18/01/2014 Dateline London

died in the bombing. There's a full bulliten of news at

the top of the hour. Now on BBC News, Dateline London.

Hello, and welcome to Dateline London. Breaking up Britain's banks,

the woes of France and President Hollande, and another chance for

peace in Syria. My guests today are Owen Jones of

the Independent, Michael Goldfarb of Globalpost, Agnes Poirier of

France's Marianne and Mustapha Karkouti of Gulf News. Very good to

see you. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband,

proposed this week to break up Britain's banks and to make sure

bankers' bonuses are kept in check. It comes after his announcement that

a future Labour government would cap energy prices and after the

Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested a rise in the

minimum wage. Is the underlying theme that the years of politicians

claiming that you can't buck the market are now at an end with more

regulation, more state interference in markets, wages and prices?

It is an area in which Ed Miliband has some political traction but do

you see the big picture here? This is a big change in the way that

politicians are thinking because of the recession. There is a sense when

the financial crisis erupted in 2008 that this would herald a rebirth for

ideas traditionally associated with the left and neoliberalism had

proved itself discredited and a new alternative would emerge. That did

not actually happen in the first few years and that goes back to what

Milton Friedman once said, you need a crisis to get real change, but it

depends what ideas are lying around. The intellectual cupboard of

the left in Britain and right across Europe was pretty barren. It was to

deal with the catastrophic defeat that it had suffered over the last

few years. The new Right, as it was known and remains no, its was

bubbling around like it had never happened perversely, what should

have been a absolute catastrophe for neoliberalism became one of its

greatest ever opportunities and we have seen under this government cuts

that Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamt of and we have seen

privatisation going into the heart of the National Health Service that

Margaret Thatcher would never have dreamt of doing and are rolling back

of the state which originally the Conservatives were very keen to say

that it was not their aim but now they are so emboldened that they can

now say a leaner state is their objective. We have also seen

conservative lenders -- Conservative leaders saying payday lending should

cap rates and they should cap bankers bonuses and also there is

talk of the minimum wage this week so there is more interference on the

right in mechanisms than there was before. On some of those sort of

issues. To put the minimum wage into context, in real terms it has been

falling for years. It was introduced in the face of Conservative

opposition and it has been falling for years now so George Osborne is

talking about restoring it to its value if it had kept up with

inflation so I would not overplay the significance of that even though

it is a U-turn to where the Conservatives used to be. The

banking issue, given the scale of the financial crisis it would be

impossible not to play to those sentiments but the government is

fighting the European Union to stop the imposition of caps on bonuses so

although I would like to be optimistic and say that the wind is

shifting and we are having a renewal of an assault on free market

economics, I do think that is the picture. Where do you see it with

Mac when Ed Miliband talks about the electricity prices he may be

political weather which was a change for new Labour and bankers are not

very popular so what do you think? I agree about the word regulation. In

your dreams, it is not a British thing. In France we love regulation

but even now we have the president doing a U-turn and being what he is,

a social democrat, rather than a socialist and so the Labour Party

has been trying so hard to set the agenda. They went on about the

decrease of living standards and I think they were right and perhaps

Osborne raging -- raising the minimum wage is right but it is now

about the very timid reform of the banking industry but it sounds to me

that the real thing in terms of Banking Reform Bill something that

is very old. 1932, the banking union reform act in America. That is the

elephant in the room. Retail banking separated from the investment

banking. He has not said that but he has said more competition. More

competition, why not? It is really very timid. We are not going to have

much disagreement! I agree. Looking at the papers today at the big

speech trailed all day that Ed Miliband is looking at the banking

industry did not even make the front page of the Financial Times. Their

front story is about the Long now was that in terms have to work at

some of the banks and it is actually killing them. Some guy died because

of working 20 hours days and they are being abused by their bosses but

they are willing to be abused by their bosses because they want to

make ?500,000 a year or whatever. If he barking up the wrong tree? Ed

Miliband is, on this one he missed a huge opportunity. If you are talking

about competition in the high street it will not do anything for people.

What you need to do is get the speculators out of banking. That is

what it comes to. Investment and speculation. Let the investment

bankers, it is confusing, investment bankers are bankers but they are not

bankers like the people that you ask for a loan to start a small business

but says no because the institution is completely focused on generating

profits from the investment banking arm. This goes back to what Owain

was saying earlier. It was Bill Clinton, the third way, he did away

with the glass steeple. He said the guys who gave him money to run for

president seemed like the kind of guys he could do business with but

they were just greedy. Everybody gets greedy. You have to take them

much more by this graph of the neck. The other problem is that it is an

international problem. It is not something a Prime Minister or

president can do because it is a globalised industry. If you put

regulations here and you lose the profits they will go to Dubai or

Singapore and people do not want to get involved. This is right. I keep

hearing this argument whenever I go to the Gulf from the business

community. The bank now is trying to lead everything, from investment

bank accounts, lenders, everything. That is wrong. Big banks are bad for

industry, for business, and this is the attitude, especially in the

Gulf. The idea at the end of the day based on a... To comment on Ed

Miliband, certainly it falls within the electioneering here as well. He

is playing to the political gallery? Absolutely. Of course, in substance

there is an issue there but also it helps the electioneering. We are in

an election year at the moment and so we will keep hearing about this.

The Labour Party is just trying to exist. What is interesting about

what Ed Miliband has tried to do is that there has been an attempt to

move away from the Thatcherite consensus, since the late 1980s all

political parties were supposed to agree on privatisation week trade

unions etc. You have seen an attempt to depart from that for example by

calling for a cap on energy prices. What I find fascinating and it says

so much about the debate in Britain, is the response to that from the

Tory front bench for much of the media was he'd had turned into a

frothing at the mouth Communist. He called for land speculators to land

taken away if they sat on and he was compared to Robert Goodman -- Robert

Mugabe and the Bolsheviks. When you look at opinion the majority of

people want the renationalisation of energy, rail, water, that is not

even most voters, even the conservative voters want that to

happen. What Ed Miliband is making, what are quite timid shift away from

that Thatcherite consensus and gets attacked for being an extremist, he

is still not going as far as British public opinion. Why not? If there is

something that you think is popular based on those polls, why is there

not a political party that reflect that? I think with Labour you have,

because of the potential, if you like, because there is on certain

issues a lean to the right to like immigration and the welfare state,

what this government is trying to do is focus on those sorts of issues

and rather than be angry at the banks, be angry at unemployment heap

-- unemployed people but it needs more encouragement from Ed Miliband

and the Labour leadership. There is also the power of the tabloids and

the Daily Mail press. They do not like the banks either! The Daily

Mail is very critical of the bankers and the bankers bonuses. They are

because they are extreme in all that they do. As soon as it does mention

the word regulation Ed Miliband is branded a Communist. How do you want

to have a serene... This is the particular brand of oxygen that

hovers over Britain. You would think there had never been a Labour

government ever elected because there is always 80% of the press

against them. When people go to the polls in certain moments they will

return a majority for Labour and the polls still indicate, in spite of

the fact that Ed Miliband has no impression as a leader, that if the

election was held today there would be a slim lead. I do think there is

a clear disconnect between media elite opinion and public opinion.

Whilst they can pander to right-wing immigration -- white -- right-wing

opinion on things like immigration when it comes to other issues like

the economy, there is an interesting part in a right-wing newspaper being

horrified about people embracing socialism and they say that unless

free marketeers step up again they face being wiped out. There is some

misunderstanding there. It seems to be that it has shifted from

political and geological issues into really pragmatic issues. Ed Miliband

is really trying very hard to become one of those pragmatic addressing

the public at large, not his power base. This will take him nowhere.

Some commentators claim that France has become the new sick man of

Europe with an under-performing economy and no signs of real

structural reform. This week the French president Francois Hollande

gave what was billed as a major speech aimed, commentators said, at

re-launching his unpopular presidency. How far were people

listening to what he wanted to say and how far were they more

interested in what he did not want to talk about in his complicated

personal life? Why are you turning to me? Because you are French and

you have a great insight into this! Obviously the economy is a huge

issue in France for the French people. The first questions were

about a completely different from the journalists which shows what

they were interested in. What are the French people interested in? It

has been fascinating being in France for the last ten days. The world

media flocked to Paris not to hear about the new plans of the president

for the economy but rather of his gallivanting. I thought it was all

quite civilised because croissants were delivered. I thought this was

high civilisation! You can drive your mistress into a nervous

breakdown and have croissants delivered to the new one, what

morality! 77%, apparently, of the French people felt concern and shock

and they wanted to hear about what he had to say. His big speech to the

media... Why are you laughing? Let me try and focus. He did talk for

two hours which is quite impressive. Just a few minutes were

dedicated to the gross improved and on his private life. That was the

only clip than anyone in this country played. The French press was

attacked for being so deferential to the president, it is true, he is an

institution, but I do not think we are more deferential, for instance,

that the British hacks towards the Queen or head of state. But are you

actually saying that French people may not be particularly moved by it,

but they were not uninterested. Of course not! They were interested,

but not as fascinated or obsessed or excited as their British neighbours,

for instance. Speak up for the Anglo-Saxons! Two things that have

to be said, one amusing, I hope, and one serious. The big question is,

how does a guy whose nickname is Wobbly Casted managed to get these

incredibly attractive, obviously intelligent women to be interested

in him?! It is not just power, intelligent women to be interested

Romance moves in mysterious ways! More seriously, France is in an

economic crisis, although again, this is another part of the oxygen

that hovers over Britain. It is never as bad as the British press

makes it out to be, France is not doing as badly as other European

countries that have enforced austerity measures. Its economy is

performing better than the Netherlands, for example, which has

been big on austerity. They all want to join with George Osborne in a

union of the Austria. But it is true there is a crisis, and the deeper

question is that this takes away concentration and focus from the

crisis. When Bill Clinton was finally revealed, the Monica

Lewinsky thing, it was at a point in time when we sat back and said, wait

a minute, he spent all the time avoiding the public knowing about

this, all of this sexual activity in the Oval Office, and he has got a

contrary to run, man! I think this is a question the French may be

asking, and if pollsters ask them, they might say, which would you

prefer, that the President have affairs or that he looked after the

affairs of state? Or, wait, would you prefer him to be happy and

therefore... No, to be... Agnes, work hard and happiness comes from

doing a good job. I would rather he was focused on his job. And Bill

Clinton was not the first president still have affairs, Franklin

Roosevelt didn't do too badly. Cross one metre rock... The French media

are a lot more grown-up than we are in this country. The horror of them

focusing on policies and substance! He sums up the iconic British,

post-war Labour politician Nye Bevan said, if you stand in the middle of

the road, you get hit by traffic in both directions. That sums up his

plight, down to about 20% in terms of approval ratings. But there has

been this myth which the right in Britain are pushing that, look, he

tried to depart from austerity and look what happened. It is just not

true in Paris. This bill cut of 1.8%, he is planning cuts of 30

billion euros by 2017, it will hurt France a lot, because they have not

got quantitative easing to soften the blow, so while there are

comparisons with Francois Mitterand, with his famous U-turn in

1983, when he was supposed to have abandoned socialism, when other

countries were having deflationary policies, I do not think this you

tent as the substance that people say, because he has already been

pursuing austerity. -- this U-turn. There are still a safety net in

France, and so far the political emphasis was about sparing people

the effect of Ulster at the, totally unlike in Britain. -- the effect of

austerity. He is trying to address the huge cost of hiring people in

France, Labour does cost a lot, and that is what he wanted to address.

To have a happy president running a country is one thing, but to have

another, to deliver on the economy, that is something else. It is part

of the French culture, private affairs are private affairs. We have

seen it before, Sarkozy did not do so bad on that, even Francois

Mitterand. He hid his grown-up daughter for a number of years. But

of course there is no comparison on this front, the real comparison is

that the great leaders of Europe, you know, the giants of Francois

Mitterand, Helmut Kohl, look at the generation of leaders now. There is

no credibility somehow. We don't really take them seriously. A final

thought before we move on, we still don't know, for example, the First

Lady of France is. Well... Perhaps we do not care, but taxpayers to pay

for an office. That is the only fair point in the whole saga! What should

be the status of the first partner? It is an American conception, and in

France there is no such thing as a first partner, so it has always been

down to the President's choice, you know, what they are going to do,

what kind of protocol they adopt, so we need to know who is going to go

to Washington, and we shall know, that is the next step. The saga

continues. Peace talks get under way next week on Syria, and made a new

push for humanitarian agencies to obtain more access to conflict

areas. Gordon Brown, in his role as a UN envoy, is be adding a campaign

to provide schooling for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon. Is the

best we can hope for to minimise their suffering? I talked to Gordon

Brown about it this week, and one of the sad things about the education

initiative is that it will provide education for children, but implicit

in that is that this will go on for years. This is the frightening

element of it, we have seen it in the Middle East, in Iraq, but before

that, a long time before that, we have seen it with the Palestinians,

the first... Generations. Generations, they provided

education, the United Nations, and once they opened the first school,

it means people are staying longer, and that is pretty sad, no doubt

about it. And it looks like the Syrian situation will take a long

time. It is a very complicated situation. It should have been hit

hard right from the first few months, but it was neglected. The

people, the uprising, the Syrian civilian people who went out in the

street, long before armed militia were introduced in the country. We

were deserted by the West in particular. America, in the first

place, and Europe, certainly, no doubt about it, they encouraged,

probably they incited the whole situation, the whole Arab Spring in

other countries. We have seen swift change, weather in Egypt, June is

here, Egypt is still going wrong, but there was a change, a major

change. They had at least one year of the Muslim Brotherhood experience

in June is year. But in Yemen, the army, the national armies are the

countries' armies, national armies. -- in Tunisia. In Syria, it is the

regime army. It has never been, over the last four decades, a national

army. It was there to serve the regime and no one else. Do you have

any hopes of peace? My experience covering these things for decades is

if you bring people to the table before they are ready to deal, it is

really bad to bring them to the table, because it will explode at

the table, and then you push the whole process back by months. The

only thing I would say is that because it does involve Russia and

the letter states, and Lavrov and Kerry seemed to have some chemistry,

and if they have some way of telling aside, you are going, there may be

some hope. -- the United States. Are they ready to put a deal on the

table? I agree with you, but the position is in disarray. Assad has

gained some political clout, and now we are not at all, like in

September, ready to intervene, talking of Assad, it has become a

counterterrorism case. Thousands of Western jihadis are in Syria, a lot

of French people among them. 2000 foreign Japanese in Syria, and it

brings back the blowback we saw in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when you

had, of course, thousands of jihadis. There are problems with

radicalisation, Tiger, the Al-Nusra Front, they are all fighting each

other. -- Al-Qaeda. It is not all over Syria, it is certain points.

The problem is, with Kerry in the area juggling so many issues at the

same times, these are connected, whether Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and

Pakistan, don't forget, because they need American support for security.

We will have to leave at there. We are back next week at the same time.

You can comment on the programme on Twitter. Thank you for watching and

goodbye. Good morning! A gloomy day today

with further outbreaks of rain, something brighter on offer for

Sunday. However, today, yes, cloudy with