28/12/2016 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the the papers will be

With me are Oliver Wright, Policy Editor at The Times

and Katie Martin from the Financial Times.

One store in particular we are looking forward to getting deep

into. Guess which! The front pages tomorrow starting with the Times Up

The Times leads with an investigation,

alleging that Google is failing to remove anti-semitic content

hundreds of adverts have been pulled from their site in response.

the paper reports that the company stands accused of profiting

The i picks up the news that George Osborne

is to become the new editor of the Evening Standard.

A poll for the Daily Telegraph finds that

two-thirds of respondents think withdrawing from the EU

is more important than holding the UK together.

The FT leads on President Trump standing firm

on accusations that the British spy agency, GHCQ, tapped to his phones

New research shows drinking three cups of tea a day

could cut the risk of dementia by half - that's on the Daily

Guess who's front page that is! That's right, the Daily Express.

The Mirror says that two bullets matching a gun

owned by the Moors murderer, Ian Brady, have been found.

Great British Bake-off bosses, over the signing of Noel Fielding as

Let's start with this wiretapping or not of Donald Trump by GCHQ. The

British intelligence agency. Trump stands firm on GCHQ spying claims,

allegations transatlantic ties. Read a mile from the intelligence agency

itself. We don't hear from GCHQ often at all, do we, directly? They

don't like sticking their neck out, they are not the government

department you can call up and say, we've got a comment about this, it

doesn't work like that, but they've come out swinging on this one, they

said the allegations from Sean Spicer and Donald Trump were utterly

ridiculous. And should be ignored. So that's a no. But the allegations

weren't directly from the White House? No, Trump was doing what he

does best, which is watch cable TV and regurgitate it live on prime

time, or get his spokesman to do it. This particularly was Sean Spicer

who brought this up. The other point about GCHQ is not only do they not

speak very much, but they certainly wouldn't speak without political

approval so this will have gone to Downing Street and Downing Street

will have approved the statement, which is really significant. The

other thing is, this story has been moving around all day, it started

off this morning suggesting they were apologising many Americans,

saying they never intended to it. But Mr Spicer let it be known that

actually the administration wasn't apologising at all. You appear to

have a split between the national security adviser, McMaster, who

talked to his counterpart in the UK today, and by all accounts did

apologise. Then the other half of the administration say, no, nothing

wrong, we're sticking with it. Sir Malcolm Rifkind has said this is

completely outrageous, you can't carry on like this, can't have a

president saying this stuff and can't have a press secretary going

off on one in front of the press again in this fashion. Exactly, if

they'd said it just once, maybe we could have somehow sorted it out,

but it's this first rule of holes, just stop digging. They are not

stopping. So the latest from Trump and Spicer, Trump is saying he was

just repeating reports from a "Talented legal mind". This... Who

hasn't checked the facts. It isn't the basis on which you normally

throw accusations like this around. Sean Spicer is saying we don't feel

like we have anything to apologise for. Some of the Republicans do,

though, some of the people in Congress say its time an apology was

issued. This is one of the big issues behind all of this, their

esteemed Trump in the White House. There is a gap between team Trump

and Republicans in Congress, some of his constituents will get a very bad

deal out of Trump care, the replacement of the Obamacare medical

provision. So that's sort of split, as well as splits with in the White

House, split between the White House and Congress, it could get

interesting. The other point is, the Trump administration, those close

around it, want to keep this row about the Obama phone tapping going

because remember when they brought it up, it's a diversion tactic from

the other allegation doing the rounds about contact between the

Trump administration and the Russians prior to the election and

what was going on. In a way, as many smoke signals that go off in

different directions, it plays into them. Muddies the waters all over

the place. They don't want things to be clean. This headline, allegations

of strain, strained transatlantic ties. Commentators we spoken to

suggest that actually the intelligence agencies here and in

the States know what they are dealing with and will continue to

cooperate. Is the strained political rather than among the intelligence?

I would imagine so, yes, the spooks, if you like, work closely together,

but there will come a point at which Trump is throwing around accusations

effectively against the UK Government, that we're not

comfortable with. I do suspect there is very much a political split.

Let's look at the Times, Google lets anti-Semitic videos stay on you

Tube. This is an investigation papers carried out, advertisers

revolt after Web giant's failure. This in particular focus is on

anti-Semitic content. There are other accusations against YouTube.

This is the follow-up to our investigation yesterday talking

about how Google was selling advertising off the back of some

pretty nasty videos and getting money from the government, big

brands, part of the story says a whole lot of people have pulled out

and said they won't advertise. The other part of the story is the scale

of you know, he'd videos. Particularly anti-Semitic hate

videos. They found 200 videos in a quick search. -- eight videos. The

interesting bit is they alerted Google to these videos, they took 12

videos, reported them to Google, they should take them down in 24

hours, they all stayed up. -- hate. Does Google have the technical

capacity to monitor this? They would argue, not really. We've got to

question that, I think they can remove stuff, it's whether there is

the will, whether they want to invest the cost and the staff to do

it. Is there an argument that for some people this is hate speech and

four others free speech? But if you see this stuff in real life you

might think that, but it's pretty poisonous. It's not just the

anti-Mister Dick -- is not just the anti-Semitic stuff, there is

homophobic material. The level of bile you can find on the Internet if

you're looking for it is extraordinary. It's interesting

we're at the point where the arbiters of what you should and

shouldn't be allowed to say online art dominoes pizza, effectively,

it's one of the companies whose agency is pulling support and

Google, -- from YouTube and Google. They don't seem to take action

without commercial impact. Quite hefty potentially, this company have

asked one of the world's biggest advertising agencies, it says, it

spends ?35 million each year with Google in Britain. Yeah, the

question is how long they'll keep it up for, the real thing you have to

look for. They always say they'll do it, but quietly a few weeks later

they don't. Hopefully on this occasion they will insist Google

changes what it's doing. And will bring back the advertising until

they do. Shall we look at a story bound to keep you going for some

time? Here it is on the i which couldn't resist it. Six jobs George,

public and political world shocked after Osborne is appointed newspaper

editor. We used to have two jags Prescott, now six jobs George. Were

you shocked? Well, I think there's not many things that can bring the

FT newsroom to a total standstill. The kick trolley on Thursday

afternoon comes pretty close but this was a moment of genuine shock.

Yeah, completely from left field, you know, George Osborne PCs to be

Chancellor of the Exchequer. He's never been a journalist. He was

turned down for a job by someone at the FT, Gideon Patmon. Times

trainee, turned down by The Times. He wrote a column for the Telegraph

for a while. But his credentials as editor of a regional but nonetheless

major daily newspaper I think is reasonable to question. It really

raises serious issues around conflict of interest and it would be

one thing if a sitting MP... It would be interesting to hear what

his constituents think. It interesting enough a sitting MP is

in this position but as the paper points out he rakes in the 650 grand

salary from Blackrock as adviser. Is it a reason other than envy to say

he shouldn't do the job? Say there is a story about Theresa May making

a mess of something, is he really going to have an impartial view? Say

there is a story about Blackrock making a mess. Not that these

companies have ever got into trouble before! Andrew Neil, who presents

the Daily Politics for the BBC, we spoken to him and he says he think

this is a perfect vehicle for George Osborne to take on Theresa May, from

which he could at some point in the future mount a leadership bid. Is

that really what he's about? I think it's pretty difficult, everything

written in the standard will be scrutinised through that prism for

the future. One thing that struck me is, who needs fake news when the

real news is quite so bizarre? The other thing which is interesting is

he's a man who made his name trying to cut the deficit but will have

similar problems at the standard. From the proprietor of view it's

quite a coup, isn't it, to get him? That'll be helpful to business,

won't it? It is a coup to have him, a great person to reel in new

advertisers and say, advertise with us. He doesn't get away from the

fundamentals, that the standard relies entirely on advertising and

it is falling. The Tatton seat under the reorganisation of boundaries? I

can see how long-term he can stay in Parliament. There is an

acknowledgement by Osborne's people they'll see how things go. Tatton is

due to be abolished anyway in the boundary review, so in a few months'

time... He doesn't start this job until May, at some point before then

he might announce he will stand down, I think it's reasonably

likely. He fielded a question today, whether being editor of the Evening

Standard was compatible with being an MP. He said the Evening Standard

is mostly edited in the morning and vote in parliament in the afternoon.

So he can work from 5-11, send the paper to be printed, then go to the

Commons? When will he have time to go to Blackrock? It's only four days

per month. The other issue about the Privy Council as well, who have

access to all sorts sensitive government information. Is it

compatible with being a newspaper editor? No, I think it's fine for

politicians to write newspaper columns, there is a long tradition

of that, Boris Johnson in the Telegraph, Michael Gove in the

Times. He gave that up when he became Foreign Secretary. Osborne is

a backbencher to all intents and purposes. I think there was a

conflict of interest between editing the paper, being the ultimate to

decide what goes in, and being an MP for the governing party, whether he

gets an ad Theresa May or not. John McDonough kindly treated to George

Osborne offering to write a column for the standard about the latest

budget U-turn. Apparently Nick Clegg is going to keep writing his column

until he's told otherwise. So yes, the internal politics are going to

be fascinating and if you look at the front of the i, the happy faces

on the people of the Evening Standard are quite something to

behold! Somebody is taking a photo of him in the distance, can't

resist. Two stories in the Telegraph, Brexit bigger than the

union. Another poll suggesting, this time, people think it is more

important that we get out of the EU than holding the UK together. This

is a really strange poll, they suggest two thirds of the people

they questioned thought Britain's departure from the EU mattered more

than stopping the UK break-up. If that's right it suggests a whole

bunch of people who voted to remain in the referendum have completely

changed their minds and for Brexiteers and want to get rid of

Scotland. Don't care what happens to the union. If right, it's

extraordinary. I have a few doubts. Doesn't it depend on the sample

size? It's not huge number of people. I'd be fascinated to know

how the question was phrased, exactly how many people they asked.

It seems to be suggesting that people think losing Scotland is a

price worth paying for leaving the EU, which leads me to wonder what is

the controversy about the referendum in Scotland? Why block it, why be

unhappy? If it's a price worth paying, we don't care either way,

let them do it. It reflects a wider point regardless of whether it's

right. A lot of people in England think, if you want to go, just go.

There was a touch of that in the previous referendum. Numbers would

suggest the SNP wouldn't necessarily win that referendum. But if you look

at what the numbers were before the last referendum was called, the

majority in favour of remain was far bigger. It entirely depends on what

kind of deal and what the state of the relationship between the UK and

EU is in 2019. If it looks like there is a prospect of a deal that

would suit both sides, it's pretty implausible Scotland would vote to

leave. If it looks like it'll be a hard and disorderly Brexit, the idea

Scotland might not necessarily join the EU, but join something like the

EA, countries like Norway, which are on the sidelines, part of the single

market but they don't have to have the Euro, you can see how it became

quite an attractive future. Let us look at this final story, Price

curbs to give fair deal on energy. This makes the Conservative Prime

Minister sound quite interventionist. Didn't Ed Miliband

put this on a stone? Tell us what the story is, Katie. The story is

there as a whole bunch of energy companies, the big six, in the UK

over the past two or three weeks, they've all been raising energy

prices for households by something like ten to 15% in some cases. The

price of electricity, gas, all going up. Theresa May says she wants to do

something about it, step in to control energy prices. This is

pretty extraordinary when you consider this is exactly what Ed

Miliband wanted to do a few years ago and was rounded on by the

Tories, who said he was being needlessly interventionist in a

private industry. Two things are interesting here. When Ed Miliband

said that he talked to the Conservatives privately and they

were worried because they felt it resonated with the public. -- didn't

resonate. People around Theresa May say she's a different type of

politician to David Cameron and George Osborne, she's much more

interventionist, believes the state has a role to intervene in markets

in a way which Osborne and Cameron were ideological utterly opposed to.

They say, you're going to see a change, she has this idea of workers

on board. -- on boards. In happened because people highlighted practical

difficulties but her instinct is the state can intervene and I think you

will see more of this, the devil will be in the detail, though. Huge

practical problems, there will be a lot of anger and upset from energy

companies. Some of they've done has been pretty poor but there has been

so much scrutiny on them, some accusations against them are

somewhat unfair. If the argument is that the market isn't working, have

we just got too few companies to create the competition we need?

People are quite reluctant to move around between companies even though

it has been made much easier. It has been made much easier, I'm not

having more would really help. It's a heavily regulated industry,

expensive industry, but nonetheless they produce quite nice returns for

their investors, so there is clearly something not quite right. I'm not

suggesting Theresa May is heading in the wrong direction on this. This is

very much in keeping with her initial speech she made in Downing

Street when she took her position saying, I'm here to help people just

about managing. People holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet,

like George Osborne. It is very much in keeping with what she's been

saying from day one, yet devil is in the detail. That's it from the

papers, all of the front pages are on the BBC website.

If you miss the programme any evening you can catch up later on

the BBC iPlayer. Nice to see you both. Now it's time for the weather.