16/12/2011 Newsnight

Would you rather be French than British? France's Finance Minister

suggests, economically speaking, we might.

There's history to these spats, but this evening, the French are

slapped down by Nick Clegg. Is it French nervousness about their own

problems behind the latest row. Also tonight, author, polemicist,

thinker, Susan Hitch has died, we will show one of -- has died. We

will show one of his last interviews. I'm happy to take it as

face value, I will take that, whatever has been said.

You get a real sense of the year ticking away from up here. David

Grossman looks back and down on Westminster.

Good evening, it's not exactly the 100 years war, but let as say

anglo-French relations have probably been better, this evening

the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, described as simply

unacceptable, French criticism of the UK economy, after the French

Finance Minister suggested that Britain's economic situation was

very worrying, and argued it was better to be French. The looming

specter of a credit rating downgrade for France hangs over

this argument, as does the recent European treaty by David Cameron.

Tonight, as one ratings agency declares a solution to the eurozone

crisis, beyond reach, we ask which economy is superior.

# God save our gracious Queen # God...$$NEWLINE There has often

been a healthy rudeness about cross-channel relations. Honest

John Bull, versus the scheming French frogs, Orla France versus

England the spats go along way back. We have had spats over doing

business, and now the business of last week's Brussels summit, means

it has all broken out again. From Westminster, that's drawn a

robust British response. I'm always pleased to be British. In this

economic situation, although we have got a bigger deficit than

anywhere else in Europe, because of the legacy of Gordon Brown, we have

got two things very strongly in our favour, we have got our own

currency, and so we are in control of our own destiny, and we have our

own Bank of England, that can manage that currency. And we have

got a credible fiscal plan, that has passed through parliament, that

the markets believe. Those two things together put us in a far

stronger position. From Joan of Arc, through to General de Gaulle,

French leaders have aunch been good and saying no -- often been good at

saying non or worse to Britain. What has angered them this time, is

not just David Cameron's behaviour at the summit, the Prime Minister's

veto forced precisely the outcome, an inter-governmental pact, rather

than a full treaty, that President Sarkozy wanted. Rather the main

trigger for French wrath, seems to be a threat by American credit

ratings agencies to downgrade France's AAA rating, if there isn't

decisive action to stablise the euro.

To Nicolas Sarkozy, facing re- election next spring, it is a sign

that the Anglo-Saxon world has no confidence in the future of the

currency. And that it fears France, in particular, is dangerously

exposed to the crisis in Greece and Italy. It is a natural moment,

cynics would say, to try to undermine the standing of Europe's

main non-euro state. So economically speaking, is it better

to be French? Or to be British? Britain's deficit 9.4% of GDP, is

much bigger than France's at 5.7%. Its bebt is only slightly lower.

90% against France's 8%. Its inflation rate is more than double,

4.5 he%, against France's 2.1%. But in the City of London, this

economist thinks that is not the full story. At the moment the two

countries look much the same, to be honest, if you look at most

economic and fiscal indicators. But I think, looking ahead, it is

certainly the outlook for France that is probably worse, because

France, is of course, in Europe, and directly hit by the eurozone

debt crisis. Where as the UK is a little bit removed. What matters is

the relative future health of the two economies. That depends on the

fate of the euro. One ratings agency, FITCH, today, affirmed

France's AAA rating, but said the long-term outlook is no longer

stable, it is negative. It says France is the most exposed of the

top rated eurozone states, to a further intensification of the

crisis. I think it would be going a bit far to say France is the next

Italy or the next Spain. It doesn't have the big debt problems those

economies have. But its banking sector is exposed to those troubled

peripheral economies. Its banking sec tosh is very fragile, that

means its -- sector is very fragile, so the economic outlook is be

Ahead for the French, as for the British, more austerity, to bring

down the deficit. But it may not be enough. The ratings agency, FITCH,

said it believes that a comprehensive solution to the

eurocrisis, is technically and politically beyond reach. As for

the deputy, Nick Clegg who rebukeed French President, for what he

called unacceptable French remark about the UK economy. A long-term

relationship with a country, always keen to project its power on the

world stage, is probably repairable, but the problem with its currency

is another matter. Joining me now from Paris is one of

Nicolas Sarkozy's MPs. Thank you very much for your time this

evening. Your Finance Minister had his wrist slapped today by our

deputy PM, but think he went too far? Well, I think that in fact,

you know, we have kind of bad fever peak, but it will go down very

quickly. I know that the Prime Minister rang up your Deputy Prime

Minister, to try to rub off the misunderstanding between the two

men. I don't think that this is very serious. It is showing, in

fact, of course, that there is some anxiety in France about the

eurozone's future. That it is true that I myself, I'm a very sceptical

Uri man, but we are used to this kind of fever between the two

countries, it never lasts very long. So it is good for the press, but it

is, you know, it won't stand very long. Your deficit, as we saw, in

those figures, is lower than Britain's, but your biggest problem,

really, is that you are in the eurozone. Are you now saying you

wish you weren't? I would agree with you, that in fact, this is

true, I heard that the Bank of England and Britain, the British

Government, had its own currency, and can master, you know, its own

money currency policy. I agree with that. And in fact, this is very

difficult, this is what in fact the Finance Minister said, it is very

difficult to conduct, you know, in the eurozone a currency policy

which could be adapted to each country. This is why, I think, that

the eurozone may not survive very long. But, of course, I'm not

representing the French Government when I say that. I only look at the

facts, and I would say that the eurozone is in danger, especially

also because the central European bank is very rigid, and because of

the German attitude, in fact, which, they should do quanative easing to

help the states, not just for the banks to help the states to invest.

Looking at the political position, it is a very hard message this, for

your President Sarkozy, going into an election year, then. Do you

think this whole spat, indeed even the way the treaty was negotiated,

was a political manoeuvre to help him? No, I met personally President

Sarkozy before the Brussels summit, he wasn't very surprised by the

British attitude. He said to us a couple of MPs, that of course, if

there is no agreement with 27, there will be an agreement between

the euromember states, that means the 17. In fact, this is very

normal. Because Britain is not belonging to the eurozone, and in

this kind of discipline, bugetry discipline, that they tried to

achieve, you know, it cannot really apply to Britain as such, because,

in fact, this kind of budget discipline is to achieve, to save

the euro, and I have doubts about that. Because in fact, this is not

a question of budget deficit, it is a question of lack of

competitiveness between the euromember-state. Thank you very

much indeed. We appreciate your time. Thank you, good night.

Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain is then

to be lived far more intensely, we stumble, we get up, we are sad,

confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There

is nothing more, but I want nothing more. Christopher Hitch, wrote in,

one since, his own momento hori, and thought about his death many

months before it came. He talked candidly about cancer, making him

sober and objective. Today it finally killed him. We look at an

extraordinary writer, polemicist, thinker. Dashing, smart, funny, to

his admirers, the young Christopher Hitchens was the securing of idle

thinking. A bit like Hemingway, he was a two-fisted writer, that went

for typing, scrapping, oh yeah, and drinking and smoking too.

Of a leftish bent, he nevertheless challenged sacred cow its like the

mythology surrounding President Kennedy. Like everyone else of my

generation, I can remember exactly where I was standing on the fateful

day when John Fitzgerald Kennedy nearly killed me, I can remember

the Cuba crisis. Some said Tom Wolf had Hitchens in

mind when he created the hard- drinking hack played by Bruce

Willis in the Bonfire of the Vanties. We had a number of Scotchs

before lunch, big tumblers of Scotch. He had wine at lunch and

Cognac after. We stumbled back up to the office, and sat down at an

old desk with a typewriter, oOlevetti, he produced a thousand

seemless words in an hour, he could write better than any mine drunk

than sober. Hitchens had the work ethic of his

her low George Orwell, if not the same addiction, to tea. Settled in

the states, an American citizen, Hitchens reaction to 9/11, led him

to modify his view of George Bush, and end up backing the Iraq war.

People said, ignorant, unqualified, uncultured, uninstructed, if his

brains were made of gun powder and they have detonated, they would

barely be enough to disarrange his hair. Yet here he is, half way

through his first term, with wall- to-wall public sympathy. So, were

his critics premature, or has he been doing something right? Though

he found common cause with Tony Blair over Iraq, the atheist

Hitchens, by now ill with cancer, couldn't agree with him over

religion. Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes you objects,

in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to

be well, I will repeat that, created sick, and then ordered to

be well. Over us to superadvise this is installed a sell lest kal

dictatorship, a kind of -- celles ti, al dictatorship, a North Korea.

He was determined not to move the inch to the argument that religion

might have some purpose or some justification to it. Unlike Orwell,

who wrote a famous essay called Books Versus Cigarettes, Hitchens

chose both. In other respects, he may be judged to be in the same

tradition as the master. Jeremy interviewed Christopher Hitchens

last November, he started by asking about cancer. Are you terrified by

it? No, it is a superstition, among many. I know where it comes from,

if you would like me to say. When I was a child we were all very

frightened still by polio, it takes an effort to remember that now, but

in many countries still they are. Previous generations it would have

been small pox, the heart that never gets the right rhythm,

bronchitis, TB, but none have the same horror that cancer has been

allowed to acquire. It is probably because of the idea of there being

a live thing inside you. A sort of malignant alien, that can't

overlive you, but does in a sense has a purpose to its life, which is

to kill you and die. It is an obscene parody of the idea of being

pregnant. I always feel sorier for women who have cancer than who have

men. For men the idea of hosting another life of any kind, is hard

to think about. But for a woman, it must be a grotesque, nasty version

of the idea of being a host to another life. I have been idea why

people propigsate with bogus cures, scare stories. I have set my face

to try to demonstrate it is a maldy like any other, and will yield to

science. That is what I will spend my life pushing. The most common

word used for cancer is "battling"? I think that is a version of the

pathetic fallacy. It is giving a real existence to a something that

is in a sense, in a real sense inanimate. If it has a sort of life.

I rather think it is battling me, it is much more what it feels like.

I have to sat passively every few weeks and have a huge dose of kill

or cure venom put straight into my veins and poll it up with other

poisons too -- follow it up with other poisons too. It doesn't feel

like fighting at all, possibly resisting, but no, you feel like

you are drowning in passiveity, and being assaulted by something that

has a horrible persistence, working on you while you are asleep. There

will be people, who won't say it to your face perhaps, who will say you

smoke and drank a lot? That is demystifying. It is people saying

it is God's gift to me to have it in on throat because that is the

organ I used to blaspheme. If you have led a Bohemian life that I

have had, it is precisely the kind of cancer that you would get, that

is a bit of a yawn. Do you still consider yourself a leftist? I do.

Many of your critics would say that as your waistband expanded your

politics moved further to the right? They should see my waistband

now, I have lost 30 pounds. It is such a well known script, it is

deserving of the name cliche, I pin that accusation on my accusers,

that is what they are resorting to. Do think of these labels apply to

you, leftist, or whatever, you are more of an iconclass. There isn't a

global class now, some of us miss it, but it is gone. Is it likely to

be replaced, I don't think so. Is there a socialist theory of an

alternative world economy, just in theory that could stand up against

the idea of a market system, not conspicuously, no. In fact the

anti-globalising movement seems to be nostalgic for a preIndustrial

Society in many ways, thus to be rather Conservative. From this you

could probably tell I still think like a Marxist, which I do.

believe in the dialectiv? And the materialism of history. Do you

think it is a life well lived? have to leave that to others. I

have been encouraged in the last few months by some extraordinarily

generous letters, including, these are the ones I take most to heart,

from people I have never met or don't know. If they say what I have

written or done means anything to them, then I'm happy to take it at

face value, for once. I will take that. And yes, it cheers me up. I

hope it isn't written with the intention of doing so. Though I

must allow for it, possibly being for that reason. But, in case you

are watching this, anybody, and you ever wonder whether to write to

anyone, always do, because you would be surprised by how much of a

difference it can make. I regret, here is a regret, I regret not

doing it more often myself. Thank you very much.

My pleasure. Christopher Hitchens, talking to

Jeremy last year. There is another chance to see the full half hour of

Jeremy's interview with Christopher Hitchens, on BBC Two on Sunday at

11.30pm. Joining me now is a close friend of

Christopher Hitchens, the historian, Simon Schama. Really nice of you to

come in, Simon, on a day that I'm sure is very difficult for you.

could I not, Emily. I mean he's a man who clearly was not scared of

making enemies, not scared of upsetting people, and yet there has

been this tangible sense of affection for a man who embraced

division? You know, I think it is partly because Christopher was

really against a time of pablamand demureness, really. He believed him

self to be sort of the inheritor of mischief makers, like Tom Payne and

Wilks, The Levellers, and George Orwell. Well said in his essay on

the English language and politics, that most political writing is in

defence of the indefensible, and takes on a transparent melatricious

quality Christopher was not like that, really, he wanted not to be a

party person of any kind, but his own particular self, wielding his

own particular sword. The bitter irony in way, for those of us who

knew and were deeply fond of him. Was his notorious larger than life

habits were completely of a peace with his intellectual courage. That

is to say there was something morally decent about his double

Scotch, if you catch my drift. That he was outside the normal

boundaries of the polite, the conventional and the ingraceating.

This idea of being a mischief maker, was it ever a polemicist for the

sake of argument, or do you think he genuinely believed every time he

went against the grain? I feel a complete fraud sitting in his shoes,

which in many ways are impossible to fill. Being anguished at taking

his name in vain. I think he would have said there was a certain

amount of instinctive taste for mischief, that if there was trouble

brewing he would seek it out. That is why he wasn't a conventional

journalist or prepared to be an armchair journalist. He wanted to

go where the sewer stunk most awfully, and he made sure he was

there. He liked actually skiing along the race zor blade in that

kind of way, to mix my fete fors, shocking to Newsnight and to Hitch.

He would want to do that, the vast majority of the arguments,

otherwise why, for God's sake, support the war in Iraq and

alienate most of your ideolgical comrades. Most of the arguments he

took he took absolutely from principle. Today we had this quite

curious push from David Cameron about the revival of Christian

values, there is something ironic of this coming on the day when such

a passionate believer in atheism has died. Did it alter his approach,

do you think, to death? I'm sorry, Emily. In the sense of riceing Oder

of sanctity. Is that -- rising oder of sanctity. This idea that God is

not great? I don't think he was like Richard Dawkins in a sense in

which he felt there needed to be an impassioned neo-Darwinian crusade.

He was surprised, bemused and shocked, all our generation were,

I'm slightly older than him, that theocracy was possible in the 21st

century. Not that religion was still hanging around, but religion

which actually had the power of force to it. The great moment for

many of us was the Salman Rushdie, it changed a lot of us, until that

point, we could make jokes actually about making sin a crime, a capital

crime too. After that, that fatwah wiped the smile from our faces. In

that sense the doing the battle with the state still having the

power of zealotry, that could get you in horrible trouble. I think

during his illness, I will say this. I was put in mind of a great

unrepentantly atheistic death, I know, eventhough Hume was some what

of a story, Christopher would not mind being identified. Hume died a

heroic death, reported by Adam Smith, by his friend, who was

visited by a doctor, that said I'm delighted to leave you in better

spirits than I imagined. Hume said no doctor, that you would not

choose my truth, tell my enemies I'm dying as fast as I can, and my

friends as easily and cheerfully as I can. The courage with which Hitch

looked at his own death, was the sense, in truth is the ultimate

strength, and you can aim for no better thing than that. Thank you

very much. So this was the year then that

politics was overshadowed by economics, and, yes, this was the

year when division in Europe started to open up again. But a

curious byproduct of this year, it was the year where the backbencher

became a better known voice than those in the frontline of politic.

David Grossman looks back on this year.

Big Ben is getting ready for its big moment. In just two weeks the

nation will turn to its four faces to get us started on 2012, but,

before then, a little contemptation of the old year is called for. 2011

has been a cracking political year, here are Newsnight's headlines.

The they, it's worse. Europe it's back. Ordinary MPs, they are really

quite cross! The sun is out today, but 2011 was the year that even

more thick black clouds appeared in Britain's economic sky. In fact, it

has got so gloomy that the entire deficit reduction programme of the

coalition, has been destroyed. That, is having profound consequences for

British politics. The Chancellor's Autumn Statement

is usually, well, a bit dull. This year's though, was political

dynamite. The bust was deeper and had an even greater impact on our

economy than previously thought. And the result of this analysis is

that the OBR have significantly reduced their assumptions about

spare capacity in our economy, and the trend rate of growth.

reason why the Autumn Statement was so seismic was the political

calculation of both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, was

that they would go into this coming election saying, look we have

sorted it out. We can now start to delivering -- delivering some

goodies. There is no way that will be the message at the next election

now. The change for Labour is to say we won't be worse, we will have

a convincing alternative, that up until now they have failed to make

any impact in terms of the wider electorate as to what that message

would be. It is a very long time to ask people to put up with quite

dire circumstances. Groups of people in whom you rely to shift

the vote in the centre ground, whether it is women aged between

30-40, or swing constituencies in the Midland, or Medway towns, these

classic areas where the big battles of British politics are fought, it

gets hard Tory say come back to us, or come with us, -- harder to say

come back to us, or come with us, if people are still going through

tough times. Just like the mechanism of Big Ben, the coalition

was finely tuned, it had been to be. Both party leaders knew one issue

above all others threatened to rip their common endeavour apart, they

had to do everything they could to resist making any new policy on

that issue for the entire parliament. That issue, of course,

was Europe. There were rum pblgs over the summer. Conservative

backbenchers wanted David Cameron to make a treaty change in Europe

dependant on Britain getting powers back. And David Cameron sounded

keen. Any treaty change, as the last treaty change did, is an

opportunity for Britain to advance our national interest. The Liberal

Democrats were adamant this wasn't going to happen. This Government is

not going to launch some smash 'n grab raid on Brussels on its own.

But this month, that sense sayingal veto, and as a result, strained --

sensational veto, and as a result strained coalition relations.

Europe is the great potential killer of this coalition. It is a

running story, that is the danger. Not one that erupts every nine

months then disappears t will continue to be a theme throughout

this parliament. And could, at some point, as Paddy Ashdown and others

have hinted, break the coalition. David Cameron was rather pushed

into that veto, after Number Ten spectacularly mishandled a

completely meaningless vote on an EU referendum in October. Imposing

the full force of a three-line whip on outraged backbenchers. I'm not

prepared to go back on my word to my constituents. And I'm really

staggered, no, I'm really staggered that loyal people like me, have

actually been put in this position. Which brings us, rather neatly, to

our final headline. The parliamentary drama in 64 though

acts. At the other end of the palace of Westminster, from Big Ben,

is the Victoria Tower, with shelves and shelves of vellum controls,

Britain's laws going back to the 1400s. We, of course, don't needing

to back that far. The big piece of parliamentary legislation this year,

after the budget, was the health and social care bill. Not so much

for what it did, but for what it told us about how coalition

politics worked. The Liberal Democrats managed to get concession

after concession by getting a bit nasty and cutting up rough.

Conservative backbenchers looked on and took note, they realised that

if they wanted to get things their way, well, it is the squeaky wheel

that gets the oil. Not only were there rebellions. The ayes to the

right, 111. Backbench committees came into their own, freed from the

power of the whips, they drove the news forward, where once

parliamentary committees may have helped try to bury news. I would

just like to say, one sentence, this is the most humble day of my

life. I think this was the year of the

backbencher, they were certainly very lively, we have seen a new

fearlessness coming in. You have seen a lack of control, if you want

to put it that way, of the select committees. You look at someone

like Louise Mensch, she doesn't come across when she's in her

committee as someone who is very worried about what the whips or

anyone else thinks about what she has got to say. And you might say,

it is harder to remember the names of ministers who stood out this

year than it is to think of a good clutch of interesting backbenchers.

Funny that. So that's it, our time is up. And

soon, so will 2011's. Above all, this has been another transitional

year in politic, slowly, some times rather cluanky, our politicians