. The five

Challenger banks were set up to provide more competition to make the

banks behave themselves, and they are being run by Fred Goodwin's

coterie, the people who are running RBS, you may remember crash the

economy. He turned out to be fantastically bad that his job, and

the people who were working with him are now running these Challenger

banks. It is not hard to find people who would be better at running them,

because you just find people who haven't crashed the economy? Can you

blame them for his mistakes? He wasn't solely to blame at RBS for

crashing the economy, he did have a large role in it though. Surely we

can find people in the country who have not worked for RBS can a bank,

there must be? The revelation was called " disturbing". They said

mistakes had drained the Exchequer of billions of pounds, and that

would not be repeated. It doesn't look good, doesn't? I think Martine

has a point, of these individuals -- each of these individuals are good

bankers and executives in their own right, but it doesn't look good.

Hasn't the sector changed quite a lot since it all went wrong? Yes, it

is a great story, because it makes you drop your post over breakfast.

You will wonder how these people survived the crash and seem to be

flourishing despite what happened. Surprise, surprise. Lex look at the

FT. -- let's look at the FT. Few contingency plans among FTSE groups,

large companies want to lie low. What is going on? Do you think these

companies feel they don't need to worry about a Brexit? The FT has

done a survey of the FTSE 100, and it turns out that only four of them

were prepared to say they were engaging in any kind of detailed

planning. Vodafone said that no planning of note was required. So,

either they are coming over as pretty complacent, or they really

don't think there is anything very much to worry about. Those are the

only two possible conclusions. It is very interesting. In a way, you

might say this is a steady as you go reassuring, this business is happy,

David Cameron will be happy with these comments. I wonder whether

they think they have longer than they have, it won't happen in the

summer and they will get themselves organised just in case. I think they

don't think it is going to happen. The out campaign will be happy with

this. They will think that this means the establishment is

complacent. Here we have the establishment being painted as

taking for granted that they will not be a Brexit. The league campaign

will be happy with this, because they will say, these guys think they

are going to be OK, and they will try to fire up their supporters by

giving the establishment of bloody nose. In the final paragraph it is

pointed out that while no FTSE company said it wanted Britain to

leave, only 18 said that they backed continuing membership. It is hard to

predict, they haven't really come out... Abu Hamza and latest blow to

UN sovereign tree. Terrorist daughter-in-law cannot it reported

due to human rights. Can we have some background? It is another EU

referendum story in a roundabout way. This is the daughter-in-law of

Abu Hamza, smuggled a sim card to him in jail, which is not the worst

crime, but he is a particularly nasty character, so it is a bad

thing to have done. He was eventually sent to America. He was,

where he has been jailed for a long time. She was jailed for a year. The

European Court of justice, which is the UN -- EU Court, says that she

cannot be deported because she has the right to family life. The out

campaign is piling in saying that it means Britain cannot make its own

laws. The timing is brilliant, especially for the Daily Telegraph.

He has Abu Hamza, the most hated man in Britain, the European court of

justice making an appalling decision yet again, according to the

Telegraph. And it all comes to a wonderful climax at the end of this

week. It comes down to the issue of you can pick and choose who you are

allowed to give human rights. Yes, and newspapers are not very good at

dealing with the nuance of these cases. Although, this one is

particularly badly timed, and obviously there is an issue with

this, but most people will think this is not a great decision by the

European court of justice. On the face of it, it is probably are bad

one. That is why we have checks and balances, so that everybody has the

laws applied to them. The Guardian, the Democrats, the test of... The

Clintons are getting a taste of the GOP treatment. This is an analysis

of the Clinton Sanders situation, that Sanders is being hailed as

authentic and drawing an enormous amount of support from young

voters. He only joined the Democrats last year, he was independent before

that. The question raised at the end of this is, is he at all electable?

If not, why is he dead, and making a comparison with Jeremy Corbyn. That

is why it is on the front page of the Guardian. It is about Jeremy

Corbyn, really. We think what is going on in the Labour Party is

somehow unique to the Labour Party, but it is not, it is a worldwide

phenomenon of people looking for the outsider candidate. Hillary Clinton

is not an outsider, but she is electable. I think she said

progressive 15 times. A lot of the Twitter feeds on the night of this

face-off were criticising Bernie Sanders' lack of foreign policy, and

saying that he just doesn't have the experience. What am I allowed to

call people? Clinton is the real deal, and he is having his moment,

but as it says at the end, if he wins the nomination he might as well

hand the Republicans the keys to the White House right now, I strongly

suspect that is the case. But then the Republicans have their own

issue... Astronaut Tim Peake prepares for England and Scotland's

Six Nations clash today. The match will be beamed live to the

International Space Station, and another costume change for Tim

Peake. This will confuse the Russians, do they do rugby? I like

it because you have the English flag in the Scottish flag, and his wife

is Scottish. That has not been mentioned, but he has clearly nailed

his colours to the mast, as it were. The annual fallout is being

avoided by him being in space. And as I said earlier, I think we have

just about reached peak Peake. When you are tired of space menu are

tired of life, I think. Thank you both, up next is Sportsday.