02/10/2016 The Papers

away from winning the Malaysian Grand Prix. That is all the sport

for now. Now on BBC News here's

Gavin Esler with The Papers. Hello and welcome to our Sunday

morning edition of The Papers. With me are Ben Chu

of the Independent and Eleanor Mills has fired the Brexit starting gun,

saying she'll launch a Great Repeal Bill in the spring,

scrapping the law that took Britain Brexit also leads the Telegraph -

the headline reads May Takes The Axe It also has an interview

with Samantha Jefferies, the widow of a Falklands hero,

who this week won a High Court Brexit also leads the Observer,

with claims from former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan

that the UK turning its back on the single market

and closing its borders risks The Express also has

that story, proclaiming The Mail on Sunday has a story

featuring the claims of comedian Jon Holmes,

who says he was sacked from his Radio 4 programme The Now Show

for being "white and male." The BBC says it was creating

opportunities for more Let's begin with the splash on Me

firing the Brexit starting gun, the Great Repeal Bill to scrap EU

membership. This is the first time we are getting a sense of what to

race in -- Theresa May means when she says Brexit means Brexit. She

says this will be a vote under this new bill to repeal all the former

legislation meaning EU rules were sovereign over British law, which

has been hailed in many papers as a great start. Given how very slim

majority in parliament, only 12, it would be interesting to see how that

vote goes down and whether MPs really do abide by the referendum,

or whether they go more on their own gut. As we know, in Parliament,

Brexit was not popular. I think it is interesting, and the other thing

that comes out of the interview today and stories on the other

papers is the widening sense between a hard Brexit under soft Brexit. Had

Brexit being pulling out of the EU quickly, invoking Article 50, then

maybe going back to World Trade Organisation tariffs and not trying

to have a proper deal allowing us passports to the city so they can go

on training. It is a much more hard sense that this is all over. Or a

soft one which is more of the status quo, which more centrist people in

the Tory party preferred. She is hoping, I think, as she goes into

the party conference this week, the this will put a dampener on Brexit.

I think it is like chucking a grenade into a tank of petrol, they

will go crazy about what this means. I think it is a cracking story, but

it raises so many other questions, she has a majority of 12 in

Parliament, we know the Conservatives are as divided as the

Labour Party on this issue they are particularly divided, and she might

not win a vote. We have the supremacy of Parliament after a

referendum which the British people made it clear what they think. I

think this is more of the media management announcement than

anything substantive. There was a great comment on Twitter this

morning saying this is the legislative equivalent of the phrase

Brexit means Brexit. It sounds dramatic but the content is not

there. Why would the UK keep this bill in place after Brexit? Of

course it wouldn't, but it doesn't tell us anything about the single

market access, it tells us nothing about the customs union,

contributions to the EU budget, migration, all these key issues

people want to know the answers to are not covered by this Great Repeal

Bill, so Great Repeal Bill obviously sounds dramatic but there is no

content. But it's very clever, isn't it? She has skirted over this whole

business when the big fight in the Tory party is between hard and soft

Brexit. We will move on in a moment to Nicky Morgan's story in the

Observer where she says she is calling for what she calls a soft

Brexit. They have set up a new group called Conservative Mainstream, the

more Remain end of the Tory party trying to say we should have the

same relationship that we do with the EU. That's go on to that now.

The Observer says had Brexit will mean new bigotry according to Nicky

Morgan. She fears "Trump like attitudes", we risk losing the

centre ground which Theresa May is trying to capture, and Theresa May

has been speaking on the Andrew Marr Showed saying she will trigger

Article 50 and begin the formal process of leaving the EU before the

end of March next year, so we have at least the beginning of a

timetable, but she still has the problem, and this has brought down

Tory leaders in the past. Article 50 of March confirms what everyone

suspected. Boris Johnson said something similar. He was slapped

down so it is not exactly news. You are right in terms of the two wings

of the Conservative Party sniping at each other now. Yes. Nicky Morgan is

saying this morning something which is direct against people like Liam

Fox, Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, saying if you dally with hard Brexit

it is dangerous, not just because of the economic impact but social-

political impact. If you have the hard right saying we can do all

these things and not cooperate with Europe, it is like Trump's view of

the world, that you need not cooperate, you just assert yourself

and don't need to consider others in your mind. That is an interesting

attack because it is different to the usual economic critique we have

had before now. It sounds very high-minded but this may be sour

breaks, Nicky Morgan was at the ceremoniously tacked on Macs sacked

by Theresa May -- may be sour grapes. It is the second time she

has had a pop at her since she was relegated. She had a go about

grammar schools and now says she is for soft Brexit. There is definitely

animosity between these ladies. What is interesting in the Sunday Times

interview with Theresa May is how she is positioning herself on the

centre ground. It is about social mobility agenda, saying I made it

because I was talented, selective education but not a privileged toff

like Cameron and his like, and she is campaigning on behalf of people

she says had just managing. She says, we need to think about people

for whom on the surface it seems OK but life is difficult, they are

still struggling. That is really putting her tanks on the centre

ground where the Labour Party should be, but of posts do it mac Kos

Corbyn has taken them so far into the crazy left-wing wilderness that

there is a huge open goal for the Tories, and she is quite right wing

but sitting on it because she wants to win. This may be the biggest

story of the next two or three years. Very interesting. And the

irrelevance of the Labour Party in all this discussion, it you are

talking about a fight between the wings of the Tory party, Labour is

out of the discussions. Let's move on to the more cheerful subject of

American politics! Janet Daley in the Telegraph saying she understands

why Americans will vote for a dangerously ignorant demagogue.

Quite a few conservatives are very worried about the prospect of a

Trump presidency on both sides of the Atlantic. And rightly so! Her

column ends up by saying people hate Hillary more than they are offended

by Trump, which is probably true. Or true to some extent. But, I mean,

Trump is such a peculiar thing it is difficult to say where he fits in

the history of American politics. It is an insurgent thing and we don't

know where it will end. I am interested in the New York Times

revelations about his tax affairs, because they have evidence that he

had a stonking great loss on his businesses in the mid-90s, which

they think maybe the reason why he was able not to pay income tax for

18 years, because even offset losses against profits going forward. That

goes to the heart... You may be right that he is unique but he

claims to have done it himself of the great businessman and so on, and

he isn't. That is the point of Janet baby's column, she is saying what is

hard for those in the UK to understand, and I think it is true,

having been in America when they were talking about the health Bill

and people talking about how awful it is that people might have

insurance to give them health care, from a British perspective it is

bonkers, but there is this individualistic, I made it myself,

section of American politics, this puritanical, I did it my way... They

think Trump stands for that. And he inherited his wealth. Exactly, he

doesn't stand for the little man although that is how he is

positioning himself. You could say Hillary is the presidential

candidate because she was married to Bill Clinton and from that things

follow, so you have two candidates neither of whom can claim they did

it alone. Many people in America say they can't stand either but they

have a Hobson's choice. For a lot of Americans who believe in this self

actualisation as the defining freedom of the American way, they

can't bear it, they see Clinton as a socialist who wants to even everyone

up, and it stops Americans being able to do it their way. It is hard

for us to get our heads around it but there is a strong thought like

that in America. Two countries divided by a common language! I

think this is also a cracking story, and other in the Sunday Times, Lord

Bell ran a $540 million covert operation in Iraq for the Pentagon.

How well did that persuade the Iraqi people? To explain to our viewers

what this means, this is the American government giving $540

million to a British PR firm to run psychological operations, things

like putting lines into soap opera plots in the Arabic media, saying, I

hang out with the Americans, or I stopped being a jihadi and now my

life is great. It is that kind of propaganda, we are talking about

propaganda. They should put them in the Archers, that is the answer! It

doesn't seem to have worked. We all know about psychological operations,

but it is interesting that this was so privatised. Everything in Iraq

was privatised, security, catering for troops etc, but is interesting

they gave it to a British company, and they reckon they made ?15

million in fees, a lot went to distributing leaflets and probably

paying scriptwriters or whatever, but it is a fascinating window into

this world. Fascinating, isn't it? It is, but as you say, talk about

money badly spent! How much worse could it have been if they haven't

done this deep psychological manipulation. It may be made things

worse, it was so crude! Our last story of the day, the Mail on

Sunday, BBC sacked me for being a white man, I am not speaking

personally as far as I know! Radio for comic told he was the wrong and

colour, even the former diversity boss says it is unfair, John Holmes

sacked from radio fours. As the chair of Women in journalism I bang

the drum for diversity a lot and it is true that the airwaves are often

filled with what could be called stale pale males. I am usually in

favour of diversity, but I think he is great on And Now Show, it is

funny, and you need a balance on these things. People think there is

positive discrimination so people only get jobs because they are a

woman or from an ethnic minority. That is hopeless, it is bad for

everybody. People than think you are not as good. Or there is a token.

There are many extremely talented women and people of colour out there

who could get these jobs but because the way society works, it tends to

privilege people who have fitted a prior mould. There are more white

chaps at the top than other people, and we do need to do something about

that. In FTSE 100 companies if you left it as it was, or politics, it

would take 100 years to get parity is something needs to be done but it

is hard when people feel they are being squeezed out. And it can be

windowdressing, could have -- put a couple of people in low positions

because it takes a race box or agenda box, and the people at the

top don't change. And they are behind-the-scenes so people don't

see them. Box ticking is obviously the approach in one wants. It is

analogous to the debate about social mobility, everyone is in favour of

it but to have it some people you'll need to move down as well as some

moving up. People complain when they move down but you have to understand

if you had to get change in big organisations, you sometimes have to

push people down and give people bad news. There will be some losers. We

should talk about the people who win as well as those who go down. It

sounds like it was phrased in a crass way, the person who told in

this bad news, so you have sympathy. But the principle is that you should

try to get more women into these shows. What is telling in the

coverage is the picture of the people running Are Now Show, three

white blokes. There are women and people of colour and they don't all

need to be white chaps. Thank you very much, that's it for The Papers.

Thanks To Ben And Eleanor. Just a reminder, we take a look

at the next day's front pages every