:00:00. > 3:59:59will try to find out exactly why. More headlines and more on the
:00:00. > :00:32.Syrian story at midday. Hello and welcome. The United
:00:33. > :00:39.Kingdom says no to currency union with an independent Scotland. And
:00:40. > :00:46.what does the release of Taliaban prisoners tell us about the future
:00:47. > :00:52.of Afghanistan? My guests today are a Chinese writer, a writer with the
:00:53. > :01:00.nation and Steve Richards of the Independent. The Scottish National
:01:01. > :01:09.party had first considered joining the euro, then the planned for
:01:10. > :01:14.retaining the pounds there and, and now the British government has said
:01:15. > :01:20.no. Is this the terminal setback for the independence movement? Good
:01:21. > :01:27.Scotland goal instead for its own currency? It is a big moment in this
:01:28. > :01:31.campaign. It is extraordinary in the context of British politics more
:01:32. > :01:47.generally to see such publishers politicians as any balls -- Ed balls
:01:48. > :01:51.and the Chancellor coming together. Irrespective of what happens in the
:01:52. > :01:57.referendum, Scotland is going in its own way, it is so different from
:01:58. > :02:02.England. I perform a political show in the Edinburgh Festival about the
:02:03. > :02:06.chief politics. What I am seeing does not affect any of you in
:02:07. > :02:12.Scotland, eight of the topics, health, education, all the other
:02:13. > :02:17.things are so separate. However, on this technical issue of the
:02:18. > :02:23.currency, Alex Salmond has no answer because she insists that all this is
:02:24. > :02:33.bust and they will be able to keep the pound. That is not at all
:02:34. > :02:35.clear. Look what happens in the euro when you have a bank controlling
:02:36. > :02:43.interest rates border independent country. If he does not do that they
:02:44. > :02:48.have ruled out the euro now for obvious reasons. There are huge
:02:49. > :02:56.issues with the currency. There are real problems for the independence
:02:57. > :03:01.case, this basic currency issue. You make a very important point which
:03:02. > :03:06.very few English commentators have made which is that in its head in
:03:07. > :03:11.many ways Scotland is already independent. On most of the big
:03:12. > :03:18.issues which affect people, the health service, education even the
:03:19. > :03:22.church is, Scotland is different. It is a different country and all the
:03:23. > :03:27.key issues which have fascinated the Westminster -based coalition
:03:28. > :03:32.obsessed with reforms of public services, are the very issues over
:03:33. > :03:37.which Scotland has entirely separate powers and have moved in an entirely
:03:38. > :03:42.different direction. The key defining themes of this Parliament
:03:43. > :03:48.for Westminster and England are utterly removed from what is going
:03:49. > :03:55.on in Scotland. Do you think, however, that at the beginning of
:03:56. > :04:00.September if the opinion polls suggest David can and will be really
:04:01. > :04:03.do with a thumping majority, because of that difference, giving the
:04:04. > :04:08.result that one Conservative MP in the whole of Scotland, that might
:04:09. > :04:14.actually affect the vote. We have had the SNP say that David Cameron
:04:15. > :04:19.is the living embodiment of why you should bought for independence. I
:04:20. > :04:27.think it will have an impact on the boat. Better together campaign also
:04:28. > :04:33.leaves that would be a massive bonus for Alex Salmond comic the leader of
:04:34. > :04:39.the independence campaign. If that were to happen it would have a more
:04:40. > :04:48.profound impact on the campaign than this very powerful co-ordinated
:04:49. > :04:54.currency campaign. There have been some parallels drawn with Germany
:04:55. > :04:58.and Greece, a big country effectively dictating economic
:04:59. > :05:04.policy for another one which is supposedly independent but because
:05:05. > :05:10.of the currency link it is not. The fact the euro has been in trouble
:05:11. > :05:15.affect this a lot. Do you think that England and Scotland in a currency
:05:16. > :05:22.union is very different from the whole of the EU? There has been an
:05:23. > :05:27.argument that if Scotland bought it for independence that Westminster
:05:28. > :05:30.would not say no to the pound. Would it make any sense to have a
:05:31. > :05:37.different currency across the border? How would it work? Then they
:05:38. > :05:41.really would have independence. Once you concede that the bank of England
:05:42. > :05:46.will determine your interest rates you then, in effect, which is what
:05:47. > :05:50.is happening in Europe, have to harmonise many things as well. They
:05:51. > :05:57.have already got separation of powers in many key areas. What more
:05:58. > :06:02.with the get if they were allied to the English currency. Also I do not
:06:03. > :06:06.think it isn't tiredly bluster. You would be real resistance from the
:06:07. > :06:14.English -based politicians order to be a joint currency. In some ways
:06:15. > :06:18.you are right. In some ways Scottish independence is more about politics,
:06:19. > :06:24.it is about national identity, rather than economics. I know
:06:25. > :06:34.economy matters, it is probably the biggest factor swaying the boat here
:06:35. > :06:39.-- vote. When push comes to shove at the end of the day it is about
:06:40. > :06:45.Scotland being a different country. When I think back to China's history
:06:46. > :06:50.when they were these moments that a massive country that had different
:06:51. > :06:59.pockets of majority and minorities and different ethnic groups and
:07:00. > :07:05.provinces that wanted independence. A lot of that, technically you can
:07:06. > :07:10.argue how to do currency and how to manage the economy but at the end
:07:11. > :07:15.the decision came to who we are, what we want to be. I think that
:07:16. > :07:23.will matter more at the end of the day. Also, looking back 100 years to
:07:24. > :07:29.what happened in Ireland you could see Ireland with the better off in
:07:30. > :07:33.financial terms in the short-term to remain part of the United Kingdom.
:07:34. > :07:42.That is not the way Ireland wanted it. It will probably be a heart vote
:07:43. > :07:47.in the end. There is absolutely no chance that the Scots will bought
:07:48. > :07:55.for independence, said one man, but he does not spend so much time they
:07:56. > :08:05.are. I think this is the heart vote. Someone said it is a shame George
:08:06. > :08:09.Osborne looks like Butcher Cumberland's General staff. He puts
:08:10. > :08:14.of even people who were potential conservative voters. The reason it
:08:15. > :08:19.has got to this point is that over the last 35 years this country has
:08:20. > :08:27.become, at least in terms of politics and economics, London
:08:28. > :08:31.centric. The Scots are up there as king who are these people and what
:08:32. > :08:36.right do they have to say anything about the way that I live? They do
:08:37. > :08:40.have a tremendous amount of autonomy. The best thing David
:08:41. > :08:47.Cameron has ever done was get the ball max of of the table. If that
:08:48. > :08:53.had been left in as a third option in this vote that would have
:08:54. > :08:58.carried. I think that is what many people are saying. I was in
:08:59. > :09:05.Middlesborough last year doing a piece on inequality and throughout
:09:06. > :09:12.the north-east only in a have to jest you hear people saying if the
:09:13. > :09:21.Scots vote for independence I hope they take is with them. That is a
:09:22. > :09:25.good point. I have had such conversations in Newcastle and
:09:26. > :09:29.people feel very remote from the London media, the London
:09:30. > :09:36.government, effectively in the same way as some Scots do. On one level
:09:37. > :09:41.it should be a warning but I do not know that anyone in Westminster is
:09:42. > :09:46.ceding it about just how is let this country is. It is such a small
:09:47. > :09:54.country. I am from America so I have a sense of scale. How can a country
:09:55. > :09:58.so geographically compacted as Britain be so very different between
:09:59. > :10:05.this part from where we are talking and the rest, the bulk of the
:10:06. > :10:10.country. Although it makes sense for them it is painful to see the Labour
:10:11. > :10:17.Party lining up with Cameron and Danny Alexander. Scotland still
:10:18. > :10:20.holds to the old British welfare system in a way that, really since
:10:21. > :10:30.that should then we are, then Cameron, Britain has been leaving
:10:31. > :10:38.behind. It is certainly a very strong argument that is being made
:10:39. > :10:44.by Salmond. When the north-east had their chance for voting for their
:10:45. > :10:54.own regional assembly, the fault in the regional assembly was
:10:55. > :11:00.slaughtered. -- vote. The suggestion is that independence will lose but
:11:01. > :11:09.if it is based on emotion and heart it would win. It still might but I
:11:10. > :11:13.think there is this. The leadership of the European Union we were
:11:14. > :11:20.speaking about earlier desperately does not want this. They do not want
:11:21. > :11:25.to contemplate Catalonia going independent or any number of regions
:11:26. > :11:32.in Italy or France for that matter going on their own. Let's move on.
:11:33. > :11:41.Britain's senior politicians have been lining up this week to show off
:11:42. > :11:45.their Wellington boots. How competent or otherwise has the
:11:46. > :11:53.response to the flooding really been? Let's not get carried away,
:11:54. > :11:57.these are really terrible floods and I do not want to diminish the
:11:58. > :12:02.suffering of people caught up in them or who have lost their houses
:12:03. > :12:08.but this is not Katrina. There are not bloated bodies floating in the
:12:09. > :12:13.floodwaters or people stranded on their roofs for weeks without water
:12:14. > :12:16.but that image of George Bush peering out of the aeroplane from
:12:17. > :12:20.above has influenced the way politicians have responded. The
:12:21. > :12:25.point where Cameron really put his foot in it was when he came out and
:12:26. > :12:31.said money is no object. We too minute, if money is no object here
:12:32. > :12:36.why is it an object elsewhere, why do we have to have a bedroom tax and
:12:37. > :12:45.cuts to social security? You have been telling us all this time there
:12:46. > :12:55.is no money. When it is people in a particular place having problems
:12:56. > :13:01.money is no problem. How do you see this? One of the things that is kind
:13:02. > :13:05.of obvious is that even King Canute could not do much about the weather
:13:06. > :13:09.or the tides so politicians have to show they cheer and do something but
:13:10. > :13:14.it is fairly limited what they can do. It seems to me that the
:13:15. > :13:21.government could have acted quicker and with a little bit more force.
:13:22. > :13:27.The military being called earlier and more being put out the to help
:13:28. > :13:32.the people. The weather, nobody can do anything about the weather, it is
:13:33. > :13:38.absolutely severe. But the response to it could have been better. The
:13:39. > :13:43.fact that they were so many politicians going on these tours of
:13:44. > :13:49.the area, not particularly helping anyone, but to have their picture
:13:50. > :13:55.taken, it is rather hilarious. It does remind me of these dodgy photos
:13:56. > :14:05.you have seen of Chinese officials to doing severe places. They were
:14:06. > :14:11.floating on air. Sometimes you want to laugh but it is not laughable. It
:14:12. > :14:19.is not laughable if you are caught in it. A serious problem with the
:14:20. > :14:25.British infrastructure issue. Had there been more work put in, they
:14:26. > :14:31.had been neglect for a long time of infrastructure, the railways, the
:14:32. > :14:35.flood defence for example. There is a money issue, there is always a
:14:36. > :14:40.money issue, it is the priority, what should be done and whether we
:14:41. > :14:45.will be doing more now that this has happened, to look into the future.
:14:46. > :14:53.Will there be more infrastructure improvement? One of the other
:14:54. > :14:57.parallels is Obama and the Gulf oil spill. He learned from Katrina that
:14:58. > :15:03.you have to go, shall empathy, you help a lot of people, then you leave
:15:04. > :15:08.and you let people sort it out. You have to show UK. At least in that
:15:09. > :15:17.sense the politicians have done something but it was left to the
:15:18. > :15:23.Royal family to fill sandbags. Yes, they were the. This weather system,
:15:24. > :15:29.it has been going on for six weeks, the flooding has been building and
:15:30. > :15:33.building. The official response initially was that it is the
:15:34. > :15:39.Somerset levels, it used to be a lake, what do you expect? Then after
:15:40. > :15:43.weeks and weeks and weeks you send out your Environment Secretary who
:15:44. > :15:51.is a climate change sceptic and then he gets sick. You are in the middle
:15:52. > :15:56.of a crisis and the retina fell of the back of your right, now it is a
:15:57. > :16:00.terrible thing to have happened but now he has disappeared and you bring
:16:01. > :16:04.out any pickles so finally Cameron has to step in after six weeks of
:16:05. > :16:10.dreadful weather and building floods. That degree of lack of
:16:11. > :16:53.leadership and direction is what people will remember. Imagine if
:16:54. > :17:03.they did not go to these areas, all hell would break loose. Ed Miliband
:17:04. > :17:11.would look like he would prefer to have an espresso in Primrose Hill.
:17:12. > :17:15.They cannot win on that front. There is a political issue and I think it
:17:16. > :17:19.is to do with spending. In 2010, when this coalition came in, cheered
:17:20. > :17:25.on by much of the media, they announced a whole range of spending
:17:26. > :17:30.cuts very quickly, including on flood defence spending. Everyone
:17:31. > :17:34.said, this is brilliant. At last a responsible government. Now we face
:17:35. > :17:39.the consequences. There is an issue. Will it be an issue by the time of
:17:40. > :17:45.the next general election? Absolutely not. There was a foot and
:17:46. > :17:48.mouth outbreak and Tony Blair postponed the timing of the
:17:49. > :17:52.election. Everyone said this will determine his fate at the election.
:17:53. > :17:58.It will all return to the economy and everything. I do not think it
:17:59. > :18:02.will be decisive for Cameron. The decision by the Government of Hamid
:18:03. > :18:10.Karzai to release prisoners from what some American commentators
:18:11. > :18:14.called the Taliban University of the prison, what does this tell us about
:18:15. > :18:30.the future? What will be left behind? I think there has been
:18:31. > :18:33.tremendous tension between Hamid Karzai and various governments. It
:18:34. > :18:39.goes back to the middle of the last decade. First of all, who are the
:18:40. > :18:42.Taliban? Unless you are going to have soldiers in every house in
:18:43. > :18:47.Helmand province conducting we education courses at night, the
:18:48. > :18:52.Taliban are part of the furniture in Afghanistan. How do you deal with
:18:53. > :18:57.them? Hamid Karzai has wanted to do with them for a very long time. Now,
:18:58. > :19:02.with the British and American troops getting ready to be gone by the end
:19:03. > :19:06.of this year, there will be remnants, believe me. The country is
:19:07. > :19:10.far from pacified. He had to deal with the reality of these people.
:19:11. > :19:16.They could just have easily have come into Kabul the day after he has
:19:17. > :19:22.gone. They can still strike at the heart of the capital from time to
:19:23. > :19:30.time. The Taliban University thing, it has been a dreadful place since
:19:31. > :19:34.the middle of the last decade. It is a school in the way most prisons are
:19:35. > :19:41.full teaching young, impressionable people about how to be successful at
:19:42. > :19:47.being bad. There is no love lost between Barack Obama and Hamid
:19:48. > :19:53.Karzai. The Taliban in some way will have a political wing and they will
:19:54. > :19:57.probably come to be involved in the Government of Afghanistan. Can I
:19:58. > :20:00.make the obvious point that, whatever one thinks of Hamid Karzai
:20:01. > :20:08.and the way he runs the country, it is his country in the end? The
:20:09. > :20:13.Taliban will still be their when the last Taliban or British soldier
:20:14. > :20:20.goes. Crushing them does not seem to have worked. It is his country. The
:20:21. > :20:26.complication is that he was put in with huge support from the
:20:27. > :20:33.Americans. Then it came to this point that he had to run his country
:20:34. > :20:40.and that they have had lots of frustrations with each other for a
:20:41. > :20:47.long time. This just seems to me to be one of the incidents that happen
:20:48. > :20:52.on the road to Afghanistan becoming less occupied and run by the foreign
:20:53. > :20:58.troops but by their own government. Having said that, this is the
:20:59. > :21:05.Government. The administration has been a government put in by the
:21:06. > :21:11.Western powers. That is why I see the frustration. What is the best
:21:12. > :21:16.way to run Afghanistan? I am not sure. Shall we leave it to the
:21:17. > :21:25.Afghanistan to do that? You should say that whatever the reasons in the
:21:26. > :21:29.first place, Tony Blair and George Bush perhaps had very little sense
:21:30. > :21:34.of history. Anyone who read the history of the last 150 years about
:21:35. > :21:36.Afghanistan might have thought a long-term presence to try to
:21:37. > :21:42.re-educate people and change the nature of the state would not work.
:21:43. > :21:47.Every Western powers since Alexander the great has fallen apart in
:21:48. > :21:52.Afghanistan. There is no way this crude intervention that was launched
:21:53. > :21:57.was going to bring peace and harmony with the lion lying down with the
:21:58. > :22:02.lamb. The question what to do now is extremely difficult. People in
:22:03. > :22:06.Afghanistan are suffering from civil conflict. I am not sure what the
:22:07. > :22:11.Americans think they are doing. I have been struck by the response to
:22:12. > :22:14.this release of prisoners that the American military have been making
:22:15. > :22:24.very angry noises about it. There has not been much coming out of the
:22:25. > :22:28.Obama Administration. This has been very quiet. Whether it is because
:22:29. > :22:31.they are still hoping to broker this bilateral security agreement or
:22:32. > :22:45.whether there is something else going on in the back channels, I do
:22:46. > :22:51.not know. How do you see this? How do you think people will see it?
:22:52. > :22:56.There has been a massive change in public opinion. One of the reasons
:22:57. > :23:05.why... Without giving it any thought at all, Blair immediately supported
:23:06. > :23:09.action against Afghanistan was because it was popular. Unlike
:23:10. > :23:12.Iraq, public opinion suggested huge popularity. Every single newspaper
:23:13. > :23:19.was for it. Nobody gave much thought as to what the consequences would be
:23:20. > :23:23.in terms of long-term commitment. I remember an interview with Clare
:23:24. > :23:28.Short, International Development Secretary in 2002, and she said,
:23:29. > :23:32.already, she had just got back from Kabul and said the Taliban are
:23:33. > :23:37.regrouping and we are diverging military resources to Iraq. This is
:23:38. > :23:41.a disaster. Instead of that view being explored, she was condemned
:23:42. > :23:50.within the Government. It was from that point on, from the British
:23:51. > :23:54.perspective, both a long-term commitment, it was never clearly
:23:55. > :24:01.thought through. Were they there to absolutely destroy the Taliban? How
:24:02. > :24:07.long would that take. How long was the Government going to work with
:24:08. > :24:13.the Taliban nothing was thought through. There is resistance to this
:24:14. > :24:18.form of military intervention. We are seeing a new kind of
:24:19. > :24:23.isolationism in the United States. We talk about Syria all the time.
:24:24. > :24:31.You could not get 10% of the public to say there should be an
:24:32. > :24:39.intervention to at least remove basher al-Assad. Nobody had any hope
:24:40. > :24:44.for the peace talks. It was a figleaf that John Kerry managed to
:24:45. > :24:48.pull together. They have a relationship now. The same with
:24:49. > :24:52.Afghanistan. I know for certainty that, in America, anyone who goes
:24:53. > :24:56.and sits and talks to Americans, they will not talk about
:24:57. > :25:02.Afghanistan, you know it is a war. They will not talk about anything
:25:03. > :25:07.which has gone wrong in Iraq. Even after the Western troops have gone
:25:08. > :25:12.and the country would, I fear, sink back into civil war, the only thing
:25:13. > :25:17.actually that people would care about, and it will only be liberal
:25:18. > :25:20.elites, and I do not mean that in a pejorative sense, would be the fact
:25:21. > :25:24.that so many women would be encouraged to get an education in
:25:25. > :25:28.Afghanistan. The gains made by women are going to mutually be rolled
:25:29. > :25:34.back, I fear. That is the one hope that people have. That is an
:25:35. > :25:39.important point about how the role of women, for some women, has
:25:40. > :25:44.changed. It is not the reason why Britain and the United States went
:25:45. > :25:49.to war and it is not a reason that people are changing the culture of
:25:50. > :25:53.the country. Simpson said we should just declare victory and go out.
:25:54. > :25:59.What we do next in Afghanistan? Alan Simpson, we were Republicans, he
:26:00. > :26:05.said, declare victory and get the hell out. That is it for this week.
:26:06. > :26:07.You can comment on the programme on Twitter. We are back next week at
:26:08. > :26:10.the same time. Goodbye.