22/07/2017 Dateline London

Hello and welcome to Dateline London, I'm Jane Hill.

This week we ask, what are the advantages of Brexit?

We look at Donald Trump's stalled plans to reform Obamacare,

and we discuss the ever increasing problem of migrants to Europe.

My guests are: the conservative commentator Alex Deane,

the Middle East expert Rachel Shabi, Thomas Kielinger of Die Welt,

and the American writer and broadcaster Jef Mcallister.

The second round of Brexit talks were held this week -

for four days at the end of which both sides

as robust, and Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator said more

clarity was required from the British side

Some conservatives in this country are beginning to talk of a

transition period. There will be further talks

at the end of August. Certainly in the UK the advantages

of leaving - or remaining - Let's take some time to discuss

them. I think it is extraordinary

rhetoric. I know we will not have a discussion like that today! A

majority of the country voted to leave the EU, imagine having such

contempt for your fellow countrymen that you would use such a turn. If

Remain won, I would not refer to them like that. After four days of

talks, what is your reading of it? It's a two year process, at the

beginning people posture and pose on both sides and people set out the

very highest points of their stores, they know

that you will go inwards to a convergent point so you want to

stretch things as far as possible. The fact that there are a lot of

good mood musics, they get on on a personal level, Michel Barnier and

David Davis, and they have a history where they understand each other a

bit. My instinct is, good start. This will emerge quite quickly, a

good outcome is in the interests of both countries and Europe. So far,

we have been looking at Britain as being the odd one out. And a

character we want to get rid of, that's the wrong perspective. Europe

will be very interested in making sure that this is an amicable

separation which does not destroy the network of connections and trade

relations, and in the end, I think I predict quite an acceptable outcome

for both camps, as it were. I do not buy this adversarial atmosphere

which still reigns over the negotiations. I think that

eventually, we only have 18 months left. But mindful had to accept

themselves here! It is not long. -- both minds. This will have to be

positive, aside from the money and separation issue, and the divorce

Bill, that needs to be resolved as there is a lot of anger attaching

itself to money. There really is, there has been so much focus. Do you

have focus that that is an inevitable sticking point that will

work out. Why is there so much anger? That people who voted to

leave did not realise it would be a thing? It's inevitable the subject

arises, we get more than we put out, a lot of money goes from the UK

every year. The second largest net contributor to the EU is about to

leave, of course it was going to be an issue that after 40 years in

partnership, I do not normally seared phrase like this but there is

something slightly grubby about trying to grab the pennies, as that

group goes out the door. If it was right for us to join in the first

place, we could discuss that if you want, I am convinced it is no longer

right for us to be here now but if we could part as friends and have a

reasonable relationship thereafter, it seems the shouting over a set

amount of money, whatever the amount of money comes to be, is somehow

losing side of the broader picture of the relationship between our

country and the European friends and partners for generations to come. If

you'd think from that perspective, the demands for at the end will be a

relatively small amount of money, but that is short-sighted. I hope we

can come back to that. Jeff and Rachel, I'm interested in how you

are portraying that and what people are making a bit elsewhere, as

various European nations continue to battle it out? For me, it is

interesting, the way that it has been portrayed is, of course, shaded

by people's positions. Quite emphatically. We saw some of that

last week. It is a concern, I do not think we can deny that, however much

goodwill we think that there is or there should be between EU and the

UK in this negotiation. It does seem clear that the people charged with

the negotiation are not equipped to do so. Now, I do not... In a

practical sense? They clearly did not think on it before, they did not

have a plan. I do not think they are constitutionally, or in terms of

their personality, very well equipped to deal with it. They do

not seem to be good negotiators all seem to think about what is best for

Britain... Which is, of course, we want to leave in jobs and the

economy, the environment, environmental protections,

employment protections for the UK, that should be front and centre of

their thinking. In looking at the way negotiations are going, it

clearly does not seem to be the case. I think it is OK... I do not

think it is OK for people who want to remain to disparage those who

voted to leave in this way. But I do think that it is OK to say that

actually, if the mood does shift, because this does seem intractable

and impossible, it is perfectly acceptable for politicians to be

sensitive and responsive to that. Four days into the negotiation, I

cannot see how you definitively say what you are saying, you say what

you want to see... I began by saying it is too early to say how it was

going and you say, but obviously all of this is not working. It has been

a year and we haven't heard of any progress since we decided to leave.

We are starting negotiations soon and I would agree with you... It is

nice to hear the good mood music that at the practicalities are going

to overwhelm the project. The fundamental differences will have to

reassert themselves, will there be free movement of people? Will there

not? Will there be re-entry into the Common Market, on a wholesale basis

or sector by sector? Where everybody gets a veto? The Financial Times

recorded that there were 750 individual treaties that the UK

needs to renegotiate with third parties just to get back to a

standing start. There are food safety points, the movement of

atomic products, a giant number of vocabularies that need to be

carefully pulled a -- pulled apart. In the middle of this, a lot of

people in Europe end up getting a veto over specific details. It is

showing a softening of interest in the hard Brexit, and the banks and

foreign companies are now beginning to get space in Frankfurt and

Dublin, and big banks putting money down for 50 private school spaces

because they expect more people. This will not be easy, and all of

these transitional arrangements are not clear yet. All of these

businesses need certainty. We are at the point where people make

decisions for the point where this was already going to be done and

nobody knew what this would be like, I think all of the barnacles will

get thicker and thicker, and it will feel like a dumb idea. OK, you said

earlier, at the risk of rerunning the referendum campaign, from here,

where we are now, what are the key benefits going to be? Once this is

done, from your perspective, what will be better? They are as we were

a year ago, we can govern ourselves in the way a sovereign nation can

do, and we currently can't within the EU, determine EU trade

agreements, the competence that the EU reserves for itself, and

controlling our own borders. What we do with those things is up for

negotiations but it is up to us rather than determined by others. If

you think of those principles behind those broad areas, in sovereignty

terms, we were one of nine, and Prietos were common, now we are one

of 28, those out of the Eurozone where they coalesce together it is

smaller. -- vetos. On money, I know we can talk about how much we

putting and what it equals but will clearly we put in more than we get

out. We should be able to decide how we spend our money and that is what

a sovereign nation gets to do. And on immigration, this is where people

are most upset, but when commentators on the remain side said

it was racist to want to control our borders, they helped the campaign to

leave the EU. It is very helpful to be sneered at and it is still

happening others, Polly Toynbee and others. We could fill the entire

programme with this, but still 18 months to discuss, Alex, as you

pointed out! Sean Spicer has gone, after Anthony

Scala was appointed the director of communications. It comes after a

difficult week discussing health care, with the president discussing

proposals, for replacing what we often call Obamacare. Let's begin

with the events overnight, what do we know of the new man, the new

directive -- director of communications. What is going on

there? He is a friend of Donald Trump, a New York guy, giving

advice, they talk a lot. He is really a buddy of trumps, he worked

in banking, but Sean Spicer, he has been leaked against a lot, in a

chaotic White House, he could not take the thought of another enemy,

they did not like each other, and the fundamental problem is that

Donald Trump believes that he is his own best communications director and

he does so through his tweeting. He thinks his communications staff,

when things are not going well with big media and with the country, he

thinks it is the communication's shops fold. He has a parade of

people beneath him who he often disses and trades out and

contradicts and sends up with wrong information but it is their fault.

Sean Spicer became unusable in a classic sense of a press secretary

because nobody could trust what he said, and he talked himself off the

air. The usual TV briefing because he did not want Donald Trump to see

him all the time, Donald Trump would see the briefing and get mad at him.

Anthony Scaramucci is a pugnacious fellow and I'm sure that he will

satisfy Donald Trump for a while, but I don't know for how long! And

what about those disparaging remarks he made about Donald Trump, being

totally out of his depth and so forth, he was very negative about

the troubled presidency. He does not sound very close to him, does he? I

agree, but Donald Trump himself... He calls on people and manages to

make deals with people he hates! It is a good question. What will happen

with health care? This keeps hitting the buffers, it was a massive

campaign pledge, where is it now? For him, it wasn't so much a

campaign pledge, he does not care one way or the other. He does not

really care about policy. He does not care at all about it. He wanted

to win. The Republican conference really wanted to defeat Obama care.

That is right that they had no plan. Shockingly, they knew because Obama

would veto any attempt, as he did 55 or 80 times or something, they would

never have to worry on details but when needed, it turns out their bill

was going to get at least 20 million people uninsured and Obamacare is

popular, it's gone over 50% popularity rating for the first

time. People are realising it may be taken away and so people think, this

is pretty good. If you give people an important set of benefits, as

Obama counted on, it works into the system and they do not want it taken

away any more. That was difficult for the Republicans to recognise in

advance, they would go for their meetings and people would be

screaming at them. It essentially became politically toxic and

impossible. I do not think there is a way of wholesale reform but the

system needs tweaking. It is a Republican health care system called

Romney- care, invented by the Heritage foundation 25 years ago, it

doesn't defend their interests in a fundamental way, it needs tweaking

and money but it will be done if they are willing to work with

Democrats. That's an interesting part of the equation, moving it

wider and taking it further, there has been a change in public opinion

over Obamacare. Now most people, including Republican voters, support

it and that has to be partly because they have understood the benefits

but once it was introduced, and also because with the threat of it being

taken there was a campaign that, quite proactively demonstrated to

people, this is what you would be benefiting from and how you would be

benefiting. This is why it is a bad thing to take away. Moving forward,

I think on it as something like migration, where we look at freedom

of movement coming up against the economic need for migrants in this

country, I am not saying people who voted for Brexit are racist but I

think there was a lot of misinformation about migration and

benefits to the country perpetrated over 20 or 30 years in the UK. I am

interested in how the USA turned the conversation around, in a factual

way. I wonder if it can be done over things like migration in the UK in

an equally factual way. It does not seem to work with the audience, they

do not pay attention until it is a contentious issue. As it is now,

with economic benefit versus borders. They haven't just escaped

intentions. It becomes controversial and they zero in on those issues

without implication. It is interesting, when George Bush's

press spokesman changed, or Obama's spokesman changed, we had no idea

but we are so fascinated by the Trump White House we are gripped

with this show with Sean Spicer in the centre. People will miss him.

Many satirists and commentators will miss Sean Spicer and which he was

still there but it is telling of a wider peace. I saw an analysis that

one day last week, the CNN news coverage was 92% about Trump and the

administration, 8% left for the rest of the world. That is an outlet that

Trump hates. Isn't it fascinating? He is a genius at it, by being

centre of attention all the time and saying impossible things, doing a

million things that no president in his right mind could or should do.

He gets himself in the centre of attention all the time, that's what

he cares about most. People think the show cannot go on like that, but

it can! But we do know Melissa McCarthy now has to work currently

on another impersonation, that's what we take from all of this. Let's

turn our attentions to the migration crisis. The UN tells us that 40,000

migrants has struggled across the Mediterranean so far this year,

nearly 2400 have died in the attempt. The migration crisis has

all but disappeared, certainly from the British media this year, but it

is not the most pressing problem facing Europe. Do you think it is,

actually? Rachel, despite what we have discussed in the last 20

minutes, migration is an issue in this country that has, for some

reason, gone off the radar. I think it is because people think we are

leading the EU so we are no longer party to this issue all issues

around it. I do not think it is a crisis of migration but a crisis of

approach and solidarity. So, when you look at the situation, like in

Italy at the moment, it is just under extraordinary pressure because

it has become the port where migrants have gone. There is a

massive increase in numbers going to Italy. The Balkan route has closed,

and the EU arrangement between Turkey and Greece, that route has

been closed. Part of it is just, migrants are going to move, whatever

you do. If you close one illegal route, they will pursue another

illegal route. That is the point, that it is illegal. It is perilous

and unsafe, thousands of people are dying. They are drowning, because it

is illegal. The best way to tackle this is to make it legal. To open up

a legal route. The other way is to share responsibility and shared the

dispersal. That is the thing, there seems to be a big clash between

southern Europe and northern Europe. Clearly, southern European countries

are taking more of their share, not just in terms of numbers but the

financial implications of that will stop and other European countries

are just turning away, and if the EU is supposed to be a collective there

is not a collective approach to migration and that is the crisis.

Not the actual problem. The political element... It is an

explosive issue, in Germany and Austria, which also has elections

this year. Austria is threatened if any more migrants come to Italy and

try and migrate further north, they will put the pounces on the Brenner

pass and make sure that they do not come through Austria, they will be

dead set against any further distribution of numbers. Also, there

is a crisis because it has to be seen as a politician -- you have to

be seen as a politician responsible for your nation's welfare, dealing

with the possibility of thousands more Africans on your shores. That

is just scaremongering, if you look at the numbers, it is tiny

percentage points across Europe. Most of the migrants are either

internally in Africa or are going to third World countries, like Lebanon,

Jordan, they are not coming into Europe. For you to raise this

spectre of millions of Africans... It is pure scaremongering. It was a

last year, it may not look like a large number but you need to ensure

they are being integrated in Europe, that is one thing that has not been

resolved. We do not know how to make sure that they find a home or a

place to work in, so forth. It's a social, intellectual problem, and a

racial problem. Europe has a demographic problem that it needs an

influx of migrants because it is ageing! Are not at the extent it is

currently happening. The African influx of migrants, and their

nominations, they are not going to add to the workforce, as it were, as

they are being displaced, housed in rather shabby accommodation. It

needs to be resolved. No country can absorb... Germany took 1 million,

there was no limit. Well, there was, it was 1 million! They are now

corralled in areas outside towns which no longer resembled the Little

German town it was before. It is a town stuck on the side of people who

were not there two years ago, it is causing huge unrest. There can be no

amount of movement that quickly, and suggesting that it is wrong, it is

impermissible to point that out, that is crackers. What we should be

proud of as a British country is the amount we spend in countries where

refugee camps build-up on borders. We are among the largest

contributors of those things and that is Web resources should go. But

Europe-wide, it's the wrong way round. -- where resources go. We

essentially incentivise, deadly traffic going across waters, we are

incentivising that by picking people up, often with the open can I and is

of those doing the picking up and indicating to traffickers where they

will be so they can collect passengers, we are operating a ferry

service, instead we should take them back to the country they came from

because in international law if you go through a safe nation you are no

longer illegitimate referee G taking asylum seeking refugee status -- a

legitimate refugee. This is the problem... The solution is making

people not want to migrate which means their own countries need to be

stable and prosperous. With Libya alone, you have a 20 year project.

Forgive me for four point gap something obvious, coming across an

ocean you are leading a country which will not be Syria... You

return them to the nation to which they are safe, investing far more in

refugee camps but if you let people make their way through France or

wherever, you encourage and facilitate that kind of human

movement. For a long time, we need to be honest, our neighbours like

the French were complicit. Carry on until you get to Calais, then we

bottleneck and it becomes Britain's problem. We obviously cannot resolve

this, people are desperate and are going to try. There may be perverse

incentives in them being not dead, that is the problem. There's a huge

human cost. Yes, Negi is paying enough attention to think about

bigger solutions. -- nobody. Is it that political failure? Since the

tremendous political interest in this subject one year ago, it was

cataclysmic in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe, it has completely

disappeared. Thomas is right, the Austrians will assert a national

interest. Alex mentioned the solution of the camp in the

countries they come from, we at least have to invest, if we cannot

improve the economic performance of these countries, they create

economic or otherwise migrants, they need to build up camps, save holding

areas, as we have done in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan -- safe. Some

have been operating for 50 or 70 years now. In the middle east. This

is not a solution. But it is better than people dying in the ocean. You

need to restore public trust in the process, making sure it is not just

boatloads of young men any more. It has undermined public confidence in

these asylum and refugee placement processes, people supposedly fleeing

oppression are men of fighting age. I am so sorry, Rachel. This happens

every week. That's all we have

time for this week. It's good to see you all as ever.

Plenty more to discuss next week on the same place.

Hello there, low pressure will be with us for most of the weekend, and

it is going to produce sunshine and showers. The winds will ease, not as

strong as what they were on Friday. Some showers could be heavy on both

days