12/12/2015 Dateline London

Hello and welcome to Dateline London.

In a world where many have lost confidence in political leadership,

can the climate change talks really make a difference?

And talking of political leadership, what do Donald Trump,

Jeremy Corbyn, France's National Front, Syriza and Podemos

My guests today are Marc Roche of Le Point and Le Soir,

Henry Chu who is an American journalist and broadcaster,

Polly Toynbee of The Guardian, and Abdallah Homouda

There's an old story about a dog walking on two legs -

it does not do it very well, but you congratulate it

because you are surprised it does it at all.

Is that the real story of the Paris climate change talks; that they may

not deliver a perfect solution to environmental problems,

but they do represent at least an extraordinary attempt by world

leaders to show that most elusive of qualities -

It has been, Ed Miliband was saying this is the French have done a

really good job. They did a marvellous job because

they fought to get this agreement at the last minute, and they had to

persuade Saudi Arabia, so it is a great success for Paris, but of

course what are the details? Basically Western countries don't

have the money to finance climate change, the industry is fighting

against this agreement and has lots of money to persuade policymakers to

finance denial of climate. The NGOs are divided, but the issue is

unemployment, terrorism... That's today's issue. And so it is a

great battle won, but it is not a war.

Nevertheless the good news for those that who have been there is that the

client -- time for climate change scepticism is gone. We have to do

something about it, therefore to get people to agree on almost anything

is a bit of a triumph. I think in terms of what it is, it

is -- whether it is a great demonstration of leadership, really

Barber said to do. After Copenhagen anything which came

out of this was going to be a success.

I realise getting 200 countries to agree is very difficult, but this

should be a dog walking on four legs are not two. As Mark says, we need

to see what the details are. 1.25 Celsius is more ambitious, it is

still not enough. I went to see if there will be any

teeth behind this or whether it will descend into unworkable and

unenforceable solution. The science is so far ahead of what

is politically possible because of all the reasons that Marc said.

In Britain we have had the most rainfall over in some parts of the

country. Now officially this rainfall is a direct result of

global warming, the extraordinarily warm winter we have had so far. But

at the same time we have a Government that promised to be the

greenest Government ever, and has just cut all of the subsidies for

renewables for wind and for soul or just as they were becoming economic

Lee viable. -- solar. We could generate all of our electricity in

this country for wind and solar, with a bit of back-up from nuclear,

but the nuclear deal is outrageous, appalling, it is the most expensive

form of energy that is. If he had spent a fraction of that on solar

and wind, he could have produced much more. So within this country

there are climate politics that are very difficult.

One thing I am waiting to here about is an end to the force of trading in

carbon credits, which everybody is trying to shift the burden onto

others. Reducing the fund or the lack of funding to help third World

countries, I'm not sure if Saudi Arabia coming in would be asking to

foot the Bill because the reduction in oil prices would not help, and

the crisis in the Middle East to which the Saudis are contributing

wouldn't help either. I don't know. But I am optimistic on one thing,

but it is a stand which everyone has taken, however limited, to prove

that we are all on the same boat. I mean, the globalisation of the

economy, of media, of culture, values, has come to climate change.

It would come to terror as well because nothing which happens

anywhere in the world does not affect in the rest of the world.

I wonder how many countries covered this on their front pages.

The is only one ballot, there is no plan B.

-- there is. This is even one -- even more important than the world

was coming -- all over the world. And yet we have covered it thinly,

dutifully, on an inside page. We should have been following every

twist and turn and pointing fingers at those countries that were being

recalcitrant. I didn't think any country has covered it in the way

they should. You were talking about wars, we have

had war on terrorism, war on drugs, nobody talks about the war on

climate change, but that is the sort of rallying we need, and it seems --

and what seems to be just earnest coverage doesn't really do it.

I hate the use of the word "War". Just call it a plan of action. But

no one has made the link, it is about the refugee crisis, because it

is quite clear that many of the refugees are coming to Europe,

fleeing the effect of climate change also, not only war and other things.

And so the people who are against climate change, financed very often

by the industry, should be opposed to refugees also but they should see

that the two issues are linked. People think it's boring, basically.

Everybody agrees, and then There is a concept in American

politics called concepts which the American public

thought were appropriate Republican hopeful Donald Trump this

week went right outside the window by calling for Muslims to be banned

from the United States. But does Trump also represent

a phenomenon we have seen across democracies -

what Jeremy Corbyn calls politics as usual?

leaders shattering Overton Window And are any of these former

outsiders likely to wield real power Donald Trump. How do you explain why

Donald Trump is regarded around the world is a bit of a buffoon, and is

regarded with an American politics is potentially the next president?

I don't think -- know how many people think he has a shot at the

presidency, a chicken and egg question. What he

is saying creating a budget -- particular

creating a budget -- particular climate of fear. And so he is in a

sense the id of the Republican Party.

politics. You have the right and the left, you

have populists on both ends. they are coming into greater

prominence now. Whether they can really come into power, I'm not so

sure, but besides power the is influence.

What you are seeing with Donald Trump, is pulling the party rhetoric

within the Republican party particularly, father to the right

and expressing those things which once seemed beyond the pale.

-- further to Cheney, all the other Republican

candidates, saying this is nonsense. This is un-American.

But every time we in the media have said he has gone too far, he has

always seemed to either recover or have a bounce in the polls. These

appalling statements have usually been at times he has begun to

experience, edition. So this has been a way of solidifying his base.

It is like a religious cult in the sense that the more opposition he

engenders, the more they think is actually correct. When you mentioned

some of the other phenomena we see, whether it's the national Front or

Overton Window, these aren't new forces. The national Front has been

around for a long time. -- whether it's the national Front or Syriza.

But they are all being much more successful now than many years ago.

Because of the collapse of the centre.

How do you see Trump? IC Trump as... He is not politically

experienced. He had nothing to do with politics all his life.

That is the -- the attraction though.

But I am trying to describe him as he is. This can be an attraction to

people in America who have lost the faith with Washington, who would

like to bring someone from, a fresh breeze from outside. And to the

Americans he could have some new appeal.

I really surprised that he has solidified his support. He has more

than twice than the next contender. How far can he go? I am not sure,

but would he be the opposite number of Hillary Clinton for example?

She must wish it, must be prayers said in the Democrats.

Other Muslims reporting him as mainstream or maverick?

He is reported as a maverick, not a serious politician, but nevertheless

there is a sense of feeling victimised in the Arab and Muslim

world, because people escape the Middle East because of the crisis in

the Middle East. They don't do for the leisure of finding a better

life, but people are under immediate threat, and danger.

How do you see Trump? The list of people I gave deliberately from the

left and the right, they are all different things, but the one thing

they have in common is that there is something rotten with the state of

politics, it is an insiders' club. Well, if I wanted to try and be

optimistic about Trump I would say what might be useful with what he

has done is articulate something bubbling under the surface of a lot

of all for more conventional politics.

-- awfully more. We are worried about these Muslims,

are they going to tip the cultural balance? There is a sort of cultural

shudder going on very much influenced by the terrorism, and

maybe when somebody comes out and just said -- says Ed, let's just

throw them all out, you are suddenly pulled up short and is said that is

ridiculous, impossible. And maybe it's sort of cleanses it

in a way. And you have something to confront. When you have people like

Cheney saying it is outrageous, maybe you Lance the boil. I am being

optimistic. If you take the national Front in

France, who have gone ahead, although the left and the right

haven't done that badly either. They have caught the immigration issue.

People are afraid of the image they have seen on television. Where their

weakness is, including Trump, is the economy. The economic lesson is

suicidal, national Front, they want out of the euro, protectionism,

nationalisation, more civil servants, and through foreign

workers out. It makes no sense. And that is why I think Marine Le Pen

will do extremely well in the regional elections but she will lose

the presidential elections. Read my lips, she will not be president.

But I think also you are identifying that people are actually responding

emotionally, they are not responding to a policy position in a rational,

intellectual way. And I think we see this with Donald Trump stop Polly, I

take your point that it might allow a catharsis for the people who have

these feelings that are suppressed. But they could also poison the well.

As I mentioned earlier I feel like there has been condemnation of him

from some of the other party rivals, but they haven't necessarily as

strong or as dignified was we might want it to be, and I think that will

force them to adopt even -- and even further right position.

When you look at all your different right left -- right, left, maverick

parties, is there something going on where people some -- suddenly are

expecting something different from politics? They wanted to be fun,

exciting, something new, it is kind of 24-hour news politics -- 24-hour

news politics. Reality television. Yes, we have some kind of -- but

looking at the left for example, Syriza in Greece, first their

diagnosis of the problem was not right. They fought harder than

necessary, and we had to recapitulate at the end. The people

elected them second time because the alternative was not right enough to

stop so there is a problem here. These people, do they need to mature

more in politics to understand the realities, or just the lack of

alternative? With regard to Podemos in Spain, they had to align with a

right wing party in order to get them there in the capital. And then

she adopted someone from an extreme right wing party as a Chief

Executive of the municipality. -- in order to get a mayor.

Jeremy Corbyn has been the only one with the ideological background.

How do you mean? He has never even run a committee. He has been in

Parliament, but he has been a one-man protest.

I am talking about the tradition of the Labour Party from which he

comes. But he has always been on the

outside, he has never been appointed to anything, they have always said,

that is Jeremy sitting in the corner.

The vote of the national front, it is young people, less educated,

workers, unskilled or middle skilled, afraid of globalisation. We

have a real problem. Part of the population is of the employment, and

so we have to think how to bring these people back into mainstream

and then they will vote for them. We have seen this week people saying

the middle class in America is finished, and I wonder whether it

was the case that we have been told that there is no alternative, Mrs

Thatcher's phrase, to a kind of market economics that we have, and

yet it doesn't seem to work for many people, including the middle

classes, and therefore if you are told there is no alternative you

start looking for other things, it may be the left or the right, it may

be Jeremy Corbyn or more fun in politics, it may be Podemos, but

people are maybe realising that things are implanted unfairly.

This is the longest recession we have had in our lifetime, and this

permanent hollowing out where technology is taking out all the

decent and jobs, so either you are highly educated as a top

professional, or there are a lot of rotten service jobs from which there

are no ladders up. I think that is beginning to seep through, people

see their children's opportunities, the number of graduates who are

working in coffee shops, note chance of anything better, it is

unpredictable whether it comes out right or left. A lot of us on the

left thought, here is the crisis of capitalism at last, this will make

people realise that we cannot have finances, -- double finances run in

the way they have been. It hasn't worked out that way. But

we now have a Coalition Government -- we had a Coalition Government, a

Conservative Government, gone the other way. The left has missed its

chances, not just in Britain but elsewhere.

We have Francois Hollande, but not doing...

The left is Italy and the Italian example is an example of a left

wing, really reformist, changing things like no right wing Government

would have done. And in terms of what we did consider

extremist, let's not ignore the fact that in Britain you have a

Government that was already considering in pursuit of an agenda

of cuts that were radical, but we haven't seen in a generation.

In America you have had offices that have benefited very, very tiny

subsections of the population, so you could call that extreme to a

certain extent and there are people now reacting to that, already pushed

to the extreme. How far do you see some of these

forces achieving power? Overton Window did, but the people who

wanted -- who didn't want to compromise broke away from Syriza.

-- Syriza. The young people have social

demands, economic terms -- demands. They need their aspirations to be

addressed. When these people know how to do it in political terms and

when this is cemented into the politics in a way that can make it

doable, now you will have some kind of stability and they will succeed.

But so long as this is not the case, you look at the Arab Spring and Arab

countries' relation -- revolutions, you can demolish but not build.

Did they come out of the crash or the recession? Was the a connection?

No, I think it had nothing to do with the recession, the recession

was the worst, it to time to transpire.

But it was economically driven. The provision has been a community

for decades. But it is not necessarily directly connected to

what happened in the West because people were suffering. The social

media, it is connected to the social media more than to the economic

crisis. Mark said Marine Le Pen may have

success but will not become president, what do you think about

Jeremy Corbyn's chances? Limit. He scores less well

personally than Ed Miliband who just lost the election because some

people regarded he was too much to the left.

So much of it now is about charisma and character.

Back story and all the rest of it. You feel that he is in exactly the

same place as Ed Miliband, in North London intellectual, miles away from

ordinary people's lives and he doesn't have the magic ingredient.

You feel he hasn't thought it. We know what happened in Britain

with the opinion polls last time, they weren't exactly a curate.

I saw the New York Times suggesting that opinion polls don't measure

younger voters, because younger voters do not have landlines and it

is much easier to pull people who have landlines.

In other words there are things which are not measurable by politics

as usual. Yes, and one of those measures is

social media, and that is where a lot of it is happening now, but I

think the smart campaigns, and Obama's campaign tapped into this,

was seeing what was going on there and turning it to their advantage.

But the people around Corbyn forget that following each other on

Twitter, they get an echo chamber effect where they think everybody

out there is just like us, and that is the danger.

That is exactly the problem of political forces in Egypt. The

political parties meet at Cairo hotels and exchange messages via

Facebook and they think they reach the people. No one reaches the

people, you have to go to the people.

The victory of Marine Le Pen was due to social media.

This is very important. When you talk about the echo

chambers and whether there is a chance of success for these parties,

we have had insurgents like this into politics before, and this is

actually not a new phenomenon in political history in the last

century. Hitting back at the United States,

they tended to split the vote on whichever side of the fence they

were, but that is true of Britain, coalitions...

We have an appalling political system where there should be a split

between the Socialists and the Democrats, and the same is true on

the rights, between the Europeans and the pro-Europeans.

And yet our Government is never going to reform the voting system

because it suits them. But people had a chance to vote for

it, and I think with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn's constituency

there were only three places that voted for Bush to representation.

The Conservative Party put a huge amount of money and effort into

misleading people, saying it would be very expensive to change.

You offer people a little more choice in their voting, and the tone

it down, and you wonder if the world has gone mad!

That's it for Dateline London for this week.

You can comment on the programme on Twitter @gavinesler.

We re back next week at the same time.

A wet Saturday for a large parts of the UK. There is a real contrast

with the temperatures right now, across northern Britain it is

called, whereas in the south it is really mild. It is in the middle

that we have the wet stuff, that rain hitting the colder air, falling

as some snow. This cloud moved in overnight and is going to bring most

of us a pretty dull weekend. There will be a lot of cloud around

could -- today, further rain around across north of England and North

Wales. At lower levels there could be some

snow, and on the higher levels it could make for tricky travelling

conditions. There is sunshine across northern

Scotland, brightening up in Glasgow, and after a wet morning things

turning brighter and drier and Northern Ireland. Staying wet in

northern England. Potential for further flooding in parts of the

Midlands, and there is that snow falling on the higher roots in

northern England. Even at lower levels there could be a little bit

of snow. Far south, look at the temperatures,

12, 13. It stays blustery on the south

coast. As the rain clears from northern

England, the Midlands, it could turn icy overnight.

With the rain across the South, temperatures don't drop here, we

stay in double figures in the south-west.

Further north it will be a very cold night.

Extensive frost across northern England, parts of Northern Ireland

and Scotland, -5 or maybe even -10 in some Scottish lens.

-- glens. Dial and down across south-east

England, the Midlands, tomorrow. South Wales, south-west England

generally have another grey but largely dry and mild day.

Further north, the sunshine will turn rather hazy.

Temperatures will struggle. They could be some snow is that web

whether Bush is into southern Scotland for a time on Saturday.

-- Sunday. It will keep things relatively mild

in the South West, but there will also be spells of rain across the

weekend.