30/09/2016 Newsnight


30/09/2016

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Theresa May is a world leader, the Prime Minister of the fifth

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largest economy in the world, but what are her political passions,

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This weekend she'll take to the stage at Tory Party Conference.

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Will we start to get a clearer picture of what our

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What she has not had, I think, is a 100 day plan of the sort

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that we had worked out, when we came in, in 1997, when we

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She seems to have not had that whole series of policies and

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We'll hear from some of those who witnessed the first steps

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Deutche Bank has got a market capitalisation of 16.8billion

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dollars and faces a US fine of 14 billion for mis-selling.

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Is what the IMF calls the riskiest bank in the world too big to fail?

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The bloody history of some of the world's earliest and finest

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I've never actually licked a manuscript but they have probably

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Not only is it her sixtieth birthday tomorrow, on Sunday it's one hundred

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days since the Brexit vote and she'll be in Birmingham

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addressing party conference for the first time as PM on that

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very subject - I wonder which she'll find the more enjoyable -

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And then she makes a wider ranging speech on Wednesday.

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Theresa May has been a senior figure in conservative politics for almost

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two decades but apart from her style choices, ideologically she has been

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a closed book to all but a few trusted lieutenants.

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Since entering Number Ten there have been a few glimpses -

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her determination to pursue "responsible capitalism,"

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the return of grammar schools, and of course that moment

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of caution, or brinkmanship, over Hinkley.

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But will she come up with eye catching policies,

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and does political history tell us that early enthusiasms

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A clear image of Theresa May has yet to settle on the public retina.

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In some cases, the details are sketchy, but in others,

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The new Prime Minister was fortunate to have a G20 summit at the UN

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General Assembly early in her tenure to help establish foreign policy

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credentials, but in truth, one problem dominates

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Here we have not yet had an outline, merely a clever sounding phrase

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And we are going to make a success of it.

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Every time one of her Brexit ministers seems to add a little

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clarity to the government's approach, they have been sat down

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On Sunday, Mrs May is set to give what has been billed as a big speech

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on her approach to Brexit, perhaps then we will find out more beyond...

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Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair 's chief of staff and he arrived

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He warned Theresa May against wasting any time.

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The first 100 days are crucial in setting the mould

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for the Prime Ministership, that is when people see you.

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There are two things I regret from our first 100 days,

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the first was being bold and really difficult policies you want to get

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through you should do at the beginning when you have

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The second thing you should do is try and focus on those

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issues that are going to be really important.

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For Theresa May, the issue she will be remembered for is Brexit.

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Whether she succeeds or whether it is reversed

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If I were her I would focus exclusively on that.

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With the dominance of Brexit and the fact that Mrs May has been

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so long in the Home Office, you might have thought that

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a distinct May domestic agenda would emerge slowly, but we have had

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A pause in signing the deal on the new nuclear power

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station with the Chinese, citing security concerns

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was emblematic of cutting loose from the Cameron Osborne years

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and another was announcing the return to grammar schools.

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Strangely it was this attempt and focus on her agenda that has

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caused most disquiet among Conservative backbenchers.

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The grammar school policy was seen as both rushed and vague and indeed

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there were so many unanswered questions about how it would work,

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that it provided something of a rallying point for disgruntled

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There was more uneasy when despite all the previous

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signals suggesting cancelling the Hinkley Point power station,

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a deal, slightly amended, was agreed anyway.

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Questions then about what sort of political operation Mrs May

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was running and whether it was up to the job.

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Mrs May has a very different relationship with the press

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from her predecessor who had no staged visits to schools

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or factories and very few informal sources of information.

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The only way in is through the front door, guarded by two aides who have

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been with her on and off since her time in opposition.

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I created the job of chief of staff and I came to work for Tony Blair

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having imported that from the United States.

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I've noticed that Theresa May has two, there is an inflation going on.

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She has a male one and a female one and they seem to have a significant

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role, controlling access, they seem to have a major role

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in terms of policy, for example around schools and the role of chief

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of staff has become more like that of The West Wing.

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As someone who arrived on the job unexpectedly and in extraordinary

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circumstances, Theresa May has been cut more slack than most

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new prime ministers, but that patience is

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We will have decision soon on Heathrow, government spending

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Either the Prime Minister defines events or they will define her.

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Let's grapple now with the May enigma and what history tells us

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about the importance of a Prime Minister's honeymoon

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with broadcaster Michael Cockerell, who has chronicled the careers

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of seven Prime Ministers, Deborah Mattinson, pollster

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and former adviser to Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, Polly McKenzie,

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who worked in Downing Street for Nick Clegg and the journalist

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and author Harry Mount, who's writing a book about Brexit.

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Good evening. Michael, you have seen more Prime Minister 's go through

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that black door than many, has anything surprised you since Theresa

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May went through it? Partly what we were expecting of her, that she was

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going to be boring and stayed and unexciting, but I think she has been

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much more interesting. When she appointed Boris, everyone was

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shocked, not least Michael Gove, he was at a party when it came through

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on his mobile phone and he went white, apparently. She has not been

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that predictable. She has been amazingly self-confident, at her

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leadership launch, someone asked why she should be Prime Minister and she

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said she was the best equipped for the job. She has this

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self-confidence, she hit the ground running. If you look at Prime

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ministers who have come through mid stream, John Major, who have the

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poll tax, Gordon Brown, but Theresa May is faced with a policy that she

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actively voted against, having to drive it through, does it make it

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more difficult? It is incredibly difficult and she has appointed

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three different competing voices, David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris

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Johnson to fight it out over this policy, which she cannot take too

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much leadership on... What is the psychology of that? It must be

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difficult for her. She is not known as someone who is a natural

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delegator, yet she knows she cannot push too hard because she needs to

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give them potentially enough rope to hang themselves. You have been doing

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a lot of work on Theresa May, what do people pick of her? Their views

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are little hazy. They do not know very much, but what they do know is

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quite positive. I could say that voters are cautiously optimistic,

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she is making the right noises, the mood music is right. In what way?

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She is differentiating herself from the guide before in a good way,

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saying I am not an Old Etonian. She is also saying that she is reaching

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out, the speech on the steps of Downing Street, I tested that in

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focus groups and people loved it. Are you one of the people who are

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struggling to get by, she said, and people said yes. 56% of people in

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this country define themselves as have nots and it was a direct appeal

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to them. On that question of differentiating herself from David

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Cameron, she is not posh or one of the boys, she has to drive that

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through. He did talk about that, making a more equal society and did

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not deliver. You could say that we have a public schoolboy, educated at

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Oxford handing over to a public school girl educated at Oxford. She

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went to a public school as well. She did a very good job. Cameron said

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very similar things on his first time. You remember that famous

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speech by Thatcher on her opening day. They all try to set these

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messages that she will be defined by this one big issue of Brexit and I

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think she has been doing rather well on that and being a reluctant

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remain, either by accident or design, is the perfect position to

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be in. I have been interviewing, the Brexiteers like hers, they think in

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the House of Commons where the Tories are largely pro-Romain,

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they're more likely to get them through the divisions -- Remain. She

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is not doing the glad handling, she's not going to schools are

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factories, is she underestimating things because she is a woman? There

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is a weirdo expectation, her chief of staff, must be the person of the

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agenda, which is strange, she is somehow ventral uprising for him,

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when she clearly has an ideology... To the voters think that? The

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problem with voters is they have a very narrow set of role models.

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People say she is probably quite like Mrs Thatcher. The thing about

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the early Thatcher years, it was Keith Josef, who was supposed to be

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her Svengali. Do you think there are certain negative points that people

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see, she is quite restrained. Actually what people are feeling is

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not that she is restrained, but they are feeling that she is very

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measured. They are a little bit impatient already. You are saying

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that you think she's doing well on Brexit, I do not think that is quite

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whether voters are. Rightly or wrongly, I have heard people saying

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what is she doing going on holiday when the country is in crisis? It is

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very early days, if you think she will come up with these tremendous

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rows over the next five years and Europe is what has killed the last

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three Tory prime ministers, this is early days. It is too early. You say

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also about being a very measured. Her Cabinet reshuffle within a

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couple of days, I was talking to one Cabinet minister, you will have to

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work out who it was, he said he was sitting around the Cabinet table and

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only four of us were in the same job that they had been in before! More

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radical than you think. You get rid of the number of people that you

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want to get rid of because they have committed the cardinal sin of being

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in with David Cameron, George Osborne or Michael Gove, but you

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shovel all the other ministers who have been in the job for long enough

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to understand how the ministry 's work, it is a rather odd thing to

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do. Let us put it into the context of other prime ministers in their

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earliest incarnations, what Jonathan Powell was saying, she does not seem

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to have a 100 day plan, but she was in different circumstances, Tony

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Blair had been preparing forever, but when Wilson came in, what did he

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quit -- did he do quickly and did it survive? He came in and played on

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the fact that he was the first grammar school boy after three old

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it a row, after a 14th Earl and the huge political star, who Wilson

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modelled himself on, just before he became Prime Minister, was JFK. JFK

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said we would have 100 days of dynamic action and Wilson said we

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would have 100 days of dynamic action. He tried to play himself as

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the first Prime Minister born in this century, the youth vote. Coming

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on to the Coalition, you were there with Nick Clegg, was he prepared for

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what happened? The Conservatives did a lot of preparation in opposition

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whereas the Liberal Democrats with no expectation of being in

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government... Did that damage them in the long-term? The real challenge

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was trying to build a narrative that was about something other than

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austerity and I think that that in a way is a mirror of how Brexit will

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dominate Theresa May's Premiership. It is the biggest thing and the

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Coalition will be known for cutting 80 billion of public spending and it

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does not matter how many strategy teams you have, that is the game. On

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that question of Brexit, I am sure that as a Prime Minister, should she

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will not want to be defined entirely by Brexit, but I she said earlier,

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she can hive of the problems to David Davis, Boris and Liam and take

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the glory of it goes well. That will be enough to define it, a huge thing

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to take a side of Europe successfully.

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I'm sure she does not want to be defined by it, she had Patrick

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McLoughlin briefing the media that she wants to be defined by other

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things. But the huge event is Brexit, so she will try to be

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defined by other things. I'm sure her conference speech will be full

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of other things. What do you think, Deborah, she has to do, she is doing

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the big speech on Brexit on Sunday and on Wednesday she is doing the

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wider thing. The public priorities are clear, NHS, immigration and the

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economy. All of those things in one way or another relates to Brexit

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actually. They are all connected and joined up. The 100 days thing is not

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an accident. All the polling research I've done looking at

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previous prime ministers suggests that 100 days in is often as good as

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it gets. That's the moment where people have made their minds up. If

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you have not won them over by then you may be never will. On the

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policies, if policies disappear in the first hundred days, you think

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what were these policies in the first hundred days. That is often

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right. There are often gimmicks as well, as Gordon Brown had worked out

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what he was going to do for his first 100 days, and then things got

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in the way. There were the floods, the threat of foot and mouth.

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Suddenly he took control of these things. But he said to me, I'm

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really angry, because my grasp for what I was going to do for 100 days

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is not working out like that. Thank you very much indeed.

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The chief executive of Deutsche Bank had to come out fighting today

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after shares tumbled 9% at the start of trading following a big fall

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overnight in the bank's Wall Street listed shares.

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John Cryan assured staff at what the IMF calls the world's

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riskiest bank that finances were strong, but not only

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is there the small matter of a 14 billion dollar fine

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in the US for mis-selling mortgage-backed bonds before

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the financial crisis of 2008, there's persistent doubt over

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whether its 1.8 trillion dollar balance sheet is worth what the bank

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Its shares rallied later in the day, but could Deutsche Bank fail,

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or would the German government ride to the rescue?

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Deutsche Bank, the biggest bank in Europe's biggest economy, 147 years

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old, but you might remember it best for the financial crisis, for a two

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and a half billion dollar libel penalty, or for another huge fine.

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This time for busting sanctions. And now it faces of $14 billion fine

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from American authorities for selling those dodgy mortgage-backed

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securities that led to the 2008 crisis. And when your bank is valued

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at 15 billion euros, a $14 billion fine is a pretty terrifying

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prospect. Hence the share price tumbling. Also falling world the

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price of Deutsche Bank's Coco Bonds and that tells us a lot. So what is

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a Coco Bond? A way of raising money by borrowing it but with strings

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attached. Based on a normal bond with a bank borrowing and then

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paying fixed rate of interest for five, ten or 20 years before getting

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to the end of that period and paying back the lump sum. Now for the

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strings. The clues are in the name, CoCo is short for contingent

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convertible, in other words it can change in certain circumstances. In

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theory all sorts of things but for Deutsche Bank it means if it starts

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to run short of money the bonds turn into equity, in other words instead

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of the bank owing you money, you end up owning a little bit of the bank

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instead. That helps the bank because it no longer owes money, and its

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balance sheet looks stronger. But the investor is probably not getting

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such a good deal, receiving volatile shares instead of a predictable

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fixed income. That's why Coco Bonds have to pay a higher rate of

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interest than normal ones. Plenty of people simply don't want them. The

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more nervous people are about a bank, the less people once it's CoCo

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bonds, and the cheaper they become. That's why the cost of CoCo is good

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at risking how dodgy a company looks. Today the value of Deutsche

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Bank's CoCo bonds slipped to an all-time long. CoCo nominally worth

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100 cents now trading for than 70. It does suggest nervousness. If we

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see a feud is of stabilisation, if we see a quick resolution. Obviously

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we have the US elections coming up and Angela Merkel has enough on her

:19:20.:19:23.

plate so there will be an appetite to get this resolved as quickly as

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possible and you will see an improvement on the CoCo quite apart

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from the share price itself. This all matters because the tentacles of

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Deutsche Bank stretch far. It manages assets of ?1.5 trillion.

:19:36.:19:39.

It's got the world's biggest portfolio of derivatives with a

:19:40.:19:43.

notional value of, wait for it, ?46 trillion. The word is

:19:44.:19:48.

interconnectivity. If the global bank like this comes and stringed,

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the whole world starts worrying. This is the London headquarters of

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Deutsche Bank and it employs 9000 people in the UK. Out of a global

:19:58.:20:02.

workforce of over 100,000. This is one of the big beasts of banking.

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Although it's also pretty controversial. The IMF says Deutsche

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Bank is one of the biggest contributed to global risk in

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banking. It's got a monstrous problem as well from the states,

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that $14 billion fine. Deutsche Bank says that fine is preposterous.

:20:20.:20:24.

Although it set aside about 5.5 billion euros to pay for legal

:20:25.:20:28.

costs. If they have to find more money they will have to find it on

:20:29.:20:33.

the capital markets. Tonight a senior figure here has told me that

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it is categorically off the table that it would approach the German

:20:38.:20:42.

government for that money. Deutsche is responding. It's just sold its

:20:43.:20:47.

Abbey life-insurance business to calm investors. A year ago it sacked

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Chief executives and now behind-the-scenes I'm told it

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started a major re-shattering problem. But the board is reluctant

:20:54.:20:59.

to shrink or get rid of its investment banking arm. Some think

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it needs a profound shake-up. I don't think it is a viable

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institution in its present form fundamentally. This problem has been

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waiting to emerge, I was going to say since the global financial

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crisis, but actually before that. What we have effectively is a very

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large hedge fund associated with a large German retail and commercial

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bank. And that doesn't make sense. Tonight sources in both Germany and

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America say a deal is being negotiated, and the fine will be

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much less than $14 billion. What it will still be large enough to hurt,

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and to show that our biggest banks remain vulnerable. Adam Parsons.

:21:39.:21:44.

One of the cultural highlights of the autumn

:21:45.:21:47.

is an edge-of-the-seat tale inspired by medieval manuscripts.

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No, not the latest Dan Brown thriller 'Inferno," but a true story

:21:50.:21:53.

written by a librarian at Cambridge University.

:21:54.:21:56.

Christopher de Hamel has turned a lifelong obsession with ancient

:21:57.:22:00.

literature into a book that critics are comparing to 'A History

:22:01.:22:04.

of the World in 100 Objects' and 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'.

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It tells the dramatic and often bloody story of a dozen impossibly

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rare early manuscripts, with a cast list including saints,

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Casting his eye over these precious pages is our own tabula

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It's made of animal skin and it's got words, it can talk.

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As you turn the page, the light catches the burnished

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Come with us into the Parker Library, Cambridge.

:22:44.:23:03.

And the capital world of Christopher de Hamel.

:23:04.:23:06.

Everything is illuminated, or will be, presently.

:23:07.:23:11.

No elephant had been to England since Roman times.

:23:12.:23:18.

This is the earliest picture of an elephant drawn

:23:19.:23:20.

It was brought over here in 1255, sent over by Louis IX, Saint Louis,

:23:21.:23:27.

and Matthew Parris came down and drew on site.

:23:28.:23:31.

They fed it on meat and wine and it died two years later.

:23:32.:23:34.

De Hamel has been fascinated by ancient manuscripts

:23:35.:23:49.

He spent his entire working life surrounded by them.

:23:50.:24:09.

Now he's told the colourful and often blood stained story

:24:10.:24:11.

I want to know everything about the manuscript.

:24:12.:24:14.

First the text, what it actually says, that is one thing.

:24:15.:24:17.

What I want to know who made the book and when and where and how

:24:18.:24:20.

and why, how long it took and what it cost.

:24:21.:24:23.

Where the paints come from and why they painted or why they didn't

:24:24.:24:26.

Why they copied it, what they copied it from.

:24:27.:24:29.

How it survived, where it's been since the Middle Ages.

:24:30.:24:32.

There is no limit to what I want to know about a book.

:24:33.:24:38.

I've never actually licked a manuscript but I bet they've got

:24:39.:24:41.

a wonderful, they probably have a wonderful taste.

:24:42.:24:43.

In a mountain cave, Goering's secret treasure trove was located

:24:44.:24:45.

One of the treasures that Goering plundered

:24:46.:24:48.

was a medieval book of hours, or prayer book, which had once

:24:49.:24:50.

But it seems it was separated from other Nazi loot

:24:51.:24:55.

A French soldier stood on it and handed it into a monastery where

:24:56.:25:02.

You can turn the pages, you turn them, you are face-to-face

:25:03.:25:06.

with something that a thousand years old.

:25:07.:25:10.

They are a combination of art and literature and history

:25:11.:25:13.

The most prized possessions of the Parker Library include the 1400

:25:14.:25:40.

year old Saint Augustin Gospels, which de Hamel takes

:25:41.:25:42.

to Canterbury Cathedral under strict security when a new Archbishop

:25:43.:25:44.

This kind of parchment on these very, very early manuscript

:25:45.:25:48.

And I can explain this entirely in terms of physics,

:25:49.:25:58.

but walking into the cathedral, holding the book open with this

:25:59.:26:04.

very, very tissue fine parchment, and 5000 people.

:26:05.:26:06.

Singing with those deep organs, the pages vibrated.

:26:07.:26:13.

It was as if the book was humming in time with the music.

:26:14.:26:19.

And it was, if I was open to a miraculous experience, I would

:26:20.:26:22.

In Inferno, Dan Brown and team spin a modern tale of text

:26:23.:26:31.

Something not entirely dissimilar happened in the early days

:26:32.:26:37.

Created by Archbishop Parker, he was appointed by Elisabeth

:26:38.:26:45.

the first to sell the Protestant Reformation to the country.

:26:46.:26:47.

He has to convince all of middle England about this

:26:48.:26:53.

It was not new, but was just the English way of doing things.

:26:54.:27:05.

And with all the things, the Bible in English,

:27:06.:27:08.

married priests and all those things, very controversial

:27:09.:27:10.

He believed, had existed in Anglo-Saxon England,

:27:11.:27:18.

therefore he gets licence from the Privy Council Office

:27:19.:27:20.

effectively, to help himself, just to take into his own possession

:27:21.:27:23.

So it was a kind of dodgy dossier to some extent,

:27:24.:27:27.

could we call it that, the fruit of his labour?

:27:28.:27:29.

Every historian, whatever you are writing you will go

:27:30.:27:35.

through the historical material and pick out what seems to tell

:27:36.:27:40.

the narrative that you want, or tells the story that you want.

:27:41.:27:43.

Manuscripts are enchanting and full of interest,

:27:44.:27:44.

Because everything has been copied pretty much,

:27:45.:27:54.

And in any case the ordinary person can't have access to them

:27:55.:27:59.

We all know what the Taj Mahal or pyramids look like,

:28:00.:28:03.

And the thrill of standing in front of the pyramids of the Taj Mahal,

:28:04.:28:11.

where incidentally I've never been, but would love to, there is that

:28:12.:28:13.

sense of, there is one of the great icons of our civilisation.

:28:14.:28:17.

You have wonderful fun in some library peering at the

:28:18.:28:31.

manuscript and discovering things no one knew.

:28:32.:28:32.

It was the most technologically advanced space adventure yet.

:28:33.:28:42.

A mission almost beyond imagination, to survey and land a probe

:28:43.:28:45.

on an asteroid moving at 84,000 miles per hour.

:28:46.:28:51.

The prize - clues to the origins of the universe and a haul of data

:28:52.:28:55.

which will take scientists years to process.

:28:56.:28:56.

Today the Rosetta probe descended to its final resting

:28:57.:28:59.

place on that asteroid, a monument to human endeavour

:29:00.:29:01.

which may even outlive life on our own planet.

:29:02.:29:03.

Here's a look back on 12 years of the project.

:29:04.:29:05.

# That you wake one day in your own world.

:29:06.:29:37.

# They don't hear cries in your own world.

:29:38.:29:54.

# Only time will tell, if you can break the spell.

:29:55.:29:59.

Good evening. The weekend looking a little mixed on the weather front,

:30:00.:30:38.

Saturday will bring showers, everyone's across southern Britain,

:30:39.:30:42.

perhaps Hale and thunder. The north

:30:43.:30:43.

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