:00:03. > :00:13.documents. Paolo Gabriele admits he some of the letters to an Italian
:00:13. > :00:31.
:00:31. > :00:34.Britain's political conference season sees Labour's leader
:00:34. > :00:38.desperate to convince his party he can become prime minister but why
:00:39. > :00:42.has he been unable to convince the voters? How has Ireland managed to
:00:42. > :00:47.deal with austerity while Greece protest and Spain falls into more
:00:47. > :00:55.trouble? And despite the enormity of the issues at stake, is is
:00:55. > :01:00.becoming a forgettable American presidential election? My guests
:01:00. > :01:10.today are Greg Katz of Associated Press, Annalisa Piras of Italy's
:01:10. > :01:10.
:01:10. > :01:14.Expresso and Brian O'Connell, an Irish writer. Judging by the
:01:14. > :01:18.opinion polls, not many British people dressed Nick Clegg allotted
:01:18. > :01:24.but as the Labour Party begins this conference season, the big question
:01:24. > :01:28.is, Ed Miliband is an intelligent Labour leader but does he have the
:01:28. > :01:36.right set to become Prime Minister? If he has, would now be a good time
:01:36. > :01:43.to show it? It is early days. You have got to remember that two years
:01:43. > :01:47.before the last election, Gordon Brown was thought much more prime-
:01:47. > :01:51.ministerial than David Cameron. An awful lot can change between now
:01:51. > :01:57.and then. I think this Labour Party meets in better heart than you can
:01:57. > :02:01.possibly have imagined. Two years ago, this was a party on its knees.
:02:02. > :02:06.29 % in the polls. People said it will take to walk free elections to
:02:06. > :02:15.get back again. Now they are 10 or 12 points ahead. It is pretty
:02:15. > :02:20.astonishing. They have been voted the most confident -- competent on
:02:20. > :02:25.all kinds of things. But these are difficult days. Labour is going to
:02:25. > :02:31.have to produce tough answers for tough times. But you can't produce
:02:31. > :02:36.a budget now when every single forecast of where we would be now
:02:36. > :02:41.would have been wildly wrong two years ago. How much of it is,
:02:41. > :02:45.despite the fact politicians always say it is all about policies, it is
:02:45. > :02:50.largely about personalities. People form an opinion of somebody, they
:02:50. > :02:59.see them on television, and they figure, that David Cameron is a
:02:59. > :03:03.nice fellow. Ed Miliband has not done that. Does he have to do that?
:03:03. > :03:08.Is the analysis right that it is actually about this party? He is
:03:08. > :03:13.only a bit behind David Cameron. He was miles behind to start with. He
:03:13. > :03:18.has got a lot of recognition still to make. He has put on quite a lot
:03:18. > :03:22.of authority. But in the end, the choice will be David Cameron or Ed
:03:22. > :03:29.Miliband. How IT will David Cameron crash further in the next two-and-
:03:29. > :03:39.a-half years and how much can David -- Ed Miliband mover? It is to size
:03:39. > :03:42.
:03:42. > :03:47.of a coin. -- two sides of a coin. In general, over the last four
:03:47. > :03:57.years, they have thrown up leaders because we are not happy with the
:03:57. > :03:58.
:03:58. > :04:02.economy. In some ways, Ed Miliband, it is there for the taking. He is
:04:03. > :04:07.not a head on economic Competency. All the polls show they trust the
:04:08. > :04:16.Labour Party to look after the NHS, education and so on, but not on the
:04:16. > :04:19.economy, and that is the crucial thing. He has close the gap. If the
:04:19. > :04:22.good thing for Ed Miliband, who we are working in a fixed parliaments
:04:22. > :04:29.now and everybody knows when the next election is going to be. We
:04:29. > :04:34.are halfway through that now. But it is not enough to say, we have
:04:34. > :04:41.got a double-digit lead as a party, not Ed Miliband's personal polling,
:04:41. > :04:46.just because the other lot are really bad. If you say we need more
:04:46. > :04:50.growth and less cutting, how are you going to do that? They need to
:04:50. > :04:54.explain that in detail. The problem is, you want to keep your powder
:04:54. > :04:59.dry until closer to the next election, but because we know when
:04:59. > :05:03.the next election is an things are still tending at the moment, it is
:05:03. > :05:08.very difficult not to start coming up with credible alternatives now.
:05:08. > :05:14.I don't think anybody, we are not going to see a huge amount of that
:05:14. > :05:19.at this party conference, but I think he does need to move away
:05:19. > :05:24.from their theoretical stuff. He got slammed for pre- distribution
:05:24. > :05:30.and all this kind of stuff. I think there is a danger that people think,
:05:30. > :05:40.he does not really know what we are run out on this particular council
:05:40. > :05:42.
:05:42. > :05:47.estate. Does he have the time to do it? Does he have to introduce
:05:47. > :05:52.himself personally to the electorate? I think that is a big
:05:52. > :05:56.part of it. That is absolutely spot-on. Unfortunately, when things
:05:56. > :06:01.start getting worse in the economy and every indicator says that is
:06:01. > :06:05.the direction we are going, people will look at a strong leader. I am
:06:05. > :06:15.afraid, so far, from what I hear about what people make of Ed
:06:15. > :06:16.
:06:16. > :06:20.Miliband, I was actually thinking about his brother, a lot of people
:06:20. > :06:26.think Labour made a big mistake. When you look at leadership
:06:26. > :06:30.qualities, David Miliband had more. He was more charismatic, he had
:06:30. > :06:35.more leadership qualities that is so difficult to describe. I fear
:06:35. > :06:40.that what people see at the moment is a very nice personal -- person
:06:40. > :06:46.in Ed Miliband, he is competent, he knows his policies, but he's not
:06:46. > :06:50.the Great Leader we need in a moment of crisis. You could say, he
:06:50. > :06:57.must have a streak of ruthlessness somewhere, he took on his brother
:06:57. > :07:04.and defeated him against all the odds. But he's more of a shadow
:07:04. > :07:10.rather than a virtue, I think a lot of people will suspect he has been
:07:10. > :07:17.ruthless with his brother back he does not have what it takes to
:07:17. > :07:21.convince the outside world. In other words, he was very good at
:07:21. > :07:26.finding a consensus inside, but when it comes to convincing the
:07:26. > :07:32.wider public, he is not finding it easy. Do that is another
:07:32. > :07:41.interesting question. We do seem to have a political class in all
:07:41. > :07:47.parties. That can be quite a difficult sell for the public.
:07:47. > :07:51.watch him all the time from my guess on a gigantic screen and icy
:07:51. > :07:56.Ed Miliband time and again and I can't think -- can't help but think
:07:56. > :08:02.he is not rejecting much, he is not connecting much, he is not forceful.
:08:02. > :08:06.What he says is fine but he suffers from a little brother syndrome not
:08:06. > :08:13.just in relation to his big brother but also in the shadow of Tony
:08:13. > :08:23.Blair and Gordon Brown. He has not defined cool years. I think that is
:08:23. > :08:24.
:08:24. > :08:32.crucial. -- defined who he is. I don't sense the connection with the
:08:32. > :08:38.voters. David Cameron may have to find too much coolly is. Before the
:08:38. > :08:42.election, it was all wolf in sheep's clothing. Since the moment
:08:42. > :08:47.he came in, he has been axing everything, outsourcing everything,
:08:47. > :08:55.more Thatcherite than Margaret Thatcher, and moving on behalf of
:08:55. > :09:02.the rich. He has to find himself in a way that is dangerous for him. --
:09:02. > :09:12.defined himself. Does anybody understand what the big society is
:09:12. > :09:15.
:09:15. > :09:24.yet? Redistribution is a terrible word but if they can find a way to
:09:24. > :09:28.express its, they could do well. Should we make sure that employers
:09:28. > :09:33.pay fair wages so the taxpayer does not have to do that? They should be
:09:33. > :09:40.a better way to say that. problem is that party, this is now
:09:40. > :09:44.have less debate and they are more about the leader. Tony Blair was a
:09:44. > :09:50.past master at this. I think it is going to be difficult for Ed
:09:50. > :09:54.Miliband because of the fact that nobody really cares, outside that
:09:54. > :10:00.conference hall, about the union block vote. It is going to be all
:10:01. > :10:06.about the leader. If he does not have that personality, it is not
:10:06. > :10:12.going to be great. The All people see his three clicks on the news,
:10:12. > :10:18.we watch the whole thing. street protests increase this week,
:10:18. > :10:23.more details revealed on the problems of Spanish banks, plus the
:10:23. > :10:32.news that Italy's best-known comedy genius, Silvio Berlusconi, might
:10:32. > :10:40.make a comeback. As the European macro -- as the eurozone struggles,
:10:40. > :10:50.Ireland shows that they can deal with austerity of relatively calmly.
:10:50. > :10:53.
:10:53. > :10:57.They are getting on with it. more cynical would say most young
:10:57. > :11:03.people have already left the country or are planning on leaving.
:11:03. > :11:08.The unemployment rate in Ireland is around 14 %. Youth unemployment is
:11:08. > :11:16.comedy about 30 %. But you have got to add on to that all the people
:11:16. > :11:19.who were leaving. It is not as bad as it was during the worst time off
:11:20. > :11:26.immigration but it is pretty bad and so they are being taken out of
:11:26. > :11:30.the equation. What you are left with is still a mess. The
:11:30. > :11:37.similarity with Spain is that Ireland's sovereign debt and its
:11:37. > :11:42.banking crisis are welded together. Until that can be separated, it is
:11:42. > :11:48.very difficult to get on with it. Spain is a proportionately much
:11:48. > :11:56.bigger problem and it now has the European stability mechanism.
:11:56. > :11:59.Ireland is hoping it will get some help on funding its bank debt
:11:59. > :12:04.separately from its sovereign debt but it seems to be pushed further
:12:05. > :12:08.down the back -- pipeline. Is there are cultural stoicism in Ireland
:12:08. > :12:13.about this? One of the big books that people are buying in Dublin is
:12:13. > :12:22.about the famine and you open it and you weep. Is there something
:12:22. > :12:30.about that? Does it mean Ireland is more resilient? I don't think they
:12:30. > :12:35.are more resilient. There is a lot of anger in Ireland. But I think,
:12:35. > :12:43.maybe, it happened to us slightly earlier than it did to Spain and
:12:43. > :12:46.because we were riding high on this Celtic Tiger and because the
:12:46. > :12:56.minister for finance at the time guarantee the Irish Banks and
:12:56. > :12:58.
:12:59. > :13:04.stepped in, we all knew what was coming far earlier. We have
:13:04. > :13:08.probably been dealing with it for a lot longer. The problem is, we are
:13:08. > :13:14.getting to the point where, if Ireland can't get back into the
:13:14. > :13:18.bond market, you have got this spectre of a settlement bail-out.
:13:18. > :13:28.We have worked our way through the programme and the cliche is we are
:13:28. > :13:31.
:13:31. > :13:36.the poster boys of austerity. We are doing everything right. But it
:13:36. > :13:45.is still tough and we are getting tougher. A lot of people are very
:13:45. > :13:53.worried about the Budget. Given that it is hardly a democratic
:13:53. > :13:56.situation. It is very often misunderstood abroad because there
:13:56. > :14:03.is a high level of popular consensus and the majority of
:14:03. > :14:08.people think we were better off under Silvio Berlusconi. You have
:14:09. > :14:11.got to be careful. There is quite a widespread optimism for what is
:14:12. > :14:16.being done but there is a lot of uncertainty on what is going to
:14:16. > :14:20.happen at the next election because there is a popular kind of anger
:14:20. > :14:26.which is mounting and it is resulting in expressions of
:14:26. > :14:30.populism on the internet. There is this new party coming out of
:14:30. > :14:40.nowhere that is forecast to have something like 20 % of the vote.
:14:40. > :14:45.
:14:45. > :14:49.Yes, but they are looking for a kind of very low-level protest vote.
:14:49. > :14:55.But the thing is, we should be careful, because what is happening
:14:55. > :14:59.in Europe, in my view, and in the view of a certain senior analyst
:15:00. > :15:04.that I have heard speaking recently, is that they are missing the point,
:15:04. > :15:10.because we are looking at it country-by-country, and we are
:15:10. > :15:13.losing the big picture. The systemic picture is that we're
:15:13. > :15:18.going from one crisis to another, because we are not looking at the
:15:18. > :15:23.structural problem. The structural problem is that Europe needs to
:15:23. > :15:27.rebalance its economies from north to south. We need to look at
:15:27. > :15:34.Germany and say, we are all in this together, either we sort it out, or
:15:34. > :15:38.we're going to go from bad to worse. And also, you do not hear this
:15:38. > :15:44.addressed in British politics. You hear David Cameron saying, we're
:15:44. > :15:50.going to opt out of a whole load of things, just to keep his
:15:50. > :15:54.backbenchers happy. But because the eurozone is hugely important to
:15:54. > :16:00.British trade and everything, it should be up there more, but you do
:16:00. > :16:04.not really hear it so much. You do hear people speaking now about
:16:04. > :16:07.alliances with the French leader. David Cameron gave him the cold
:16:07. > :16:10.shoulder anyway before the election. There is a sense that there is a
:16:10. > :16:16.bigger story to tell, which is looking at how history will look
:16:16. > :16:21.back at this period - they will say, Europe went mad, the austerity was
:16:21. > :16:27.insane. They will take the view and say, they learnt nothing from the
:16:27. > :16:31.1930s, they fell apart. It is a great deal of pressure to put on
:16:31. > :16:36.Angela Merkel and Germany, but as you say, in the end, the Germans
:16:36. > :16:40.decided not to take responsibility. But this should be the debate in
:16:40. > :16:46.every single country in Europe, we should talk about, where are we
:16:46. > :16:50.going? Sadly, Britain has counted itself out, we will gets lessons to
:16:50. > :16:56.other people, but we will not take them ourselves. -- we will give
:16:56. > :17:02.lessons. But history will also look back at this period and say, there
:17:02. > :17:07.was no leadership, nothing, a complete vacuum. 12 people getting
:17:07. > :17:11.together and reaching a consensus. But that's fundamental to the
:17:11. > :17:16.project, isn't it? What you were suggesting is that there should be
:17:16. > :17:25.an agreement on a way forward, and that nation states should act
:17:25. > :17:29.collectively, but they are acting as nation states. Why is that? The
:17:29. > :17:34.leaders are thinking about their voters, and saying, the voters
:17:34. > :17:39.would never understand this, if we spoke about the long-term, 10 years
:17:39. > :17:43.hence, they are thinking about the protests next week. They are
:17:43. > :17:48.underestimating the intelligence of the European citizens. If Angela
:17:48. > :17:52.Merkel could speak to the German citizens and say, look, guys, your
:17:52. > :17:56.future is linked to the rest of Europe, so you have got to accept
:17:57. > :18:00.solidarity, because if you do not, we will be worse off. Germany
:18:00. > :18:05.itself is about to go into recession, according to reports.
:18:05. > :18:10.She needed to say to her people, this is not just about lazy Greeks
:18:10. > :18:15.or lazy Italians, disgraceful things which have been said, this
:18:15. > :18:19.is about, we cannot export, our exports are shrinking because of
:18:19. > :18:25.what has happened to the rest of Europe. The structural reforms are
:18:25. > :18:30.not happening fast enough. The European Central Bank has to
:18:30. > :18:35.oversee banking union, but it is happening so slowly. Spain is
:18:35. > :18:39.almost certainly going to be requesting a bail-out. Yes, and it
:18:39. > :18:44.is a problem of leader's thinking strategically, not tactically. It
:18:44. > :18:48.is a problem of the media saying, the debate is this, not this. It is
:18:48. > :18:55.the awareness of what is the real issue in Europe, instead of running
:18:55. > :18:59.after how many billions are needed for Spain, how many for Greece.
:18:59. > :19:09.is unlucky that this has happened when Europe has the weakest
:19:09. > :19:15.
:19:15. > :19:20.leadership, I think, for many years. This American presidential election
:19:20. > :19:23.has fallen into the pattern we have come to expect in a nation which is
:19:23. > :19:33.divided politically more or less down the middle. It is a 50-50
:19:33. > :19:34.
:19:34. > :19:39.contest, more or less. Why is Mitt Romney struggling to get anywhere?
:19:39. > :19:41.Are Americans are engaged in this election? I just came back, I was
:19:41. > :19:47.in the States for the conventions, and there is not that much
:19:47. > :19:53.excitement. There is anger and fury on both sides, tremendous hatred
:19:53. > :19:57.and demonisation of the other side. But there is not the great
:19:57. > :20:03.excitement that there often is, and I have been trying to understand
:20:03. > :20:07.why. It just seems to me that it comes down to people saying the
:20:07. > :20:11.other side is terrible, the other side is going to cut off all our
:20:11. > :20:18.rights, do this, do that, but it does not seem to have caught
:20:18. > :20:22.people's imagination. People are very unhappy with Obama. People
:20:22. > :20:27.find Mitt Romney a cardboard figure, easy to throw stones at. There is
:20:27. > :20:33.just not much debate. I think it will change this week, with the
:20:33. > :20:36.start of the presidential debates. His part of it actually some kind
:20:36. > :20:40.of commonsense from the American people, which is, these issues are
:20:40. > :20:50.really difficult, and there is a problem in Washington whoever gets
:20:50. > :20:53.
:20:53. > :20:59.elected? In other words, Americans will just get on with it and do the
:20:59. > :21:03.best for their families? Yes, I'm afraid that is the case. I'm afraid
:21:03. > :21:08.Obama came in on this tremendous wave of hope, or at least that was
:21:08. > :21:12.his slogan, and he has managed well, he has been scandal free, the
:21:12. > :21:16.economy has grown a bit, but he has not caught lighting in a bottle and
:21:16. > :21:20.turned people. So, there is this sense that it does not matter that
:21:20. > :21:30.much. It is sad because usually I find these elections really
:21:30. > :21:32.
:21:32. > :21:35.exciting. Is the divide deeper than ever before? It is more nasty. The
:21:35. > :21:40.Republicans needed a candidate who was going to appeal to the centre,
:21:40. > :21:43.at least 5% in the centre, and I thought Mitt Romney was well
:21:43. > :21:49.positioned to do that, but he has not had a good plan to find these
:21:49. > :21:54.people. Saying that 47% of people are welfare scroungers does not
:21:54. > :21:59.leave a lot of people in the middle! Well, it does leave that
:21:59. > :22:05.5%! It does leave the swing voters, but it was probably not the wisest
:22:06. > :22:10.thing to say. But what do you make of it? I have spent a lot of time
:22:10. > :22:16.in American campaigns, and usually, they really fire the imagination,
:22:16. > :22:20.with big thoughts, big ideas, something to think about what an
:22:20. > :22:25.amazing country this is for producing ideas... It is probably
:22:25. > :22:29.because it is about the economy, and nobody has any answers. Also,
:22:29. > :22:33.if you look at the line-up of the candidates on the Republican side,
:22:33. > :22:37.in the primaries, it was pretty thin. So, Mitt Romney is a
:22:37. > :22:41.cardboard figure, that may be here's the best of a bad lot. I was
:22:41. > :22:45.surprised. I think what has been interesting about the economic
:22:45. > :22:50.debate, particularly from a European perspective, is that we
:22:50. > :22:54.have seen Obama, insofar as he has been allowed to, injecting more
:22:54. > :22:59.stimulus, and it worked better than here. Americans are grumbling about
:22:59. > :23:04.low growth, we're talking about no growth, negative growth. We have
:23:04. > :23:08.seen that actually, if Obama had had a freer hand, it probably would
:23:08. > :23:12.have been even better. He has not been able to be Roosevelt, because
:23:12. > :23:15.he has been restrained by the insane American constitution.
:23:15. > :23:19.debate is also about the deterioration of the level of the
:23:19. > :23:29.public debate, which is one consequence of Technology, which
:23:29. > :23:32.should worry us, because we all belong to a moment in time in which
:23:32. > :23:39.the new media revolution has lowered the level of debate so much,
:23:39. > :23:42.and it has become so fractured and so reduced to sound bites or
:23:42. > :23:47.fragments of conversation. If you think that today, we face an
:23:47. > :23:51.historic moment, which is extraordinary, because America has
:23:51. > :23:54.lost its primacy in international trade, it is not any more the power
:23:54. > :24:01.that it was, we have got another part of the world which is rising
:24:01. > :24:05.at a phenomenal speed, this should be one subject of conversation.
:24:05. > :24:12.What are our leaders doing about these historic terms? And who is
:24:12. > :24:18.talking about that? I want to give you a chance to rebut this slur on
:24:18. > :24:22.the American constitution. What is so insane about the constitution?
:24:22. > :24:26.Well, because you have is huge emphasis on the presidential
:24:26. > :24:29.election, everything is geared to that, and then you elect a
:24:29. > :24:36.president who does not have enough power, he cannot actually do what
:24:36. > :24:40.he said he would do! I would agree that the foreign policy of Obama in
:24:40. > :24:44.many ways it represents the foreign policy of George W Bush. There is a
:24:44. > :24:48.lot more continuity than I expected. I would have expected after four
:24:48. > :24:52.years to say, this is how he has put his imprint on foreign affairs,
:24:52. > :24:56.and I do not see that. But in terms of the stimulus that you mentioned,
:24:56. > :25:00.if you think back to the weeks before his inauguration, he said,
:25:00. > :25:05.this is what I'm going to do, I am going to pursue this policy, and he
:25:05. > :25:09.has done it in a limited way, with his hands tied. I think he has been
:25:09. > :25:12.consistent, I think he has been maligned. I think he has done
:25:12. > :25:15.pretty well in the circumstances. But if you think of how much
:25:15. > :25:20.stronger his health care plans would have been, and his stimulus,
:25:20. > :25:24.both of which he got elected on - you get elected, and at the same
:25:25. > :25:28.time the constitution allows people to elect someone to stop him. So,
:25:28. > :25:32.either presidential elections should be much more low-key, just
:25:32. > :25:34.one part of the constitution, instead of investing this whole
:25:35. > :25:38.sense of nationhood in an event which does not lead to that