04/01/2017 Newsnight

Is that the low rumble of an earthquake we can hear,

rattling the Elysee Palace, shaking up France?

Could she really win the Presidential election in 2017?

And what on earth would she do if she did?

But even if she loses France could be changing direction.

We'll try to work out where the country

is going and what it means for the rest of us?

You to continue to look for work or your benefit

The sanctions regime: life for those who've had welfare

Ken Loach, the maker of I, Daniel Blake,

will be here to discuss whether benefit sanctions have a place.

They come from the same background, maybe they went to the same

And they work together to build a brilliant company but then at some

point they realise they need to start focusing on people

who didn't come from the same background as them and did not go

to the same university and do not look like them.

How the royalty of Silicon Valley are coping in America.

We know President Hollande will not be in power after May.

What is to be determined is who will replace him.

Marine Le Pen of the Front National hopes to pull a Trump-like shock,

and to that end, she has been putting flesh on her policy platform

The big news is that she's inserted some nuance

She's no longer saying France must come out.

But she is for change, and even accepting that she'll

probably fail to win, France could take a radically

Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban reports.

For many French, the Front National, the National Front, and its former

leader Jean Marie Le Pen, had become like the baddies in a graphic

novel, there to menace, but never to win.

But his daughter has sought to rebrand the party, shed its racist

I think she has done extremely well in detoxifying,

that's the word she uses, the Front National brand and saying,

"I'm not an extremist, I do not make nasty

jokes about the Holocaust and parties like mine

"Look at Ukip, look at Brexit, look at Trump in America".

"It is perfectly normal to vote for me,

I'm just a politician, except that I'm different from the others".

Le Pen's platform unveiled during recent days has a take

back control feel to it, restoring sovereignty of

the economy, she says, being more protectionist of the territory of

France itself, imposing permanent border controls and of monetary

policy, reintroducing the franc, albeit pegged to wider European

currencies in a kind of new exchange rate mechanism, a more moderate

message than some of her recent pronouncements

She's not going for hard Frexit, she's trying to explain

to the electorate that she wants to renegotiate things with Europe.

She is doing this probably because she wants to reach

beyond her traditional electoral base.

If Marine Le Pen is to win, she has got to leap a whole series

of hurdles, from appealing to voters who usually stay at home to racing

through a crowded presidential field, and indeed,

With the party short of cash, it may seek another loan from

Russia, a country the party leader has been reluctant to criticise.

The Front National has a storeyed past of aligning themselves

Marine Le Pen's stepmother and her father got money

They campaigned heavily for Saddam Hussein, saying that he was

misunderstood, a bit like Bashar al-Assad today,

and a beacon of secularism in the Middle East.

And strangely enough, it has not harmed her.

Received political opinion suggests she may

get to the last two for a second-round vote, as indeed her

But it will be very hard for her to clinch victory.

But then again, that's received opinion, based on polls,

and one French paper announced yesterday that it

TRANSLATION: We realise that pollsters did not predict several

big events - Brexit in Great Britain, Trump in the US.

In France, we have primaries on the right and

we didn't expect Nicolas Sarkozy to be eliminated in the first round.

We all thought Alain Juppe would win.

That's what the polls were telling us.

But it was Francois Fillon who won, and nobody

Francois Fillon, now leading the polls, is a man of

He may well cast doubt on Marine Le Pen's values,

or even suggest she's not so different from her father.

She is suddenly looking not as the newcomer,

as she would hope, but somebody who has tried again and again to be

elected, while Francois Fillon was prime minister for five years

and is now the favourite, the newcomer.

She didn't expect him to win the primary.

So this is a new battle for her and it is dangerous

Mobilising people against an establishment candidate

will still provide Le Pen with plenty of options, and the success

of her messages on border controls and leaving the single currency may

yet produce in France a huge challenge to the European project.

Joining me now are Benedicte Paviot, the UK correspondent for France 24,

and Philippe Marliere, Professor of French and European Politics

at University College, London.

I want to start by getting you to reflect on the Front National, they

seem to have softened enormously. Should we think of them as the

Fascist party or the French Ukip? It is more the French Ukip but it is a

different animal to Ukip. There is very much the question of identity,

this is across the French spectrum, people are concerned about security

and France is still under a state of emergency, about immigration. And

that is they are concerned, very high unemployment, France has almost

10%. The economy is not doing very well, so it is difficult and people

are finding it very hard to get by. But I wouldn't compare and Nigel

Farage doesn't like her thinking they are in the same boat. He has

never said a word against, he said, but he has criticised her father.

Would you call them a fascist party? She is very astute in her language,

so she is able to appeal to people who would be described as probably

fascist but she is careful, unlike her father, not to generally say

things, although she has been in trouble herself, whether it is about

Muslims and also about the Holocaust. Do you think of them as

the Fascist party? Or Ukip? It is hard-core them a fascist party today

-- it is hard to call them a fascist party today, although their roots

are in the far right, and they are clearly an extreme far right party,

but they have softened the image, the brand, because of Le Pen

herself, the message is soft, but when you look at the core policies

it is about immigration and law and order. Identity politics. It is

still about Islam posing a major threat to French identity. The have

-- these have been very important in other elections, like in America. If

many French voters think they are a fascist party, they will think they

will never vote for them, but if you look at the policies you have

described, populist economics, sovereignty, national control, you

could see people voting for that, couldn't you? It would appeal to the

mainstream? It is a difficult question, opinion polls have said

for the majority of people the Front National remains a party which is a

threat to French democracy. That is very clear. It is not a normal party

in that respect, but if you want to see it as a fascist party along the

lines of the Nazis in Germany or Mussolini, there are differences,

clearly. Let's talk about the Front National, being parked between Ukip

and more extreme, but Francois Fillon, he is not a normal French

candidate, he's quite right wing. Thatcherite. Which the French don't

like. Very socially conservative. Yes. Francois Fillon, I would not

agree with your reporter, he's a known quantity, he would like to

present himself as a newcomer, but the French people know him very

well. He was a Prime Minister under Nicolas Sarkozy and we should point

out that it is quite a surprise that we are sitting here at the end of

November... He was not seen at all by the polls as the favourite to be

the Conservative candidate, but he is the official candidate in what

was a very successful first time exercise for the French

Conservatives to do these primaries, that is the... Be socialists did

that at the last election, they will go through their second exercise. It

was very successful because they got millions of people do come out and

vote and we ended up, not with another former Conservative Prime

Minister, we got Francois Fillon, who has a track record, and is a

known quantity. He has parked his tanks very firmly on the right,

which is a slight problem for Marine Le Pen. She had geared herself up to

be dealing with Alain Juppe. He's not doing well in the polls, though.

Ever since his victory, which was very good, and the expulsion in

third place of the former President Nicholas Sarkozy, he has been

completely silent and 53% of the French people feel he has been to

silent and he has disappeared, you can't afford to do that. And that he

should also change some of its policies. What is going on in

France? We have not spoken about the Socialists, no one seems to be

bothered by them in this election. Is it cultural or economic question

mark it is very simple, the Francois Hollande presidency has been a

fiasco, really, there's a strong rejection of what Francois Hollande

and the government have achieved, so a very unpopular government. That is

why one of the candidates, Manuel Valls, will have a mountain to

climb. If he's nominated by his own party. The second reason, the left

is not united. There will be many many candidates, 5-6 candidates on

the left. Very briefly. What do you think the EU should be thinking

about this election? Should they be terrified of both candidates? Marine

Le Pen is a bit softer towards the EU than she was six months ago. If

Francois Fillon wins or a socialist wins, any candidate will be rather

lukewarm regarding Europe but they will be the same continuation of the

same policy as at the moment. If Le Pen wins it is a totally different

situation. She would like a referendum about Frexit. That would

be a different proposition, but she has to win, and she's not there yet,

in my opinion. There is one other person to watch out for, the

independent candidate. The wild card. Thanks for joining us.

Britain has a new ambassador to the EU - didn't take long.

I'm joined by our political editor Nick Watt.

What do we know about Tim Barrow? He's an immensely respected figure

and his nickname in the Foreign Office is deep state, which means he

has the answers to everything. He had a stint in Moscow and a couple

in Brussels. Boris Johnson is delighted. He believes the UK

mission to the EU needs to be headed by someone who speaks the language

in Europe. He was one of the diplomatic high-flyers who takes the

form or notes of the European Council some years ago. They also

believe because Tim Barrow has been the political director at the

Foreign Office, he is June to the politics and he also has something

of a sense of humour and is aware of the intricacies of the Brexit

debate. This became apparent in a recent appearance before the foreign

affairs select committee when his boss Alan Duncan inadvertently set

him up as one of those dreaded experts. This is the exchange. I'm

not perhaps as deeply immersed in the

thinking, but maybe I can bat that to Tim Barrow, who has been living

with this... I'm not an expert. Michael Gove might approve, but not

me. Where did disappointment come from?

It has been quite quick. Is it a solution, or does it create another

problem inside the Foreign Office? Tim Barrow was only approached for

this job in the last 36 hours after Sir Ivan Rogers stood down, and the

process a successor was led by Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet

Secretary scotching rumours that a political Brexiteer would be put in.

Sir Jeremy has ensured that at one level, nothing changes. A Whitehall

life will run the British mission to the EU. But at another level,

everything changes. He is a clean slate. Sir Ivan Rogers carried a lot

of baggage because he was associated with David Cameron's negotiations.

Interestingly, Tim Barrow has achieved a first. He has united

Remainers and almost all Leavers. One dissenting voice is Nigel

Farage. In the film I, Daniel Blake,

you see the main characters Daniel Blake and his friend Kate

lose their benefits after being Sanctioning is a punishment for not

looking for work hard enough or turning up on time

for appointments or whatever. Now, Daniel Blake's story

is fiction, but those who work in food banks

say that sanctioning does force

people into charity. We're going to debate sanctioning

shortly with Ken Loach, who made But first, we go to the town

of Accrington to meet some people Filmmaker Nick Blakemore has

returned to Maundy Grange, a charity relief centre he visited

in 2014, which tries to help them. I've had a bit of a bad

situation with a landlord. Got in rent arrears with

the landlord and he's just started At the moment, he's struggling

hard for furniture. Here, we try to provide an immediate

response to poverty and need Need can be defined as not having

enough to eat or suffering from mental ill-health or needing

help with a form. It's difficult to be optimistic

at the moment because we've seen three years of things getting

gradually worse and I think there are things which we weren't used to,

like benefits sanctions and people being left to be destitute,

which are now more commonplace. And that's a worry, and that doesn't

seem to be getting better. I can't get into the house

to get my stuff, so while I'm fighting to get my stuff,

I've got nothing to live on, If I can get hold of

a bed or something. I've got no debts and I don't

owe anybody any money. When he lost his job four years ago,

he says he gave up on the system I've worked all my life and now

they expect me to do I do volunteer work

five days a week. There should be heads

rolling for that one. When you say you worked

all your life, what were you doing? My first job, I worked in the mill

for six years and then in a foundry for a couple of years,

and then in another foundry When I was here last,

I met John Crabtree. The sanctions are basically

about saying you're not making enough of an effort

to look for work. I turned around and said to them,

"Look, I'm 61 now, there's no jobs So how can you sit there, young

person, 25, and tell me about work? You haven't even had

the experience I've had". I tracked John down to his

new place in Accrington. he says, because he did not fill

in a form correctly. This is where I've been

for about three year. Last time I spoke to you, you'd been

sanctioned and you said you'd I spoke to you the other day

and you said you'd been in prison? I got caught, obviously,

so I got 20 months. The plug was in, it ran over,

and that's what it did. Well, it's better than the place

you were in before. Can I just ask you,

when you think back, Yeah, I worked from

the age of 15, 16. Things should be easy now,

not worse, but anyway, Jonno, are

these your supplies? Chocolate's my favourite

drug, then weed. Sometimes I wake up

and think, oh, shit. Sometimes I have a nice

dream and I think, ahhh. When you find a place to sleep

at night, what do you look for? It's got a bit of light,

that's quite nice. As long as you have a couple

of sleeping bags, something It's a lot better than,

say, sleeping in a Tesco You get over here

and out of the way. You know you have to get

up in the morning by You find a place that's

sheltered like this. Back in 2014, Zack was

struggling to make ends meet. Some jobs, they're only taking

on certain qualified people. What happened after you

were sanctioned, then? They basically messed around

with my housing benefit and it still carried on until not

so long ago. They got me over ?1,000

in debt with my landlady. Messing with my jobseekers'

and all that lot. That's what made me want

to get a job, really. So obviously, I don't

have to depend on them. All we have is emergency

accommodation, which is literally It's easy to agree with

the principle that people But what worries us is the number

of people who can't work who are being penalised for not

being able to work. The way things are going,

I think there's a big gap in people's awareness

of what's going on. Maybe some people feel we're moving

out of recession and things are getting a bit better and maybe

there's a lack of willingness to look at people who don't have

that feeling that things are getting better, and for whom things

are getting considerably worse. I use a lot of food from the skips,

I've got to admit. I find a lot of chocolate biscuits

sometimes, a lot of cake. The soup kitchens, things like that,

there's not enough to cope So when you are hungry at tea

time, you do the skips. Can you explain how

often you go hungry? Because I'm homeless,

I'm on the streets at the moment. We did ask the Department for Work

and Pension for an interview, but they weren't able

to offer anyone. They did say, however,

that sanctions are only I'm joined in the studio

by Matthew Oakley, who was commissioned

by the government to write an independent review

into the impact of sanctions And in Bristol we have

director Ken Loach, whose award winning film I,

Daniel Blake told the story of people struggling

with the bureaucracy Matthew, I would like to start with

you for some facts. You did a review and you found it was basically

working, is that right of the sanction system? Essentially so. We

need to take on board the wider context, that this is a system of

sanctions that only applies to a small number of people. The majority

of people on benefits are not sanctioned. So the people you see in

that film are at the hardest end of what are talking about. Secondly,

there is a huge amount of international evidence that shows

that conditionality, requirements placed on people who are on

benefits, backed up by financial sanctions, penalties for not doing

what they should be in terms of looking for work, is effective in

getting people back to work more quickly. Thirdly, this is a system

that is supported by both the majority of the public, but also

benefit claimants themselves. That is one of the surprising things from

my review. We spoke to a lot of benefit claimants and charities who

support them and even people who have been sanctioned, and they

supported the principle. What is your reaction as you watch that

film? Do you think those people should

have been sanction, or do you think they are just, if you like, the cost

of a sanctioning system, that you will have some people who shouldn't

be sanctioned who are sanctioned? It looked like someone find it quite

difficult to get a job. Absolutely. What my review said was that in

certain situations where people are obviously vulnerable, we are talking

homelessness here, that should act as a signal for people to step in

and provide more support for those people so they can get themselves

out of that situation. Did you see I, Daniel Blake, the movie? I have

not seen it. Ken Loach, did you recognise the finding that some

conditionality in a system that is, you have got some responsibility is

and you are punished if you don't meet them, do you accept any of that

in the benefit system? Well, what's clear is that sanctions are a cruel

and vindictive way of treating vulnerable people. People are to

fail. The system is there to trap them. When they go to a Jobcentre,

they are not shown the jobs that are available. The job coaches aren't

allowed to show them what jobs are available, and people are inferior.

And a lot of people are sanctioned because of the work capability

assessment -- people are in fear. We heard a story of a man who had a

heart attack in the course of the assessment. He had to go to hospital

and was sanctioned because he couldn't complete the assessment.

There are absurd stories of people being sanctioned for being a few

moments late. And of course, we know Jobcentre staff, I don't know if

Matthew Oakley got this in his report, but Jobcentre staff are

given targets. They call them expectations, and if they don't

sanction a certain number of people per week, they get into trouble.

Let me put this specifically to Matthew. They have to work in a

terrible atmosphere. Is that correct, they have do sanction a

certain amount of people? I'm telling you it is correct. Wouldn't

you be more concerned if we did not know how many people at a job centre

were sanctioned? That we didn't know they were sanctioning, say, 30% of

people, is it not right, in terms of standard management practice, we

understand what proportion of people on benefits each office is

sanctioning. Are they forced, they told you should be sanctioning this

number? That is not my experience, we have spoken to Jobcentre staff,

in the review, what we found is a large proportion of the staff

actually supported the system. Ken Loach, I'm interested, you say there

is no conditionality at all, or there are some kind of sanctions,

and in a way, you said there should be no sanctions at all. Nobody

supports cheating. Nobody supports tax cheat, but they don't seem to

get the same coverage. Yes, of course, people should not cheat, and

there should be a way of dealing with that, but when you stop people

odds money, you force them into the dire poverty, they have nothing --

when you stop people's money. They are driven to the streets and food

banks, and last year out of one group of food banks, 1,100,000 food

bags were given. Half a million of those went to families with

children, children would not eat unless people put tins into a

charity bag. Don't you think that is disgusting? We accept that as part

of our society now. That is the system which Matthew Oakley appears

to be defending. What I would say, this is a system which the vast

majority of the public actually support, the claimants... You can't

hide behind that, this is an appalling system. That is not to say

that there are people who need more help. We have a binary system, you

are either capable of work or you're not. But there are people who are on

the margins and they will find working quite difficult, they have

ragged lives or the responsibilities are a bit own a bit much. Are we

applying sanctions to those people? Most people would say we do not want

sanctions apply to people who are not capable of holding down a job.

We need to understand what a sanction is. This is not people

being sanction for not being in work, being unemployed or out of

work is not because of a sanction. It is not doing what you have agreed

to do for the people are agreeing to do these things. Seeking work and

taking steps towards work, and maybe you are taking steps to prepare

yourself for work, to take on some kind of activity which improves your

health condition. This isn't people being sanction for not being at

work, this is not taking the steps to what they have agreed. Ken Loach,

the last word. People are sanctioned when they are in work, woman were

sanctioned for going on leave when she was on a zero is ours contract.

-- zero hours contract. We are missing the point, this is a very

cruel way to deal with the most vulnerable people and if all the

people who fulfilled every thing of what they are required, they would

still be 1.6 million people unemployed and there would still be

5 million people underemployed, the system creates the poverty and we

are punishing the poorest and blaming them for their poverty,

blaming the unemployed for the unemployment, and that is really

false and Matthew should accept that. Ken Loach, Matthew, thanks for

joining us. We now move to the other end of the social spectrum.

The billionaire bosses of Silicon Valley.

They have been as taken aback as anyone by the new and obvious

Full, as they are, of the potential of technology to solve anything,

suddenly it seems that real people in their midst, have problems that

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook made a new year Facebook

post with a hint of guilt at how disconnected he has become

He's challenged himself to visit 30 US states this year,

and to meet the people in them, having, he says, enjoyed

travelling around the cities of the world in recent years.

It's a fascinating post, it not only offers a good idea

for a new year's resolution for upstanding members

But it also tells us something about the tech entrepreneur class -

a kind of new royalty, with a sense of the duty

Or does it tell us something about the challenge of trying to run

a business for everyone, in a society that's split.

Here's our technology editor David Grossman.

The New Year is a time to reflect on times past...

What could possibly help a New Year hangover better than a load of world

leaders popping up on your phone to give you their thoughts

And, how refreshing, amongst the peace and goodwill messages,

to hear the North Korean leader announce a new long-range missile

But look who's also lighting the fuse on the year with a missive,

In a post on Facebook, he says:

In previous years, he has said something more substantive,

"I'm going to programme an AI for my house, I'm going

This year he is like, "I have a toddler and I don't have

that much bandwidth and I'm just going to go to Nebraska

The fact is, tech companies like Facebook don't really

They don't have too many Trump supporters working

They're built of people who look the same, they act the same,

Maybe they went to the same university together.

And they work together to build a brilliant company,

but then at some point they realise they need to start focusing

on the people who didn't come from the same background as them

and did not go to the same university and do not

We need to start bridging our way out and experiencing people in a

different context if we are going to build their products.

And I think that's something I'm seeing more founders

One of Donald Trump's first actions after his election was to summon

the bosses of the big tech companies to Trump Tower for a meeting.

Most had made no secret of their antipathy towards him

But how powerful are these tech bosses

I think that what Mark Zuckerberg does by being the chief

executive of Facebook, which has its own population,

or its user base which is larger than most countries in the world,

And the messaging and the way it convenes people or convenes thought

or informs people is hugely important and can be

transformational for different political agendas.

The Facebook algorithm, of course, has been blamed

for spreading fake news stories during the US election campaign.

The balance between maintaining an open platform and policing

the content on that platform has never been one the tech companies

They don't like the messiness of the real world.

They don't like the messiness of how you deal with unemployment

The hot thing in Silicon Valley right now is this thing called

Everyone loves it for different reasons, because it's a bold

and simple idea which can transform the world.

But politics isn't really about bold and simple ideas.

Politics in the real world is about campaigning and meeting

people and understanding different ways of looking at the world

and forging compromise and legislating, and that kind

of messiness is something Silicon Valley just

This is much more the sort of project they love,

bringing the internet to the unconnected in

Although the big tech firms are more and more powerful in our lives,

they're only now learning how to use this huge influence.

Clearly, they don't want to act like elected politicians,

apart from, that is, sending out the odd

That's all we've got time for this evening.

But before we go, as you might have heard, today was the last day Dippy

the Diplodocus could be seen in the Natural History Museum before

I understand that things are not going smoothly.

Let's go over now to the museum hall.

Skies are likely to clear through the night and it will turn bitterly

cold. A