:00:23. > :00:25.Hello and welcome to Dateline London.
:00:26. > :00:30.This week we hear more about Europe's migrant crisis.
:00:31. > :00:33.One of my guests is just back from seeing the impact
:00:34. > :00:37.of the continuing flow of people into Italy.
:00:38. > :00:39.We'll discuss the state of the French presidency.
:00:40. > :00:43.And - what a week in the White House.
:00:44. > :00:46.My guests this week are the writer and broadcaster
:00:47. > :00:50.Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Agnes Poirier from France's
:00:51. > :00:59.Marianne, John Fisher Burns of the New York Times,
:01:00. > :01:04.and the British-Somali journalist and writer
:01:05. > :01:07.at Prospect magazine, Ismail Einashe.
:01:08. > :01:22.We will begin with the migrant crisis. We talked about it not that
:01:23. > :01:26.long ago but it is an issue that is absolutely not going away. We have a
:01:27. > :01:30.great opportunity to discuss first-hand the issue and some of the
:01:31. > :01:32.problems facing Europe as it struggles to cope with wave after
:01:33. > :01:40.wave of migrants. Ismail, you've just returned
:01:41. > :01:43.from Italy, which is bearing the brunt of this tide of humanity
:01:44. > :01:53.escaping war, famine, Well, the last several years Italy
:01:54. > :01:58.has become Europe's's migrant bottleneck. Since 2014 500 thousand
:01:59. > :02:04.have arrived on Italian shores. This year alone 94,000 have arrived in
:02:05. > :02:11.five days a couple of weeks ago 11,000 raved. -- arrived. I've been
:02:12. > :02:15.talking to many of those who make the dangerous journey, often from
:02:16. > :02:19.countries such as Gambia, Nigeria and from eastern parts of Africa.
:02:20. > :02:24.These are young men who often head out into the unknown across Africa,
:02:25. > :02:29.who arrived in Libya which is currently in the Civil War. From
:02:30. > :02:34.there they set off on a dangerous journey into the unknown where they
:02:35. > :02:38.get rescued and they arrived in these tiny, cut-off, isolated towns
:02:39. > :02:45.after they get rescued in Italy. Italy is not coping with this
:02:46. > :02:47.crisis. The Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni described it as
:02:48. > :02:55.unbearable and in the last few days there has been a conference in Tunis
:02:56. > :02:59.between African and European ministers, and also Italy has said
:03:00. > :03:04.in the last few days that it may shut its ports to rescue boats. Also
:03:05. > :03:08.Italy has threatened to actually give migrants who are in limbo in
:03:09. > :03:14.these southern towns in Italy and Sicily visas to head north. In
:03:15. > :03:17.retaliation, Austria has said they may send a battalion of troops to
:03:18. > :03:23.the Italian border to stop the influx of people heading north. We
:03:24. > :03:30.will talk about the responsibilities of other EU countries, the fact
:03:31. > :03:33.Italy says it can't cope. I'm interested in some of the personal
:03:34. > :03:39.stories. What were the reasons people by giving you for why they
:03:40. > :03:43.left wherever they had come from? Whether it's from Eritrea, where
:03:44. > :03:47.young men are skipping conscription and a state that persecutes people,
:03:48. > :03:52.but most of these stories are really young people. They are probably
:03:53. > :03:57.14-18, largely African. A lot of them from Western Africa. Big come
:03:58. > :04:01.for a multitude of reasons but primarily you might describe them as
:04:02. > :04:06.being migrants. They often come in search of a European dream. In these
:04:07. > :04:08.countries, people often hear about Europe through social media and
:04:09. > :04:14.Facebook and they see their friends in Europe and they say, I want a
:04:15. > :04:18.slice of that. They embark on these dangerous journeys across Africa
:04:19. > :04:22.into Italy, many of them then find that this European dream sours and
:04:23. > :04:28.they'll stock in these reception centres in these Italian villages.
:04:29. > :04:34.In these villages actually, for example there has been real problems
:04:35. > :04:39.with corruption. In one of them in Calabria the Mafia run an operation
:04:40. > :04:43.for ten years costing the Italian government tens of millions of
:04:44. > :04:47.euros. The response of other European countries, we were
:04:48. > :04:54.discussing this last week, is what? The figures are growing year-on-year
:04:55. > :05:00.on year. This week we had Emmanuel Macron holding a summit with the
:05:01. > :05:05.main rivals in Libya, trying to resolve the political crisis. Libya
:05:06. > :05:11.is the platform. You know, they go through Libya and risking their
:05:12. > :05:16.lives through the Mediterranean. There is a boom in human traffickers
:05:17. > :05:27.there. Obviously Italy didn't take it very well. They consider Libya as
:05:28. > :05:33.being the former colony, it is part of their remit. On the other hand,
:05:34. > :05:38.I've been crossing the French Italian border to ten years and you
:05:39. > :05:44.see the evolution. The French police now, all the high-speed trains going
:05:45. > :05:49.through the Alps have to wait longer and longer. You know you're going to
:05:50. > :05:53.be delayed by at least 20-30 minutes and it's getting longer, because you
:05:54. > :06:04.have the French police catching migrants on the trains or outside.
:06:05. > :06:12.You've got this mini-Calais's now. Also on the outskirts of Paris. What
:06:13. > :06:17.we are talking is a European crisis. Of course there is the political
:06:18. > :06:24.asylum seekers, and there's the economic migrants. But it creates
:06:25. > :06:28.this huge migration problem. Can I suggest that we should use the word
:06:29. > :06:35.crisis for those people who have to leave their homes. Uganda, which is
:06:36. > :06:43.my old home country from which I was exciting 45 years ago, in the last
:06:44. > :06:50.year has taken 500,000 refugees from South Sudan. What has Uganda done?
:06:51. > :06:55.Uganda is one of the poorest nations in the world. Uganda has given
:06:56. > :07:01.groups of them, or family groups, a plot of land. The idea that we
:07:02. > :07:05.Europeans, and I do consider myself, I will always be a European, Brexit
:07:06. > :07:11.or not Brexit, I consider myself part of an extraordinary continent
:07:12. > :07:17.with extraordinary history. If what is going on is a failure, is a
:07:18. > :07:22.massive failure to understand Libya wasn't the place it is before the
:07:23. > :07:26.French and the Brits went into Libya. I'm not a friend of Colonel
:07:27. > :07:29.Gaddafi but surely we are intelligent enough to know that we
:07:30. > :07:34.went there and created the situations which has made some of
:07:35. > :07:38.this possible. Which is why people want to leave. I would be really
:07:39. > :07:42.interested in finding out about this conference. It is partly the fault
:07:43. > :07:46.of African leadership that is creating this misery for their
:07:47. > :07:52.people. Having spent some time in Libya during the UK French and
:07:53. > :07:55.sometime American military operations that toppled Colonel
:07:56. > :07:59.Gaddafi, I think it's fair to say that Colonel Gaddafi played a role
:08:00. > :08:07.in this by opening Libya to the northward migration of tens of
:08:08. > :08:10.thousands of migrants from sub Saharan Africa, who were in a state
:08:11. > :08:18.that silly desperation by the time that conflict began. -- in a state
:08:19. > :08:21.of absolute desperation. They were trying to get out of Libyan
:08:22. > :08:26.territorial waters and it was that which began and sent a signal that
:08:27. > :08:33.there was a way out of the misery. That leads me to a more general
:08:34. > :08:36.point, I spent 50 years as a correspondent, much of it in the
:08:37. > :08:40.more desperate parts of the world. I've approach myself for not having
:08:41. > :08:45.realised that this divide between North and South, between rich and
:08:46. > :08:49.poor, between white and black, was unsustainable. That modern
:08:50. > :08:55.technology and particularly cable and satellite TV which brought
:08:56. > :08:59.images of the rich Western world into the smallest communities of
:09:00. > :09:03.what we call the third World, was bound to lead to tens of thousands,
:09:04. > :09:08.ultimately millions of people wanting to make it to our world. I
:09:09. > :09:13.think whatever technical adjustments we make, that's a fact we are going
:09:14. > :09:20.to have to deal with. Part of it is that the Eritreans aren't doing it
:09:21. > :09:25.to get our fancy cars and lifestyle. They are living totally, totally
:09:26. > :09:30.devastated lives in Eritrea. The African leadership over how many
:09:31. > :09:36.decades has failed their people. If it was you or I in that situation,
:09:37. > :09:39.what would we do? If we had the wherewithal what would we do? Those
:09:40. > :09:43.who want to try to control the numbers would argue that is
:09:44. > :09:47.precisely the point of International development, and that is why money
:09:48. > :09:50.should be spent to make life better for everyone, no matter where they
:09:51. > :09:55.live, so they don't want to leave home at its most simple. There is an
:09:56. > :09:58.unspoken subject which is somewhere needs to be properly debated, which
:09:59. > :10:10.is overpopulation amongst the poorest. That is what I was going to
:10:11. > :10:14.say. You said, John, unsustainable. No one is talking about the birth
:10:15. > :10:18.rate in Africa. Some people do but not enough. Two weeks ago African
:10:19. > :10:22.leaders said the word for the first time and they said we must control
:10:23. > :10:29.in some Francophone parts of Africa we are talking about eight children
:10:30. > :10:33.per woman. Christian American fundamentalists are in Africa,
:10:34. > :10:37.absolutely opposing contraception, abortion, all of those things that
:10:38. > :10:41.were freely available at one time. There's a kind of tightening of the
:10:42. > :10:47.very thing that would stop it, and education. There is another aspect
:10:48. > :10:51.of this crisis which is not the world, and I travelled the 40 or 50
:10:52. > :10:57.years, and the way we cover that world, was guided basically by the
:10:58. > :11:01.United Nations Charter of human rights. Human rights was the measure
:11:02. > :11:05.by which we judge the performance of governments all over the world. The
:11:06. > :11:09.fact is we are now in the face of a crisis, where European peoples in
:11:10. > :11:12.particular are being asked to choose between the Charter of human rights
:11:13. > :11:18.on the one hand, and maintaining their societies as they apparently,
:11:19. > :11:24.according to every referendum and vote one has thing, what they would
:11:25. > :11:26.apparently wish to do. Which is not allowing this vast migration
:11:27. > :11:34.northward. How we're going to resolve that I don't know,
:11:35. > :11:37.personally identify solutions. Fundamentally, to resolve this
:11:38. > :11:43.endless crisis on Europe's's borders, is going to take a lot more
:11:44. > :11:47.than having an effective rescue mission which the European Union
:11:48. > :11:51.ought to have. In the last few years the EU has effectively pursued a
:11:52. > :11:57.policy which lets migrants died in Europe's's sees to deter others from
:11:58. > :12:02.coming. Fundamentally the root causes of far from the Borders. They
:12:03. > :12:08.are to do with youth population and I think we need to think bold about
:12:09. > :12:12.a plan for Africa. European leaders are very much zeroed in on
:12:13. > :12:15.short-term political calculations. They aren't thinking longer term.
:12:16. > :12:19.There needs to be longer term solutions to the root causes in
:12:20. > :12:26.Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, which stops people from going further
:12:27. > :12:30.north. Actually, I have reports in these countries that when people
:12:31. > :12:36.leave it is of detriment of those societies because the best and
:12:37. > :12:42.brightest leaves. We talk about the flood, what sort of numbers can we
:12:43. > :12:47.put on it at this stage? In Italy according to the UN, 94,000 have
:12:48. > :12:51.landed this year which I think is a 17% increase on last year. Reports
:12:52. > :12:54.suggest there are 300,000 people currently waiting in Libya in
:12:55. > :13:01.horrendous conditions in these centres. Of course just add, this is
:13:02. > :13:06.the summer season so it tends to be a peak. The numbers are going to
:13:07. > :13:10.increase, this crisis isn't going to go away. This reveals the fault
:13:11. > :13:14.lines and divides in Europe. Unfortunately Italy is struggling
:13:15. > :13:18.and the Italian government feels that this should be looked at as a
:13:19. > :13:21.pan-European problem. The northern countries are seeing this as a
:13:22. > :13:31.problem on Europe's's periphery for Greece and Italy. Peer research
:13:32. > :13:36.amongst EU countries, the British are the largest number living
:13:37. > :13:41.abroad. I just thought I would throw that in. British people, indigenous
:13:42. > :13:44.British people, have always gone abroad. This was a good and
:13:45. > :14:00.interesting figure in the research study. We are going to move on.
:14:01. > :14:04.President Macron has talked about hotspots for asylum seekers.
:14:05. > :14:09.Certainly in this country, in London we read a raft of reports about how
:14:10. > :14:17.he is suddenly not that popular after all. Is that true? Where do
:14:18. > :14:21.you see his still relatively early presidency? It's interesting,
:14:22. > :14:26.President Macron sells like Trump does. There was a slight drop in the
:14:27. > :14:36.polls because of the resignation of the top army chief. That's what it's
:14:37. > :14:41.down to. Now the crux of the matter, really, and we'll see what he's made
:14:42. > :14:47.of, is going to happen after a lull of the summer. After which he is
:14:48. > :14:54.actually going to meet face-to-face with the trade unionists. Probably
:14:55. > :15:01.in the street with protests because he intends, at least that is what he
:15:02. > :15:04.said, to reform massively labour laws and things that French
:15:05. > :15:10.presidents have said they would be doing over the last 50 years. So
:15:11. > :15:14.we'll see. It's interesting, he's completely new. Most of us look at
:15:15. > :15:19.him not knowing exactly what he's made. We are a bit like Charles
:15:20. > :15:23.Darwin and his study looking at a new species! LAUGHTER We are quite
:15:24. > :15:30.hopeful it's going to work. We have no idea whether will. He's different
:15:31. > :15:35.from Francois Hollande which can only be a good thing. This flurry of
:15:36. > :15:41.reports that he's trying to achieve what Tony Blair did in 1997 with
:15:42. > :15:48.London the cool city to live in. We don't talk much about Macron being a
:15:49. > :15:56.Tony Blair in France, we tend to look at him as a... In the 70s he
:15:57. > :16:07.was a modern man. He was young at the time and trying to implement new
:16:08. > :16:10.things. But he loves the Palace and he loves the backdrop. Somebody said
:16:11. > :16:22.he's a bit like one of the old Kings. We call him Jupiter. Jesus? I
:16:23. > :16:33.haven't heard that yet! It's because he had his picture taken with
:16:34. > :16:37.Rhianna. Let's talk about events in the US. If we got the start was
:16:38. > :16:42.colourful with Trump's harsh tweets about Jeff Sessions and the policy
:16:43. > :16:46.about transgender people in the Armed Forces, the last few days have
:16:47. > :16:50.surpassed that. There seems to be all out war in the West Wing with
:16:51. > :16:54.his new communications director Anthony Scaramucci rattling off
:16:55. > :16:58.expletives about senior colleagues. Now one of them, Reince Priebus has
:16:59. > :17:02.already gone. All of that is a backdrop to something else, the
:17:03. > :17:08.failure for the third time of Donald Trump to overturn Obamacare, the
:17:09. > :17:15.Affordable Care Act. John Fisher Burns, what is going on? I can only
:17:16. > :17:19.shake my head. I think all of us who love America and people of our
:17:20. > :17:26.generation have many reasons to do that. Our prosperity and freedoms
:17:27. > :17:30.have been sustained in many ways by the United States throughout my
:17:31. > :17:33.lifetime. One can only look upon these developments with a sense of
:17:34. > :17:38.grief. It seems to me it's beyond redemption. This isn't likely to be
:17:39. > :17:43.a presidency that lasts five years. It might even be a presidency that
:17:44. > :17:48.doesn't last one year. How does it end? The word impeachment is written
:17:49. > :17:54.on the horizon. That could be a nasty fight, because of course there
:17:55. > :18:00.would be large majorities needed first of all to vote on articles of
:18:01. > :18:05.impeachment and second novel to a trial with the majority that would
:18:06. > :18:09.be needed in order to oust Trump from office. It seems to me that if
:18:10. > :18:15.we think of that as the salvation of America, it's pretty short-sighted.
:18:16. > :18:19.Trump is the symptom not the cause of America's malaise. There is a
:18:20. > :18:26.deep malaise that has been developing for decades in America.
:18:27. > :18:31.Large numbers of people feeling excluded from the benefits of
:18:32. > :18:36.government. No matter what happens to Trump, that problem will still be
:18:37. > :18:40.there to be resolved. I suppose, ever the optimist, I think maybe
:18:41. > :18:45.America's reached a point as it did for example before the Civil War,
:18:46. > :18:51.and in the depth of the depression, when somebody emerges, does the
:18:52. > :18:56.Times make the man or the man make the times? Abraham Lincoln, FDR, who
:18:57. > :19:00.somehow sets about binding up the wings of the nation. Let's hope that
:19:01. > :19:03.there is somebody. It may be somebody we don't know of or
:19:04. > :19:07.somebody who is currently a minor figure on the political horizon, who
:19:08. > :19:15.can somehow bring salvation to America out of all of this. I'd like
:19:16. > :19:21.to partake in John Requa's gravity. We choose to ignore Trump because
:19:22. > :19:27.this is too much to follow every day. We have to catch up like a TV
:19:28. > :19:29.series. We are being sarcastic or ironic or we laugh, but essentially
:19:30. > :19:35.we are talking about the United States of America. This is, you
:19:36. > :19:39.know, terrible. This is tragic what's happening. I agree, the
:19:40. > :19:44.United States used to be great. It isn't any more. If there was a
:19:45. > :19:50.comparison, I was thinking... We are talking about dark hours of history
:19:51. > :19:54.for America. Pulse of people who voted for Donald Trump suggest them
:19:55. > :20:00.vast majority are still glad they did so. They don't regret that vote.
:20:01. > :20:04.There is a measure of the underlying malaise. 63 million people were not
:20:05. > :20:09.duped. These people knew what they wanted and they wanted Trump. There
:20:10. > :20:20.is another aspect to this which is not enough is being spoken about,
:20:21. > :20:24.which is the book by Jane Meyers, Dark Money, and some of the research
:20:25. > :20:28.being done on the really sinister group of very rich people who have
:20:29. > :20:35.as their mission, and Trump is one of the planned products of this.
:20:36. > :20:40.Steve Bannon is among them, who are determined to change the face of
:20:41. > :20:44.liberal democracies. To create states of hardly any taxation for
:20:45. > :20:48.the rich. There's something else beside the disillusionment, really
:20:49. > :20:55.planned bringing down of the states as we once knew it. To pick the
:20:56. > :21:00.theme around the liberal democracies and the malaise, when Trump came to
:21:01. > :21:05.Europe, immediately after he left Hungary and after he left Poland,
:21:06. > :21:11.there was a retreat in those countries in terms of that liberal
:21:12. > :21:14.democracy. I think Trump exemplifies, and it's interesting
:21:15. > :21:18.John was saying he's the symptom not the cause of the malaise growing for
:21:19. > :21:23.decades in America. That's not just true in the US, it is true in the
:21:24. > :21:27.UK. We've had R.N. Situation with Brexit. It's true in other
:21:28. > :21:32.countries. Even in France, you might celebrate Macron for now, how long
:21:33. > :21:38.will that last? Is Macron merely a cover for something much deeper?
:21:39. > :21:41.What's been really worrying is that on all the important thing is that
:21:42. > :21:45.America ought to be engaging on with its climate change, dealing with
:21:46. > :21:51.terrorism, whether it's dealing with the consequences of the financial
:21:52. > :21:54.crash, America has retreated. I think perhaps Americans might
:21:55. > :22:02.realise too late that Trump has done too much damage. I'm aware of
:22:03. > :22:05.European smugness about this. It seems to me we'll see this in the
:22:06. > :22:09.next weeks and months with Macron pro and his coming fight with the
:22:10. > :22:13.labour unions. He wouldn't be the first French president to lose that
:22:14. > :22:31.fight. Europe has a deep malaise of its own. Is Europe itself reform
:22:32. > :22:34.Abel? If Europe proves to be unreformable, and the status of
:22:35. > :22:38.economic or bring Europe down, Brexit. To look different. I do
:22:39. > :22:43.think it's time for us to celebrate or be smug about what's happening in
:22:44. > :22:47.America, I think we have our own crisis to deal with. I don't think
:22:48. > :22:52.anybody here is, we are taking it very seriously that the causes
:22:53. > :22:57.aren't just disillusionment by a population. There is concerted
:22:58. > :23:01.action going on by people to bring down liberal democracies. I
:23:02. > :23:06.appreciate you feel there are darker forces at work. John, on the topic
:23:07. > :23:10.of policy, this is six months into this administration. I'm curious
:23:11. > :23:15.whether anybody feels the soap opera element of it and Anthony Scaramucci
:23:16. > :23:19.and everything that is distracting in a soap opera Wade is deliberately
:23:20. > :23:24.done to distract from policy. Because what has been achieved, he
:23:25. > :23:28.couldn't sort out Obamacare. If we were able to determine that there
:23:29. > :23:39.was some sort of Russia now I'm this, it appears to me there is none
:23:40. > :23:43.-- rationale. It is a president who lives from tweet tweet and it is
:23:44. > :23:48.positively frightening. I see no order emerging from this chaos,
:23:49. > :23:55.short of some radical constitutional move, which now to me begins to look
:23:56. > :23:59.more and more likely. Are there no policy achievements at all in the
:24:00. > :24:03.six months? I wouldn't hesitate to say that but that would lead us into
:24:04. > :24:06.highly controversial debates about what is good and what is bad. You
:24:07. > :24:13.would have to say overall, the record has been one of failure. You
:24:14. > :24:18.said perhaps the person who will, as you would see it, change things, is
:24:19. > :24:23.someone who is as yet unknown to us all? Is there no one? Is there
:24:24. > :24:28.anyone in the Republican party who feel the same way? There are and
:24:29. > :24:32.we've seen it this week in debate on health care in the Senate. There are
:24:33. > :24:40.some very fine people in the United States Congress. Maybe there are
:24:41. > :24:45.people we aren't sure of yet like Nikki Haley the ambassador to the
:24:46. > :24:49.United Nations. Just one name. Maybe there is somebody who can show some
:24:50. > :24:54.sort of sense of historic responsibility and perspective, who
:24:55. > :24:58.can begin to bind these winds. It fills the ball is in the core top
:24:59. > :25:03.Republicans. They have to do their job, and to start thinking about
:25:04. > :25:15.their fast. They have two tidy the mess. I mean, they make me think,
:25:16. > :25:20.Trump makes me think of Petain, the darkest hour was France in the 20th
:25:21. > :25:24.century. The Republican party members as well. They really need to
:25:25. > :25:28.do something. It's not that the Democrats, the Democrats lost the
:25:29. > :25:31.election. I think we need to have an optimistic view of this. America has
:25:32. > :25:35.had a tremendous potential throughout its history to get itself
:25:36. > :25:40.into big trouble, but it's also shown tremendous potential to get
:25:41. > :25:48.itself out of trouble. I wish I shared your Americanness! You've
:25:49. > :25:50.dared to end on a note of optimism, John, thank you!
:25:51. > :25:54.That's all we have time for this week.
:25:55. > :26:00.Enjoy your summer breaks, if you're getting one!
:26:01. > :26:02.Do join us again next week, same time same place.
:26:03. > :26:39.We've got some fairly unsettled weather on the cards through the
:26:40. > :26:42.weekend. It's not going to be a write-off. There is some sunshine
:26:43. > :26:43.around too. He is the