05/06/2014 Newsnight

Allied leaders prepare to commemorate the D-Day landings, but

they don't all feel like allies any more. Vladimir Putin's policies have

drawn more comparisons with 1938 than 1944. We're at the spot that

seven decades ago was code named Gold Beach. This was the scene of

the biggest amphibious assault in history. Tonight they are

celebrating and tomorrow the world leaders will descend on this place.

How are more than 700 American troops killed while rehearsing for

the operation. Folk memory, the only public record of the horror. When

dawn broke in the beach here, as far as you could see, he said, there was

dead bodies. We're in Newark as the poles close in the by-election,

could UKIP be celebrating again tomorrow, or will the aggressive

Tory charm offensive pay off. Terry Gilliam is let loose on an opera.

What could they have been thinking. I wanted to put on a good show, this

involves a lot of arguments with people who are purests. And I'm not

interested in that. You are afraid, I remember. And how should a super

hero behave in the dark days of 2014? We will ask one of the world's

most successful comic writers, Mark Miller.

Good evening, the irony can't be lost on the leaders of the G 7

today, the 20th ary of -- anniversary of D-Day, to celebrate

the greatest victory the world has ever known, and to have in your

midst, Vladimir Putin, the politicians they can't stop. On the

shores of Brussels and Paris, it promises to be a mix of the curious

mix of the past and present, the sharp relief of landings with the G

7 summit hoping this time around to shape world events by diplomacy.

Tonight the mood here on the seafront in Normandy could only be

described as festive. There was a big firework display that just

finished. People are sampling the cider and calvados to get into the

spirit of the town. Thoughs of people in tents, in mobile homes, a

sort of historical Glastonbury. Tomorrow will be more formal. A

religious service in the Cathedral, services of remembrance too in war

cemetaries, attended by President Obama, the Queen, Angela Merkel,

Vladimir Putin and of course President Hollande. There are big

political differences between those people at the moment, that is what

they have been doing today, trying to reconcile the big things that

divide them. If British and French troops are to parade together, as

they will tomorrow, there are matters of protocol to be dealt

with. And just as this business was being resolved, a diplomatic

manoeuvre of far greater complexity was unfolding. For this day started

with an event intended to punish Russia and ended with another, where

the old war time allies will remember what great friends they

were back in 1944. So the G7 meeting this morning in Brussels shut Russia

out and threatened further sanctions if Russia doesn't do more to defuse

the congoing crisis in Ukraine. -- the on going crisis in the Ukraine.

We will see what Mr Putnam does -- Putin does over the next few weeks.

If he remains on the course we will indicate the actions we are prepared

to take. A little later the Queen arrived in Paris at the start of a

visit to commemorate D-Day, she was ahead of her host, President

Hollande who was rushing back from Brussels to metre. With Barack Obama

and David Cameron travelling in the same direction. The situation today

is not acceptable and it needs to change. We need the Russians to

properly recognise and work with this new President. We need

deescalation, we need to stop arms and people crossing the border, we

need action on these fronts. If that happens there is a diplomatic path

that is open. Russia had been hoping to use this moment to turn the page

on Ukraine, but President Obama was having none of it. He dined with Mr

Hollande, but refused to meet Vladimir Putin, keeping that at

Foreign Minister level. When President Putin flew into Paris a

couple of hours later, his host endured a second working dinner of

the evening. The diplomats hope now that by tomorrow morning the leaders

will have recovered their appetite for celebrating a war time alliance,

complete with a Russian leader who today was shunned by the US at

least. There was one more awkward political moment today when

President Obama in Brussels really set his face against Scotland

leaving the union. He made it quite clear that he didn't think that

would be a good thing. The White House and Downing Street we

understand felt they should get all of this politics out of the way

today and just focus on remembrance tomorrow. So that these issues would

not intrude, and obviously the key focus here at this are the veterans

of what happened 70 years ago. Even among the few hundred who are still

with us and who have come, the number who were actually on the

beaches, on D-Day, on the 6th of June is very, very small. And

earlier today I was lucky to meet such a man, Les Reeves, in one of

the first tanks of the landing craft and told me what it felt like as he

hit the beach. Everybody was scared, I mean those who said they weren't

scared were fools or liars basically. When we came off the

landing craft all you could see was water wasn't it! You know, once you

had cleared the water and there was that much going on, there was stuff

hitting the tank, and we got the headphones on and there was this

happening and that happening. You didn't have time to be scared, it

had gone. Of course what Folaued was followed was a tough campaign for

weeks, how much of a toll did it take on your squadron. Well, I don't

know really, you know... . Yeah... . What is your attitude now to the

Germans? The ordinary German army, they were doing the same job as us,

but the SS and others they were animals. Some people say this

generation is softer or they couldn't have stood the suffering

that you and your comrades with stood, is there any truth in that? I

don't think so. We were a generation where our fathers were in the first

war. When the call came we were there, weren't we. And I think

strongly that the generation of today would do exactly the same if

necessary and if needed. The thing is this, events like this must

continue, not only for the memory of those who didn't return to see the

white cliffs, but also for them to learn a lesson that war is not a

very good thing. Well the events of the landing are well trod, less well

known perhaps is the military disaster that preceded it and

threatened the very success of the entire allied invasion. A dress

rehearsal for D-Day involving tens of thousands of American troops went

badly wrong. More than 700 died in just one day when German torpedo

boats spotted landing craft ready to mount a practice assault in a beach

in Devon. Yet the real story of what happened that day was only uncovered

decades later by an eccentric beach comber from Grimsby.

In the ball of flame on the edges you could see black specks, jeeps,

men, parts of the ship, it was awful. The waters were burning and

it looked like the sea was on fire. Then there was another explosion,

another ship was torpedoed. Six weeks before D-Day and just off the

Devon coast a secret training exercise ends in disaster. There

were bodies everywhere, some in groups burned by oil, and there was

just a scene out of hell. Mani was one of 30,000 US troops sent to

south-west England to prepare for the biggest sea assault in history.

He survived the attack and felt the sacrifice of his countrymen was

ultimately worthwhile. Though his family say it deeply affected him.

When dawn broke in the beach here at Slapton, as far as you could see, he

made, there were dead bodies, but because no-one had told the soldiers

how to put their life vests on they put it round their waists instead of

over their chests, because of the weight of the back pack and

munitions and stuff, when they went into the water it pushed them

forward, most of the guys drowned. He was extremely scarred by the

whole exercise. By the experience, he was also very private and very

secretive about what happened until much later in his life. By the

spring of 1944 thousands of American servicemen, like Manny were waiting

on the south coast ready for D-Day. A stretch of the Devon shoreline was

chosen for the dress rehearsal, code named Exercise Tiger, the author

Michael Morpergo has written about the time. The city is the scene for

one of his best known novels. The Americans came here in 1943, very

deliberately choosing this beach, because the beach they were going to

land on across there in Normandy, Utah Beach, has great similarities

with this. What they wanted to do was to practice their landings,

which would be happening on Slapton Sands. In order to do that they had

to evacuate huge amounts of land, 30,000 acres had to be evacuated.

Six villages, all the people and animals had to be moved away.

Evacuation in the path of war has come to the peaceful south-west of

England. In 1943 this man was one of 3,000 told to leave their homes for

nearly a year. Now 83 she still lives in the same house. We weren't

told why we had to move out, we were told the land was wanted. We had to

get out within six weeks. So you know, it was quite an ordeal for the

parents. People realised that it was for a special reason that they had

to move out. But they didn't know why. As the residents moved out, so

the military moved in. A series of training exercises through April

1944 culminated in a large scale assault on Slapton Sands itself. The

whole idea is they were going to practice and make it as, I suppose,

as like a real battle as possible. With live fire and all the rest of

it. Shells would be coming over the heads of ships out there, the men

would be landing on the beaches, the shells would be landing in the

countryside and the villages all around, and then come June 1944 they

went over. But inbetween in April there was this terrible tragedy

during Exercise Tiger. As thousands of troops sailed around the bay, a

destroyer meant to provide cover was ordered away. The landing ships was

easy targets for German S-boats hunting in the channel.

50 servicemen died in the sea that day. US generals ordered a complete

news blackout. What has really happened here on the beach wouldn't

reach the public until the mid-1980s, 40 years after the D-Day

landings. The full story only came to light because of the remarkable

work of one retired police officer from Grimsby. Ken Small was

something of an eccentric a beach comber who kept asking questions

about the schrapnal, belts and bullets he was picking up. Then a

fisherman told him about a mysterious object three-quarters of

a mile out to sea. After the tank had been recovered naturally the

coverage that got internationally that did lead to people starting to

make contact. It became important to my dad, he wanted to create

something, a memorial to those who lost their lives. Slowly he started

piecing the story together, getting hold of unclassified documents,

spending hours on the phone to survivors, by 1988 he had the ear of

the President. It is a letter of thanks from Ronald Regan for all

that my dad did. "Your concern for our servicemen who made the supreme

sacrifice exsemplifies the strong bonds of friendship and admiration

that unite the people of our two countries." Historians agree there

was no deliberate military cover-up in this case, the official news

blackout was lifted a couple of months after D-Day. By then nobody

wanted to read about a training disaster and the story of Exercise

Tiger, simply faded away. Right from the people from these farms and

villages here, who gave up their homes and who helped this to happen,

who understood it and went through what they went through, to the

American soldiers who came over here from goodness knows where to live on

a, in a Devon landscape for a bit and exercise here, and then go over

to France, and many of them died both here in this exercise and in

France. Was what worth it? Of course it was. The most necessary of all

wars. The entire free world was at stake, his friends from New York,

other members of the family, his brother, they all felt they had to

go and fight to save the world. Despite the lost of life something

concrete was achieved by the operation, allied planners

understood the danger from fast torpedo boats, plans were changed

and survival training given, all this was put into practice on D-Day

itself in Normandy. Harry Leslie Smith is a Second World

War veteran, and author of Harry's Last Stand, with us tonight, joined

by a Russian historian at the London School of Economics and a German

historian at Queen Mary in London. A warm welcome to you all, thank you

for coming in. Harry I want to start with some of your thoughts,

particularly the ones you have expressed recently in the book about

sacrifice b whether you are no longer convinced that the sacrifice

your generation made was worth it? I think I my thoughts on that is the

fact that we fought so hard to win the war and in the election which we

were lucky to be involved in we all voted for liberal and when Attlee

took over we saw a new face from conservatism which gave us more hope

for a better life. Unfortunately it lasted for a long time, they did

well, they built new homes, they made universities for our young

people to go and educate themselves which didn't exist for the poor in

the old days. And like I said, the rationing was still on when we were

demobed, and it went on for a good year-and-a-half afterwards, which

meant that you know you got very simple rations for food it was still

a bleak life in the early days. But we could see change coming. And it

was really an uplifting time, because in those days ordinary

people like us we suffered misery of hunger and disease. There was no

health service. I lost a sister actually to TB. I remember as a kid

she was lying there helpless. My mother was so distraught by the

whole thing. She actually died in a work house. Does it feel a very

different place to you where we are today, the generation that you look

at today? It is but there is an undercurrent involved in what we

see, which we seem to be ignoring. There is a massive amount of people

who are living almost pay day to pay day and on the brink of disaster.

Let me bring in our historians, because for 60 years neither the

Russians nor the Germans have been part of these D-Day celebrations.

What does their presence this year tell us or signify? It might mean

that Germans are simply more confident about being equal

partners, but also that D-Day is no longer only a symbol of defeat. It

is also a symbol of liberation. Germans have never really remembered

D-Day as one of their major events, they would rather remember VE Day

the day of allied victory. The main debates about VE Day were whether it

was a day of defeat or rather a day of liberation. In 1985 that was

still very controversial when the German federal President held a

speech and said we should look at these events as events of liberation

because that connects us with the west. Angela Merkel today has been

praising the sacrifice and the bravery. Do you think that is

reflected at home in Germany? I don't actually think that in German

popular culture and in the German mind D-Day is, has anything to do

with heroism or was a positive memory of the war. D-Day was one of

many battles which signified defeat. It was actually rather Stalin

grabbed, the defeat at the eastern front, the bombings of the German

cities that really impacted Germans at the home front and also on the

German army. I would say that D-Day it is not that it is insignificant,

it is rather Stalingrad rather than D-Day. Does that chime with you,

does it have a significance for Russians? D-Day had a huge

psychological significance, it was downplayed by the Soviet propaganda

in 1944, because by that time of course Stalin was preparing

phenomenally big offensives against the German army and Belarusia and

Ukraine and then entering Europe. But that was the end of a third year

of incredibly tough fighting when the Soviets had already lost

millions. Jews died in millions, so by that time it was immensely

important for people to know when this war is going to end. So D-Day

came at this amazing moment and finally the second front

materialised. The second front which for two years the Soviet propaganda

promised the Soviet people that this front would appear, and their burden

would be lightened by the Allies. That was immensely important as a

moment when millions of people said Hallelujah, finally. When you say

"finally", is there a sense it could have come earlier? We should look at

the sense of how the news was presented. Stalin never recognised

the operations in Africa, Sicily and Italy as the proper second front. He

used it actually to prepare the Soviets, hey, we have to rely on

ourselves, the Allies are unreliable. They are not one of us,

they are different, they are capitalists. So still despite this,

despite this propaganda, despite this, common people in the trenches,

in the rear working, toiling day and night, they heaved a huge sigh of

relieve. It is often said we look at history through the prism of where

we are today. When you see the leaders and look at the allies and

the Allies within the Allies, as it were, it is a very stark picture

isn't it. You see the kind of diplomacy they have to do with each

other now? That's right, there has been a lot of discussion in Germany

about whether Angela Merkel would sit next to Putin, whether she would

talk to Obama, so I think there is a certain sense of, it is good that

the Germans are there and taken seriously and no longer a pariah. As

a historian this is quite a development from a few decades ago.

Thank you very much indeed. The European Central Bank has taken

drastic action, cut interest rates to record lose to ward off

deflation. It has also placed negative lending rates on its

overnight depositors, in order to tempt banks into lending more. The

ECB President confirmed the rates would stay low for longer than

previously foreseen, but it could take up to a year to be fully felt

in the economy. Our economics correspondent is here. Talks through

what they are doing and the negative what it implies, the rate? It was

either interest rate were going up or down in the past. Now we are in a

world of unconventional policy. What we had from the European Central

Bank was a lot of unconventional policy. This isn't the rate at which

they lend but what they pay on deposit. This is the rate if you are

a bank in Europe and you are putting money at the ECB they will charge

you to put that money there. Perhaps the most interesting thing they did

though, potentially one of the most significant is a big scheme to boost

lending in the eurozone. They will make up to 400 billions of euros of

cheap funding available to commercial banks, you can go and get

cheap funding and pass it on to the real economy.

Why are they doing this, what has triggered this, a real fear of

deflation or stagflation? That is the problem. This is a very

conservative Central Bank, they have had to be pushed into doing this,

growth and inemployment are awful. The real big issue is what is

happening in inflation in the eurozone. Inflation in the eurozone,

it is up at 2. 5% a few years ago, exactly what you would expect as

normal. In the past year-and-a-half two years, inflations came all the

way down to just 0. 5%. What people are scared about now is prices

actually start to fall, inflation goes negative, we get deflation. I

think to a lot of people the idea that stuff is getting cheaper

probably sounds good, it is not number one on the list of economic

problems. But most economists would tell you deflation is a serious

problem for an economy. Profits go down, wages go down, you get into

what people call a spiral of everything, there is no demand in

the economy, it sucks the life out of it. If you are a really highly

indebted economy, as in southern Europe, it is potentially lethal.

Will it actually work? I guess that is the 64 billion euro question

tonight! The market has been through three stage, stage number one this

is great, stage number 2, it is not enough, and now we are settling it

might be enough. It is often said you can't solve a problem by

throwing money at it, low inflation, you can. Is the ECB going to throw

enough money, do we have to wait for things to get worse before pushing

them into acting. The latest figures on the ebowl

ebola virus show 200 people have died in Ghana because of the

disease. We go to Brussels and speak to our guest recently working as a

co-ordinator in Guinea. What are the barriers when you look at the

problem with this outbreak? The big barrier is that the population there

has to be a willing participant in outbreak control. They need to work

with the outbreak control agencies to help bring sick people into the

treatment unit. And currently they are very, very scared and often

running away, and this is causing difficulty with bringing people into

a place where they can be cared for safely with the virus. The

population is very mobile, while they are psyche they are moving

about and this is -- sick they are moving about and it is causing

secondary outbreaks across the country. And resources are inthis.

There is a lot of talk and discussion about the local

population being very mistrustful of the foreigners or aid workers there,

they feel they are there for dark and different reasons? Yes, these

are people who live in a remote area without a lot of outside disease

control agencies coming on a regular basis. When they do in the setting

of a scary outbreak, rumours start to pass around. I have heard that we

are there to spread the disease, not to cure it. That we are there at the

behest of drug companies seeking to make a profit off the outbreak. Even

that we are three to harvest the organs of the deceased. When you

have text messages sent about spreading these rumours or that you

are there, we heard, harvest organs or whatever the ideas that they are

having, how do you combat that? We do our best to let people know what

we are trying to do. We also enlist survivors, people whom come into the

centre and done well and let the community know what we are up to. We

try to bring in community leaders. It works with some people but not a

uniformly impressive effect. Tonight the curtain has come down on

the first night of Cieline by the notoriously difficult French

composer and has not been seen in London since another World Cup year,

1966. The man who has risen to the challenge of making sense of

Cieline. Is Terry Gilliam. He granted exclusive access through the

rehearsals, I warn you there is some strong language. It may surprise you

that Terry Gillian of Monty Python fame is directing an opera at the

E Not just any opera, but one of the most difficult in the can non-.

-- cannon. Cieline is notoriously tricky, at its premier in Paris in

1888, the audience rioted. It has been down hill ever since. I want to

put on a good show, this involves a lot of arguments with people who are

purists. I'm not interested in that, people pay a lot of money to see

something and I want to really give them something they will go and

remember for a long time. And I don't want it just to be for opera

lovers. In the world of opera, there seems to be a lot of museum-like

thinking going on, and I really don't like that, because what worked

in the 19th century, why should it work in the 21 century. Everything

about this opera is inflated. It always bothers me because I don't

like opera singing in that sense where it is all arms out. The opera

is based on the autobiography of the Italian sculpture, Cieline, and the

statue the Pope asked him to cast of a Greek God. Cieline was a notorious

man. Terry Gilliam's kind of guy. This coy was full of hub Ritz --

hubris, and has had statue, at this point in his career, it was a big

mistake I made and will it ever workstake I made and will it

We do have a carnival sequence where the world is turned upsidedown, and

it involves a lot of abhorrent behaviour. I'm not sure if we have

enough rehearsal time to really perfect this. We will see on the

opening night. Laughter, what a stupid joke. The whole Roman

carnival through to act I is some of the most rea veryious -- vivacious,

cheeky music he has ever composed. The reason this piece is a very

difficult piece is because he cared about the drama so much that he

didn't care whatever. It's like sing a high C sharp for no reason. And

people are like why, because he should be in ecstacy tonight. How

high would that be, ahhhhhhhh, so it is a little high. We do have maiden

aunts that may or may not be violated. Never too late, I always

say. We have, yes, some very rude behaviour in the middle of carnival,

because you should. There may be even some blasphemous behaviour from

an anti-Pope who has to be there. That is what is interesting about

the opera because he never knew when to stop, and Cieline the same thing.

And on the third bit of the magnet that is me. Out of the three two are

geniuses! I still want to surprise myself, I suppose. Because I find

life becomes more and more repetitive and more predictable as

you get older and you want to find something somewhere that nobody has

been before. I wanted to be the explorer and the world is closing in

so much it is becoming tiny. So let's go somewhere else, at least

Folau the mad men. Dare I bring up the p-word? You said to the c-word,

no and the p-word is nowhere at all. It is the biggest leap in work and

career in my life. And everything I have done as a result has been as a

result of Monty Python. I love the idea of going back and reliving it

is something different from the fact that python is why I'm sitting here

talking to you right now, I'm talking to you because of the python

show. Who is the trickyist one? Graham, because he's dead, he can't

complain. That is not fair. Maybe it is true, I don't know? He wasn't the

tricky one, tricky is an odd one, I'm not sure exactly how you would

define that with python. It was who was the moodiest, who was the least

trustworthy, who was the most backstabbing, these are games that I

will never mention to Newsnight! John wonderfully referred to me as

the conscience of python, the Jimmeney Cricket of python. I

thought it was the sweetest thing he said about me. What are they doing?

Lock, Fan Tuti that is not our pop a, we should be here this afternoon,

but they are putting that up. If you could develop superpowers tonight,

what would you do, fight crime, save the city, rob a bank, kick back,

enjoy it? One of the world's most successful comic book writers, Mark

Miller, who has penned Superman and Spiderman and Kick Ass is thinking

about how a super hero these days. How a super hero is behaving these

days. It was the time when the super heros was defined. A time when the

world was at war and the bad guys were the Nazis in the 1940s. As the

world changed and the Cold War dragged on, new characters were

needed to engage a more disenfranchised youth. There is a

new enemy out there. The X-Men were born, focussing on a team of mutated

humans. The comics delved deeply into the themes of racism and the

politics of fear. More recently questions over America's influence

and perceived fall billity have led to a divide. On the one side those

like the Avengers and on the other a question about the society we

inhabit. Mark Miller is one of the biggest stars writing comics right

now. He straddles the world of escapism and gritty reality. Perhaps

best known for creating stories like the Spiderman and the ultra violent

Kick Ass, now a franchise. He goes further, focussing on Detroit, a

city he believes has been left to rot by those with power. The heros

are from the bottom of power, questioning the very notion of the

American dream and how far you should help those around you. Can a

comic book really change perceptions and force people to take action, or

will it always be seen as a reactionary reflection of the world

we live in? You saw Mark Miller briefly in the piece. He joins us

from the Glasgow studio. Great to have you. I guess when we look at

your super heros and they attract millions of fans. Why do you think

there is an appetite for change? I think pop culture has to keep

evolving. When I was a kid growing up I read simplistic comic books and

as a teenager they became more sophisticated. Every ten or 20 years

we have to reinvent ourselves. The mainstream audience has probably

seen everything now it is time to try something different. Isn't the

point about the super hero that they are mercifully black and white, they

are on the side of law or on the side of evil, they allow people a

very, if you like, relaxing ride into what they know will happen

there? I know what you mean and it has certainly served that purpose.

Even Superman was created by two Jewish kids in the depression back

in the 1930s, we have always needed these heros, going back to the Greek

myths. I feel slightly cupable, where we worried about got shall

City we are forgetting -- Gotham City, we are forgetting about other

things. I feel while all eyes are on superheroes it is time to try

something more radical. Talks through the radical idea, you were

affected by what you saw in Detroit, how do you convey that? I see both

sides of America because I work in Hollywood and I work in publishing

and in New York and I see the extravagant side of it I see 90% of

the time. I book to the south and see places like Kentucky and

Arkansas, and I visited a friend in Detroit, it is the America we don't

see on television or in Comic, I thought about talking about the real

thing. They are more grounded in reality, how do you know the guys

from Detroit, who have come to the cinemas sitting there, eatingway

popcorn, is the last thing they want to see on the screen? I don't know

if there is an element of a that particular. -- catharticis I grew up

where there was a deindustrialisation without a plan,

similar to Detroit from the 50s onwards. I felt a connection with it

in a strange way. I love the catharsis of superheroes, rather

than letting Batman go out and fight for people every night. I wanted a

thoughter to the little guy, and maybe if you can get superpowers you

don't do the black and white thing and put food on the table for those

who cannot pay their bills any more. Easier to change that on the screen

but the page is flatter, I mean that in every sense? I have done the job

since I was 19, I will do my best. We have a Detroit screenwriter who

is doing the screenplay and the they are transforming it to a movie. We

will try to keep it as close to home. You have sent this to Obama

and other Congress men and women, what do you want to happen?

Visibility is the thing. Not for my book, I mean visibility in terms of

just making people not forget about Detroit. This has been going on

since the 19 #50S, it has been America's embarrassment. Then it

becomes a sexy spread in the Guardian and it is like room porn.

It seems strange that the forth-largest city looks like

something out of the Third World in places. I think visibility. Let's

not talk about Gotham City, if everyone going to the cinema let's

go and see superhero movies, let's slip this in, I want them to know

about and the Power Rangers. You said you felt slightly culpable of

the niceness, if you like of the superhero, not related to reality.

If it doesn't work do you still return to the spider man or

establishment figures that seem good. What does the violence? Do? It

would be great if everything was the Avengers or a Woody Allen movie, I

like writing things like Iron Man or Siderman. I love this gritty stuff.

I left marvel four years ago and worked for them through the last

decade, I left them to become them. My plan is to create franchises and

I'm nine in. I want to do the 21st version it. When all the characters

were created were talking about the world he was in and I'm trying to do

the same. Thank you very much. Now late tonight in truth about 3.00am

we find out whether UKIP, flushed with recent electoral success in the

euros have managed to secure a parliamentary seat. The by-election

of Newark came after Patrick Mercer stepped down and the Tories have

done everything they can to save the party. There are reports they are

busting young Tory activist -- bused in Tory activists with the promise

of beer if anything else. We will see you if it has had any effect.

What are you hearing from inside the hall, a high turnout? The

expectation is there is a high turn out on the basis of the ballots they

have brought in and checking at the moment. 45-50%. In the event result

you get a lot of different opinions, although it is a safe Tory seat with

a majority of 16,000, the Tories are insisting they are refusing to be

optimistic or confident or anything like that. Their opponents are

talking about will U cup overturn the majority, but by how much will

they reduce it. Everything will demand th what happens to the

crucial votes, 20,000 up for grabs. There is an awful lot of expectation

and churn, some Labour and the Lib Dems voting UKIP to hit the

Conservatives. Some voting story to keep UKIP out. There will be mixed

switching of votes. What is your sense of what would found as a

success for the Conservatives, how big does the majority have to be for

them to rest easy? I think in these volatile and fluid political times

they will take a win. They won't give me any kind of target when I

ask them those questions. UKIP is saying anything less than 5,000

shows that even when the Tories throw huge resources they have, they

have not just thrown small things into the water they will now go for

more. We will be back, thank you very much. That's all for tonight.

A dry note on Friday, more in the way of low cloud. A few spots of

rain from that. A few isolated showers drifting up from the west,

west Wales in the direction of Northern Ireland in the