29/07/2017 Dateline London


29/07/2017

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LineFromTo

Hello and welcome to Dateline London.

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This week we hear more about Europe's migrant crisis.

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One of my guests is just back from seeing the impact

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of the continuing flow of people into Italy.

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We'll discuss the state of the French presidency.

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And - what a week in the White House.

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My guests this week are the writer and broadcaster

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Agnes Poirier from France's

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Marianne, John Fisher Burns of the New York Times,

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and the British-Somali journalist and writer

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at Prospect magazine, Ismail Einashe.

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We will begin with the migrant crisis. We talked about it not that

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long ago but it is an issue that is absolutely not going away. We have a

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great opportunity to discuss first-hand the issue and some of the

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problems facing Europe as it struggles to cope with wave after

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wave of migrants. Ismail, you've just returned

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from Italy, which is bearing the brunt of this tide of humanity

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escaping war, famine, Well, the last several years Italy

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has become Europe's's migrant bottleneck. Since 2014 500 thousand

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have arrived on Italian shores. This year alone 94,000 have arrived in

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five days a couple of weeks ago 11,000 raved. -- arrived. I've been

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talking to many of those who make the dangerous journey, often from

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countries such as Gambia, Nigeria and from eastern parts of Africa.

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These are young men who often head out into the unknown across Africa,

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who arrived in Libya which is currently in the Civil War. From

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there they set off on a dangerous journey into the unknown where they

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get rescued and they arrived in these tiny, cut-off, isolated towns

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after they get rescued in Italy. Italy is not coping with this

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crisis. The Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni described it as

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unbearable and in the last few days there has been a conference in Tunis

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between African and European ministers, and also Italy has said

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in the last few days that it may shut its ports to rescue boats. Also

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Italy has threatened to actually give migrants who are in limbo in

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these southern towns in Italy and Sicily visas to head north. In

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retaliation, Austria has said they may send a battalion of troops to

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the Italian border to stop the influx of people heading north. We

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will talk about the responsibilities of other EU countries, the fact

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Italy says it can't cope. I'm interested in some of the personal

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stories. What were the reasons people by giving you for why they

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left wherever they had come from? Whether it's from Eritrea, where

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young men are skipping conscription and a state that persecutes people,

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but most of these stories are really young people. They are probably

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14-18, largely African. A lot of them from Western Africa. Big come

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for a multitude of reasons but primarily you might describe them as

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being migrants. They often come in search of a European dream. In these

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countries, people often hear about Europe through social media and

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Facebook and they see their friends in Europe and they say, I want a

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slice of that. They embark on these dangerous journeys across Africa

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into Italy, many of them then find that this European dream sours and

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they'll stock in these reception centres in these Italian villages.

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In these villages actually, for example there has been real problems

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with corruption. In one of them in Calabria the Mafia run an operation

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for ten years costing the Italian government tens of millions of

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euros. The response of other European countries, we were

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discussing this last week, is what? The figures are growing year-on-year

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on year. This week we had Emmanuel Macron holding a summit with the

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main rivals in Libya, trying to resolve the political crisis. Libya

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is the platform. You know, they go through Libya and risking their

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lives through the Mediterranean. There is a boom in human traffickers

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there. Obviously Italy didn't take it very well. They consider Libya as

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being the former colony, it is part of their remit. On the other hand,

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I've been crossing the French Italian border to ten years and you

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see the evolution. The French police now, all the high-speed trains going

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through the Alps have to wait longer and longer. You know you're going to

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be delayed by at least 20-30 minutes and it's getting longer, because you

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have the French police catching migrants on the trains or outside.

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You've got this mini-Calais's now. Also on the outskirts of Paris. What

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we are talking is a European crisis. Of course there is the political

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asylum seekers, and there's the economic migrants. But it creates

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this huge migration problem. Can I suggest that we should use the word

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crisis for those people who have to leave their homes. Uganda, which is

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my old home country from which I was exciting 45 years ago, in the last

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year has taken 500,000 refugees from South Sudan. What has Uganda done?

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Uganda is one of the poorest nations in the world. Uganda has given

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groups of them, or family groups, a plot of land. The idea that we

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Europeans, and I do consider myself, I will always be a European, Brexit

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or not Brexit, I consider myself part of an extraordinary continent

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with extraordinary history. If what is going on is a failure, is a

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massive failure to understand Libya wasn't the place it is before the

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French and the Brits went into Libya. I'm not a friend of Colonel

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Gaddafi but surely we are intelligent enough to know that we

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went there and created the situations which has made some of

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this possible. Which is why people want to leave. I would be really

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interested in finding out about this conference. It is partly the fault

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of African leadership that is creating this misery for their

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people. Having spent some time in Libya during the UK French and

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sometime American military operations that toppled Colonel

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Gaddafi, I think it's fair to say that Colonel Gaddafi played a role

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in this by opening Libya to the northward migration of tens of

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thousands of migrants from sub Saharan Africa, who were in a state

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that silly desperation by the time that conflict began. -- in a state

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of absolute desperation. They were trying to get out of Libyan

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territorial waters and it was that which began and sent a signal that

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there was a way out of the misery. That leads me to a more general

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point, I spent 50 years as a correspondent, much of it in the

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more desperate parts of the world. I've approach myself for not having

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realised that this divide between North and South, between rich and

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poor, between white and black, was unsustainable. That modern

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technology and particularly cable and satellite TV which brought

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images of the rich Western world into the smallest communities of

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what we call the third World, was bound to lead to tens of thousands,

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ultimately millions of people wanting to make it to our world. I

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think whatever technical adjustments we make, that's a fact we are going

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to have to deal with. Part of it is that the Eritreans aren't doing it

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to get our fancy cars and lifestyle. They are living totally, totally

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devastated lives in Eritrea. The African leadership over how many

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decades has failed their people. If it was you or I in that situation,

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what would we do? If we had the wherewithal what would we do? Those

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who want to try to control the numbers would argue that is

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precisely the point of International development, and that is why money

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should be spent to make life better for everyone, no matter where they

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live, so they don't want to leave home at its most simple. There is an

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unspoken subject which is somewhere needs to be properly debated, which

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is overpopulation amongst the poorest. That is what I was going to

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say. You said, John, unsustainable. No one is talking about the birth

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rate in Africa. Some people do but not enough. Two weeks ago African

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leaders said the word for the first time and they said we must control

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in some Francophone parts of Africa we are talking about eight children

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per woman. Christian American fundamentalists are in Africa,

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absolutely opposing contraception, abortion, all of those things that

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were freely available at one time. There's a kind of tightening of the

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very thing that would stop it, and education. There is another aspect

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of this crisis which is not the world, and I travelled the 40 or 50

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years, and the way we cover that world, was guided basically by the

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United Nations Charter of human rights. Human rights was the measure

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by which we judge the performance of governments all over the world. The

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fact is we are now in the face of a crisis, where European peoples in

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particular are being asked to choose between the Charter of human rights

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on the one hand, and maintaining their societies as they apparently,

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according to every referendum and vote one has thing, what they would

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apparently wish to do. Which is not allowing this vast migration

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northward. How we're going to resolve that I don't know,

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personally identify solutions. Fundamentally, to resolve this

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endless crisis on Europe's's borders, is going to take a lot more

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than having an effective rescue mission which the European Union

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ought to have. In the last few years the EU has effectively pursued a

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policy which lets migrants died in Europe's's sees to deter others from

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coming. Fundamentally the root causes of far from the Borders. They

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are to do with youth population and I think we need to think bold about

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a plan for Africa. European leaders are very much zeroed in on

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short-term political calculations. They aren't thinking longer term.

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There needs to be longer term solutions to the root causes in

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Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, which stops people from going further

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north. Actually, I have reports in these countries that when people

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leave it is of detriment of those societies because the best and

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brightest leaves. We talk about the flood, what sort of numbers can we

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put on it at this stage? In Italy according to the UN, 94,000 have

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landed this year which I think is a 17% increase on last year. Reports

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suggest there are 300,000 people currently waiting in Libya in

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horrendous conditions in these centres. Of course just add, this is

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the summer season so it tends to be a peak. The numbers are going to

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increase, this crisis isn't going to go away. This reveals the fault

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lines and divides in Europe. Unfortunately Italy is struggling

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and the Italian government feels that this should be looked at as a

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pan-European problem. The northern countries are seeing this as a

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problem on Europe's's periphery for Greece and Italy. Peer research

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amongst EU countries, the British are the largest number living

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abroad. I just thought I would throw that in. British people, indigenous

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British people, have always gone abroad. This was a good and

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interesting figure in the research study. We are going to move on.

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President Macron has talked about hotspots for asylum seekers.

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Certainly in this country, in London we read a raft of reports about how

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he is suddenly not that popular after all. Is that true? Where do

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you see his still relatively early presidency? It's interesting,

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President Macron sells like Trump does. There was a slight drop in the

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polls because of the resignation of the top army chief. That's what it's

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down to. Now the crux of the matter, really, and we'll see what he's made

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of, is going to happen after a lull of the summer. After which he is

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actually going to meet face-to-face with the trade unionists. Probably

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in the street with protests because he intends, at least that is what he

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said, to reform massively labour laws and things that French

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presidents have said they would be doing over the last 50 years. So

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we'll see. It's interesting, he's completely new. Most of us look at

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him not knowing exactly what he's made. We are a bit like Charles

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Darwin and his study looking at a new species! LAUGHTER We are quite

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hopeful it's going to work. We have no idea whether will. He's different

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from Francois Hollande which can only be a good thing. This flurry of

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reports that he's trying to achieve what Tony Blair did in 1997 with

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London the cool city to live in. We don't talk much about Macron being a

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Tony Blair in France, we tend to look at him as a... In the 70s he

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was a modern man. He was young at the time and trying to implement new

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things. But he loves the Palace and he loves the backdrop. Somebody said

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he's a bit like one of the old Kings. We call him Jupiter. Jesus? I

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haven't heard that yet! It's because he had his picture taken with

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Rhianna. Let's talk about events in the US. If we got the start was

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colourful with Trump's harsh tweets about Jeff Sessions and the policy

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about transgender people in the Armed Forces, the last few days have

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surpassed that. There seems to be all out war in the West Wing with

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his new communications director Anthony Scaramucci rattling off

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expletives about senior colleagues. Now one of them, Reince Priebus has

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already gone. All of that is a backdrop to something else, the

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failure for the third time of Donald Trump to overturn Obamacare, the

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Affordable Care Act. John Fisher Burns, what is going on? I can only

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shake my head. I think all of us who love America and people of our

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generation have many reasons to do that. Our prosperity and freedoms

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have been sustained in many ways by the United States throughout my

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lifetime. One can only look upon these developments with a sense of

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grief. It seems to me it's beyond redemption. This isn't likely to be

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a presidency that lasts five years. It might even be a presidency that

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doesn't last one year. How does it end? The word impeachment is written

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on the horizon. That could be a nasty fight, because of course there

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would be large majorities needed first of all to vote on articles of

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impeachment and second novel to a trial with the majority that would

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be needed in order to oust Trump from office. It seems to me that if

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we think of that as the salvation of America, it's pretty short-sighted.

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Trump is the symptom not the cause of America's malaise. There is a

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deep malaise that has been developing for decades in America.

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Large numbers of people feeling excluded from the benefits of

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government. No matter what happens to Trump, that problem will still be

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there to be resolved. I suppose, ever the optimist, I think maybe

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America's reached a point as it did for example before the Civil War,

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and in the depth of the depression, when somebody emerges, does the

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Times make the man or the man make the times? Abraham Lincoln, FDR, who

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somehow sets about binding up the wings of the nation. Let's hope that

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there is somebody. It may be somebody we don't know of or

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somebody who is currently a minor figure on the political horizon, who

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can somehow bring salvation to America out of all of this. I'd like

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to partake in John Requa's gravity. We choose to ignore Trump because

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this is too much to follow every day. We have to catch up like a TV

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series. We are being sarcastic or ironic or we laugh, but essentially

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we are talking about the United States of America. This is, you

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know, terrible. This is tragic what's happening. I agree, the

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United States used to be great. It isn't any more. If there was a

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comparison, I was thinking... We are talking about dark hours of history

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for America. Pulse of people who voted for Donald Trump suggest them

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vast majority are still glad they did so. They don't regret that vote.

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There is a measure of the underlying malaise. 63 million people were not

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duped. These people knew what they wanted and they wanted Trump. There

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is another aspect to this which is not enough is being spoken about,

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which is the book by Jane Meyers, Dark Money, and some of the research

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being done on the really sinister group of very rich people who have

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as their mission, and Trump is one of the planned products of this.

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Steve Bannon is among them, who are determined to change the face of

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liberal democracies. To create states of hardly any taxation for

:20:41.:20:44.

the rich. There's something else beside the disillusionment, really

:20:45.:20:48.

planned bringing down of the states as we once knew it. To pick the

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theme around the liberal democracies and the malaise, when Trump came to

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Europe, immediately after he left Hungary and after he left Poland,

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there was a retreat in those countries in terms of that liberal

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democracy. I think Trump exemplifies, and it's interesting

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John was saying he's the symptom not the cause of the malaise growing for

:21:15.:21:18.

decades in America. That's not just true in the US, it is true in the

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UK. We've had R.N. Situation with Brexit. It's true in other

:21:24.:21:27.

countries. Even in France, you might celebrate Macron for now, how long

:21:28.:21:32.

will that last? Is Macron merely a cover for something much deeper?

:21:33.:21:38.

What's been really worrying is that on all the important thing is that

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America ought to be engaging on with its climate change, dealing with

:21:42.:21:45.

terrorism, whether it's dealing with the consequences of the financial

:21:46.:21:51.

crash, America has retreated. I think perhaps Americans might

:21:52.:21:54.

realise too late that Trump has done too much damage. I'm aware of

:21:55.:22:02.

European smugness about this. It seems to me we'll see this in the

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next weeks and months with Macron pro and his coming fight with the

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labour unions. He wouldn't be the first French president to lose that

:22:10.:22:13.

fight. Europe has a deep malaise of its own. Is Europe itself reform

:22:14.:22:31.

Abel? If Europe proves to be unreformable, and the status of

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economic or bring Europe down, Brexit. To look different. I do

:22:35.:22:38.

think it's time for us to celebrate or be smug about what's happening in

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America, I think we have our own crisis to deal with. I don't think

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anybody here is, we are taking it very seriously that the causes

:22:48.:22:52.

aren't just disillusionment by a population. There is concerted

:22:53.:22:57.

action going on by people to bring down liberal democracies. I

:22:58.:23:01.

appreciate you feel there are darker forces at work. John, on the topic

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of policy, this is six months into this administration. I'm curious

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whether anybody feels the soap opera element of it and Anthony Scaramucci

:23:11.:23:15.

and everything that is distracting in a soap opera Wade is deliberately

:23:16.:23:19.

done to distract from policy. Because what has been achieved, he

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couldn't sort out Obamacare. If we were able to determine that there

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was some sort of Russia now I'm this, it appears to me there is none

:23:29.:23:39.

-- rationale. It is a president who lives from tweet tweet and it is

:23:40.:23:43.

positively frightening. I see no order emerging from this chaos,

:23:44.:23:48.

short of some radical constitutional move, which now to me begins to look

:23:49.:23:55.

more and more likely. Are there no policy achievements at all in the

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six months? I wouldn't hesitate to say that but that would lead us into

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highly controversial debates about what is good and what is bad. You

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would have to say overall, the record has been one of failure. You

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said perhaps the person who will, as you would see it, change things, is

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someone who is as yet unknown to us all? Is there no one? Is there

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anyone in the Republican party who feel the same way? There are and

:24:24.:24:28.

we've seen it this week in debate on health care in the Senate. There are

:24:29.:24:32.

some very fine people in the United States Congress. Maybe there are

:24:33.:24:40.

people we aren't sure of yet like Nikki Haley the ambassador to the

:24:41.:24:45.

United Nations. Just one name. Maybe there is somebody who can show some

:24:46.:24:49.

sort of sense of historic responsibility and perspective, who

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can begin to bind these winds. It fills the ball is in the core top

:24:55.:24:58.

Republicans. They have to do their job, and to start thinking about

:24:59.:25:03.

their fast. They have two tidy the mess. I mean, they make me think,

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Trump makes me think of Petain, the darkest hour was France in the 20th

:25:16.:25:20.

century. The Republican party members as well. They really need to

:25:21.:25:24.

do something. It's not that the Democrats, the Democrats lost the

:25:25.:25:28.

election. I think we need to have an optimistic view of this. America has

:25:29.:25:31.

had a tremendous potential throughout its history to get itself

:25:32.:25:35.

into big trouble, but it's also shown tremendous potential to get

:25:36.:25:40.

itself out of trouble. I wish I shared your Americanness! You've

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dared to end on a note of optimism, John, thank you!

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That's all we have time for this week.

:25:51.:25:54.

Enjoy your summer breaks, if you're getting one!

:25:55.:26:00.

Do join us again next week, same time same place.

:26:01.:26:02.

We've got some fairly unsettled weather on the cards through the

:26:03.:26:39.

weekend. It's not going to be a write-off. There is some sunshine

:26:40.:26:42.

around too. He is the

:26:43.:26:43.

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