:00:05. > :00:15.relatives to die. There will be a full news bulletin at 1.00pm. Now
:00:15. > :00:26.
:00:26. > :00:32.it's time for Dateline London, live Hello and welcome to Dateline
:00:32. > :00:35.London. Barack Obama fights for the presidency.
:00:35. > :00:37.The British Cabinet reshuffled - can it revive the Coalition
:00:37. > :00:42.government? And more refugees pour out of Syria.
:00:42. > :00:45.My guests today are: Michael Goldfarb of Globalpost.com. Nesrine
:00:45. > :00:51.Malik, a London based writer on Arab Affairs. Polly Toynbee of the
:00:51. > :00:54.Guardian. Marc Roche of Le Monde. The American presidential election
:00:54. > :00:57.campaign has kicked into life with President Obama making clear he
:00:57. > :00:59.expects it to be a fight to the finish with the Republican
:00:59. > :01:03.challenger, Mitt Romney. What does Obama have to do to convince
:01:03. > :01:13.Americans to give him four more years? And what does Romney have to
:01:13. > :01:16.
:01:16. > :01:21.do to stop him? The data breach from Barack Obama, or were there
:01:21. > :01:26.some elements of I have got some things wrong in that speech? There
:01:26. > :01:32.is a tight filter around all reality, and at the time it filters
:01:32. > :01:38.through cable news, it is almost impossible to figure out in advance
:01:38. > :01:42.what American people think of this. The Republicans are very good at
:01:42. > :01:49.painting the Democrats into a corner. They are very aggressive
:01:49. > :01:57.and hostile in their network of media, whether it is advertising or
:01:57. > :02:05.free-speech propaganda. They said that he failed to deliver on his
:02:05. > :02:12.promise of heat -- hoping change. Every speaker at the Republican
:02:12. > :02:19.conference said, we're really sorry, but due field. Barack Obama acted
:02:19. > :02:27.like a man chastened. He gave a pretty decent speech. He was sadder,
:02:27. > :02:33.wiser, but projected that he was not bowed. The last two and a half
:02:33. > :02:39.minutes was crowd-pleasing. He had a lot to do in his 40 minutes. He
:02:39. > :02:45.gave some domestic ideas, avoided talking about health care. This
:02:45. > :02:50.gets to the American people fired 32nd clips on YouTube. He is
:02:50. > :02:56.fighting on the republican battle ground in a way as they have
:02:56. > :03:01.painted them into that corner. Karl Rove said the fundraisers, don't
:03:01. > :03:08.attack him in a nasty way, say you are sorry, because the people we
:03:08. > :03:16.need to convince other people who voted for him. One of the keys in
:03:16. > :03:20.this election is that America is very divided. I was there during
:03:20. > :03:27.their Republican National Convention. The country is deeply
:03:27. > :03:32.divided. It is very unhappy as a society. What we have learnt this
:03:32. > :03:38.year is that there aren't that many undecided voters. In a sense,
:03:38. > :03:43.Barack Obama had a free shot. He wasn't going to convince any
:03:43. > :03:50.Republicans that he should be given another four years. There aren't
:03:50. > :03:55.that many undecided voters. More importantly, the peculiar
:03:55. > :04:00.arithmetic of American presidential elections lies in the electoral
:04:00. > :04:04.college. There were six states where few are undecided you will
:04:04. > :04:14.receive a lot of attention. This is a very small amount of the
:04:14. > :04:16.
:04:16. > :04:21.electorate. From being on the outside, what do we think of this?
:04:21. > :04:28.Even though you say America is quite at bleak place and quite
:04:28. > :04:34.divided, all over the past week during two conventions we have been
:04:34. > :04:40.quite inspired by it. There is lots of soaring rhetoric, Bill Clinton
:04:40. > :04:44.was amazing, Michelle Palmer rallied the troops. There are two
:04:44. > :04:51.impressions of what is happening there at the moment. The way you
:04:51. > :04:59.yes politics plays out, that big NFL style convention politics is
:04:59. > :05:05.quite attractive and sexy to Europeans. On the other hand, I
:05:05. > :05:10.think that on the outside people are just thinking those are two
:05:10. > :05:15.incredibly different candidates and the incumbent seems to be the one
:05:15. > :05:19.who has to lose it as a poster Mitt Romney winning it. Would you agree
:05:19. > :05:26.that in Britain and people around the world, they consistently failed
:05:27. > :05:32.to get were people like Mitt Romney or George Bush are coming from?
:05:32. > :05:38.There was a degree of condescension about Ronald Reagan, it is
:05:38. > :05:44.important to understand why America is a 50-50 nation, and we don't do
:05:44. > :05:52.that? You are right. When Mitt Romney visited the UK before the
:05:52. > :05:59.Olympics, he was made fun of. He does represent a huge amount of
:05:59. > :06:04.American mainstream opinion. There is this kind of British idea to not
:06:04. > :06:07.dismiss it but try to understand why place at the way it does.
:06:07. > :06:12.thought the American Democratic convention was great. I thought
:06:12. > :06:21.Barack Obama a was pretty good. He couldn't do the hope than changed
:06:21. > :06:25.thing again. What surprised me is that we didn't come back and wallop
:06:25. > :06:30.back harder at the incredible mendacity of the Mitt Romney
:06:30. > :06:34.strategy of saying, we hope you would do well, when they are the
:06:34. > :06:42.reason why everything has been blocked. There would be a much
:06:42. > :06:49.bigger stimulus package. The Barack Obama stimulus package has shown
:06:49. > :06:54.that it worked. He would have had a much bigger stimulus package had
:06:54. > :07:00.all of that right wing not prevented its. I think they took it
:07:00. > :07:07.on the chin too much and should have said, it is your fault. What
:07:07. > :07:13.the French people make of it? Do you subscribe to the view that it
:07:13. > :07:23.is a great show, very important, but there are some American
:07:23. > :07:23.
:07:23. > :07:30.candidates the Europeans don't get? The French don't came -- and don't
:07:30. > :07:38.get Mitt Romney. What we have forgotten is the economy. Barack
:07:38. > :07:47.Obama has not delivered. 10 guys there as the secretary of the
:07:47. > :07:55.Treasury. They have not done a good job on thanks to -- on the banks.
:07:55. > :08:00.They could have broken the muffin 2009. They are lending less and
:08:00. > :08:10.less. There is a feeling that Mitt Romney will be better for the
:08:10. > :08:19.
:08:19. > :08:29.economy. He is a businessman. He is low-tax. For a lot of Americans,
:08:29. > :08:30.
:08:30. > :08:40.they don't want that. They don't want tax, I mean. The Democrats
:08:40. > :08:42.
:08:42. > :08:49.have this image of not being good and the economy. The you except
:08:49. > :08:55.that, that is the reason why a things a 50-50 at the moment?
:08:55. > :08:59.think there is too much, at the general American public, I think
:08:59. > :09:09.you're giving them too much credit for sophisticated economic
:09:09. > :09:09.
:09:09. > :09:15.knowledge. We get used to war has been the epoch markers. A big
:09:15. > :09:20.market was the election of Ronald Reagan. The first Budget Director
:09:20. > :09:27.for Ronald Reagan has recanted bit insane idea of trickle-down
:09:27. > :09:34.economics. To quote Ronald Reagan, I want to get big government off
:09:34. > :09:40.your backs, to let you do what you do best. Americans have no sense of
:09:40. > :09:46.irony, so there is no sense of outrage at hypocrisy. When Barack
:09:47. > :09:56.Obama said he didn't do it by yourself because the Government
:09:56. > :10:00.made its, everybody in America is on the state's teat, and they don't
:10:00. > :10:07.want to have to pay for somebody else's teach, but they like their
:10:07. > :10:15.teat. California is virtually bankrupt. It could possibly need a
:10:15. > :10:21.bail-out of up to $78 billion. They give a quarter of a trillion
:10:22. > :10:31.dollars worth of defence contracts in California. It is the federal
:10:32. > :10:33.
:10:33. > :10:43.government that makes the country work. Why can't they get that
:10:43. > :10:46.
:10:46. > :10:52.through? You would have thought that high now they would fight.
:10:52. > :11:00.They have much better researchers than the Republicans do and their
:11:00. > :11:08.focus groups tell them they don't like and the Democrats fightback.
:11:08. > :11:15.No an incumbent President when the it economy is bad. He will be
:11:15. > :11:21.defeated on the economy. Mitt Romney will probably gets 49 % of
:11:21. > :11:27.the votes. There are only two percentage points in it. The
:11:27. > :11:31.electoral college, the way it is, Barack Obama would win quite easily.
:11:31. > :11:39.The same at the economy. If you look at the numbers, the
:11:39. > :11:44.unemployment rate came down. But in many pockets of the country the
:11:44. > :11:54.economy is doing incredibly well. If you go to Silicon Valley, there
:11:54. > :11:56.
:11:56. > :12:04.is no sense that the world as in any trouble. In all these places
:12:04. > :12:10.that you are doing well, they vote Republican. I want to answer the
:12:10. > :12:18.question from Gavin. All the reason and logic about the economy, in the
:12:18. > :12:25.end for many people who will cast their votes, this is a question
:12:25. > :12:34.about Barack Obama and his race. After eight years in public life,
:12:35. > :12:42.there are still many in America who see this as being about race.
:12:42. > :12:52.America it and it's great crucible of society is how it relates to
:12:52. > :12:53.
:12:53. > :13:01.different races. He was elected by a landslide a few years ago. They
:13:01. > :13:04.would have voted against him last time. In this country, there will
:13:04. > :13:13.be 32 % of people who are conservative and you can forget
:13:13. > :13:16.about them. That is a brilliant segue into our next section! This
:13:16. > :13:19.was billed as the week when David Cameron's government would be
:13:19. > :13:29.refreshed by a huge reshuffle. It has been reshuffled. Is it now
:13:29. > :13:29.
:13:29. > :13:34.refreshed? I know that you will say you are not impressed. Only on the
:13:35. > :13:41.rare occasions when reshuffles are designed to change policy, but this
:13:41. > :13:51.was in no change reshuffle and very few of the top jobs changed. To
:13:51. > :14:01.move Jeremy Hunt from culture, were he was much discredited, over two
:14:01. > :14:01.
:14:02. > :14:06.Health Which fees the second most toxic issue for this Government, it
:14:06. > :14:09.commercialising large chunks of its, he is not the grey man to sell that.
:14:10. > :14:15.To put into the environment somebody who is a climate change
:14:15. > :14:23.denier and doesn't believe in windfarms. Even the Financial Times
:14:23. > :14:26.headline said this is a right shift. That is how it was seen. It was
:14:26. > :14:31.gratifying the backbenchers. The only thing that matters was George
:14:31. > :14:36.Osborne. If he had moved him and said the economy has been a
:14:36. > :14:42.disaster, we have done exactly what was then in the 1930s and we are
:14:42. > :14:49.now increasing at the national debt, spending it all on wasteful
:14:49. > :14:53.unemployment instead of investing and cutting even more, all of which
:14:53. > :15:03.has cost economic mayhem. That would have been a reshuffle to
:15:03. > :15:07.
:15:07. > :15:11.Do you see any sense that this was refreshing the government, or
:15:11. > :15:16.because there was no change in economic policy that we can
:15:16. > :15:20.discern...? I think in any reshuffle where the top jobs remain
:15:20. > :15:29.is not significant in terms of policy. But it is a shift to the
:15:29. > :15:35.right. It is a significant fact that this is not one Lib Dem figure
:15:35. > :15:42.left dealing with Trident, so that has been locked down in terms of
:15:42. > :15:46.the Tory party. Jeremy Hunt is not best placed to run the NHS, which
:15:46. > :15:51.is an understatement, he thinks contraception as witchcraft, it is
:15:51. > :15:59.completely ridiculous that he is there. Women have not done very
:15:59. > :16:04.well. It is interesting that David Cameron wanted to present and new,
:16:04. > :16:08.modern view of the Tory party, with women, ethnic women, but now he is
:16:08. > :16:12.kind of saying, we tried that and it did not work, so we're going to
:16:12. > :16:18.Batten down the hatches and go back to being the good old fashioned
:16:18. > :16:28.Tory party and dispense with all did media friendly positions. --
:16:28. > :16:30.
:16:30. > :16:33.the media for in the positions. you think it matters? People at
:16:33. > :16:43.home have different issues, such as the banks failing, and keeping
:16:43. > :16:48.their own jobs. Reshuffles, I have been living here 27 years, and been
:16:48. > :16:53.through all of them, and they make no impact on me. I do not
:16:53. > :17:00.understand the media obsession because unless you are moving the
:17:00. > :17:07.top person out of the Treasury, signalling a change of economic
:17:07. > :17:17.policy, I do not see what it can do. It is interesting to me, as someone
:17:17. > :17:21.
:17:21. > :17:24.who follows politics, to go back to the elections in May. The far right
:17:24. > :17:28.have written of the coalition in their minds. They would like
:17:28. > :17:32.nothing more than an early break-up of the parliament and assume they
:17:32. > :17:39.would be able to govern as a minority government, and that is
:17:39. > :17:46.just a continuation of this. One does not know David Cameron except
:17:46. > :17:52.to say that he asked, his Jeremy Hunt one of us? Can someone who
:17:52. > :18:02.went to Oxford at the same time as David Cameron went through, so he
:18:02. > :18:02.
:18:02. > :18:06.is one of us. He was given... The should not have given him health,
:18:06. > :18:14.because it was a litmus test that they had failed so far. But it
:18:14. > :18:18.doesn't matter, he is one of us. I do not know where these things come
:18:18. > :18:25.from about him being a great communicator. I do not see where it
:18:25. > :18:31.comes from. He seems a kind of silly DI. People out of the country
:18:31. > :18:34.look at him and possibly even diehard Tory reporters out in the
:18:35. > :18:39.countryside look at Jeremy Hunt, and I am not sure that they see a
:18:39. > :18:47.man of substance. What do you make of this Sunday OPs it -- the
:18:47. > :18:51.opportunities or otherwise for the Labour Party in this? One of the
:18:51. > :18:54.interesting questions, if you look at opinion polls is that Labour
:18:54. > :18:58.Party are not streets ahead, Ed Miliband has not sealed the deal
:18:58. > :19:07.with the British people, and a lot of the British people still do not
:19:07. > :19:12.know who years or what Labour Party stands for. While the eurozone is
:19:12. > :19:19.putting its affairs in order sloper, the British economy is doing worse
:19:19. > :19:29.and worse, and none of the two big parties have any solution to get it
:19:29. > :19:35.out. The Labour Party which should be spending well and spending on
:19:35. > :19:42.infrastructure and Heathrow and the extension, spending on railways, is
:19:42. > :19:50.divided again, especially the top job, which is the leader and the
:19:50. > :19:56.Chancellor, the shadow chancellor at odds for personal reasons. More
:19:56. > :20:02.than anything, the economy is again doing badly. So if it comes to
:20:02. > :20:06.polls, that Labour does not have another solution, it won't matter.
:20:06. > :20:12.We're coming up to the Labour Party conference. There was an
:20:12. > :20:17.interesting conference this week of Labour Party thinkers, and I think
:20:17. > :20:22.that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are very united, and if you look at the
:20:22. > :20:26.disunity in the other party, Labour is the most united, more united
:20:26. > :20:35.than it has been for most of my lifetime. And I also think that the
:20:35. > :20:41.image of the Tory party and a coalition government are
:20:41. > :20:49.incompetent. There has been this impression of incompetence, and a
:20:49. > :20:53.shambles. At this time, I think the reshuffle is David Cameron's way of
:20:53. > :21:00.saying, and have of this, we're going to try to be competent and
:21:00. > :21:04.deliver results, and lose the stigma of waffling and coming up
:21:04. > :21:08.with stones and -- slogans and not really delivering. It is time for
:21:08. > :21:12.the Labour Party to capitalise. am glad you said incompetence
:21:12. > :21:21.because I have a bit coming out next week called dogma and disarray,
:21:21. > :21:25.Cameron at half-time. And you! is about exact with that, they are
:21:25. > :21:28.more dogmatic than people realise. Cameron was so good before the
:21:28. > :21:33.election have been green, family- friendly, women-friendly, but all
:21:33. > :21:37.of that has blown away. Not altogether surprising, but what is
:21:37. > :21:44.surprising to me is that the Etonians bred for government have
:21:44. > :21:47.turned out to be so inept. They do not know how to pull the levers of
:21:47. > :21:57.power make their policies work. The only thing that. Them in their
:21:57. > :22:06.
:22:06. > :22:09.tracks from doing the ideological cutting to shreds policy...
:22:09. > :22:13.France, President Hollande was elected because people wanted
:22:13. > :22:16.anything except Nicolas Sarkozy, and 80 think the same thing will
:22:16. > :22:22.happen here. I want to move on now. We have seen
:22:22. > :22:31.his wave of refugees and the deaths of people trying to escape from
:22:32. > :22:36.North Africa and I just wonder what you think if anything can be done
:22:36. > :22:41.now? It seems as if we are spectators in this catastrophe.
:22:41. > :22:46.Syrian conflict has now become a struggle for the Arab future,
:22:46. > :22:51.really. So many things are conflicting and coming to a head.
:22:51. > :22:59.But there has been a glimmer of hope last week when Mohamed Morsi,
:22:59. > :23:09.the Egyptian president, proposed an Arab/Iran, Turkey agreement to get
:23:09. > :23:10.
:23:10. > :23:16.sponsored negotiation for a peaceful transition of power. Iran
:23:16. > :23:20.is beginning to understand it has alienated itself from the Sunni
:23:20. > :23:27.majority that may be in power were soon. Turkey is very eager to stem
:23:27. > :23:37.the flow of refugees, and probably to stem the activities of Kurdish
:23:37. > :23:42.
:23:42. > :23:47.And so, that is a promising move, however, having said that, it is
:23:47. > :23:51.incredibly difficult because the Free Syrian Army and those who
:23:51. > :23:59.support the Government are very entrenched. There are people who
:23:59. > :24:08.genuinely support President Assad, now toff -- not out of love for
:24:08. > :24:16.support but out of fear. There is a vacuum that people are facing after
:24:16. > :24:21.Bashar al-Assad's regime collapses eventually. Because the Arab world
:24:21. > :24:26.has been stuck for decades, years of artificial political dynamics
:24:26. > :24:31.sponsored by proxy governments over the Middle East. Israel has been a
:24:31. > :24:36.problem, and the US supporting dictatorships in North Africa. It
:24:36. > :24:40.is the politics of decades coming home to roost. Is this the moment
:24:40. > :24:45.where Turkey comes into his own, there it is getting richer and
:24:45. > :24:53.richer, the linchpin. Isn't it time for them to step in and be the
:24:53. > :24:57.power that it ought to be? But that is not very easy, is the? Turkey
:24:57. > :25:00.has been cold and over the past few months. The visit of the Turkish
:25:00. > :25:05.head of state to Cairo post the revolution, he was met with huge
:25:05. > :25:12.support because he was seen as the way forward, as this perfect
:25:13. > :25:18.iteration, the epitome of conservatism and paying respects,
:25:18. > :25:23.and democratic. And not the army. Exactly. Turkey has a lot more
:25:23. > :25:27.credibility than it previously did. Especially in Europe, they cannot
:25:27. > :25:35.go in, and they turned to the Arab world which saw off the problem of
:25:35. > :25:39.Europe. France did not want them in, and Germany.