:00:00. > :00:00.died in the bombing. There's a full bulliten of news at
:00:00. > :00:21.the top of the hour. Now on BBC News, Dateline London.
:00:22. > :00:26.Hello, and welcome to Dateline London. Breaking up Britain's banks,
:00:27. > :00:31.the woes of France and President Hollande, and another chance for
:00:32. > :00:34.peace in Syria. My guests today are Owen Jones of
:00:35. > :00:36.the Independent, Michael Goldfarb of Globalpost, Agnes Poirier of
:00:37. > :00:45.France's Marianne and Mustapha Karkouti of Gulf News. Very good to
:00:46. > :00:48.see you. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband,
:00:49. > :00:51.proposed this week to break up Britain's banks and to make sure
:00:52. > :00:54.bankers' bonuses are kept in check. It comes after his announcement that
:00:55. > :00:56.a future Labour government would cap energy prices and after the
:00:57. > :00:59.Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested a rise in the
:01:00. > :01:02.minimum wage. Is the underlying theme that the years of politicians
:01:03. > :01:05.claiming that you can't buck the market are now at an end with more
:01:06. > :01:19.regulation, more state interference in markets, wages and prices?
:01:20. > :01:22.It is an area in which Ed Miliband has some political traction but do
:01:23. > :01:26.you see the big picture here? This is a big change in the way that
:01:27. > :01:31.politicians are thinking because of the recession. There is a sense when
:01:32. > :01:36.the financial crisis erupted in 2008 that this would herald a rebirth for
:01:37. > :01:40.ideas traditionally associated with the left and neoliberalism had
:01:41. > :01:45.proved itself discredited and a new alternative would emerge. That did
:01:46. > :01:50.not actually happen in the first few years and that goes back to what
:01:51. > :01:55.Milton Friedman once said, you need a crisis to get real change, but it
:01:56. > :02:00.depends what ideas are lying around. The intellectual cupboard of
:02:01. > :02:05.the left in Britain and right across Europe was pretty barren. It was to
:02:06. > :02:11.deal with the catastrophic defeat that it had suffered over the last
:02:12. > :02:17.few years. The new Right, as it was known and remains no, its was
:02:18. > :02:21.bubbling around like it had never happened perversely, what should
:02:22. > :02:24.have been a absolute catastrophe for neoliberalism became one of its
:02:25. > :02:28.greatest ever opportunities and we have seen under this government cuts
:02:29. > :02:33.that Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamt of and we have seen
:02:34. > :02:35.privatisation going into the heart of the National Health Service that
:02:36. > :02:39.Margaret Thatcher would never have dreamt of doing and are rolling back
:02:40. > :02:43.of the state which originally the Conservatives were very keen to say
:02:44. > :02:47.that it was not their aim but now they are so emboldened that they can
:02:48. > :02:56.now say a leaner state is their objective. We have also seen
:02:57. > :03:00.conservative lenders -- Conservative leaders saying payday lending should
:03:01. > :03:05.cap rates and they should cap bankers bonuses and also there is
:03:06. > :03:09.talk of the minimum wage this week so there is more interference on the
:03:10. > :03:14.right in mechanisms than there was before. On some of those sort of
:03:15. > :03:20.issues. To put the minimum wage into context, in real terms it has been
:03:21. > :03:24.falling for years. It was introduced in the face of Conservative
:03:25. > :03:27.opposition and it has been falling for years now so George Osborne is
:03:28. > :03:34.talking about restoring it to its value if it had kept up with
:03:35. > :03:37.inflation so I would not overplay the significance of that even though
:03:38. > :03:40.it is a U-turn to where the Conservatives used to be. The
:03:41. > :03:45.banking issue, given the scale of the financial crisis it would be
:03:46. > :03:48.impossible not to play to those sentiments but the government is
:03:49. > :03:54.fighting the European Union to stop the imposition of caps on bonuses so
:03:55. > :03:59.although I would like to be optimistic and say that the wind is
:04:00. > :04:03.shifting and we are having a renewal of an assault on free market
:04:04. > :04:07.economics, I do think that is the picture. Where do you see it with
:04:08. > :04:12.Mac when Ed Miliband talks about the electricity prices he may be
:04:13. > :04:20.political weather which was a change for new Labour and bankers are not
:04:21. > :04:24.very popular so what do you think? I agree about the word regulation. In
:04:25. > :04:29.your dreams, it is not a British thing. In France we love regulation
:04:30. > :04:34.but even now we have the president doing a U-turn and being what he is,
:04:35. > :04:39.a social democrat, rather than a socialist and so the Labour Party
:04:40. > :04:42.has been trying so hard to set the agenda. They went on about the
:04:43. > :04:49.decrease of living standards and I think they were right and perhaps
:04:50. > :04:54.Osborne raging -- raising the minimum wage is right but it is now
:04:55. > :04:59.about the very timid reform of the banking industry but it sounds to me
:05:00. > :05:06.that the real thing in terms of Banking Reform Bill something that
:05:07. > :05:12.is very old. 1932, the banking union reform act in America. That is the
:05:13. > :05:17.elephant in the room. Retail banking separated from the investment
:05:18. > :05:23.banking. He has not said that but he has said more competition. More
:05:24. > :05:29.competition, why not? It is really very timid. We are not going to have
:05:30. > :05:33.much disagreement! I agree. Looking at the papers today at the big
:05:34. > :05:37.speech trailed all day that Ed Miliband is looking at the banking
:05:38. > :05:40.industry did not even make the front page of the Financial Times. Their
:05:41. > :05:45.front story is about the Long now was that in terms have to work at
:05:46. > :05:50.some of the banks and it is actually killing them. Some guy died because
:05:51. > :05:54.of working 20 hours days and they are being abused by their bosses but
:05:55. > :05:59.they are willing to be abused by their bosses because they want to
:06:00. > :06:06.make ?500,000 a year or whatever. If he barking up the wrong tree? Ed
:06:07. > :06:09.Miliband is, on this one he missed a huge opportunity. If you are talking
:06:10. > :06:14.about competition in the high street it will not do anything for people.
:06:15. > :06:17.What you need to do is get the speculators out of banking. That is
:06:18. > :06:24.what it comes to. Investment and speculation. Let the investment
:06:25. > :06:27.bankers, it is confusing, investment bankers are bankers but they are not
:06:28. > :06:32.bankers like the people that you ask for a loan to start a small business
:06:33. > :06:35.but says no because the institution is completely focused on generating
:06:36. > :06:43.profits from the investment banking arm. This goes back to what Owain
:06:44. > :06:48.was saying earlier. It was Bill Clinton, the third way, he did away
:06:49. > :06:51.with the glass steeple. He said the guys who gave him money to run for
:06:52. > :06:55.president seemed like the kind of guys he could do business with but
:06:56. > :07:01.they were just greedy. Everybody gets greedy. You have to take them
:07:02. > :07:05.much more by this graph of the neck. The other problem is that it is an
:07:06. > :07:08.international problem. It is not something a Prime Minister or
:07:09. > :07:12.president can do because it is a globalised industry. If you put
:07:13. > :07:16.regulations here and you lose the profits they will go to Dubai or
:07:17. > :07:20.Singapore and people do not want to get involved. This is right. I keep
:07:21. > :07:28.hearing this argument whenever I go to the Gulf from the business
:07:29. > :07:32.community. The bank now is trying to lead everything, from investment
:07:33. > :07:40.bank accounts, lenders, everything. That is wrong. Big banks are bad for
:07:41. > :07:49.industry, for business, and this is the attitude, especially in the
:07:50. > :07:52.Gulf. The idea at the end of the day based on a... To comment on Ed
:07:53. > :08:00.Miliband, certainly it falls within the electioneering here as well. He
:08:01. > :08:07.is playing to the political gallery? Absolutely. Of course, in substance
:08:08. > :08:11.there is an issue there but also it helps the electioneering. We are in
:08:12. > :08:17.an election year at the moment and so we will keep hearing about this.
:08:18. > :08:21.The Labour Party is just trying to exist. What is interesting about
:08:22. > :08:23.what Ed Miliband has tried to do is that there has been an attempt to
:08:24. > :08:32.move away from the Thatcherite consensus, since the late 1980s all
:08:33. > :08:38.political parties were supposed to agree on privatisation week trade
:08:39. > :08:42.unions etc. You have seen an attempt to depart from that for example by
:08:43. > :08:47.calling for a cap on energy prices. What I find fascinating and it says
:08:48. > :08:51.so much about the debate in Britain, is the response to that from the
:08:52. > :08:58.Tory front bench for much of the media was he'd had turned into a
:08:59. > :09:03.frothing at the mouth Communist. He called for land speculators to land
:09:04. > :09:08.taken away if they sat on and he was compared to Robert Goodman -- Robert
:09:09. > :09:12.Mugabe and the Bolsheviks. When you look at opinion the majority of
:09:13. > :09:17.people want the renationalisation of energy, rail, water, that is not
:09:18. > :09:24.even most voters, even the conservative voters want that to
:09:25. > :09:28.happen. What Ed Miliband is making, what are quite timid shift away from
:09:29. > :09:32.that Thatcherite consensus and gets attacked for being an extremist, he
:09:33. > :09:36.is still not going as far as British public opinion. Why not? If there is
:09:37. > :09:40.something that you think is popular based on those polls, why is there
:09:41. > :09:46.not a political party that reflect that? I think with Labour you have,
:09:47. > :09:54.because of the potential, if you like, because there is on certain
:09:55. > :09:57.issues a lean to the right to like immigration and the welfare state,
:09:58. > :10:02.what this government is trying to do is focus on those sorts of issues
:10:03. > :10:07.and rather than be angry at the banks, be angry at unemployment heap
:10:08. > :10:11.-- unemployed people but it needs more encouragement from Ed Miliband
:10:12. > :10:20.and the Labour leadership. There is also the power of the tabloids and
:10:21. > :10:23.the Daily Mail press. They do not like the banks either! The Daily
:10:24. > :10:27.Mail is very critical of the bankers and the bankers bonuses. They are
:10:28. > :10:36.because they are extreme in all that they do. As soon as it does mention
:10:37. > :10:42.the word regulation Ed Miliband is branded a Communist. How do you want
:10:43. > :10:44.to have a serene... This is the particular brand of oxygen that
:10:45. > :10:48.hovers over Britain. You would think there had never been a Labour
:10:49. > :10:52.government ever elected because there is always 80% of the press
:10:53. > :10:57.against them. When people go to the polls in certain moments they will
:10:58. > :11:01.return a majority for Labour and the polls still indicate, in spite of
:11:02. > :11:05.the fact that Ed Miliband has no impression as a leader, that if the
:11:06. > :11:16.election was held today there would be a slim lead. I do think there is
:11:17. > :11:21.a clear disconnect between media elite opinion and public opinion.
:11:22. > :11:26.Whilst they can pander to right-wing immigration -- white -- right-wing
:11:27. > :11:32.opinion on things like immigration when it comes to other issues like
:11:33. > :11:41.the economy, there is an interesting part in a right-wing newspaper being
:11:42. > :11:44.horrified about people embracing socialism and they say that unless
:11:45. > :11:49.free marketeers step up again they face being wiped out. There is some
:11:50. > :11:54.misunderstanding there. It seems to be that it has shifted from
:11:55. > :12:00.political and geological issues into really pragmatic issues. Ed Miliband
:12:01. > :12:07.is really trying very hard to become one of those pragmatic addressing
:12:08. > :12:10.the public at large, not his power base. This will take him nowhere.
:12:11. > :12:13.Some commentators claim that France has become the new sick man of
:12:14. > :12:15.Europe with an under-performing economy and no signs of real
:12:16. > :12:18.structural reform. This week the French president Francois Hollande
:12:19. > :12:20.gave what was billed as a major speech aimed, commentators said, at
:12:21. > :12:23.re-launching his unpopular presidency. How far were people
:12:24. > :12:26.listening to what he wanted to say and how far were they more
:12:27. > :12:33.interested in what he did not want to talk about in his complicated
:12:34. > :12:39.personal life? Why are you turning to me? Because you are French and
:12:40. > :12:42.you have a great insight into this! Obviously the economy is a huge
:12:43. > :12:46.issue in France for the French people. The first questions were
:12:47. > :12:49.about a completely different from the journalists which shows what
:12:50. > :12:53.they were interested in. What are the French people interested in? It
:12:54. > :12:58.has been fascinating being in France for the last ten days. The world
:12:59. > :13:07.media flocked to Paris not to hear about the new plans of the president
:13:08. > :13:14.for the economy but rather of his gallivanting. I thought it was all
:13:15. > :13:25.quite civilised because croissants were delivered. I thought this was
:13:26. > :13:28.high civilisation! You can drive your mistress into a nervous
:13:29. > :13:37.breakdown and have croissants delivered to the new one, what
:13:38. > :13:44.morality! 77%, apparently, of the French people felt concern and shock
:13:45. > :13:52.and they wanted to hear about what he had to say. His big speech to the
:13:53. > :14:00.media... Why are you laughing? Let me try and focus. He did talk for
:14:01. > :14:03.two hours which is quite impressive. Just a few minutes were
:14:04. > :14:07.dedicated to the gross improved and on his private life. That was the
:14:08. > :14:16.only clip than anyone in this country played. The French press was
:14:17. > :14:23.attacked for being so deferential to the president, it is true, he is an
:14:24. > :14:26.institution, but I do not think we are more deferential, for instance,
:14:27. > :14:32.that the British hacks towards the Queen or head of state. But are you
:14:33. > :14:37.actually saying that French people may not be particularly moved by it,
:14:38. > :14:46.but they were not uninterested. Of course not! They were interested,
:14:47. > :14:51.but not as fascinated or obsessed or excited as their British neighbours,
:14:52. > :14:55.for instance. Speak up for the Anglo-Saxons! Two things that have
:14:56. > :15:02.to be said, one amusing, I hope, and one serious. The big question is,
:15:03. > :15:08.how does a guy whose nickname is Wobbly Casted managed to get these
:15:09. > :15:09.incredibly attractive, obviously intelligent women to be interested
:15:10. > :15:20.in him?! It is not just power, intelligent women to be interested
:15:21. > :15:25.Romance moves in mysterious ways! More seriously, France is in an
:15:26. > :15:30.economic crisis, although again, this is another part of the oxygen
:15:31. > :15:34.that hovers over Britain. It is never as bad as the British press
:15:35. > :15:37.makes it out to be, France is not doing as badly as other European
:15:38. > :15:40.countries that have enforced austerity measures. Its economy is
:15:41. > :15:46.performing better than the Netherlands, for example, which has
:15:47. > :15:49.been big on austerity. They all want to join with George Osborne in a
:15:50. > :15:57.union of the Austria. But it is true there is a crisis, and the deeper
:15:58. > :16:01.question is that this takes away concentration and focus from the
:16:02. > :16:08.crisis. When Bill Clinton was finally revealed, the Monica
:16:09. > :16:12.Lewinsky thing, it was at a point in time when we sat back and said, wait
:16:13. > :16:15.a minute, he spent all the time avoiding the public knowing about
:16:16. > :16:22.this, all of this sexual activity in the Oval Office, and he has got a
:16:23. > :16:25.contrary to run, man! I think this is a question the French may be
:16:26. > :16:29.asking, and if pollsters ask them, they might say, which would you
:16:30. > :16:35.prefer, that the President have affairs or that he looked after the
:16:36. > :16:42.affairs of state? Or, wait, would you prefer him to be happy and
:16:43. > :16:48.therefore... No, to be... Agnes, work hard and happiness comes from
:16:49. > :16:53.doing a good job. I would rather he was focused on his job. And Bill
:16:54. > :16:58.Clinton was not the first president still have affairs, Franklin
:16:59. > :17:06.Roosevelt didn't do too badly. Cross one metre rock... The French media
:17:07. > :17:12.are a lot more grown-up than we are in this country. The horror of them
:17:13. > :17:18.focusing on policies and substance! He sums up the iconic British,
:17:19. > :17:22.post-war Labour politician Nye Bevan said, if you stand in the middle of
:17:23. > :17:27.the road, you get hit by traffic in both directions. That sums up his
:17:28. > :17:31.plight, down to about 20% in terms of approval ratings. But there has
:17:32. > :17:35.been this myth which the right in Britain are pushing that, look, he
:17:36. > :17:39.tried to depart from austerity and look what happened. It is just not
:17:40. > :17:47.true in Paris. This bill cut of 1.8%, he is planning cuts of 30
:17:48. > :17:52.billion euros by 2017, it will hurt France a lot, because they have not
:17:53. > :17:58.got quantitative easing to soften the blow, so while there are
:17:59. > :18:02.comparisons with Francois Mitterand, with his famous U-turn in
:18:03. > :18:06.1983, when he was supposed to have abandoned socialism, when other
:18:07. > :18:11.countries were having deflationary policies, I do not think this you
:18:12. > :18:19.tent as the substance that people say, because he has already been
:18:20. > :18:22.pursuing austerity. -- this U-turn. There are still a safety net in
:18:23. > :18:28.France, and so far the political emphasis was about sparing people
:18:29. > :18:36.the effect of Ulster at the, totally unlike in Britain. -- the effect of
:18:37. > :18:42.austerity. He is trying to address the huge cost of hiring people in
:18:43. > :18:51.France, Labour does cost a lot, and that is what he wanted to address.
:18:52. > :18:56.To have a happy president running a country is one thing, but to have
:18:57. > :19:02.another, to deliver on the economy, that is something else. It is part
:19:03. > :19:07.of the French culture, private affairs are private affairs. We have
:19:08. > :19:15.seen it before, Sarkozy did not do so bad on that, even Francois
:19:16. > :19:19.Mitterand. He hid his grown-up daughter for a number of years. But
:19:20. > :19:29.of course there is no comparison on this front, the real comparison is
:19:30. > :19:37.that the great leaders of Europe, you know, the giants of Francois
:19:38. > :19:44.Mitterand, Helmut Kohl, look at the generation of leaders now. There is
:19:45. > :19:49.no credibility somehow. We don't really take them seriously. A final
:19:50. > :19:55.thought before we move on, we still don't know, for example, the First
:19:56. > :20:02.Lady of France is. Well... Perhaps we do not care, but taxpayers to pay
:20:03. > :20:08.for an office. That is the only fair point in the whole saga! What should
:20:09. > :20:13.be the status of the first partner? It is an American conception, and in
:20:14. > :20:17.France there is no such thing as a first partner, so it has always been
:20:18. > :20:24.down to the President's choice, you know, what they are going to do,
:20:25. > :20:27.what kind of protocol they adopt, so we need to know who is going to go
:20:28. > :20:33.to Washington, and we shall know, that is the next step. The saga
:20:34. > :20:38.continues. Peace talks get under way next week on Syria, and made a new
:20:39. > :20:43.push for humanitarian agencies to obtain more access to conflict
:20:44. > :20:48.areas. Gordon Brown, in his role as a UN envoy, is be adding a campaign
:20:49. > :20:51.to provide schooling for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Is the
:20:52. > :20:56.best we can hope for to minimise their suffering? I talked to Gordon
:20:57. > :21:00.Brown about it this week, and one of the sad things about the education
:21:01. > :21:03.initiative is that it will provide education for children, but implicit
:21:04. > :21:09.in that is that this will go on for years. This is the frightening
:21:10. > :21:13.element of it, we have seen it in the Middle East, in Iraq, but before
:21:14. > :21:22.that, a long time before that, we have seen it with the Palestinians,
:21:23. > :21:25.the first... Generations. Generations, they provided
:21:26. > :21:29.education, the United Nations, and once they opened the first school,
:21:30. > :21:34.it means people are staying longer, and that is pretty sad, no doubt
:21:35. > :21:38.about it. And it looks like the Syrian situation will take a long
:21:39. > :21:42.time. It is a very complicated situation. It should have been hit
:21:43. > :21:51.hard right from the first few months, but it was neglected. The
:21:52. > :21:56.people, the uprising, the Syrian civilian people who went out in the
:21:57. > :22:02.street, long before armed militia were introduced in the country. We
:22:03. > :22:08.were deserted by the West in particular. America, in the first
:22:09. > :22:14.place, and Europe, certainly, no doubt about it, they encouraged,
:22:15. > :22:19.probably they incited the whole situation, the whole Arab Spring in
:22:20. > :22:24.other countries. We have seen swift change, weather in Egypt, June is
:22:25. > :22:30.here, Egypt is still going wrong, but there was a change, a major
:22:31. > :22:37.change. They had at least one year of the Muslim Brotherhood experience
:22:38. > :22:44.in June is year. But in Yemen, the army, the national armies are the
:22:45. > :22:50.countries' armies, national armies. -- in Tunisia. In Syria, it is the
:22:51. > :22:56.regime army. It has never been, over the last four decades, a national
:22:57. > :23:03.army. It was there to serve the regime and no one else. Do you have
:23:04. > :23:06.any hopes of peace? My experience covering these things for decades is
:23:07. > :23:11.if you bring people to the table before they are ready to deal, it is
:23:12. > :23:15.really bad to bring them to the table, because it will explode at
:23:16. > :23:19.the table, and then you push the whole process back by months. The
:23:20. > :23:24.only thing I would say is that because it does involve Russia and
:23:25. > :23:31.the letter states, and Lavrov and Kerry seemed to have some chemistry,
:23:32. > :23:38.and if they have some way of telling aside, you are going, there may be
:23:39. > :23:42.some hope. -- the United States. Are they ready to put a deal on the
:23:43. > :23:47.table? I agree with you, but the position is in disarray. Assad has
:23:48. > :23:51.gained some political clout, and now we are not at all, like in
:23:52. > :24:00.September, ready to intervene, talking of Assad, it has become a
:24:01. > :24:07.counterterrorism case. Thousands of Western jihadis are in Syria, a lot
:24:08. > :24:12.of French people among them. 2000 foreign Japanese in Syria, and it
:24:13. > :24:16.brings back the blowback we saw in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when you
:24:17. > :24:26.had, of course, thousands of jihadis. There are problems with
:24:27. > :24:36.radicalisation, Tiger, the Al-Nusra Front, they are all fighting each
:24:37. > :24:44.other. -- Al-Qaeda. It is not all over Syria, it is certain points.
:24:45. > :24:49.The problem is, with Kerry in the area juggling so many issues at the
:24:50. > :24:55.same times, these are connected, whether Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and
:24:56. > :24:59.Pakistan, don't forget, because they need American support for security.
:25:00. > :25:03.We will have to leave at there. We are back next week at the same time.
:25:04. > :25:05.You can comment on the programme on Twitter. Thank you for watching and
:25:06. > :25:42.goodbye. Good morning! A gloomy day today
:25:43. > :25:46.with further outbreaks of rain, something brighter on offer for
:25:47. > :25:47.Sunday. However, today, yes, cloudy with