29/07/2014 Newsnight

Will President Putin feel any real pain from western sanctions? The

United States sim posing new sanctions in key sectors of the

Russian economy. Energy, arms, and finance. But if we really wanted to

hurt him, wouldn't we be targeting Russia's vast reserves of natural

gas? The only problem is that Europe needs all that lovely gas. Instead

it is the banking sector that will feel the burden, this could be

enough to tip Russia into recession. Another 100 Gazans are reported to

have been killed since last night by the Israeli Defence Force.

Why does the leader of the opposition in the Israeli parliament

support the onslaught. And the great First World War poet,

significant Fridayed Sassoon. Dark Claude are smalledering into -- dark

clouds are smoldering into red. Who and what determines how we see the

Great War. Do we see it clearly. Learly.

So after much huffing and puffing the European Union has finally

responded to the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH17, by

moving to so called stage III sanctions against Russia. There will

be ban on sales of equipment to Russia that would help it modernise

its huge oil industry. A prohibition has been put in place on exports of

technology that has actual or possible military use. Leading

Russian banks will no longer be able to raise money from European

investors. Is this the EU showing its teeth or just some flaccid gums?

And will these measures genuinely hurt President Putin so he thinks

again about his backing for pro-Russian rebels in eastern

Ukraine. Or, will the pain, if any, actually be felt by us?

We will hear in a moment from our economics correspondent, but here

first is a report from Moscow. Moscow's Gorky Park this evening had

a happy air about it. Life has rarely been so good in Russia,

soaring gas and oil prices have filled the coffers, and the

middle-classes are enjoying it. The fighting in Ukraine and the downed

flight seem far from here, it is hard to believe that sanctions would

sweep all of this away. But analysts of the Russian economy were already

detecting signs of trouble before today's news. Only in the last

several weeks have we started to see the strains emerging, so higher

interest rates, stubbornly high inflation, in June for example the

car sales were down 17% year on year. So you are starting to see the

cracks now appearing. Interestingly an opinion poll out today suggests

the number of people who are worried about sanctions in Russia has

actually dropped from over 50% back in March to around 35% today. The

number of people who are not too concerned or not bothered at all is

now over 60%. That poll was reflected this evening by Moscow's

young and carefree in Gorky Park. It all seemed a world away from

Washington, where President Obama was announcing more sanctions.

Russia is once again isolating itself from the international

community, setting back decades of genuine progress. And it doesn't

have to come to this. It didn't have to come to this. The sanctions did

make the Russian news today, but it wasn't the main story. And the

presenter said that Ukraine should be being isolated, not Russia,

because it had used what he called "weapons of mass destruction"

against its own people. The official reaction to the sanctions has been

one of stoicim. This was the Foreign Minister yesterday. TRANSLATION:

This gives us no pleasure, just as we know it gives European countries

no pleasure to impose the sanctions. But, I assure you, we can overcome

the difficulties that will arise in some parts of our economy. Possibly

we will also become more self-sufficient and more confident

of our own strength, this is also useful. While this evening Sergei

Markov, a political scientist with close links to the Kremlin, made it

clear that the new sanctions could have consequences. And now it is in

history that in the on the anniversary, 100 years since the

Great War, we are very close to world war three. The Kremlin appears

to have made a decision, it knows as the sanctions pile up, there will be

economic and then political consequences. But it seems to have

calculated that the political consequences will be much worse if

it is seen to give in to America and its allies in western Europe. So

joining me now is our economics correspondent. Do you think these

sanctions are remotely significant? I think they are very significant,

they have already been described as the toughest sanctions on Russia

since the end of the Cold War, I think that is true. If we go back

two weeks since before the Malaysian airlines was downed. The US brought

in tough sanctions, Europe brought in much weaker sanctions. Today

Europe has gone a lot further than the US did two weeks ago, much more

than anyone else was expecting, even this time last week. This is going

to in particular hit Russian banks who are already been locked out in

borrowing in dollars, and now locked out in euros as well, I think they

are significant. Do they have any kind of implications for us, I mean

it is quite interesting that we have danced around the whole energy

sector. Very little in the way that will damage Russia's huge oil and

gas industry. What are the implications for the UK and the

European Union? There is damage to the Russian oil industry, we have

deliberately not targeted the gas industry. The effect will vary

across the European Union. France is more exposed to arms sales and

Germany some of the high-tech energy equipment. In the UK there are two

things to bear in mind, firstly when the Russian banks come to raise

money they do it in London, we are talking hundreds of millions in lost

fees in the City. Secondly BP, it owns 20% of Rossneft, a big direct

investment, there is worries about that, their shares are down two. 5%

today. If you look however at sanctions that have had an impact in

the past, say on Iran, they tend to be actually rather more significant,

draconian, Iranian companies broadly banned from raising finance across

the world. Almost impossible for Iran to sell anything anywhere. That

had a major impact on that economy. Do we really think that these much

more limited punitive actions will make Putin feel any pain at all of

any serious sort? No, I think they will. I think you are right. These

are nowhere near as strong as the sanctions on Iran or Sudan

previously. There are two things to bear in mind. Firstly we have to

look at the underlying health of the Russian economy. If we look at

Russian economic growth over the last decade the first thing we can

see is that the Russian economy was growing at 6-8% a year, it slowed

after the recession, but last year the Russian economy only grew by

just over 1%, before anything happened in Crimea or Ukraine. This

wasn't economy that was slowing down. Secondly, now I agree with

you, the formal sanctions will cause some pain, they are not massive.

What matters more is the indirect effect. So three times this year the

Russian Central Bank has been forced to raise interest rates. Most

recently on Friday, to try to defend their currency. As well you know

Robert, the last thing you want to be doing when your economy is

slowing is raising interest rates. So I think the actual sanctions

themselves are not what's doing the damage. What is doing the damage is

the action they are forcing the Russians to take, raising interest

rates and a slowing economy, it never ends particularly well. Thank

you. Now joining me is a former British ambassador to Russia, and

the director of p the Russia Studies Centre of the Henry Jackson Society.

We are trying to see if this is largely cosmetic and the Europeans

saving facial in a difficult situation or it will have an impact

on the way Russia behaves in the Ukraine? I think the current round

of sanctions announced by the US and the EU today are deeply significant.

I would argue that the earlier sanctions were in a sense symbolic

and it is Duncan said the greater impact they had was indirect in the

sense of the message they sent to international investors, and markets

and confidence and so forth. I would agree with you that this is just to

an extent a face-saving exercise. The EU needed to retain a degree of

credibility in the way it acts towards Russia, I do think the

sanctions will impact Russia and may bring about change in President

Putin's behaviour. If we look for example at the sanctions imposed on

the energy sector, we are already talking about equipment that may

have an impact on the efficiency of Russian oil companies in a few

years' time, but not damaging them in a major way now. If you look at

the restriction on Russian banks raising capital, well, they will

simply go to China, won't they, for that money. They have also a Central

Bank that can print money. Do we really think that in terms of what

the impact will be on ordinary people's lives in Russia that they

will see any difference? If we look at the past experience of sanctions

and the Russian regime, President Putin. If one considers for example

Russia's reaction to the United States adoption of the the act in

2010, sorry 2012, Russia's response was assertive, it was in a sense

defensive, and in one or two respects quite aggressive and gave

the impression indeed that America did take seriously, sorry that

Russia took seriously the sanctions and the impact that had it and its

behaviour. As somebody who knows Russia very well, how does President

Putin typically pond to these sports -- respond to these sorts of

threats? He's counter suggestible on things like this from the west and

he will be to this, and not respond in the way we want him to. He has

90% popular support in Russia, and the reason is because he's seen as a

great hero of the Russians against the intruding, humiliating and

encirleling west. Therefore he has little political choice, apart from

anything else, but to stand firmly against these sanctions. The

sanctions are, in my view, very unlikely to have their affect, and

unlikely to prove counter-productive in finding any solution to the

Ukraine problem. What in your view should the west be doing? This is

not a popular line of course, but the west needs to talk seriously to

the Russian, bringing the Ukrainians into the conversation about a

solution which protects what the Russians see as their assets in

Ukraine, which is to keep Ukraine out of NATO and protect the

Russian-speaking population there. If we could do a deal which

incorporates that, Putin can go back to his people and claim victory and

we can come down from what is actually at the moment a very

dangerous escaltory spiral. The west introduces sanctions, whatever

economic effect, they will not have a political effect. Russia maintains

its support for the separatist, and maybe steps it up a bit. The west

introduces more sanctions and more support for the separatist, and

sliding dangerously down hill. Do you see any way out of escalating

conflict? I would agree with Sir Tony that these are a gamble. Gamble

in a sense they bring about economic hardship, potentially economic

hardship against Europe and America, but they are also a gamble because

we don't know how President Putin will react to this. Sir Tony is

correct, what President Putin will need to get out of this is something

that he can present to the Russian people as a victory. I would, I

suppose, depart from Sir Tony in the sense that I think alongside

sanctions there absolutely should be diplomatic engagment behind the

scenes, and that may well be a way of bringing about a compromise which

will be difficult for the west to swallow, but it is better than the

alternative. Thank you very much. Is the great thing about the National

Health Service that no British person has to pay to use it, or is

it that most of it is provided by the public sector, by the state?

Labour's health spokesman, Andy Burnham said the role of the private

sector in the health sector has been growing too fast, he called on the

Government to halt privatisation until after the general election.

But is this the same Andy burn biamond Burnham who was Health

Secretary and saw a huge increase in private association with health

care. Does it map if a private company fixes your hip or screens

you for cancer so long as they do it cheaply and properly. I will speak

to him in a minute. First we have this.

When you hear about health privatisation, maybe it evokes

America and its health care system, a system built on private insurers.

Or, perhaps you think of privatising in the 1980s or 1990s, when publicly

owned companies got sold off, neither is quite right. I don't

think privatisation is the right word. We haven't seen large

transfers of ownership from being a public NHS hospital into the private

sector. What we have seen is more contracts going to private sector

operator, it is more like outsourcing than privatisation. This

has been driven by something called the new public management school of

thought. The big idea is that decisions are passed to local

managers who are then held to account by targets and market

forces. But to make all of that work you need alternatives to replace

weak services and create competition. And that's where the

private providers come in. This idea isn't new, Alan Milburn a Labour

Health Secretary said the hard thing about health politics is by and

large the thrust of policy over the 30, 40 years, with ups and downs all

the way, has broadly within in one direction, more diversity, were

youity and autonomy and better data. An increasing share of NHS spending

has gone to private providers under the coalition, whose reforms tilted

the health service that way. But outsourcing also rose under the

Labour administration, including Andy Burn ham's ten euro as

secretaries for health. What direction has it gone. Outsourcing

got better during the reforms So many difficult things were

happening at the same time, there was a lot of emphasis on targets,

there were new payment systems for hospitals and a lot more money until

recently some that have generated a big improvements in performance that

we have seen. One of the questions going forward when there isn't much

money in the systems and problems appear, is quite how the private

sector helps in that kind of environment. If Mr Burnham plans to

crunch down on outsourcing on the NHS, it is hard to say what effect

it would have, but it would affect services from cancer care to

cataracts. Joining me from Salford is Labour's

spokesman Andy Burnham. What exactly are you proposing? The first thing

is can I correct something in your piece there, to say that I did

something in Government and saying something different in opposition.

In Government I changed policy towards the NHS preferred provider

principle, because I was saying that the public NHS is important. A

service that puts people before profits. And my views haven't

changed. What we have seen under this Government... Is a very big

hang. Hang on a second. Towards forced send tendering of services.

It is taking the NHS into new territory, large contracts being

offered for sensitive services such as older people's care and cancer

care. Suggesting this Government sees no limits on the use of the

private sector. My big point is who gave this Prime Minister permission

to put the NHS up for sale in this way. Because if you remember Robert,

before the last election he said there would be no reorganisation of

the NHS, then he brought forward the biggest-ever. It is really not what

I think, the British public have never given their consent for their

most valued institution to be broken up and sold off in this way. Hang on

a second, who gave Labour permission before the election in which you

were Health Secretary, because in that period actually privatisation

on your definition went up by 60% and it has gone up only 20% under

this Government. Where was the permission that you had? I'm not

sure you have your figures right. These are official statistics? Let's

explain the different role, Labour used the private sector in a

supporting capacity, to provided a decisional capacity to bring down

NHS waiting lists. Our mandate was to bring down NHS waiting lists and

we did, to the lowest ever level. I'm saying that this Government has

changed that. It has forced tendering on the NHS and we are now

seeing huge contracts being put out. The FT will report tomorrow that

there is currently ?6 billion worth of the NHS out to open tender to be

signed before the next election. I don't think that is acceptable when

the public have never given their express consent for the NHS to be

broken up and sold off in this way. But you explicitly said in 20009

nine and I will quote you that we can move beyond polarising debates

of public and private sector provision, were you wrong that

distinction is an artificial one? I said at the beginning I introduced

the NHS preferred provider, I saw a role for the other providers the

voluntary or private providers supporting the public NHS. So you

were wrong, if you let me make the point, you changed your mind? No

because I explained to you what I said. This Government sees a

replacement role, so it sees the core public NHS being replaced by

private providers. That is to take the NHS into new territory. And I

put it to you again, that the British public have never given

their consent for that policy. That is the crucial issue here, if David

Cameron wants to pursue that policy he must explicitly go to the next

election and say this is the kind of health service we want. I have put

out the vision for a different health service under Britain, a

public integrated service based on the principle of the NHS preferred

provider. At the end of the day that matters. I'm passionate about the

public NHS and what it represents, it is a service based on people not

profits. I'm not clear why you think it matters, actually when people are

polled, what they say the NHS is about is free at the point of use.

People frankly seem to be very neutral about who provides that

service. So long as the quality is there. You have for example, hang

on, we have, as you know, some of the worst, the worse worst mortality

rates for cancer of any rich country. Why not try the private

sector to see if we can improve the mortality rates? Let me answer the

main point there. This is the crux of it, isn't it. I think people

value the service that we have, that as I say is based on people not

profit, that means when people walk through the door of the NHS it is

you that matters, it is not your bank balance or the views of

shareholders that are the important thing. That is the essence of the

service we have, and I think that is what Danny Boyle was celebrating at

the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. Now you mentioned cancer

care, I have shown today how cancer care has gone backwards under this

Government, we're seeing the national cancer target missed for

the first time. So you know the Government's reforms aren't making

things better, they are making things worse. The NHS has gone

downhill under David Cameron. So I think this is the crux of the debate

we have to have at the election. This is the choice we have to have.

Do we want an NHS that continues on people not profits basis, or do we

want a very different service. I'm very clear that I think the public

want to see the NHS continue, if we carry on allowing the inexable

advance of the market into the NHS, in the end it will devour everything

that is precious about it. Just so that I can grasp what it is you are

saying here, I just want to return to your period as Health Secretary,

there was a hospital that failed under Labour, in Cambridgeshire, it

was moved down the runway to privatisation when you were Health

Secretary, it is now perceived as a private low-run hospital for the --

private low-run hospital for the NHS to provide private treatment, would

you reverse that private sector management? I don't think you can

just reverse contracts that have been signed. Let's be clear on that

example. I was seeking an NHS provider for that hospital under my

provider principl it was this Government that signed the contract.

The NHS was unable to bid? Let me make the broader point, in the end

you have to decide what kind of health service you want, if you look

around the world, market-based systems cost more not less than

systems like the NHS. They also do something different to the quality

of care what they lead to is greater fragmentation of the care, when the

future demands integration of care. I'm quite clear that the market is

not the answer to 21st century care. I'm setting out my stall, you may

disagree with it but I'm pretty clear that is the principle which we

should build our health service going forward and those are the

foundations on which I'm developing Labour's vision for the NHS in the

21st century. Many thanks. Now Israel intensified its remorseless

bombardment of Gaza today. There were more than 60 air strikes and an

estimated 100 Palestinians killed, including seven families, according

to the Palestinian health authority. That would bring the total to well

over 1100 Palestinian deaths since hostilities began on July eighth,

compared to something over 50 killings of the Israelis. Gaza's

only power plant was hit today, making living conditions even more

miserable for the territory's one. Eight million people. What are

Israel's real aims and what are the prospects for peace.

We're joined from Tel Aviv now. What has been happening today? Well, as

you just said today was one of the bloodiest days in Gaza, according to

Palestinian officials, as you say, more than 100 killed, Israel says it

was Hamas-related targets that it was attacking. But local people

there say a school was attacked and as you say a tank shell from an

Israeli tank hit the only power station, taking out supplies there.

On this side of the border missiles from Gaza continuing to rain down on

Israel, one for example intercepted this evening over Jerusalem by the

Iron Dome system. And on the political front the security cabinet

delayed or postponed its meeting from today until tomorrow amid

continuing deep divisions in the cabinet about how exactly to pursue

the war. I think increasingly the Prime Minister Mr Netenyahu squeezed

very much between hawks and between public opinion, which is very much

in favour of prolonging the war, on the one hand and America, the UN and

other powers on the other hand pressing very strongly for a

cease-fire. What is the point of the bombardment, the military action,

where does it all end? Well it is hard to say, certainly Israelis are

very shocked by the number of soldiers now 53 that they have lost

in the last two weeks. And they are also very shocked by the discovery

of more and more tunnels leading under the border into Israel. Now

Hamas today put out a video which it says shows some of its militants

Protestantsing into Israel, we cannot verify this, but certainly

the idea for the Israeli army they confirmed there was an incident of

this sort, and yesterday five Israeli soldiers were killed when

Hamas militants came out of that kind of tunnel. So far these losses

only seem to have stiffened the Israeli public's demand for a

continuation of the war. But what is interesting is increasingly now

there is a debate here about whether the demilitarisation of Gaza, as Mr

Netenyahu puts it, can really be carried out in the context of a war

by the Israeli army or whether there will have to be some kind of

internationally sup advised de-- supervised demilitarisation.

Involving some kind of carrot or big, big investment of funds into

Gaza, how that mechanism could work, it is a long way off. It is proposed

by a former Defence Minister. Mr Netenyahu has certainly shown

interest in it, it is an idea gaining more and more traction here

now. Many thanks. Earlier I spoke to the leader of the Israeli opposition

Labour Party, I asked him how with the Israeli left's tradition of

trying to reach a peaceful solution with the Palestinians he could

support Israel's onslaught on Gaza? These are tragic events, and believe

me most Israelis feel extremely sorry for these tragic events, but

we are simply defending our people. I'm going to the same shelter that I

have been at as a child. I have been shot at every evening and every

morning by missiles, like most of the citizens of Israel. Simply put,

so when you are trying to uproot the missiles, after absorbing and

absorbing and absorbing and you warn the citizens and you alert the

civilians and you send leaflets and SMSs, in the end you fight, you

fight to save your own people and you want to know something, I lead

the Israeli opposition, I lead the peace camp in Israel, if you want to

make peace you have to be ready for war. We are yearning for peace, but

we have to make peace with those who are unwilling to sit down -- we have

to make peace with those willing to talk to us, not those calling for

our destruction and killing our citizens every day. They may be

calling for your destruction but Hamas does look extraordinarily

weak, no longer getting the support of Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood,

the Iron Dome, a tremendous protective cover for Israelis. On

that basis isn't the Israeli army going massively over the top in

Gaza? But that's not the full picture, with all due respect. It is

a very distorted picture. First of all they have been sending thousands

of missiles on Israel. I urge you to be here one day or be anywhere and

live under missile attack. I mean any normal human being wouldn't

accept it. But secondly, most importantly of all, they have dug

tunnel, they have taken money from European tax-payers, and they have

spent it instead of on relief and helping their citizens in Gaza, on

tunnels which have been dug under our homes in southern Israel in

order to breakthrough one night, kidnap thousands of Israelis and

drug them, torture them, kill them or abduct them to Gaza, and in the

most incredible thing that paradoxically all of these kibbutz

and villages on the border are part of the peace camp in Israel. This is

the absurdity of it all. We have spoken to a former soldier today who

nonetheless says that the Israeli army has become more hardened and is

acting in a more aggressive way than it would have done in the past. And

you will have read similar testimony from former soldiers on the

Internet. This is a widespread complaint and concern of former

members of the military. Do you believe that the Israeli army is

behaving in a more aggressive way? No, not at all. I think it is

behaving actually in quite a cautious way. There could be errors

and mistakes, but I can describe to you dozens of events constantly that

depict what I'm talking about. Every unit has indepth legal council, we

are one of the only armies in the world that is clearly having legal

counselling involved in every part of the operation. A few days ago in

a school in BethHanun, the army uncovered a launching pad of 24

missiles, what are we supposed to do when somebody fires from his home,

from his shelter, from his school, from his mosque, at the end what do

you do, and you want to know something, in most cases, even major

European powers, even major international powers acted in fact

in a much more brutal way than the Israelis. But with more than 200

children already killed, what is the solution, what is the end, at what

point does the Government say we have achieved what we want to

achieve? OK, so first of all I'm the leader of the opposition, and my

line is that whilst we protect our citizens, and we wanted not to go

into this operation at all, nobody. We believe, we, Labour and the peace

camp believe that we should be very much proactive on moving on peace

with Mahmoud Abbas, with the Palestinian Authority, and weaken

Hamas. We are in the midst of a clash of extreme Islam versus

moderate nations and a coalition of moderate states that sees Szczesny

ISIS on the east, and Hamas on the south, and Hezbollah in the north,

that is the real battle in the region. And the battle in the region

is a confrontation of a coalition of nations that believes in being in

fighting terror and moving towards peace and combatting extreme terror

organisations that do not see Israel as the only stop on the way to

Europe, and other elements in the free world. Is there really hope of

peace if you, as the opposition, think there is no possibility of

negotiating with Hamas, which plainly has significant popular

support among the 1. 8 million people who live in Gaza? So that's

again to be questioned. I mean the people of Gaza are under gun

threats. They are not really free to express their opinion. Gaza has been

abducted by Hamas in 2005 and they have killed and tortured their

colleagues from Fatah and kicked them out and took it over. And they

are operating like a base of terror. I do not rule out the possibility

that Hamas will kind of revert into becoming a political party within

Palestinian politics, but they can't have both. You cannot be a political

party on the one hand, and on the other hand having an army of your

own do whatever the heck you want, terrorise people all over the region

and undermine the whole notion of peace. Hamas refuses to agree or

accept a peace agreement with Israel. Thank you very much. Thank

you very much. If you use the Internet you are the subject of

hundreds of experiments at any given time on every site. That's how

websites work. So said the dating site Okcupid today in response to

the allegation it has been manipulating their use ires by

setting up unsuitable people on dates. It comes after the news that

Facebook had conducted a secret psychology experiment on 700,000 of

its users. Although some of us might think the best marriages are perhaps

always those between people who seem whole low incompatible. This

question arises, are they messing with our emotion, when is.

I'm not looking for stardom, but really, thank you. She's a hot

singer-songwriter, he's a charmingly dis-he willed record executive. Of

course Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffelo get it together in this

summer's romcom Begin Again. You have my number, right. What about

the rest of us, some put their details on dating sites like

Okcupid. Hi there, these old threads, just a little bit of sports

casual. So subscribers signed up in good faith, you know the kind of

thing, GSOH, all my own teeth! Except Okcupid were deliberately

setting some of them up on bad matches, where on paper at least

they only had 30% compatability. Although they were told by the site

it was more like 90% compatability. Parental advisory, a match with Niki

Inaj -- Minag, I didn't see that. I'm concerned about the way these

sites are manipulating people's mind and emotion, how far are they going

with the experiment, the only thing missing it seems to me is a cage. In

another one of its called experiments, Okcupid ran profiles

with photos but no text and visa versa, and guess what, people went

on looks alone. So shallow. Okcupid said: Most ideas are bad, even good

ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out. If

you use the Internet you are the subject of hundreds of experiments

at any given time on every site. That's how websites work. This comes

after Facebook was accused of being unethical for trying to influence

the emotions of almost 700,000 users through the news feeds they were

exposed to. I think we are just touching the tip of an iceberg here,

what went on with phase book again was incredible, dealing with

people's psychological problems and here we are people with dating

problems. People go on these dating programmes and dating sites and they

are already suffering emotional situations and to put them through

it again is cruel and unkind. I used to describe some of the sites

as a human petri dish in an environment where they didn't feel

they were being observed. There are regulations and guidelines in place

within an academic environment to deal with that. What we are dealing

with now is we are dealing with commercial organisations, for whom

they do not have a responsibility to protect their customer, their

clients from harm. Frankly, you have signed your life away as soon as you

tick the box and say you agree to all the terms and conditions. The

rules are being rewritten, or as my date Nikki says, maybe your weird is

nigh normal. 100 years ago today the first shots

were already being fired in war that would wreck much of the world and

leave nine million people dead. Centinary events are under way

around the country, but how do we remember that terrible conflict. For

most of us poetry has conditioned what we think and how we see those

terrible days. Owen and Sassoon, the geniuses among the war poets, have

their names inscribed in Westminster Abbey and many of our hearts. Why

does poetry loom so large in our memory of the war. Does it reveal

truth or give a distorted view. We will discuss that in a minute. Here

is Sassoon at his most evocative, animated by Newsnight's Aslan

Livingston The actor David Harewood reading

very well there. The author of Faithful Year, about 1914 is here

with an historian who has written extensively about German military

planning in the run up to 1914. We do, I think, see the First World

War through the prism of Owen and Sassoon, as that period when the

flower of England was wiped out in this most futile of all wars. Is

that the correct way to see the First World War? No, and I think the

problem is that since the 1960s schoolchildren have been taught

about the First World War largely through the prism of poetry, it

isn't just the poetry, it is the prose literature which started

coming out at the end of the 20s, which also portrays a disillusioned

view of the war. Of course Sassoon's view of the war has value, but it is

an individual response for the war, written for all sorts of reasons,

political, class reasons and even sexual reasons, Sassoon's homoerotic

impulse conditions the way he takes his mens' side against their

officers, and of course he's one of the officer class himself. So we

need to look at it as historical evidence. One of the things I hope

will emerge from four years of commemoration of the First World War

is the idea we should have a non-know lithic -- man know lithic

view of the -- monolithic view of the First World War. There were so

many people living in this country with different views about going to

war and enlisting. Up until this point we have had a very sort of

black and white view of how the war was. How is the war seen in Germany?

Completely differently to how it is seen in this country. The prism that

you described is a different one, the prism is the Second World War

and everything that happened before the First World War is just not as

important. I have to say until quite recently that was the case. The

Second World War which was so much more destructive and horrific for

Germans than even the First World War has only recently featured in

the popular imagination. In anything resellbling the enthusiasm --

resellbling the enthusiasm that exists in the First World War in

this country. What do you mean by that, how has that view changed,

what sort of enthusiasm do we now see in Germany then? The enthusiasm

is primarily around discussing, yet again, the origins of the war, the

responsibility. Who is to blame? Who is to blame. What is the prevailing

view in Germany? Until probably a year or so ago I would have said

most people would agree that Germany was more to blame than others, after

decades of debate, historians and the general public had agreed, I

think, on that. But with recent publications on the origins of the

First World War that has really shifted again. And there is among a

large section of the German public and among historian as real relief,

if you like, that finally we can brush aside this guilt, at least,

not the guilt for the Second World War, but finally after 100 years we

can say we did not cause the First World War. But does art condition

the way the Germans see the First World War in the way that the poets,

thGreat British poets condition the way we see it? Much, much less so I

would say. There isn't this tradition of looking at the famous

war poets, or the idea that would you teach those kinds of poems at

schools, as you mentioned, that doesn't exist, that is partly

because after the first world war there was a much more fractured

memory of the war. Obviously when we look at the war poets we realise

that is one view and there were others, but it has been boiled down

for most people to one view, that never happened in Germany, it was

always a fought over memory. So, help us out here, the war poets are

wrong, what is the right way of seeing the First World War? The war

poets are not wrong, but they only represent one point of view. What

historians in Britain are particularly exercised about is the

idea that the war was completely futile, when we get to 2018 it will

be interesting to see exactly what national commemoration will take

place of the 100 years, the 100 days of Britain's march to victory,

because historians are exercised that 1918 is a forgotten victory in

Britain's history because Britain won the war.

Just to be clear about this, what is your own view about who was more to

blame for the origin? Good gracious! Nice easy question? Well I suppose

it is the ministers around the Kaiser I think are to blame. They

had a very strong idea of the need to go to war as soon as possible. I

think you sort of agree with that don't you? I would say they are more

to blame than others but not exclusively so, you can attribute

blame to other Governments I would definitely start in Germany and

Austria and Hungary. That is it for tonight. We leave you with the work

of the photography artist Greg Siegel who took pictures of family

and friends lying down in a collection of their own rubbish, is

this a metaphor for my debut on Newsnight. I fear it might be, good

night. Hello there, I think for most of us

tomorrow a similar day, which means northern parts of the UK, brisk

winds blowing in from the west, bringing a scattering of showers,

best of the dry and sunny weather the further south you are. So

through the afternoon, I think across Northern Ireland, still the

chance