11/06/2016 Dateline London

Hello, I'm Sean Lage, welcome to date line. This week, Hillary

Clinton gets the nod from President Obama but still has to feel the

burn. On an important anniversary for the women's movement, what

difference would it make to have a woman president in the US. And here,

less than two weeks before the vote that could take the UK out of the

EU, the fruit of the UK has been placed on the centrestage. Here are

or writers who said their careers trying to explain the British to the

outside world. Stryker McGuire is an editor at Blomberg. Both he and Ned

were born in the US. Welcome. Ned, first of all, let's begin with the

US. This week, the people known in the US primaries as superdelegates

have effectively handed Hillary Clinton victory in the contest to

choose a Democrat candidate for November's presidential election.

Not so super if you are Bernie Sanders. His supporters point out

that super delegates could still change their mind at next month's

convention. Even the intervention of the Obama has not persuaded Mr

Sanders to concede. Meanwhile, Clinton's likely opponent Donald

Trump has asked to meet the most influential of American

Conservatives. Let's start with the Democrats, what is Bernie Sanders up

to? I would be astonished if he doesn't concede after my hometown

Washington, DC has its relevant presidential primary. Both the

voters have voiced their opinion in Washington. I think on the

Democratic side things are becoming clearer. Hillary is very fortunate

in Hatra Serry, because even though there is natural reluctance -- in

her adversarial. Reluctance among even young supporters of Bernie

Sanders because it has been a bitter campaign, if the choice is Hillary

or Trump, I don't think it is a difficult choice, and for that

reason alone, we will see very soon people falling in. And indeed,

Elizabeth Warren, who is a distinguished American senator also

on the left side of the party has already endorsed Hillary. And even

though puzzlingly she is not at all liked among many American voters,

she is experienced, competent, and I think has strength that basically as

the campaign goes on while showing. They brought she is also a fighter.

-- will show. She can be really tough. That is what some people do

not like about her. Not bizarrely, it is because she is a woman. You

know, in some ways she can't win. In some ways, her sex is a problem.

Obviously it shouldn't be, but it is a problem in the way that Obama's

skin was a problem. There are people who will never vote for her for that

reason. It also operates at a different level for young voters.

She is a reminder of how little women have progressed in the US, in

2016 we are still talking about having the first woman president. On

the other hand, why is she saying to young women to convince them that

gender equality is something that is going to happen in the US, she's not

talking about paid paternity leave, something that surprisingly the US

does not have. She is not talking about what she is going to do to

help women get into politics. The US is behind Afghanistan in terms of

gender representation in the United States. Our campaign is all about

her, her claim to public office is to say, I am competent and

experienced. It turns out that you need to have more of a vision, you

need to be in tune also with what the country, and she represents an

elite, she represents a political dynasty in American politics. And

this is what, it has been a turn-off for those young voters who like

Bernie Sanders. Striker, do you think she has managed to nail this

negative, that she is perceived by a lot of voters as being part of the

establishment that they blame for things being the way that they are?

You know, she can't really... She can't nail it. The thing that she

has most, will have most going for her, is that she is not Donald

Trump. You know, people are going to... The choice for many people in

the United States, it is just... I mean, I think it could be a huge

loss for the Republicans. I think the Republican party could be in

very serious trouble. I bet the Republicans wish they had

superdelegates! She can't nail it, because it is true. Hillary Clinton

needs Bernie's people, and I'm not sure that all of them will switch to

her. You should see what goes on and social media, incredible. Paul on

the Guardian pointing out, suggesting, that a great majority

because of the Trump factor may hold the nose. In the end they will vote

for her, I'm sure they will. I watched Elizabeth Warren's

interview, bringing her onto the team would be a brilliant thing. As

a vice president? Yes. That would infuse Bernie Sanders' supporters.

If you can have one woman, why not to? -- why not two. She is in a

strong position to do that kind of thing, not the conventional thing,

it has got to be a man from Ohio, and he has to be from northern Ohio,

that of thing. Let's talker but about Donald Trump. It has been a

difficult week for him. -- let's talk a bit about Donald Trump. I was

thinking more about the judge and the controversy over that. Ben

Carson on Saturday morning, former Republican candidate who is now an

adviser to Donald Trump is saying privately he fully recognises that

this is not the right thing to say, to attack this judge who is dealing

with a case that is to do with the former Trump University and why it

failed. If you are a Democratic strategist, it isn't any more about

what Donald Trump says. It is who he is. I'd Elizabeth Warren, perhaps a

little cutie, said that he is a bully and a racist -- and Elizabeth

Warren, perhaps a little OTT. A lot of Americans say he is calling it as

it is. That is a worrying sign, so many Americans and Republicans got

behind him, it was a line-up of right-wing candidates at this

election, that tells you something about where it has gone, the central

ground and American politics. There are huge divisions. It is not an

American phenomenon, you have got Corbyn and Brexit here. We are in an

age when political discourse among people who used to read the nation

or the Christian science monitor is RIP, it doesn't exist. Look at

weeks, we have got Ted Cruz who came closest. He was antiestablishment.

He was hated by the Republican establishment in the United States.

What is happening here is just totally fascinating, and may be

worrisome. But you mentioned the coat brothers. Things move very fast

those days. That looks like it is over with. Just remind people who

they are? They own probably the second largest arrive at Lee held

company in the United States. And it is huge, -- the second largest

privately held company. It is into agricultural products and trading at

oil and so on. They are small government people, aren't they?

There was a quote, somebody quite close to them, saying that he would

like a Federal government so small that you can drown it in a bath tub.

They would like a government small with less interventions. They are

very Conservative, that is interesting. Trump is actually not

very Conservative. Those brothers and the Republican establishment is

all about free trade. Trump is not about free trade. You have this real

interest, that is why the Republican party is in despair. Because this

candidate, Trump, if you were ever to get close to power, would be

doing all kinds of things that they have never advocated. And just as

you were suggesting that may be Democrat voters will hold the nose

and vote for Hillary, Republican candidates will hold the nose and

support Trump. I don't know, I'm not sure. Some will, but the party is

completely torn apart by this. But that is also why Hillary needs

Bernie's supporters. It is that layer of people who feel deeply

disenfranchised, who, I mean, obviously there is a very small

crossover between Bernie and Trump, but there are people who will stay

home and don't vote if they don't fill represented. I think what

Hillary has going for her is that the default position among many

American voters will be not just opposition to Trump, but a mum. I

mean, real or arm. -- alarm. And also women voters, which is

interesting because he is not only a bully, he is a misogynist. No matter

how women voters relate or not to a woman candidate. And it is a big

thing. In other words, you know, it is a little less startling because

it comes eight years after Obama being president. But the first

woman... I mean, in her acceptance speech. I have been asking myself,

why don't I feel this? Why don't I... This week we have seen 150th

anniversary being marked of the founding of the suffragette

movement, a big driving force in the British context for eventually vote

for women and eventually women politicians. Ironically, an American

woman, Nancy Aston was the first woman to take a seat in the House of

Commons. That was more than 100 years ago now. Here we are in the

American context, only in the mid-80s did we have a woman actually

on the ticket at all. We had surely chisel. -- surely. But it feels, it

feels very, very late. It feels, Wake up America, why has it taken so

long? There is also the question, what are they planning to do to

bring more women into politics? What are you planning to do to articulate

the grievances of so many young women who want to go into politics?

They prefer the grumpy old white man, the traditional candidate, to

the woman, who has achieved so much. Gender in the end is just gender,

I'm sorry to say it, I have good friends who were in the feminist

struggles in America who feel this is really, really important. And of

course, given the state of argument about reproductive rights in

America, it is important. But actually I think it is because, as

my daughter said, who is 20 and a strong feminist, I care about what

is in her ears, -- what is between her ears. Is she a strong candidate?

Look at what she has backed in the previous administration, the welfare

cuts, the crime bill, those things are not good for women or anybody,

and she represents that establishment, the corporate world.

It has done very little for women. You said that America is behind the

curve globally on this. We have justices on the Supreme Court, two

women secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright. And a

raft of women in senior positions in Congress. Condoleezza Rice, don't

forget. On that basis, the presidency may have not until now

been on within striking distance for women, but women's record in

politics is pretty good. The few who have managed to get to the top have

a good record. Why haven't they done their bit in promoting more women?

The whole discussion about positive discrimination, mentoring women and

so on, nobody is having these debates in American politics and

they need to have it because that is how you're going to recruit more

women for top political jobs. Only 20% of senators and members of

Congress are women, this extremely low in comparison with most

countries, Afghanistan has more women in Parliament. It sounds like

you want to move to Afghanistan! Afghanistan, which is not a beacon

of gender equality, has more women in political positions than the

United States. There is something... In a parliamentary democracy, it is

easier to get people to where you want them to get. Most women

leaders, I suspect, have come through parliamentary systems as

opposed to popular vote. There is so much bias and discrimination against

women, normally you elect more women and have proportional representation

-- on proportional representation than first past the post. That is

why Hillary has been so careful, she suffered a lot of discrimination and

flak while she was just the wife of a politician. She is extremely

careful. There is this idea that an order for a woman to be seen as a

credible politician, she also needs to be demure and feminine and bake

cookies and be a good mother and where the heels at the end of the

day. This is not possible. And it is absolutely horrendous expectations

that people have about women in politics. Again, I'm not... I'm not

trying to blow the trumpet for Hillary, but I think she will grow

into this role now that she has got the nomination, and I think her

acceptance speech was a kind of change of tone, change of

confidence, and I think the mere fact that if she wins, of having a

woman president, will be seen five or ten years from now as

significant. Will it mean anything else in the rest of the world? Does

breaking that glass ceiling in American politics... We will save a

lot of money on building walls on the Mexican border! Is there any

sense in which it will serve a valuable purpose internationally?

Not on the scale of Obama, I don't think. But I guess I am the only one

who is not deeply sceptical. But having followed her career, she will

be a competent, if she is elected, she will be a competent and I think

good president. It has been the UK's female politicians this week who

have made the biggest impact on the referendum campaign. Five of them,

including the Scottish First Minister, lined up along with Forest

Johnson for the big televised debate between those who follow Mr Johnson

and those who follow the Prime Minister's read. The debate was

lively, with a fellow Tory accusing the ex-mayor of being motivated by

his ambition to become PM, and much talk of Boris's big whopper. What

did you make of this debate, was there a sense that finally the

campaign is coming alive? I don't know. I found it really depressing,

actually. Well, just on the question of women and Boris, I don't know if

you noticed, but when there was a question about the effect on women's

rights of leaving the EU, Boris was unable to address the question of

women and women's rights at all, he talked about several other things.

The white to be fair, there were two other women from the league

campaign. But that was the question, come on, Boris! -- the league

campaign. There are all these facts and pseudo- facts and plain lies

being banded around, and I think none of this is very much touching

what is actually going to make people vote one way or the other,

and I think the strength of that leave slogan, take back control,

really tells you what is going on here. This is about people feeling

disenfranchised, out of control in their lives, for reasons which

actually have nothing to do with the EU. And this referendum, which I'm

sure David Cameron is bitterly regretting ever having let out of,

opened Pandora's box. It is becoming the place where people are

expressing that. It is not about that. I'm beginning to really worry

that we are going to leave. We sitting around here, members of the

chattering classes in London, we are here to chat, and we all want to

remain. But for a lot of people out there... I don't have a view! Let me

pick you up on that point. You said, it is nothing to do with the EU, but

the question on immigration is. As the leave campaign said, if you

can't close the door on immigration to the EU, you can't control... They

keep saying, we will be Switzerland, assuming, and there is a very

powerful argument in the German newspaper this morning from the

German government that if the Brexiteers win and Britain comes

back and says, OK, April fool, we want the same rules, can you give us

the deal that we want, that will not happen. The fact is, if they want

any access of note... You are saying the condition is that you have to

have free movement. Well, of course. The world we live in, you just can

no longer be isolated. If you are, you are isolated at your peril.

There is also the other problem. Immigration is an extremely

difficult issue. No government in the world has been able to control

immigration. This is the big Lie that is going out there, half of

migrants... Half of the migrants coming to Britain in last year have

been non-EU migrants. Our British people worried about those as well?

I think essentially the point has been that leaving the European

Union, and if what you want in the end is access to the single market,

I'm afraid you are going to have those EU migrants, pesky EU

migrants, coming to live in Britain, there is no other way around it. Had

you been at all inspired by the argument of the remain campaign? You

are saying that you are Remainers. Have they risen to the challenge?

There is an argument that I suspect many of us are partial to, which

they can never make. Which is that, there is something good about

unification, there is something good about countries working together in

concert to do things together. And one of the things that people like

about the UK now, in particular London perhaps, is that you actually

do feel like a part of Europe. You know, but that, they cannot, they

literally cannot make that argument. I feel very, very disappointed with

the Labour Party here. But I also understand, I really understand, it

is very difficult to argue for the EU at the moment. I'm not a fan of

the EU in so many ways, look at what it has done to Greece and Portugal,

Howard has failed to deal with the refugee crisis, it is not working

well at all -- how it has failed to deal. It is hard to say, I really

want to be part of this thing. I feel like it would be worse to

leave, we needed as a defence against rollbacks of workers'

rights, we need that social chapter. And you don't know why the Labour

Party has not been making that argument? They are understandably

torn about the EU. Because the voters are torn about it, and two

the MPs. The leadership is in a real dilemma. Labour is divided on two

grounds. There is the economic argument, the EU innocence, if you

look at what has happened in Greece and Portugal and so on, -- in a

sense. Austerity has not worked, millions of people are unemployed.

It is not the kind of Europe that the European left once. Labour

cannot make that case. On the other hand, the question of immigration.

The other thing that you can sell the European Union is because of the

project. But Labour voters do not want more immigration. And so they

cannot defend Europe on the basis of the cosmopolitan project. They are

saying, we are going to control immigration. But this is not what

the voters want, but many Labour MPs are with them. The two about this.

This is not just an election -- two tragedies. It has not been all of

these things that we have been talked about our true. I don't know

whether you remember in 1970s movie called Network in which this guy has

been fired, he calls on viewers all over America to open the window and

say, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to stand for it any more. That

both for people whose bought from in the US and for a lot of wrecks it

hears, this is a way to punch the establishment in the nose, which is

fine. -- Brexiteers. 40, 50, 60 years of economic growth and lots of

other things that Britain... I mentioned in the introduction to

this section that the future of the UK itself would be put on the table.

We have this remarkable joint appearance by a Conservative former

Prime Minister, Sir John Major, and a Labour former Prime Minister, Tony

Blair, the two men who were the British architects of the peace

agreement in Northern Ireland, saying that this could be endangered

by Brexit. We had this discussion about whether the UK voted to leave

the EU in 12 days' time, then Scotland would hold a second

referendum because it doesn't want as they are in the UK if it is not

an EU. -- doesn't want to stay. The stakes are being raised quite

dramatically by those who you would think would not want to risk raising

those prospects. If you think of Northern Ireland, the border now, it

is a release valve for nationalist sentiment in the north. Because you

can go back and forth. So you can imagine you are in a single country.

You can literally go back and forth with these. If that becomes an

actual border... The Irish president has been campaigning here in the

United Kingdom, the Irish politicians have been campaigning

for Remain because of that problem. The bigger fear is that a Brexit

vote could hasten the disintegration of Europe itself. What we are

looking out at the moment is a lot of nationalism and xenophobia in

Europe. It is not going to be a break-up that will be nice. The

other countries that would follow suit's I am thinking about states

that are happy to take funds are not happy to take part in projects like

the refugee crisis, Hungary and Poland. They are not very keen on

hosting other citizens in their own countries. Also the whole atmosphere

of this campaign will encourage people like Marine Le Pen and the

far right parties all over Europe. There is talk of Marine Le Pen

coming to Britain to campaign at some point at the end of this

campaign. Another thing worth saying is that, let's say that the vote is

to remain, all the problems still remain. All the problems that we

have everywhere don't go away. This won't clear the air? No, certainly

not inside the Tory Party. It is not the most able option. Immigration

will remain a problem -- stable option. Even if they leave it will

be a problem. Even Boris has said they are not going to deport all

these people. You're not going to wake up the next morning and find it

is 1950s England again! This is another thing that I don't get. Take

back control! Is this the glorious 70s when 90% of the country went to

University or where 10% of the country had passports? Or is it the

1960s... Are you saying that is the consequence of being in the EU? That

more people are going to university now than before? No, what I am

saying is, what do you want to go back to, where is the Disneyland

where it ends. There is a right wing and a left-wing fantasy. I was

speaking to an elderly lady who was saying, we used to have jobs here,

and she thought, she was 90, she thought that we were going to go

back to that. We have to get out as well, I am sorry to say. Thank you

all for being with us for another addition of Dateline London. That is

it for this week. We are back at the same time next week. You can of

course comment on the programme on Twitter on hashtag BBC dateline.

Goodbye. Hello there. We got away with it in

London earlier on for Trooping the Colour and the big fly past. In the

last we had a thunderstorm south of