25/03/2017 The Papers

We'll be taking a look at tomorrow mornings papers in a moment.

You can tell by the laughter that we have already rummaged through them.

Ukip's leader Paul Nuttall has described the decision

by the party's only MP, Douglas Carswell, to leave

Mr Carswell says he'll remain in the House of Commons

as an independent MP and is leaving Ukip "amicably and cheerfully."

Fire crews are dealing with the aftermath of an explosion

on the Wirral that is believed to have been caused

The family of PC Keith Palmer, the officer murdered in Westminster,

issue a statement thanking those who helped him in his last moments.

The US says it's investigating coalition airstrikes that

were carried out in western Mosul, killing dozens of civilians.

The crew on board the International Space Station think they have found

life on Mars in the science-fiction horror film Life. But is all what it

seems? Mark Kermode will fill us in on the film review. -- The Film

Review. Hello, and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be With me are Ruth Lea, economic

adviser for Arbuthnot Banking Group, and John Rentoul, chief political

columnist at the Independent. Just before they begin with their

thoughts on the papers, let's give you a fighting chance to keep up.

Tomorrow's front pages, starting with the Sunday Times,

caliming EU migrants living in Britain will continue to get

child benefits after Britain leaves the EU.

The Observer leads with the coalition air strikes in Mosul,

which it says, have killed at least 150 civilians

The Sunday Express's front page features the Conservative MP

Tobias Ellwood, and says he's spoken for the first time after trying

to save PC Keith Palmer in Wednesday's terror attacks.

The Mail reports that the air ambulance Prince William co-pilots

had a near miss with a drone last summer.

The Sunday Telegraph leads with Douglas Carswell's resignation

from Ukip, reporting that it's led to a "civil war" within the party.

The Independent also has a picture of Douglas Carswell,

but its main story features calls for Europe to stick together

following the Westminster terror attacks.

Welcome back to you both. Ruth, the Sunday express. Tonight we have seen

a statement from the family of Keith Palmer. They will have been thinking

of this man on the front page of the paper, Tobias Ellwood, the Foreign

Office minister. He certainly is a bit of a hero. I thought he behaved

excellently. He ran towards the problem and lots of other people

were running away. This picture of PC Palmer, he looks so vulnerable,

if I may say so. I think the real message of this story is that the

security at the front of Parliament will have to be stepped up. You will

have to have armed policeman there. At the moment you just have to

police officers in high visibility jackets, which really isn't good

enough. John, Scotland Yard has been giving us more details tonight in

terms of what it knows in the investigation. One of the most

striking things I have seen in the last hour is something that suggests

that the entire duration of the attack, from the moment the first

casualties was hit on the bridge to Keith Palmer being stabbed and then

being shot, was one minute and 22 seconds. Yes, 82 seconds.

Astonishing. And it was all over. It was all over very quickly. I was

working in my office off the press gallery, just beneath Big Ben, and I

heard the bang of the car hitting the railings and I thought it was a

traffic accident. It sounded witty serious so I went to the window to

see what was going on. -- pretty serious. It was very confusing, you

couldn't see what was happening until you heard the crack of

gunfire. And that was it, it was all over. U2 will know this very well,

but the people watching who are not aware of this, we think of

Parliament as one building, but it is a kind of rabbit warren of

connected buildings and corridors and sellers. -- You two will know.

The police would have been searching for hours afterwards to make sure

nobody else slipped in during the confusion. I think so. To this idea

of armed police, the idea that you do not have armed police around the

Parliament is nonsense. There are some armed police. But in 82

seconds, my goodness, he caused some damage. And he could have caused a

great deal more. He could have killed 30 people. He injured how

many, 30? And if there had been more than one person, they could have got

into the Parliamentary estate. He was stopped within 20 yards. But if

there had been others behind him, the Gates were still open, and the

Prime Minister herself was there. She was only 100 yards away. Yes,

too vulnerable. People have reported seeing her in new Palace Yard, and

then being told to get into a car. This is striking, in the light of

what you are saying, this report on the front of the Observer, which

suggests that the police may never know now exactly what motivated him.

I don't think any of us do. He was an odd character, 52 years old. Most

of these jihadists are in their 20s. 52, extraordinary. And of course he

was a convert. But what he did, why he did it, nobody will ever know.

But it was obviously premeditated. He must have worked out the route.

You have to pick the right sort of pavement, in order to do this. He

had obviously thought about this quite hard. John, presumably there

is a dilemma here for the authorities, all kinds of

authorities, because the suggestion is he may have been radicalised in

prison. That is a very hard place to provide effective countervailing

measures. Absolutely, that is a serious problem. We have had the

Prevent programme for more than a decade. Fishermen bleat is quite

hard to measure how effective it has been. -- presumably it is quite

hard. Has it been able to prevent lots of kids from being radicalised,

or not spotted the ones who were in danger? I think the coloured Mahmoud

case does raise another question. -- Khalid Masood. To what extent was he

really and Islamists terrorists, or was he disturbed individual would

management problems? Who just have a rage against society. Obviously

there is a sort of lowering between the two in many cases. -- sort of

blurring. Police do not like the term loan Wolf, they prefer the term

Logan Act. What he has turned out to be a lone actor. And therefore less

of a danger to society than he might have been. In an open society you

will never stop these things, that is the tragedy. Woosha just clarify

the number of casualties. You mentioned the figures, but we think

we are down to 14 still in hospital. That is in encouraging sign, the

numbers are decreasing all the time. We obviously hope that all of them

will be out sooner rather than later. Another story on the front of

the Observer, this very interesting story about the Mosul attack. This

is one of those stories that bubbles up occasionally and then drops away,

and we lose attention on it. But this has been going on for months

now. That is right. We were given the impression a long time ago that

Mosul was within days of falling to the Iraqi army. But they are still

there. They have had to halt the bombing because of civilian

casualties. This is a bombing attack that happens more than a week ago.

Last week. It does suggest that taking Mosul is turning out to be a

much, much bigger and longer struggle than we thought. But you

can see they will go back into it, they will assume they will fight and

fight and fight until they actually destroy the Isis state. At the

moment they just have Raqqa as well, in Syria, and you can see Isis as

this caliphate that they talk about, disappearing. My goodness me, the

terrorism will continue. Yes, we said pitcher on the front of one of

the little girls in a refugee camp, who has been displaced from Mosul.

Let's go to your paper, John, the Independent on Sunday, and we have a

byline from your good self confidently predicting that Douglas

Carswell will rejoin the Conservative Party. I don't know

that pictures from this weekend or if it is from the archive. You think

it is the end of Ukip is a party? Yes. I think Ukip has been a tenant

since the referendum, if not before. The fact that Britain is leading the

European Union means there is no point to Ukip. Douglas Carswell has

for some time sounded to me like somebody who is going back to the

Conservative Party. The only thing that stopped him going straight back

across to the Conservative Party is that under his own principles he

would have to have a by-election. He doesn't want to do that. I suspect

he will join the Conservatives up just make joined the Conservatives

just before the next election. I cannot help but think of Winston

Churchill's phrase, he ratted and then re-ratted. Douglas Carswell is

a Tory and always has been a Tory. As he said himself, as he was being

interviewed this afternoon, he joined Ukip because he was so

passionate about Brexit. At Brexit is happening. If I was a Ukip

minister I would say, that is all very well, but look at the political

scene at the moment. We have a Labour Party that is deeply divided

and according to the polls deeply unpopular. We have the Liberal

Democrats, almost white doubt in the Parliament, they have won a

by-election since, but they are still a shadow of what they were

several years ago. We have an opening here, a potential here, for

a party to challenge the Conservatives. In the Stoke

by-election, Ukip's big chance, it failed to make any headway. Ukip

could have established itself as a working-class protest party to

displace Labour. But it didn't work. It is all over, I'm afraid. The

Sunday Times. This is quite a story, on the face of it. EU migrants keep

benefits after Brexit. Another Tory manifesto pledge at risk, says Tim

Shipman, the paper's little editor. What do you make of it? -- political

editor. It goes back to the negotiations David Cameron was

having before the referendum to try to renegotiate the terms. This is

about the payment of child benefits to EU citizens who are going to be

here after Brexit. That is a slightly different category of

people eke as those are people that the UK has decided, outside of the

freedom of movement of the EU... Because they will no longer have a

right to be here. Yes, those other people where we decided they may

live here. Therefore the question of where their child benefit goes to is

less important, I would suggest. I think that is right. It seems

perfectly reasonable that EU migrants who come here should have

the same rights. But I like that, another Tory manifesto pledge at

risk. Stir, stir, stir. Let's be honest. The Tory manifesto was in

2015. Since then there has been a referendum and we are leaving the

EU. I think the ground rules have changed. It is nothing like the next

manifesto pledge, in my humble opinion. We will take your word on

that. We will briefly note that the Sunday Telegraph is reporting that

Ukip is at war after Carswell quits the party. From what John says it

sounds like there was civil war before, during and after Carswell.

Some might say it goes back to the days of Alan scared, the leader who

was fighting his colleagues. -- Alan Sked. It is quite an achievement,

really, that the party has operated despite all these rivalries and

conflicts. It has an impressive record of local government victories

and European Parliament victories. I don't like to pay tribute to Nigel

Farage, but you have to say that as a 1-man band, his personality and

his television presence was enough to hold the party together

sufficiently. Boy, do they miss him now. Absolutely. I will pay tribute

to Nigel Farage. I think he has done a great job. Well, as a Brexit

supporter you would. Is that the first time you have been competitor

Mandy Rice Davies? Darling! Finally, a story that might not be a story at

all, Ruth? Exactly. Tell us about it anyway. This is Prince William's air

ambulance, or the one that he copilots. It does not say that he

was actually in it. Despite the fact they have put a photograph on him on

the front. William's helicopter split second from lethal drone

crash. He was probably at home changing nappies. That is almost

certainly true. Otherwise this would not be called exclusive... If

William himself had been a split second from a lethal drone crash, I

think the BBC might have already changed its bulletins by now. I

suspect there is slightly less to this story than meets the eye. Does

that happen a lot? Do journalists sometimes slightly write stories up

a bit more? Well, got to have something to put on the front page.

To have something to put the headlines. Indeed. That is

journalism. It certainly made us stop, look and read. Yes, full

marks. But we still haven't read the inside copy. We are desperate to

read the inside copy as well. You may have to wait. You might find one

in your home tonight, in the cabs, as you head back. Keep your eyes

peeled for a late-night vendor. What is on page four? We'll tell you

tomorrow when we review the papers in the morning. Why then we will

have a hard copies. Thank you to both of you. And forget, all the

front pages are online on the BBC News website, where you can get a

detailed review of the papers. It is all there for you, seven days a

week. And you can watch us there as well, if you really want to again,

with each night's edition of the papers posted on the page shortly

after we finish. Ruth, John, thank you for your company this evening. I

will be back tomorrow afternoon. Coming up next, The Film Review.