09/03/2017 The Papers

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

With me are Kate Devlin, Political Correspondent

at The Herald and Peter Spiegel, News Editor at The Financial Times.

Nice to see you both, waiting patiently so we can get on air! Now

for the front pages, starting with the Guardian. It says that Theresa

May is putting off the controversial rise in national insurance

contributions for the self-employed until the autumn. The Times claims

her decision to delay the measure would be embarrassing for the

Chancellor who pledged not to show it difficult decisions on tax. The

Daily Telegraph says the Prime Minister is refusing to back down

and says she denies breaking a manifesto pledge not to raise tax.

Conservative Party whips warned Mrs May that they did not have the

numbers of MPs needed to push the budget measure through the Commons,

according to the Daily Mail. The Sun also focuses on the National

Insurance story and announces its own campaign: calling on the

Chancellor to scrap plans. Theresa May could trigger Brexit talks as

early as next Tuesday, says the express, after her trip to the EU

summit. The head of the euro bank says the outlook for Euro growth is

more optimistic. A and E waiting Times are the worst on record

according to the Daily Mail, there is data on waiting time showing 85%

of patients were seen within four hours in January and that is far

below the 95% target. We will stop with the Ferrari over

National Insurance. We begin with the Telegraph. Theresa May rejects

breaking the Tory tax promise. The PM is defiant over National

Insurance as she faces budget rebellion from 100 of her MPs. How

is this not breaking a pledge, if they said they would not raise tax,

and now they are? In the newsroom we watched press conference in Brussels

where she tried to explain why this was not the breaking of a Tory party

manifesto, I am not sure I understood it. I imagine most voters

didn't understand it either. It was interesting if you look to the

coverage of the different papers, how differently they played the

press conference. The Telegraph focused on her defending of the tax.

Others called is shifting of the date of the legislation and that it

is underhanded. Everyone has a different view. The most interesting

thing to me in the Telegraph story of the 100 Tory MPs ready to sort of

defy her. We have an amendment here being prepared with 30 MPs signing

on and that could have killed it. It seems only a matter of time before

she has to make a U-turn. She did not close off that possibility. She

left the door open that there might be a U-turn at some point. All of us

in the media today had a slightly different view of where this is

going and she didn't really help us in the press conference. Kate, you

are nodding sagely. I agree with all of that. One of the things the

Telegraph has rightly picked up on is her explanation about what had

happened. It is important to remember that this is what happened

after the general election so they are pointing to the small print

three months after voters were told something in a manifesto, and she

says no amendments or concerns were raised at the time and what she

means by that is not by ordinary voters but by MPs in the House of

Commons and it points to one of the problems which is why the Tories are

here in the first place. When you have a weak opposition you have no

one pointing out this kind of problems to you so you end up

creating a storm for yourself and really having your own MPs becoming

the opposition, and that is what we are seeing today. The Sun is in a

campaigning mode on the same story. Fight fans can, we had a spite than

man yesterday. They are saying, come on, grafters get behind us. It has

been a terrible few days for Philip Hammond. His reputation as a safe

pair of hands is very much in tatters. Just over this? I know it

is important if you are self-employed and you will face

these tax rises but is it really going to be his undoing? Tory MPs

asking tonight one of the things she announced was that she was going to

delay this and bring in a review, which they had announced, which

would look at whether self-employed people could get more benefits,

including parental leave, after they have a child. If you were in the

Treasury before the budget surely you would have linked the two

already so you wouldn't have to come up with this attempt to buy them off

24 hours later and you would've thought through the policy to start

with. The other issue, and what we have seen is the incremental, she

has left it open a U-turn. David Cameron recognised these things

quicker, he is to put his hand up and say, we need a U-turn, and

killed the story quicker. He would not have had a campaign on the front

page of the Sun. It is the Tory press who are coming after her. It

is the opposition within her own party and the press that had

supported her thus far that is coming out against her and the Sun

has decided to campaign on this, one of the most conservative papers in

the country, which tells you all you need to know about where it is

going. The Times are not quite saying a U-turn yet, they are saying

a blow to Philip Hammond is Theresa May backpedals on tax. We be talking

about this earlier on, a small backpedal but it is about the

timing. It is going to come in the autumn rather than in the spring. Is

that backpedal, I guess it. Again at the last minute we were getting

ready to set our front page and we thought it was more minor than the

Times is but this is the problem with the story, everyone is making

their own judgment on it but in any case none of it is good news for the

Prime Minister. Know, and she got asked about in Brussels as well and

she was there to talk about the summit, which we will get to. Let us

look at the FT. A new Scots poll is seen as almost inevitable, it says.

There is a picture that of Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister,

with Theresa May. How close can they get to saying there will be a

referendum, without saying it? I think this is a very good story

because what it points to now is where the row is happening and the

pace of how much this debate has changed in the last couple of weeks

is frenetic. Now the row is becoming about when, about the timing around

when you can have a referendum and whether you can have it before or

after Brexit. We have a front-page story with the former Scottish

secretary, the man who was in charge last time the Scots went to the

polls about this, and he is saying it would fail one of the tests from

the last time, one of the three key tests, and he is saying it wouldn't

be legitimate to holder before Brexit. That is something the UK

Government also suggested last week. Yes, they need to make sure we were

out of the EU before it happens, but if you run a second referendum we

have to be sure of your numbers? The numbers are close but they still

point to a defeat. The reason we thought this was an important story

is exactly why you said it, the question of whether it is gone, and

now it is a question of when. We have the source is very close to the

Prime Minister and they see that Nicola Sturgeon is pushing for a

referendum before Brexit but they want to push it to 2019. Right now

basically Downing Street has decided this will happen and she has set all

the signals there will be a second referendum can we delay it long

enough to make it harder? If you have a referendum while you are

still in the EU there is a vague chance you never leave, whereas once

you're out, trying to get back in again, with the Spanish opposition

such as Catalonia and the thought of joining the euro it, it all becomes

more complicated. In terms of actual independence for Scotland if Britain

is out of the EU but Scotland, more people in Scotland voted to stay in

the EU, Willie not Gareth and I is the independence vote? It will

galvanise some people, but there was an interesting strain of the

Independent state and you could tout rise them as wanting to be

Independent from both the union of the United Kingdom and the union of

the European Union so there is this kind of question mark about whether

if you take out the people who voted for Brexit, are the SNP representing

the 45% anymore hasn't gone down to 27%? That is interesting. The other

thing we have learned in the last few weeks is that it is Northern

Ireland now as well as Scotland. This is even more complicated for

them because suddenly you are seeing a surge in national support because

people are worried about a hard border and what has been for 20

years rather free-flowing economic zone. It is going to become even

ever harder for her in the couple of years. Let us look at a different

story, NHS crisis, A has the worst month on record. This is waiting

Times for patients to be seen within four hours. 85% were seen in that

target time in January, which is short of the 95% target. Hospitals

are being told they have more money so they should sort it out. This

story will not go away for the government. You feel for them, they

are between a rock and a hard place. We have an ageing population of

people are showing up the hospitals will often and it is almost like a

permanent winter now and we used to long lines just in the winter but

now statistic show it will continue into the warmer months. There is

just no more money. There is nothing that can be done. A lot of people we

talked to in the Treasury said that they thought that some of the

initial money that they gave up front under David Cameron would

carry them through this Parliament and at least there would be no

crisis until the next Parliament, whipped is clearly happening now as

it is speeding up and they do not have the time and they have to find

the money from somewhere back as we learned from the budget row, you

raise taxes on anyone and it will be a problem. Where will you find the

money to fund the NHS? This will be an even bigger crisis for the

venture in the coming months than any of this stuff that we're talking

about. The Health Secretary has been saying today at a conference that if

we give you more money for health and social care, to get people out

of hospital when they are better, to support them at home, it eventually

will come down the pipe and he's going to say he wants results. He

will say that. The problem is the buck stops with him and I think that

is where the public very much as. I think it is quite a difficult one.

It is difficult to blame front-line doctors and accident and emergency

departments. The ministers don't blame them, do they? On a population

basis everybody realises there is a problem, when you are a patient

coming up against, talking to doctors, the sympathy does not lie

with the government, and that is the problem they have. Let slip of the

Times. The picture story taken at the Memorial to those who served in

Iraq and Garristown. There is Tony Blair in the middle, looking rather

grim faced. A man apart, it says. Beneath Prince Andrew is finding

some to laugh about a rather sombre occasion, which is a rather jarring

comparison, but rather discomforting moment for Tony Blair. A lot of

people say you should not have shown up, which is probably the wrong

call, but he has become a rather tragic figure. It was interesting

his speech last week when he came out and talked about trying to

reverse Brexit. He has clearly tried to repeatedly reinsert himself into

the political process and for ever he will be tainted by this. Even

people who respect him as a competent just believe that he is

now so tainted by this legacy of the war that any thing he says on

Brexit, he's the wrong guy at the wrong time and he has no credibility

and it is actually a very moving photo for that reason. It shows him

isolated and whether it was just a moment in time where he wasn't

talking to anyone but it does tell the story of a barn at a place in

his career now where he is politically isolated because of the

legacy of the war. You can understand why the picture editor

picked this. It is a man who is dammed if he doesn't and if it

doesn't as well. Were he not to be there he would have faced a lot of

criticism as well so there is just no right answer on a lot of things

if you are Tony Blair. Now for the Guardian. Cover prams against

pollution. A lot of stories of late of the levels of pollution in

cities, particularly London. Parents are now being advised to cover up

their prams, particular school run. I moved here from another country,

one of the other options I had was to move to China but my wife said it

would be too much for our kids with the asthma and bronchitis but now we

have to worry about it in London! It has gotten rather unsettling that on

the walk to school you have scientists and health experts

advising that you should cover the pram. My kids are older now and they

are not in a pram but it is unsettling and these things are

showing that they are causing rising levels of asthma and bronchitis in

children in London has become one of the most polluted cities in terms of

particular its and the things that children are breathing in. And as a

new arrival to this country, it is rather unsettling. This has been

going on for years. We have been walking to school with kids in

pushchairs and heavy traffic. What this might encourage people to do is

not to put covers on their prams but to get in their cars as they go to

school. That could make it even worse. Yes, you may indeed. Thank

you very much. We got through quite a few there. A surfeit of national

insurance but I'm sure we have not had the end of it.

Don't forget you can see the front pages of the papers online

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