05/12/2016 Newsnight

Good grief, does that leave HIM to be the one picking up the pieces?

It's been a difficult year for the EU, and it just got

Are the Brussels institutions capable of recognising

a crisis when it hits them, and then responding to it?

We'll hear the view from Vienna and Rome where votes

have just taken place And ask this commissioner how

Also tonight, you may have seen these aerial shots

We meet the Syrians in the city who are filming them.

And after the riots in 2001, we had reports into social

Are we moving forward, or going round in circles?

We'd all seen it coming, but the deed was done yesterday.

Italian voters chucked out their prime minister Matteo Renzi,

and threw out his plans to make the constitution more decisive.

Economically, it makes reform harder, making it more difficult

Politically it empowers the populist Five Star

Movement which wants a referendum on the euro.

And the political and economic uncertainty adds to the financial

pressure on Italy's damaged banking system.

The implications for Italy are huge, the ramifications

The only good news for the Brussels elite was the fact that Austria

turned away from the far right candidate and elected

We can join Gabriel Gatehouse in Vienna and Mark Urban in Rome.

Let's start with Austria and the Brussels elite is breathing a sigh

of relief. But the glasses only 54% full because 40s 6% of the

population voted for someone on the far right. -- 46%. It is not the end

of the road for the far right Freedom party because there are

likely to be elections next year and they could win the more powerful

Chancellor post instead. Austria really is not the most important

piece of this puzzle. There will be two elections in the first half of

next year that potentially will be fundamental to the future of the

European project. The first in the Netherlands where Goethe builders,

with his deeply Eurosceptic group, is leading in the polls and then of

course the French presidential election with Marine Le Pen almost

certain to reach the second round run-off. Couple that with what is

going on in Italy and some pretty Eurosceptic administration is

already in place in countries like Poland and Hungary and you have

something that is quite combustible. These groups do not all agree on

their critique of the EU, they do not want their own version of the

heart Brexit, they do not even all want to leave the euro but they do

want to reimagine their relationship with the union. I hesitate to make

the comparison but in the past few weeks I have been forcibly reminded

of something that Gorbachev once said about perestroika, but the

soviet union was like a big rusty piece of machinery and he said I

wanted just to tinker with it a bit and loosen the screws but then the

whole thing began to shatter and shake, the screws came loose and all

of a sudden the whole thing collapsed. A good metaphor! Let's go

to Rome. Matteo Renzi will stay on for a few days, what happens next?

What is clear from the referendum, which after all was on quite an

obscure package of constitutional reforms, is there is a huge

undercurrent of discontent with politics as usual here and in

particular with economics as usual. A 70% turnout on the referendum

vote. Once Matteo Renzi has gone through these next few days to put

the budget through, the question is how soon can there be an election in

this country. I have heard people saying between February and April,

but there is not the right legal machinery in place to do that yet

because it is all up in the air because of the package of reforms

that was going through. That means crisis for the next few weeks.

Pressure on the banks and then at the end of it, and election in which

two of the three parties losing in the polls say they want to take

Italy out of the euro. As this most unusual of political

years draws to a close Italy becomes another place where something

exceptional was happening. Government with a large majority

upended by a referendum. A leader routed, his friends argue by his own

sense of honour. There's a lesson that Matteo Renzi gave to the

political establishment in Italy no one resigns. And nobody really wins

elections or loses Rab referendum and everyone remains seated in his

chair. And Matteo Renzi took political responsibility,

accountability. That is an English word with no translation in Italian.

So Prime Minister gets flushed away but that is far from the end this.

Matteo Renzi was in the middle of remaking Italy's electoral Lawes and

help people are represented in their democratic institutions. And that

what has not been completed meaning that they cannot just have a fresh

general election tomorrow. Add to that the fact that the country has

got to pass a national budget before the year is out, and you have a deep

crisis with no one really in control.

People have gathered outside the Prime Minister ill Palace to watch

it play. Matteo Renzi was hoisted not just by constitutional arguments

say his opponents but the apparent inability of Italy to pull itself

out of the economic doldrums. TRANSLATION: The government in

recent years has not delivered on its promises to Italians. And so

turnout was very high, higher than at local elections six months ago.

That is because citizens wanted to say no, that is enough with this

government, that is enough of my terror Renfe, with Europe, the banks

and Angela Merkel. Tonight it emerged that Matteo Renzi has been

asked to stay on a few days longer to finalise Italy's budget for 2017.

Saha along with the new government had to put fresh electoral Lawes in

place, as the markets I upped the tottering Italian banks. Not so

long, I do believe there's usually a measurable financial markets take

the position a little bit before the event, as usual. And now they are in

some kind of stand-by position. But real answers must be given by Italy

as the country, starting with the president of the Republic trying to

arrange another government with specific tasks, the first

immediately to pass the budget law for 2017. That must be by December.

And to have a new electoral law secondly to go to new elections and

give Italy a little bit stronger political government, posted by

Italian citizens. And waiting in the wings is this

man. Beppe Grillo, leader of the Five Star Movement. They campaigned

against Matteo Renzi in the referendum and they are well placed

for any general election. They're complaining to take Italy out of the

euro. How real is that threat now? It is clear that the Five Star

Movement wants to get Italy out of the eurozone. And this is the

paradox of the coalition which supported a note to the

Constitutional reform, it was a real bunch of has-been, former Prime

Minister, a good part of the establishment which struck an

alliance between the neofascists of the extreme right and the populist

Five Star Movement. And this probably is the most, the biggest

paradox of this situation, it was a no without any reality.

For those who beat Matteo Renzi the referendum was a cause for

celebration. It may prove to have been just the appetiser for an

enormous change in politics here. One in which the main course in an

election expected this spring will be whether Italy should stay in the

euro. Well if you add in Brexit, Italy,

far right parties, does it add up to a crisis?

Laszlo Andor is the former European Commissioner for Employment,

Do you think the top brass in the EU recognise this is a manifest crisis

for the EU at the moment or are they hoping it will just go away? I think

there is enough understanding and has been for some time that the

monetary union in its current form is not entirely sustainable and they

will have to be reforms. This has been very slow, decision-making

making obviously should be faster. It does not mean however that people

do not realise that these reforms are needed. I think everyone thinks

it is an economic challenge. What about the political side, that

voters everywhere you give them the chance seem to be saying, whoever it

is up there, we do not really like you. It does not necessarily look as

though the top guard of the EU really get that. A lot of

frustration came up in the Italian referendum but it was not a

referendum about the EU or membership of the EU, any

interpretation would be a distortion in that fashion. This was a domestic

or constitutional question which was raised and there were many

pro-Europeans on both sides of the yes and the no camp yesterday. I

wonder whether that is a little complacent because you can disregard

one vote or another but everywhere, whether Austria, the UK or Italy or

indeed Greece, everywhere you go voters given the chance of voting

for change and when they see the EU it is an institution that moves that

one speed, very slowly. And just cannot change and absorb the

capacity for change that the public currently have? If you really watch

this, the voters voted against change, Matteo Renzi both dashed he

wanted change and the voters voted against that, this was quite a

different thing from what you describe. I think you're not getting

the kind of changed the voters are voting for, they're not writing

about constitutional change, they are voting for changing the guard,

changing the top brass. Do you think for example that Juncker is the

right man to lead the EU through this restaurant is a huge economic

crisis and paralysis in Italy, do you think with this happening on his

watch, he should just stay there and carry on as though nothing is

happening all would be better if he got out of the way and say, the

voters do not like the establishment and we new blood. You are connecting

entirely distinct issues. The leadership of the EU institutions is

organised in a way which is legitimate and based on the treaties

approved by all the member states including Italy, the UK and other

countries. This referendum in Italy was about how to reform the Italian

constitution especially the Senate, how to make decision-making faster,

how to make the political class more cost efficient inside Italy. People

were not asked about Juncker or the European leadership on this issue.

If you want to press this it is just very artificial and misleading I am

afraid. It is interesting that you say that because I'm not sure to the

average British person that it feels that remote, all over Europe people

seem to feel there is a disconnect between their lives and those of the

people governing them. A lot of that is coming out in frustration with

the EU and people watching this would say you're just a part of the

problem. In failing to recognise what is a huge and important

interaction with the voters and trying to dismiss that as a

technical vote on a constitution or a little internal affair. Do not

feel it is bigger than that? There has been a shift in

pro-European opinion because people realise that before the UK

referendum, a lot of politicians, especially in the Leave campaign

were telling lies about the European Union. Now there is a period of

reckoning, a period of understanding of what it means to destabilise the

European Union, what it means and what it costs to leave the European

Union. Of course, a period when people look into these details a lot

more than before and that makes people more pro-European, which we

have seen in the Austrian presidential election, where the

Green candidate winning with a greater margin than he did in the

spring. Thanks. The second, final and decisive

round of the contest between the government

and the judiciary kicked off today with arguments put

in the Supreme Court over whether Parliament has a right to

a say on the invoking of Article 50. We won't get a result for a while,

but TV viewers could watch It was quite heavy going,

and won't I suspect, Our political editor

Nick Watt was watching. Our starter for ten after a day at

the Supreme Court is, what links Freddie Laker, Greenland, the

Bahamas, and a grand hotel now demolished? Yes, these were legal

cases cited as the government sought to overturn a ruling by the High

Court that Brexit negotiations must be triggered by Parliament and not

ministers using ancient royal powers. The government's main QC,

James Eadie, argued ministers need not hold a parliamentary vote. He

said since the inception of Article 50 in the Lisbon Treaty, MPs have

not argued it is up to them to trigger the process. James Eadie was

saying where Parliament has not said, I am taking this power away,

it still rests with the prerogative. He was saying the Royal Prerogative

exists on a separate plane over and above the domestic sphere and unless

Parliament is saying it is taking it away. James Eadie was saying the

European Communities Act, which is at the heart of this case, is merely

a conduit for transposing those international law rights into

domestic law. James Eadie cited the case of a Tameside hotel from the

20s to underline his point. This was an elegant grand hotel on the

Victoria embankment that suddenly got requisitioned by the government

in World War I and there was a statute that said they had to pay a

certain amount of compensation. They said no, we used the Royal

Prerogative to requisition it, we do not have to pay. The Court of Appeal

and House of Lords found they did, because a statute restrained the

prerogative. Whatever the 11 justices decided, this is likely to

be a landmark case. It will not prevent the triggering of Article 50

but it could lead to major alterations in Britain's

constitutional settlement encompassing Royal Prerogative

powers and the role of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales

and Northern Ireland in UK by decision-making will stop this is a

hugely important constitutional case that goes beyond the issues arising

out of Brexit, because it concerns a part of our Constitution, the Royal

Prerogative, and touches on devolved power to Scotland, Wales and

Northern Ireland. And we have a Supreme Court that... We do not have

a written constitution, but they have an important role in

interpreting the unwritten constitution. I come from... To this

as a traditional conservative. Historically I have always believed

this country manage well with an unwritten constitution. In recent

years I have begun to have doubts and those doubts do not centre on EU

membership, they centre on devolution and managing a system of

devolved power to different parts of the UK and maintaining an overall

framework. I am on record saying I think we need to give careful

thought to whether we shouldn't have some kind of written constitution.

It needn't be a detailed document, but one that sets out a framework

for those relationships. Emotions are running high as the Supreme

Court is asked to rule on how the Brexit negotiations should be

triggered. One You support is relax. The triggering of Article 50 is in

line to start next year and whether the Supreme Court disagrees with the

High Court and says you can crack on, or whether we have to bring a

short bill to the house, Parliament will not frustrate that. They are

acceptable solutions to get on with doing what is a major change to our

constitutional position. Just a stone's throw from Parliament there

is a new kid on the block. The Supreme Court has only sat the seven

years but it is now cementing its position in Britain's ever evolving

constitutional settlement. Rather than argue about how

our constitution works in the supreme court,

could we perhaps codify the rules, so that we know in advance

what the rules are and have Or do we prefer our slightly messy

unwritten rules that perhaps have the capacity to flex

when you need them? Dr Catherine Haddon is from

The Institute for Government. Thanks for coming in. The Dominic

Grieve point, he is coming around to the idea, he might need to codify

things around the Royal Prerogative, particularly devolution. Is that a

good idea? It is difficult to say in circumstances where we have things

in flux. It is almost as if you wanted to do it in advance. There is

so much going on where the constitution is in flux. We are

repatriating powers in the process of leaving the EU. There is a lot we

need to think about in terms of the Constitution, bringing in other

issues in terms of codify in, consolidating our Constitution might

be a step too far at the moment. A lot of people are deeply attracted

to the idea of having a proper written constitution so you know

what the rules are. Does that lead to more dispute because in the US

they seem to argue about nothing but constitutional rights, or does it

resolve disputes to write it down? It is difficult to know. What we are

seeing at the moment, the Supreme Court deciding on this issue, is in

effect what we could see more of. You have different issues. The

question about transparency, do we understand the constitution, should

it be consolidated? The issue of whose authority decides the

constitution? The Supreme Court Parliament, the government? And

prerogative powers, but they are Tom when they should adapt. The

complicated thing about the UK, Parliament is sovereign and reign

supreme so the parliament if it wants to can abolish the Supreme

Court, Kartik? Or you have a written constitution voted in by Parliament

and pine and can abolish the ring constitution. Parliament, isn't that

the principle that governs everything? It is, the

democratically elected... Dictatorship! Part of our government

so it can legislate for these things. There are checks and

balances in the system, similar to the US. The rule of law is obviously

one of those and we have seen judicial reviews since the 70s form

part of that. This is dramatic and more important but in a sense it is

a continuation of the travel we have seen. Parliament can legislate and

create a Bill of Rights which it has talked about many times. It could

legislate to change Royal prerogatives, put it on the statue

books. It did it with a fixed term parliaments acts that changed Royal

Prerogative into an act of Parliament. The ability to call an

election. The monarch's right to dissolve parliament. It caused

confusion in OK you might want to amend it further you cannot turn it

back into a Royal Prerogative. You could repeal the act. And give the

Prime Minister the power to call the election. Constitutional authorities

are divided on what you would do in replacing a Royal Prerogative. In

the long-term, would we be better off trying to write it down? I think

it is written and codified in a lot of places. There is value in

consolidating it, even in a guidance document, which we saw with the

Cabinet manual. Before the election, when we expected a hung parliament?

Exactly and the purpose was to make sure constitutional decisions would

not decided by people on Newsnight in the middle of the night to make

sure we have some sort of authority that could speak to it. I think you

are seeing awareness of constitutional issues and a desire

for more clarity, but you wouldn't have the debates we are having about

who is the authority and what is the process by which we challenge it.

Constitutions are not fixed, they have to change all the time. We

would still face those same issues. Thanks.

There's been more bloodshed in Aleppo today with the Syrian

regime barrel bombing a district in the east of the city -

and its forces advancing further into rebel territory.

Now if you've been watching us regularly, you'll know we've been

trying to keep in touch with citizens in Aleppo,

as the siege there enters its most intense and brutal phase.

That is not always easy, but today, we can show you what life

is like for some of the local journalists and cameramen

who are filming the destruction of their own home town.

The images can often be difficult to watch, let alone gather.

And news networks don't even broadcast the worst of it.

In this report, we've been speaking to two of the citizen-journalists

It was filmed by Milad Al Shehabi in eastern Aleppo and edited

this film has some disturbing images.

Filmed in high-definition, the tragedy in Aleppo

With the besieged rebel-controlled part of the city considered too

dangerous for Westerners, it's a network of local activists

and citizen journalists, called the Aleppo Media Centre,

who risk their lives to film these scenes that have been

The images of Aleppo by drones showing the miles and miles

of devastation are both breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Most of them are filmed by this man, Hasan Katan.

A law student when the conflict erupted, he's now a film-maker

Every shot he takes brings him a mix of emotions.

Mustafa al-Sarout used to be a tailor before the revolution.

He now also works as a cameraman for the Aleppo Media Centre.

His footage of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting

dazed in the back of an ambulance went worldwide.

But there are many Omrans in Aleppo and each time there's an attack,

the journalists are torn about how to behave.

The group upload and share the videos they film.

Despite the lack of action by the international community

so far, they still hope their images can and will make a difference.

That's the question at the heart of the latest government inspired

report into integration - ethnic, religious and social.

It was produced by Dame Louise Casey.

She said she expected to find discrimination and disadvantage

feeding a sense of grievance and unfairness, and isolating

certain communities from the best opportunities.

But while she did find that, she was also aware of cultural

and religious practices that are holding back some citizens

in certain communities, particularly the Muslim ones.

Women and children are sometimes victims of regressive

Now this is not the first report into this issue -

but it is interesting to see how they've evolved.

Back in 1981 there were riots in Brixton.

Race was an issue and out of the wreckage came

At that stage, the concern was what British society was doing wrong.

Lord Scarman talked of inner-city decline, his most memorable finding

was to fault the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of police

And, he said, positive discrimination to tackle

racial disadvantage was a price worth paying.

Scroll forward to the year 2001, and there were riots

in Oldham and Burnley, prompting more than one report.

The Cantle report came out in 2006, now putting weight

on what the minority communities might do.

It said different communities lived parallel lives.

It warned that single faith schools might raise deeper divisions.

And it even suggested that immigrants could take an oath

Well, a decade of immigration on, with huge numbers of Poles coming

in and growth of over a million in the Muslim population too,

concerns over parallel lives have increased.

Today's report has tougher language on how minorities must fit in.

There's an emphasis on English language classes

And women's emancipation from "regressive cultural practices".

And the Casey report says schools should promote British

values to help build integration and tolerance.

Well, to some extent you might caricature the way the debate has

evolved over the years, as progression from a worry

about "No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish" to certain

groups saying "we don't want to go to your pub anyway".

I'm joined now by Sarah Hewitt, Headteacher at

Anderton Park Primary in Birmingham - she received death threats

after her school was inspected as part of the Trojan Horse scandal,

from Manchester Amina Lone, Co-director of the social

foundation which is an anti poverty think tank.

And Tadeusz Stenzel Chair of Trustees, Federation

First how do you respond to the idea that we seem to be asking migrants

to fit in more rather than working out what we do to help them. Perhaps

not as binary as I have suggested. How do you respond to that, is that

a fair thing for a society to start doing? I welcome the report and

think it has some interesting findings, not least saying we want

to have a new community investment programme and more English classes.

All a good thing. But you cannot say that without resources to back it,

and the last government significantly cut adult education

investment. I think the responsibility is on society and

individuals as we are all part of the same thing. We've got to work

together and live together, it is not about other people, Muslims or

immigrants or minority communities actually having to just change but

also about society saying what are British values, what do they mean

and how did they shape our future as a country. Some of this is addressed

at the Polish community as well, and that has been a conspicuous

immigration of the last decade. There have been problems obviously

but I agree it is a lack of education causing a lot of the

problems. I think we have reduced the amount of training for

immigrants and their living in a separate world which even in the

Polish community, which is widely distributed, and not so concentrated

on some of the others throughout the UK. The people live here, they eat

here but they live a life through the media, through Poland. They

watch Polish TV and Polish football games. But if the British Government

paid for English second language courses, do you think demand would

be there? It is always a problem, you can take the voice to the water

but cannot make it drink. It is a problem that I have come across.

This seems to be a reluctance to learn more than is absolutely

necessary to get by work. But there is an impending problem whether

children are now being educated in English schools and in the near

future the parents and children will not be able to communicate with

another. One was no English and the other was no Polish! I will ask you

all to give us three practical steps in a moment. Pressed to think that

it is OK to say we need you to try a bit harder in your communities, you

have to oppose regressive policies with women stuck at home. I think

that is fair to say, one of the things that we should be proud of in

the UK, sometimes I feel that we tell parents, we interviewed new

parents and we say this is a British school and we follow British law, we

have the equality act and we tell him -- tell them what that means.

And you get lower back from that? Sometimes. People sometimes say that

is your opinion and I say yes but that is the law as well, gay people

are also equal, disabled, able-bodied, the whole thing. You

cannot bit -- you cannot pick the bits of the equality act that you

like and leave the rest. I'm happy to say that, but I just wonder who

else should be saying that to families. Because this should be an

expectation for all British citizens and visitors to Britain that this is

what we expect and how we expect them to behave. And that gets you to

the idea of an oath, I do not know if you are in favour. I'm not a

great fan of that because I think any kind of declaration is only

effective if there is a sanction if you fall foul of it. You have not

respected British values, you get a ?50 ticket? And also a lot of the

British population is homophobic or misogynistic, so it should be an

oath for everyone. I would like a practical suggestion from each of

you, what would be the most important thing to do? We need to

reconstruct British values so they are reflective of the country as it

is changing and also provide support. That point about people in

schools or other institutions having British values and not

discriminating is right. But I know people who have been working in

schools when families have taken girls are the sports classes and the

school has allowed it. So we have got to be consistent. Support for

staff in public sector errors. Maybe we should just cut off Polish

television stations so they have to watch the BBC! We tried to influence

the Polish government to produce programmes aimed at the Polish

people living here in the UK. That they get politics from Poland but we

want to represent what is happening here. My suggestion is that we need

to teach people their responsibilities. They all know

their rights but very few, there's little emphasis put

responsibilities. That would be important to do that. We're going

right back to the thrust of the KC approach. Absolutely. Give me one

practical idea. I think it needs to come from the government, we need to

stop the fragmentation of schools. In what way? We are in an unusual

situation where we have all kinds of schools and this is a bit

fragmented. The government have lifted a cap on faith schools. This

report is about integration and the opposite to that is segregation and

you could argue that faith schools segregate. Anything that is about

segregation we need to rethink. We need to stop people being creamed

off to go to grammar schools, that is the opposite of integration. And

practical homes, be passionate about equality in the homes, speak about

that and be passionate about that. Children are brilliant at this and

in my school children are passionate about the quality. And the parents

tell me that their daughters have given them a hard time because for

example they said that their son should have the biggest bedroom and

the girls give them what for about that. So children are an amazing

tool for changing the mindset of parents. And that is huge, mindsets

change and behaviours, they change the world. Parallel lines is the

phrase people have been using, what is it that makes people want to sort

themselves into ethnic areas? I think people feel comfortable with

someone they identify with, whether culturally, with clothing or

language. When I go to my parents home in Birmingham, the local

supermarket is full of Muslims on Christmas Eve buying up all the

Christmas stock. So it is more complex. I am a Muslim woman, I have

children, I do not identify as needing to be emancipated, it is a

diverse community so we need to be cautious about labelling the whole

community. Thank you very much. That is all but we have time for this

evening. But before we go, Sotheby's

announced today that it was creating a brand new art forensics unit

to detect fakes, following its failure to spot

an ?8.4m forged painting. We thought we'd give it -

and you - its first big test. What follows is a series of 19th

century masterpieces - but mixed amongst them are a couple

of numbers our producers See if you can spot the fakes -

and then check the @BBCNewsnight twitter feed to find out

if you were right.