04/11/2017 Dateline London

Hello, I'm Shaun Ley

and this is Dateline London.

They do say politics

is showbiz for ugly people...

This week, British politics

was found to have something

in common with Hollywood,

sexual sleaze.

In Washington it was financial

sleaze under the spotlight.

The special prosecutor investigating

whether Donald Trump's presidential

campaign was influenced

by the Russians laid his first

charges, but is he any

closer to proving a link?

With me to discuss all that are:

Marc Roche, of Le Soir,

a Belgian daily newspaper,

and the French magazine Le Point;

Bronwen Maddox, Director

of The Institute for Government;

the Portuguese writer

Eunice Goes;

and Henry Chu,

International Editor of Variety.

Good to have you with us today.

Michael Fallon was Britain's

defence secretary

in more ways than one.

The minister in charge of the armed

forces was also the first man over

the top when political flak started

to fly,

the "safe pair of hands"

when the Government needed

a reassuring presence

at the microphone.

Those hands and that voice

cost him his job this week.

He resigned abruptly

because, he said,

his behaviour

towards women had fallen short

of what modern life dictates.

He's the most prominent political

casualty of the campaign against men

using power to extract sexual

favours which began with claims

against Harvey Weinstein,

one of the most powerful

figures in Hollywood.

He is under criminal investigation.

Michael Fallon faces

no such allegations.

The only thing he said he had done

wrong was repeatedly put his hand on

a woman journalist's knee until she

told him she would slap him if he

did not stop, and that was 15 years

ago. She says it was not a problem

to her, she says it is no reason for

him to resign. Is this a nervous

breakdown at Westminster?

There is

more in the newspapers about what he

may have done, in different

circumstances, Westminster isn't the

one of the places where the Harvey

Weinstein allegations have triggered

a whole... They have empowered

people, mainly women, not entirely,

to say, inappropriate behaviour that

happened in the past, I was a victim

of this, it is unleashed all this.

To me, some things make it

particularly feverish in

Westminster. One, the very nervous

state of politics at the moment. A

very weak government, finding it

hard to maintain discipline. This is

not just about Conservative but

Labour as well. But it is a free bra

atmosphere and MPs themselves are

very afraid. Boiling up and away but

it also has something to say about

the very peculiar working conditions

at Westminster. The abuse of power

within very undefined and

old-fashioned working relationships.

-- febrile Atmosphere. There is not

recourse in a lot of these cases, if

you have a complaint against an MP,

who do you make it to, they are like

little fiefdoms, and the parties are

not very good at policing this, I

want to keep reputations as clean to

the outside world as they can be.

All that is boiling up. It is a

legacy of some quite old-fashioned,

distinctly weird employment

practices, when you look at it.

The

compensation has been, this is the

power of patronage, so intertwined.

Yes, and in the past, this has been

used, the list we have been talking

about, this was drawn up by Chief

whips and they were using this

information to discipline MPs, to

twist their arms, make them vote in

the direction the party leadership

wanted rather than using the

information to say, this behaviour

is not on. There is really a

culture, a profoundly disturbing

culture, masculine, some scholars

would say, referring to a really

distasteful abusive culture towards

women, towards younger employees,

occurs it is also affected young

men, young researchers. That

reflects the wider culture in which

we live. As Bronwen mentioned, this

is a result of the lack of rules,

there is no recourse, there is no HR

department in the House of Commons.

That can issue guidelines. And it is

also the result of not enough women

in the House of Commons. When you

have more women, when you have

gender parity, within a chamber, the

culture of the chamber changes

because women feel far more

emboldened to say, this is not on.

But men also behave better, they

know that actually very certain

behaviour that cannot be accepted.

Is that something unique to the

British political system, how would

this pair with what has happened in

France?

Exec to the frame in France

but in France, you had people not

saying anything because no one will

listen. You had a privacy law

instead. That privacy law allowed

people to do terrible things. I

remember, when I was at Le Monde,

the main job was to cover the

minister of finance. There was a

sexual predator, they reported

constantly to the editors, and they

said, can't do anything, he is a

friend of mine. He is a friend

about. That was Dominique Strauss

Kahn. If something had been done

then, we would not have had that

incident.

The incident in New York.

So it is exactly the same.

It

creates a culture in which you

cannot say anything, is that because

the law potentially protects you,

but in the case of Westminster,

actually, it is sometimes -- it has

sometimes suited the political

organisations not to have this

exposed.

And they have been

discussing

using it for internal

purposes but not exposed publicly.

Does that make it credible when they

now say, we will now have... There

needs to be independent procedures,

meeting on Monday to discuss

attentional code of practice.

I

think she is right, there needs to

be an independent body of standards,

and a body for complaints. There is

something, the IBSA, that was set up

after the expenses scandal, that

deals only with pay and expenses,

the standards it was taken out of

the remit at the last minute by MPs.

-- IPSA. Now I think we need an

independent body on behaviour and on

this HR function.

And working

practices, things have changed

tremendously in the last 20 years,

the late is, where staying late at

night, drinking and so on, that led

to really unsavoury things

happening. And so, the working

practices, the working culture of

the House of Commons, the way it

should work it should be more like a

normal place of employment, where

actually, that encourages good

practice.

This is an interesting

intersection between politics, the

world Westminster and the world of

Hollywood, two sectors where these

are hothouse environment, the

gatekeepers to power are very few,

and so, potential for abuses of that

power are very great, and the

mechanisms for reporting are very

full tea or nonexistent in some

case.

The magazine has been

reporting the entertainment industry

since the days of vaudeville. --

faulty.

Journalism is complicit in

some of this, the culture has been

known about, Hollywood coined the

phrase the casting couch, and yet

the unsavoury side of this has not

been exposed.

Journalists bear

responsibility but it was very hard

to get people to go on the record

with these accusations, you do not

want to come forward with

unsubstantiated stories. What I find

discouraging about these scandals in

politics and entertainment is they

are nothing new, in the US, I

remember the Clarence Thomas Anita

Hill hearing and he subsequently was

appointed to the Supreme Court. We

had Dominique Strauss Kahn. Over the

years... They seem to burst into the

national conversation, you think

there will be measures taken to

combat and there is not.

As the hashtag metoo gone far

enough? Has it gone too far?

Speak

to any young teenager, female

teenager, and they will tell you

that this kind of behaviour is part

of their daily lives, and this is

not on, it is not pleasant, it makes

people feel devalued. And in this...

It is part of culture where women

are seen as objects, not real

persons, who have rights and their

own integrity, where their bodies

are discussed and at the disposal of

the public. This is part of a very

strong and pervasive culture. It has

not gone far enough and it needs to

extend...

The French presidents have

all been sexual predators, they have

all been elected, and nothing came

out except when they were dead.

I

think it can go too far, in the

sense of accusations against people

who... In circumstances where there

is not really power or employment or

something involved, look, I feel

oppressed by this. The nature of

this, there is going to be

exaggeration. I don't think that in

itself it is a bad thing compared to

the huge value.

Taking this to

Westminster, we have at the first

signs of a pushback, one

Conservative MP who has not been

accused of anything, one of the

veterans, saying, there is a danger

of a witchhunt, other MPs, a

Conservative MP, who had the

governing party whip withdrawn,

otherwise he cannot sit as a party

representative, because of serious

allegation that the party passed to

the police, he said, the media told

him, he was not told. There is a

potential problem here. Talking

about duty of care, there is a

potential problem.

Yes, I think

there is, you do not want to see a

political career, and a lot of

stress and risk over the years,

going up in smoke because of

something that is not proven and may

never be properly tested. I think

this is where procedures really

matter, whether it goes to the

police. You want something else,

short of the police, to investigate

these things and set some of them

aside, because it is in the nature

of that.

That is where it is

important to have procedures in

place, also to protect the people

who are full sleep cues.

-- falsely accused.

I think there

should be a right organism in this.

Is there a danger for the Prime

Minister in this, if she is seen to

readily to hand over her MPs to this

kind of environment, some will have

done things where they deserve to be

handed over, but some MPs are

contesting claims against them, this

becomes another problem for her as a

Prime Minister perceived as weak.

Now people saying, she is not even

on our side.

The greatest danger

would not be seen to be responding

properly. The second greatest danger

is to lose key people, that she

really needs, she is in a weak

position but having said that, this

is a scandal that goes right across

all parties, equally balanced

allegations. She has done the right

thing by saying, we need a body in

Parliament and we must meet next

week.

We all are what happened with

the expenses, where, as soon as it

was set up, MPs will start

complaining, that is what happened

with the independent expenses body.

And that is equally a danger here,

but we need a political earthquake

for these institutional cultural

changes to happen, they do not

happen incrementally, you need

trigger offence to fall smack of

force these changes.

Will it happen

in Hollywood?

I think it is, the

snowball effect of the allegations

has wrapped in so many other

figures, no longer just Harvey

Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, also Brett

Ratner, another producer, so I think

these are really beginning to

emerge. And the understanding that

this is no longer a way to keep

operating in Hollywood.

The rise of the chief whip,

the arch fixer in politics,

is the story arc for the American TV

series House of Cards.

Sex allegations against

Kevin Spacey, who plays whip turned

President Frank Underwood,

appear to have brought that show,

and its fictional presidency,

to a premature end.

The prospects of Donald Trump seeing

out his real-life presidential term

had looked threatened by

the appointment of Robert Mueller.

The special prosecutor has spent

months examining allegations

of Russian collusion

in the Trump campaign.

On Monday he filed charges

against former members

of the presidential campaign team,

allegations of money

laundering unrelated to the US

presidential election.

Henry, Donald Trump was quick to

point out that this all dated two

before he even entered politics, it

is to do with money from Ukraine.

Can you relax that? -- can he relax

now?

First of all, he's right in

saying this had nothing directly to

do with his campaign but he ran on a

platform of saying, I know how to

pick good people to be surrounded

with and we are going to drain the

swamp, we have a swamp creature who

has emerged from the mark. What has

happened is significant in two ways:

Paul Manafort, former campaign

chairman, and another campaign

person, Rick Gates, and... They are

done up on charges that are quite

grave, they carried the threat of

heavy prison sentences. Robert

Mueller is putting out the signal

that, look, I'm going after the big

fish, too, and the pressure that is

now on them, to sing, in jailhouse

darlings, is now far greater. And

now we have George Papadopoulos. --

to sing, in jailhouse parlance. He

has admitted to lying to

investigators, pleaded guilty to

that.

He has done a deal, a lighter

sentence.

Yes, and he has said that

he met with Russians who promise to

give dirt on Hillary Clinton. Beyond

that, senior campaign officials

encouraged him to have these

meetings. Again, Robert Mueller is

saying, I know what you did last

summer and it is time for you to

start talking!

You have worked in

Washington, you know how the system

operates there are, it is still a

long time from saying there is a

smoking gun that proves there was a

conspiracy involving the Trump

campaign and the Russians.

Yes, it

is a long way but I think this

matters for several reasons: one,

these prosecutions, these

investigations will be going on next

year, through the spring and summer,

right as the midterm campaign for

Congress are getting underway, and I

think that could hurt Republicans

and hurt trump's own standing,

Republicans may want to distance

themselves even more, it will do

nothing to help him get things

through Congress, like tax plans.

And, it does make to meet

impeachment that bit more likely.

The possibility of it. Very hard in

the US system to stop these legal

wheels grinding, this investigation

is not going away, he will be dogged

by it.

The threshold for impeachment

is so high.

Yes but, this legal

process, it is not going to

disappear. There will have to be a

lot of steps.

What I find

interesting, Nigel Farage, quite

close to him... Former leader of

Ukip... Back from Washington. All

this Russian thing... Saying it is a

is conspiracy... I remember, my

first beat was Washington,

Watergate, the same thing that Nixon

was saying. I think that shows that

the thing is not only in the US,

this despair, in the White House,

going with this conspiracy theory,

but also, Europe, European angle to

the Russian thing. The role of

Russia in the Brexit campaign, the

role of Russia with Marine Le Pen

against Emmanuel Macron, fake news.

We need an enquiry about the Russian

lobby in Europe. The former

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the

former Prime Minister Dominique,

what was the role of Russia in

"Brexit" and Wikileaks.

Also, Julian

Assange, the hats, sharing paps many

of the e-mails that Wikileaks had

hacked. There is a connection there

in the ongoing... In the

investigation that just started in

the United Kingdom about the role of

Russia.

-- Dominique de Villepin.

The possible role of Russia in the

Leave campaign, the European

referendum, in 2016. This is quite

massive, but in terms of the

American implications, the idea that

this administration would drain the

swamp and change politics, that is

an illusion, and the longer the

investigation drags on, the more the

reputation... Because we also see

the links in the distillation of the

entire trump family and how they are

all involved.

Interesting, Donald

Trump, this has been about financial

charges, at this stage, principally,

financial misappropriation of funds,

illegally moving money around, lying

about it. Donald Trump said very

early on, when Robert Mueller was

appointed, keep well clear of my

family's finances. If he takes the

view that was indicated there, that

he will look at this, is that

legitimate or inappropriate?

Finances applies to Paul Manafort

and dates, but not George Popper

double is, that was about talking to

Russian operatives who were

promising a political score over an

opponent. Now we are looking at

Jared Kushner.

The son-in-law of

Donald Trump.

Yes, in an

investigation about the Russians,

not about formerly finances. --

family finances. This is where you

get small dangerous for Donald

Trump. It is not facing his

supporters, which is remarkable, his

support among his base and many

Republicans remains strong. They

seem to dismiss this in a way that,

if we performed a small thought

experiment, if the same array of

people around Hillary Clinton were

accused of these contact with the

Chinese, let's say, the promised

dirt on Donald Trump, would we not

see a huge outcry from the

Republican side, absolutely.

You

were in Washington, at the time of

Watergate, presumably the temptation

for some of Donald Trump's allies

and supporters will be to say he

should fire the special prosecutor,

you know...

When Nixon fired

Richardson, was done, you do not

fire the prosecutor. I remember, the

night of the long fight, and so...

We may arrive at the same situation.

I think the only problem is that the

vice president is hardly any better!

We will have an evangelical.

--

Saturday Night Massacre.

But he is a

predictable one.

Donald Trump is off

on this specific tour, 25 years

since a US president last spent this

long in the Pacific, how important

do you think this is going to be to

his foreign policy director.

It is a

long trip, 11 days, his longest

trip, it comes as he has been saying

all these things, mainly on Twitter,

about North Korea, leaving the

world, not just Asia, very unclear

how far he would go. China, really,

struggling to know what to make of

him, and indeed, to be right about

him, in a way, all really doggedly

trying to treat him as a

conventional US president, finding

that increasingly hard. Japan very

worried about how much the US

alliance can really be counted upon.

Japan, interesting debate about

whether it should build up its own

Armed Forces, explicit debate there,

and so... A lot of Asia

recalibrating relations between

these countries, and wondering how

much to change their own perception

of relations with the US, regardless

of what Donald Trump says. So it

matters a lot. We may not get

anything much more consistent out of

him in terms of what he says but

everything he says or does not say

is going to be pored over.

In terms

of the president, almost does not

matter who is in the White House,

Washington and the US matters hugely

in that part of the world. Barack

Obama talked about a tilt towards

the Pacific. Has that been delivered

in practical terms, leaving aside

the grand talk and the change of the

faces at the top, in terms of the

engagement with the region, has that

happened?

It happened under Obama,

you have the Pacific partnership,

the free trade agreement, that has

been scrapped by Donald Trump's

administration. With his bellicose

rhetoric engaged in with North

Korea, that has contributed to

uncertainty. He is going there for

trade, not just nuclear policy and

North Korea, and the fact there are

large deficits with South Korea,

with China, obviously, and so he

needs to score some success on that

front, both in terms of finding new

markets for US companies and also

getting China on board with the

North Korea policy. Whether he can

deliver that, with this Robert

Mueller investigation hanging over

him... If more allegations came out

during that trip, he would be

weakened, the leveraged you would

have in any negotiations in

Asia-Pacific would be

He has been assessed with Europe,

came to France for the 14th of July,

UK, "Brexit", Russia, there has been

a change. The future of the US is in

Asia, Barack Obama said, but Donald

Trump has not saying that, so it'll

be interesting to see what this trip

is going to be like.

In terms of

practical effects of this, a lot of

talk about what he might say about

North Korea while he is touring

around the region, even if he does

not say to the cameras, how he may

try to reassure Japan and South

Korea.

This is the problem, how

unpredictable he is, how

inconveniently may become. So far

the world has been safe because the

State Department has more less

controlled diplomacy and has come

back every time Donald Trump makes a

controversial claim about North

Korea. But let's see for how long

the Secretary of State will be able

to be in charge of that part of

diplomatic affairs.

Do we overstate

the ability of China to influence

affairs in North Korea, do you

think?

No, we do not, in fact, we

understated! I think this is China's

problem to solve, the point is that

China does not want to solve it in

the way that we would like it

solved. China has been a protector,

in a way, of North Korea, it does

not want North Korea to fall, either

because of the refugees but more

importantly because that would

create probably a kind of unified

Korea, sympathetic to America, with

American troops with access to the

Chinese border. So North Korea is a

better option, even with an

unpredictable figure. They do not

think he is as unpredictable as we

do, and certainly, they are aware

they control pretty much everything

going in and out and in terms of

resources and trade for North Korea.

It is probably more unpredictable

than they would like at the moment

but they have not really taken many

steps that we can see to Arsenal

career to come back in line. But

they have the power to do that.

You

are right to a large degree, the

historic phrase they use is that

China and North Korea are like lips

and teeth, that is how close they

are, I heard that a lot when I was

based in Beijing. They could be

working at Elizabeth Moore together

to create a smile! As opposed to

something else. -- they could be

working a little bit more together.

China has its own domestic problems,

in terms of economy and corruption,

Xi Jinping is emerging as an

incredible power, strongest since

Mauser Dong, working his own

philosophy into the constitution. --

Mao Zedong. We could see some

benefit.

This would help China to

promote itself as a global power,

the way that China wants to continue

to do business, as they have always

done, but without any consideration

for the global indications of their

actions. To be seen as there are

global actor, perhaps, perhaps a

different tact using North Korea,

just maybe a tiny tweak would help.

In those global ambition.

There is a

lot about this which suits China,

South Korea has two distance itself

from America, we really don't want a

war here! That helps China.

We

certainly do not! Thank you very

much for joining us.

That's all we have time for this

week. Do join us again next week

same time, same place, but for now

thank you for watching and goodbye.