05/01/2016 Newsnight

The Prime Minister allows his Cabinet a free vote on Europe.

Is everyone now having a go at new politics?

There will be a clear government position,

but it will be open to individual ministers to take a different,

personal position, while remaining part of the government.

But only once he's finished negotiating with EU leaders.

Has Corbyn resisted the urge to purge?

And should you have the right not to put your gender on a form?

We speak to one who believes the system is antiquated

Is the trans movement the next civil rights frontier?

Perhaps this new politics thing really is catching.

Today, the Prime Minister bowed to pressure from his cabinet

colleagues and agreed to allow government ministers to campaign

to leave the European Union - in direct opposition

Mr Cameron wants to keep Britain within the EU and believes he can

provide a compelling case for it - if he succeeds in getting EU leaders

The opening up of the debate - which will in essence allow not just

back benchers but those he works alongside -

The Prime Minister hopes that will be by the middle of February.

As an unexpectedly victorious David Cameron bathed in the applause of

his new MPs and the warm sunshine last May there was one big headache

on the horizon. Take's nightmare is not that he loses this referendum,

although that would be pretty bad. Nor is it that he fails to negotiate

a deal with his European partners. The EU is after all pretty good at

creative ambiguity. No, his real nightmare is this EU referendum is

the rock on which the Conservative Party is dashed, wrecked from a

natural party of government into an incoherent squabbling rabble. It was

into chillier air that the Prime Minister stepped this afternoon on

his way to tell the commons that Ministers would be free to campaign

anyway they chose. It is in the nature of a referendum that it is

the people, not the politicians, who decide. As I indicated before

Christmas, there will be a clear Government position, but it will be

open to individual Ministers to take a different personal position while

remaining a different personal position while

previous Prime Minister made a different personal position while

the Europe referendum of a different personal position while

unique problem. This is a case where all parties are divided, and the

unique problem. This is a case where disaster. Labour cabinet colleagues

freed from collective -- to disaster. Labour cabinet colleagues

argument as nonsense. Part disaster. Labour cabinet colleagues

calculation then as now is that the losers will only accept the result

of the referendum if they deem losers will only accept the result

fight fair. I want to see a fair fight so that I can feel that

whatever the result it is an honest reflection of the British people's

views and then we can get on with the rest of the Government's agenda,

which is significant. There are lots of other things we need to be

getting on with as well as Europe. David Cameron has another

calculation. The largely Euro-sceptic Conservative Party

membership may well pick as his successor someone who has campaigned

to leave the EU. And he doesn't want tall the potential candidates to

have to resign from his Government to do so. But one veteran of past

Conservative Party euro battles thinks this is a mistake. A pity

he's been forced to make it. We need a strong, unified Government to

handle some very difficult problems we face in the wilder world and in

providing a proper recovery and the base for a modern economy. To have

people insisting on staying in office in that Government but free

to attack their own Government on key and fundamental policy is quite

difficult. It's most unfortunate that his rebels have

difficult. It's most unfortunate this situation. The Prime Minister

does appear to have changed his mind on this from a year ago. Would you

give Cabinet Ministers and other Conservatives who want to campaign

for an out, the freedom to do so in such a referendum? Well with, there

are conservative members of Parliament who want to leave the

European Union come what may. But if you are part of the Government you

are clearly part of the team that's aiming for the renegotiation... But

for one Conservative minded to vote to leave the EU, this is the only

sensible solution. I think it would've been very difficult to

create a kind of a temporary Government during the referendum

campaign. Having a Secretary of State for transport or defence

perhaps for only six months, I don't think that would have been

practical. So being able to continue the role of Government, the

continuity of people who are experienced and know what they are

doing I think is really important. David Cameron only promised this

referendum to try to prevent his party tearing itself apart

referendum to try to prevent his Europe. He has made a similar

judgment in allowing Ministers to campaign to leave the EU if they

want to. But keeping the inevitable public arguments in check will now

prove a significant test for his leadership.

A vote is ongoing in the Commons right now so our guest,

the leading Eurosceptic Liam Fox, will join us from College Green

in a moment - though sadly not in discussion with our studio guest

here, the Europhile former Conservative Home Secretary,

Thank you for coming in Ken Clarke. Presumably you see this as a sign of

confidence in the Prime Minister that he feels able to make this

decision? Well, he has got a difficult problem on his hands, how

to have a referendum without making divisions in the party worse. For

the remainder of this Parliament to tackle all the many terrible

problems the country is facing. I potentially think it is a great pity

that the rebels have threatened resignation and forced limb to make

this concession. So you think it's a sign of weakness then? Well,

probably he had no choice. Harold Wilson had no choice. He didn't want

his Ministers to go out and start campaigning with each other, and he

was never able to put the party together again. The party split

irrevocably in the years that followed. Does this strike you as

the end of what he has called collective responsibility? He is

obviously suspending collective responsibility for an unknown period

of time, some months by the sound of it. We are going to have a

Government in which probably two or three members are opening

criticising one of the most, the Government's most important, as

David said, clear recommendations to the public. And he he said no

campaigning until after the renegotiation. Yes, there's a long

lapse between that and the referendum result. Throughout that

time, presumably now great pressure will be put by Euro-sceptic

enthusiasts in the House of Commons on other Ministers to spend those

months disagreeing with the Government on the recommendation

about what is the best basis for our voice in the world. How we are going

to influence mainly events and... Do you think they'll break the ground

rules? No, he said, as far as I understand it, tell me if I

misunderstood it, but I was listening to him. I think he said

once he has concluded the negotiations then in the months or

two which will follow that... They can do it? They are quite free to

say they don't agree with the Government's policy when they are

serving as Ministers in the Government. And you think this puts

your own cause at a disadvantage? No, I just think it makes the

Government in a, you know, very difficult position. It will be very

difficult for other countries to understand why they are dealing with

Ministers who are openly campaigning against one of the Government's

important policy recommendations. Presumably the Minister in office

will continue with European meetings and policies with the Government,

when openly back home they are stating they'll recommend that the

country should leave. So you do think it would be detrimental to

those who want to stay in the EU then? You are going to interview

Liam Fox. We served in a cabinet together in a friendly way. All of

us have to make a compromise sometimes. A man isn't born who

agrees with everything his colleagues are doing. But if it is

outside your area you stay quiet on it and accept collective

responsibility. If it is a matter of principle you do what any Minister

would have done in the past, you resign and you forcefully put your

views from the backbenches. What do you think will be the long-term

fallout from this? If it is part of what's going be a growing problem in

the next few months of keeping the Government together. And having a

strong and united Government thereafter. Unfortunately for us the

Labour Party's in an even bigger mess on collective unity on the

other side of the House. It is not surprisingly a unique situation in

Parliament which I don't think anybody has seen before. The British

constitution has never coped with this before. Ken Clarke, thank you.

Let's put some of those points to Liam Fox, who joins us from College

Green. Is it going to be very difficult for David Cameron to keep

the party together? If this is, as Ken Clarke claims, the end of

collective responsibility? No, I think he has made the decision that

will make it easier to keep the party together in the longer term.

The referendum's going to last between the end of the negotiation

and the date of the referendum itself, about three months we reckon

from what the Prime Minister was saying today. After that the

Conservatives will have to govern up to 2020, another three-and-a-half

years. I think the choice facing the Prime Minister was either does he

give Ministers in that three-month period the chance to say what they

want, given that it is not a normal piece of political activity with

Government legislation. It's a vote that every individual will have

across the country. And those Ministers will have to be answerable

to their voters and to their constituency associations who want

to know what they have to say. How can you carry on with Government

business in Europe, as Ken Clarke has explained, when all those

European leaders will be knowing and hearing exactly what you are

thinking about Europe? Well, that's one of the things you have to do in

a democracy. They'll have to understand that's how we operate.

We've not had a referendum on this issue. Since 1975. No-one under 58

in this country has ever had a say on the European issue - it's time we

had it. That will provide some hiccups temporarily in the way the

Government operates. The alternative for the Prime Minister to what he

did today is to say fine, you have the leave the Government, there is

then a reshuffle in that three months, and then the Prime Minister

has to consider the Government after that. That I think would have had a

greater impact upon the coherence of Government in the longer term. The

Prime Minister made the right decision. How many cabinet

colleagues do you think we are talking about here? Well, I think

most of the Westminster commentators would accept that maybe three might

have resigned. I think now they are going to be the allowed a greater

say we'll see a bigger number, maybe six or seven, perhaps more. We'll

see a large number in the parliamentary party, as we've seen

this week, including the new intake of MPs. The youngest ones, many of

them favour leaving too. And they are not rebels. This is a perfectly

legitimate view to have. We said in our manifesto we would have a

referendum so that every citizen in our country could have a say on

their future in Europe. Where they wanted written's destiny to be

determined. Ey wanted written's destiny to be

determined. -- Britain's destiny to be determined. Is it reasonable, is

there such a thing as a moderate level of campaigning on something

you feel so strongly about? Where I agree with Ken and the point I've

tried to make in recent weeks is we will have to govern together for the

second half of this decade. How difficult or how easy that will be

for us will be largely determined how well we treat one another in the

run-up to that referendum and how we conduct ourselves. I think that we

should recognise that we are allowed to have different views on this. It

is not Government versus rebels as it might have been in the Maastricht

debates in the material '90s. Everyone is free to have the view

they believe is in the national interest. If we do that and treat

one another with respect and understand that those are want to

stay are not traitors, those who want to leave aren't idiots. We have

to have a grown-up, respectful debate, and then it'll be easier to

come together afterwards. You believe a leader can have a

plurality of views in Cabinet? And presumably you think that's true for

Labour and Mr Corbyn as well then? I'm not sure I'm competent to

discuss the mess that's the Labour Party when we've got a reshuffle

that's against the Chilcot Inquiry to see which we get first. But we've

got to work out for our own party how we best govern. We've got a

majority in the House of Commons. That's our main responsibility. If

we have to have a three month hiatus where there's a relaxation of

cabinet responsibility in order for us to be the able to govern

effectively for the rest of the decade, that's a fair bargain. Liam

Fox and Ken Clarke, thank you both very much.

Meanwhile, to the opposition party as it wrestles

Think of a David Attenborough plant mating sequence that's been sped up.

Then imagine it's been slowed back down to real time.

Now you're working in the mindset of those who've been monitoring

the last 30 hours of the Labour Party reshuffle.

But so far we have one shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher,

And a bunch of rumours about a new entry onto the bench.

So has the Labour Leader resisted the Urge to Purge?

The New Statesman has been live blogging all the twists and we've

forcibly removed their political editor, George Eton,

from the staircase in that corridor of news so he can join us here.

What has the last 30 or so hours yielded for you? Trotsky spoke of

the idea of permanent yielded for you? Trotsky spoke of

this has been Jeremy Corbyn to act swiftly to

change the Shadow Foreign Secretary, remove Hilary Benn from that post

and get rid of Murray Eagle. That has not happened yet. Do we know now

that Hilary Benn is now safe in his post? Well Hilary Benn is to remain

Shadow Foreign Secretary against initial expectations but will have

to share some positions, he will not be able to oppose Jeremy Corbyn on

air strikes for example. So Foreign Secretary in name. Yes, no more free

votes on foreign policy. One fact we have today is Michael Dugher, a

vocal critic, he called his sacking today and end to new politics.

Michael Dugher was critical of Jeremy Corbyn during the leadership

campaign at shows to join the Shadow Cabinet. I think in the hope it

would be what Jeremy Corbyn called abroad church where you have people

with different views, different backgrounds, working together.

Jeremy Corbyn, his team now feel that led to a lack of coherence on

foreign policy and defence policy and they were keen for greater

unity. So you will not end up with what one person described to me as a

Shadow Cabinet of clones and zombies because Jeremy does not have the

numbers. Only around 14 MPs in the party voted for him so he cannot put

in ideological clones but he doesn't want greater discipline. It looked

as if Maria Eagle might have been a casualty at one stage possibly to

bury replaced by Maria Thornbury in defence. Is that one dead? The

latest was that Emily Thornbury was in top bashed in talks with Jeremy

Corbyn. I know she has been tipped to take a job in the Shadow Cabinet.

She is a Trident sceptic and Maria Eagle is a defender. But one Labour

MP said it would be extraordinary to have a Shadow Defence Secretary who

sneers at her own flag, a reference to the reason for the resignation of

Emily Thornbury from the Shadow Cabinet of Ed Miliband. Tony Blair

always made rapid reshuffles which were not necessarily at all

successful. They may be merit in taking time over this. But do you

had the sense that Jeremy Corbyn will emerge from this having done

what he wanted to do and being stronger for it? I think he will

have done some of what he wanted to do, to get Michael Dugher out, to

get in a new Shadow Defence Secretary. And if he does not have a

new Shadow Foreign Secretary he will have Hilary Benn under new rules,

essentially. I think he has lost goodwill with this reshuffle, Labour

MPs friendly are furious at the way this has prevented them from

attacking the Conservatives more effectively over the concession on

the EU by David Cameron, how it was to drag on over the Christmas break.

They feel they want to get back to the job of opposing the

Conservatives and in the moment they are in a position to do anything

but. The speed at which tensions

between Saudi and Iran have escalated are a reminder, perhaps,

that this is no new conflict. Saudi's decision to

behead the Shia Cleric - and hero - Nimr al-Nimr -

may mark a point of no return. But make no mistake -

the historic unease between these two states stretches back

millennia - pre Islam - to a time when each regarded

themselves as the central power What's changed this time, perhaps,

is the economics of the situation. Saudi - which made its fortune

on oil - is now feeling the pinch Whilst its expenditure

on defence has soared. How does this affect

what happens next? Our diplomatic editor,

Mark Urban, is on the case. There is religious schism,

there is power politics, and in Saudi Arabia's

confrontation with Iran, there is an increasingly vexed

economic dimension too. There is no doubt that the fiscal

challenge is enormous for Saudi They got used to living with an oil

price that was very high, at points in excess of $100

a barrel, and now that price has Saudi Arabia's government expects

revenues of $137 billion But oil and gas make up

something like 80% of that. So with the continuing price slump,

Saudi will be eating Last year these fell from 732

billion to 623 billion, leading the IMF to predict

the Saudis could run out of cash In the past two years they have been

running a huge deficit and this will continue for the next few years

if oil prices continue at this rate, I would expect they will be

in a very difficult financial With tension rising in the Gulf,

Iranian TV has been showing off The competition for regional

dominance now extends With Iran expected to boost oil

sales as a way of increasing We go back to the 1970s,

clearly Iran was one of the world's largest oil producers

and rivalled Saudi Arabia. Today Iran after many years

of sanctions has obviously fallen into a much lower position and lower

status in the global oil market. But we think that Iran

will try to regain status The more that Iran produces,

the more the market is flooded. The market share clearly,

the more market share Iran takes, the less market share

Saudi Arabia will have. So clearly there is

going to be rivalry. In a bid to avert crisis,

Saudi Arabia last month unveiled It envisages spending

$224 billion this year. That includes $61 billion subsidy

on fuel prices and $10 billion While the kingdom is now risking

unrest with cuts to subsidies, producing for example a 50%

hike in petrol prices, it's still increasing

its defence spending. It is due to go up by 27% over

the next five years to $62 There is an unacceptable level

of spending and an illogical If you look into for example

the budget, they introduced subsidies, but the spending

on defence has increased significantly, around 25%

compared to last year. And this is not counting any kind

of spending off balance sheets of the budget to go to countries,

poor countries, that Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's decision

to intervene in Yemen and to subsidise its allies to do

the same has created financial risks Regional leadership,

they are discovering, One that Saudi Arabia may only be

able to afford by deep cuts Unless of course actual wars push

the oil price back up. How important is it

to ask someone's gender - and would you consider it

an invasion of privacy For most of us, it will

barely raise an eyebrow. But for increasingly vocal numbers,

it is a question that's both People who see their own gender

as fluid or not easily defined say they want to remove the gender

markers - for example from passports, university

applications and official forms. And it's something the UK government

could start to actively consider To some it may sound

positively Victorian. Applying to legally change gender

in the UK involves presenting formal medical evidence to a judicial body

called the Gender Recognition Panel. Applicants must first prove

they have been diagnosed with gender in their acquired gender for two

years and will do so for ever. Stripping that process back

to a simple declaration form is expected to be one

of the recommendations made For campaigners it is the end

of a dated and sometimes traumatic process and another sign of evolving

attitudes to transgender. Across the western world those

attitudes have been transformed Some have called it

the trans moment. Time Magazine has called it the next

civil rights frontier. Trans icons such as Caitlin Jenner,

formerly the Olympian Bruce Jenner, and Kellie Maloney,

the celebrity boxing promoter, have given transgender issues

new prominence in mainstream media. And stars like Ruby Rose have taught

today's generation to think more Facebook now offers more than 70

options on gender identity, ranging from polygender

to inter-sex. But for all the progress,

the work is far from complete. Transgender people are still more

likely to be attacked or face discrimination or suffer mental

health problems or drug abuse. Some campaigners argue that proposed

changes in law do not go far enough Others simply wonder why in 2016

it is still something CN Lester is a musician,

writer and trans rights activist. And Sarah Ditum is a Feminist

and writer for the New Statesman. Thank you for coming in. CN, how

would you describe yourself if faced with a form or application, what do

you write? For someone like me who is transgender and does not consider

themselves either male or female and goes through the world being traded

sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman, it gets confusing but asked

to describe who I am. I want to tell the truth and if form simply has

male or female I cannot do that. Why are you sometimes described as a man

and sometimes as a woman? We have different ways of seeing sex and the

gender. If we look at the history of how we do gender and sex, we always

had creative ways of doing gender. We have people who transition from

one sex to another, people who live in a space between gender, people

who reject ideas of gender at all. You were born a woman. I was born

baby, is a big distinction. Because of the patriarchal system in Hong

Kong I do not even have female on my birth certificate, but while. Girl

is gender but male and female, they are different things. The nature of

transition and the reason it is traumatic is because physical sex is

a fact of biological reality. With which trans people have two

negotiate. This is one of my academic specialities, the idea of

sex as we know it emerged in the 19th century. We cannot talk about

sex without gender and the body. Coming back to the issue at hand,

the current legislation... You said the idea of male and female does not

exist in your mind? I say it is more complicated than what we were taught

at GCSE biology. None of us are biologists. It would be interesting

to talk about what is going on as opposed to these common

misunderstanding is that we have. It is immensely complicated in some

ways and in other ways enormously simple in that in day-to-day life

there are men and women who broadly are male and female, so sex classes

broadly map onto physical sex. Trans people are caught between these and

that is important and I hope the report will deal with that

constructively. But in everyday life the impression of women by men

follows the line of sex and is about the exploitation of women as sex

objects. And the argument of CN, do you think that ignores social

conditions M if we focus on complexities, which is a fascinating

and important, but small part of the argument, then we will start to

overlook the structural violence that is practised by men against

women. I would say again coming back to these proposals, which is why we

are on this programme, the enquiry has been interesting, fascinating to

see it unfold and fascinating to see someone like Maria Miller who went

into it not knowing much, realising how much this affects our general

way of being in society with each other. A poll last year found one

third of people in the UK would not describe themselves as totally male

or female. The number of trans people in society, 1% on current

figures and intersex people... If Maria Miller takes this into

legislation, what does it mean for male and female changing rooms,

public loos, how you count the number of men and women on a census?

This is hugely important. She says she wants to look at the wage gap

and the glass ceiling. If you don't have a way of monitoring men and

women as two separate classes, you can't study that. You are blurring

all the lines, all the social construct aren't you? I think what

we are saying, we don't have race on forms. The Government doesn't

mandate my race or religion on the form. But if you are not collecting

the data... If you will let me finish. Trans people are not

arguing... It is vital that we can monitor data against discrimination.

Would the data be that you start eroding that because you don't know

where the definitions lie? I am finding this amusing. It is all

hypotheticals. It is not hypothetical. We are talking about

classifying data that is private in some respects. With the individual

consent. If you can let me finish. It is a question of competing

rights. How do we protect the rights and safety of trans people. There's

a danger that we will look back and say, this revolution was happening

and you were on the wrong side. You didn't realise that this was a civil

rights movement in the way that race was or in the way that the gay

moment was and by not accepting what's happening before your eyes

you are missing the point. There are a lot of facets to what we talk

about as trans. We are not just talking about people who physically

transition and have genital reassignment surgery, but people who

identify as the opposite sex or anything along a spectrum and make

no physical or aesthetic changes but present that as their identity. How

do you present somebody who has a penis and commits violence and wants

to be admitted to female only spaces. In Kelly Maloney

pretransition life Kelly Maloney attacked his wife. Rose West is in a

prison and she attacked women... I'm so sorry, I wish we had longer for

this. Great of you to come in. The Thank you.

It is a year since the staff at Paris' satirical magazine,

Charlie Hebdo, were targeted by murderers.

This week, the magazine's new editor responded in customary style.

A provocative front cover - and the words - "We're not

going to let balaclava-clad scumbags ruin a lifetime's work."

Those attacks - as we now know - were not to be the last of 2015.

But the killings began what has now become seen as France's

Tomorrow night on BBC Two, filmmaker Dan Reed reveals

the untold story of the massacre - and of the first Islamic State

This edited excerpt from his film features previously unseen footage

and interviews with some of the hostages inside the grocery.

You may find some scenes distressing.

And you can see the full film - This World, Three Days of Terror:

The Charlie Hebdo Attacks, tomorrow on BBC Two at 9.00pm.

We leave you with President Barack Obama, who made an extraordinary

statement on gun control tonight, which speaks for itself.

Our inalienable right to life, and liberty and the pursuit

of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids

in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high-schoolers

in Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown.

And from every family who never imagined

their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet

Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.

And by the way, it happens on the street of Chicago

Unbelievably some parts of eastern Scotland have already had their

second wettest January on record and we are only five days in. Further

damp, dreary cold weather across the