10/04/2017 Newsnight

Tonight: the White House leaves open the possibility to more

The message that we are sending to the Russians is very clear.

Do they want to stick with a toxic regime?

Do they want to be eternally associated with a guy

But a former ambassador to Syria thinks regime change

This advisor to the Syrian opposition says

Also tonight...It's called Spice - an illegal drug that, it is claimed,

Can you imagine, if you slept rough, you wake up and you feel like shit

and you wake up and you smoke some Spice

and you are OK, you're ready to go, you know?

Howard Jacobson writes a book about Donald Trump.

And I wanted to be amused by it all and then you realise

the absurdity is only going to take you so far.

And remember the gay 93 year old who last year got an official

pardon for what were ONCE crimes of indecency, but aren't any more.

If I get the apology, I don't need a pardon.

I don't mind in the least, I just want an apology.

Well now he's got his apology, how does he fell about it.

Does Russia listen to anything the West says?

And can we tighten the screws when it comes to making

Previous sanctions have hurt Russia economically -

but haven't led to any softening of its stance on Crimea.

So can we expect anything new when G7 countries gather

in Italy to discuss new punishment for its role in Syria?

Today, our Foreign Secretary laid down a Boris-shaped gauntlet,

saying Russia had a choice - to continue backing toxic Assad

or to work with the rest of the world to find

He's talking moves to ban Syrian or Russian military figures.

At the group of seven meetings this week, it is the eighth former member

of that club that is topping the agenda. Russia PTP continues proper

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian brittle leaders means further sanctions are

now on the table for Moscow. The message that we are sending to the

Russians is clear. Do they want to stick with a toxic regime. Do they

want to be eternally associated with a guy who gases his own people or do

they want to work with the Americans and the rest of the G-7 and indeed

like-minded countries? Sanctions would hardly be unprecedented. The

US and EU impose sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine in

2014. Throughout we have given Vladimir Putin a simple choice.

Respect the sovereignty of Ukraine or face increasing consequences.

That has allowed us to rally the world's major developed countries to

impose real costs on Russia. So did it work? Well, Russia suffered. This

is gross national income per head for Russia are measured in US

dollars. Since the millennium, it generally moved up, hitting a peak

of almost $15,000 a person in 2014. When the sanctions came in, it

dropped dramatically to around $11,500 per person. A fall in oil

prices contributed to that as well leading to a squeeze on ordinary

Russians who had to cut their own spending by 15%. The Russian

government estimated that the number of Russians living in poverty had

been stable at around 16 million people in 2014. It now stands at

over 21 million people. That is a price that Mr Putin has been willing

to pay. In the long run, isolation, the isolation of Russia is not going

to help, but in the short run he is certainly willing to pay the price

and for the Russian people who have been traumatised so much by the

Soviet system and then by the chaos of the 1990s, they are willing to

put up with more hardships than we are. Sanctions are not currently

biting Russia as deeply as the first aid. The insurrection of the Russian

economy on western sanctions was very big and the Russian financial

markets were in turmoil because the Russian economy faced significant

pressure to repay foreign debt and banks and companies were committed

abroad. Afterwards, the attitude softened and oil prices have

recovered and no new signals on sanctions and then in 2016, the

Russian economy contracted by not point to I do not see any effect of

sanctions of the current situation. When some Britons, particularly

Londoners think about Russians, they might think of rich immigrants who

come and put huge amounts of money into some of our swankiest

neighbourhoods or or you might think of the military might of Russia, the

nuclear arsenal, the intervention for example into Syria. The truth is

that Russia is a country with very profound social and economic

problems. The biggest problem in the Russian economy is its complete lack

of rule of law, corruption throughout the entire system that

chokes all innovation. Its overreliance on raw materials,

especially hydrocarbons, dire demographic decline, the effect of

sanctions that have contributed to the decline of the Russian economy

and lastly Russia's growing isolation in the view of the

aggressive foreign policy posture by Vladimir Putin. There are sanctions

that could apply pressure, on finance, learn investment on Russia,

all is critical oil and gas sector. Might the West actually managed to

do that as it did to Iran? IC zero chances of this happening, because

there is no political will in them worse, there is a transitional

period in the US administration and Brexit in the European Union, so

will Russia and Ukraine in my view our out of plans at the moment. In

reply to those 2014 sanctions, Vladimir Putin and EU food imports

and act which hurt his own people by fuelling inflation. A man who

effectively sanctioned his own people for effect is a hard man to

beat with sanctions. Chris Kirk. Earlier I spoke to President Trump's

former adviser Did he agree with Boris Johnson's

assessment that the bombing of Syria Well basically there are now two red

lines in the making, one for the United States for this

administration, which is to forbid the use of chemical weapons

by the Syrian regime or by any other player, that is one red line but now

you have the Russians and the Iranians and their allies

who are drawing a red line So they are messaging

the United States that you may have had this one strike against Assad

because of the chemical weapons, but there is no acceptance that

you will topple the regime and I think in the negotiations that

will be taking place between Secretary Tillerson

and Moscow will be revolving Boris Johnson has called

this willingness to bomb Syria a game-changer,

do you think it is? I think the game is changing,

it started to change when for some unknown reason,

out of nowhere, the Assad regime allegedly used

those chemical weapons, although he has been

bombarding the Syrian opposition for a long time,

most of the people killed were not killed by the chemical weapons,

it is still intriguing to learn why By using them, unlike in the time

of the Obama administration, the Trump administration

will actually act, but act only to respond to the use

of chemical weapons. There is no project of toppling

Assad as far as I know right He has called for sanctions though,

against Russia over actions There are talks now across

the Atlantic about what is the next stage of how to deal with Russia

and really there are two doctrines here, one which says,

we need to put some sanctions and force Russia into changing

behaviour and changing There is this other view,

which is we now act in eastern Syria to destroy ISIS and develop a free

Syria. Then we put pressure on Russia

because if we put pressure on Russia and we do not have any part of Syria

where we can act, then But the US position now,

just clarify for us, the US administration believes that

Assad must go? In the long term, it was not

actually said, in the long term, what was said, by several officials

is that the future of Syria after the crisis will not have

Assad as a President. That is what was said,

but that does not mean immediately there will be US action to unseat

Assad. This is the problem isn't it,

that we are talking about long-term or short-term

or in the intermediate, people are struggling to work out

what Donald Trump 's foreign policy Has he turned into a humanitarian,

is he going to get involved in foreign policy, is he ditching

the America First, where is he now? Basically he is involved

fully in foreign policy. These were the questions that

were debated during the campaign when he was not yet

in the White House and let's say during the transition,

maybe in the first two to three weeks, now he is the President

of a superpower, and he Of course not all of the plans

are already established, in the case of Syria,

what prompted this action, was not his plan, it was prompted

by the Assad regime behaviour. Now I think, he and Congress

will have to figure out a strategy for Syria for the immediate range

and also for the medium So is part of the strategy also

being noticeably harder on Russia? Well, there was a view

during the campaign and during the transition

that we may find a common ground with Russia against the terrorists,

although we have many Now the incident in Syria has

occurred, the Trump administration will have to signify,

and message even Russia, that the use of chemical weapons

is forbidden and at the same time we need to continue

our job against ISIS. The remaining question is what will

Russia do in the meanwhile? We have heard them saying with

the Iranians that they would not want to see the United States

acting against Assad. Donald Trump has said in the past

that presidents who enter into foreign policy wars

are normally doing it to distract People are pointing the finger

at him now and are saying that is exactly what you're doing,

this is all a distraction. Obviously, the opposition is going

to use all the arguments they can, including arguments from statements

that he made. Look at the Clintons,

the Obama side, how many statements they made during the campaign,

that were used against them during the campaign and even now,

so that is the nature of American politics, but again the public

will judge upon what has been done on the ground in reality

and on the ground in reality in Syria, there is one path right

now, destroying ISIS and making sure that the future of Syria will

represent what the Syrians want, which are the statements made

by Rex Tillerson and the President Walid Phares, thank

you very much indeed. The strikes against Syria

by the Trump administration appeared - politically -

to come from nowhere . But tonight the White House

acknowledged it is holding open America said this evening

they knocked out 20 percent And tonight Trump's spokesman

said it was impossible to imagine a 'stable Syria

with Assad in charge'. So what does the policy

for Syria now look like? The question the world has been

grappling with for years We'll discuss in a moment,

but first - a reminder of how US policy has shifted on the Syrian

leader through these two statements just days apart from the White House

spokesman Sean Spicer and America's Can you clear up for the President

stands on whether Bashar al-Assad is the legitimate President of Syria? I

think with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have

to accept in terms of where we are, right now. There is not any sort of

option where a political solution that will happen with Assad at the

head of the regime. A few look at the situation, it will be hard to

see a peaceful and stable government with Assad.

Peter Ford was Britain's ambassador to Syria from 2003 until 2006.

Reza Afshar led the Foreign Office's Syria team until 2013 and now

Thank you to you both. Peter Ford, it is a dwindling group now who's

still think Bashar al-Assad is the solution to Syria. You do. Yes,

because he already controls about 80% of the populated areas and after

his success in Aleppo, he was well on course until this latest

extraction, to mocking up many of the remaining pockets of opposition.

Sadly, Trump has created this diversion and has set back efforts

to pacify the rest of Syria, but basically what is left is a rural

insurgency. The towns belong to Assad already and this is where most

of the people are. You describe it as a distraction and

a diversion to stop aside using chemical weapons on his people? You

assume that he did, aren't you a bit premature? There has been no

investigation. It is crucial that there should be an impartial UN

investigation? Why are the Americans so reticent about having an

investigation if there is nothing to hide on their side? We have not even

seen not a dodgy dossier, we have not seen any dossier this time. This

is Theresa May's Tony Blair moment. This is her Blair moment, her chance

to urge restraint on the Americans and not egg them on to more

foolishness. Reza Afshar? I think the problem here is your other guest

is distracting from the facts in Syria and what has been going on.

The reality is the Assad regime has bombed 500,000 people to death, he

has used weapons. On a point of fact, that is not correct. The

action that he has taken has created the environment in which terrorism

can thrive, it has also created environment in which refugees have

fled the country. The question now is not about redeemed change, the

question is what is a sensible policy about creating a situation in

which Syrians themselves can decide their future through negotiation

process? They are asking for a regime change, they are asking for

an opportunity to negotiate their own future. The first step is to cut

out the indiscriminate killing of civilians which has essentially

created this crisis, which has created a big crisis for the world.

So actually... What the US administration has done here is

finally to put some beverage on the table in the form of strikes. If

they turn that into a broader strategy which says if you kill

civilians indiscriminately, chemical weapons or otherwise, we will strike

military facilities, then that creates a process in which the

military strategy of the regime becomes limited and that forces them

to have to decide whether they want to negotiate in the Geneva talks or

elsewhere. That is a sensible policy. Let me go back to Peter. It

is hard to see how Syria can be more dangerous to Syrians? I went through

that question but allow me first to take Reza up on his earlier

statement about 500,000 killed by Assad. That is one quarter true and

three quarters alive. The UN are saying 400,000 killed. This is

typical of the distortion, exaggeration of paid lobbyists,

which is what we're hearing now. I don't think those people are arguing

the fact that there is a civil war which has been going on with the

deaths of absolutely hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria. The

question is... On both sides. Why does Assad have to stay? Because he

be goes, Emily, the country will really implode and it will be a

bloodbath. There is no moderate opposition waiting. And it is not a

bloodbath now? You say that is OK? Of course not. But it would be much

worse. You have to look at the opposition held areas to see what

life would be like. What happens if there is no Assad, who is next? I am

not talking about getting rid of Assad. The point is how to enable

Syrians to determine their own future? How do you force the Assad

regime to negotiate seriously? They have not negotiated seriously up

until now. That is because they think their military strategy will

win. You need a political and military strategy to bring this

crisis to close and that is how you will make progress against Isis in a

sustainable fashion, it is also how you will deal with the refugee

crisis. You need the political elements and the military elements.

The military elements are underway. How will you suddenly have this

consensus that Assad will agree to which he has not done for the last

six years, while he is there? The reason he has not negotiated

seriously, in the UN led talks in Geneva, is because he has a military

strategy which involves killing civilians indiscriminately and that

has been his way to deal with the crisis. What needs to happen is the

whole context has to change here and he needs to see that his military

strategy would work. Then you see how the big O Shea Shinn 's progress

under that framework, when you are sitting in Geneva and when you try

and bomb your way out of it, you can't, because the US then hits your

military targets. That is a way of forcing a negotiation to happen in a

more productive way. Reza, when working with the British Foreign

Office, was instrumental in bringing about the Nato bombing of Libya. Are

you proud of that? Do you think it is a good example for Syria? The

alternative there is to allow the Libyan regime to kill tens of

thousands of people? The question is is Libya worse now would it be

better turning the way Syria did? In any case we are talking about what

the strategy should be in Syria, and again, no one is calling for regime

change, they are talking targeted, limited strikes in order to deter

the killing of civilians and for that to go hand-in-hand with a

political strategy. I know it depends which side of the bed Trump

got out on on a particular day, but broadly they are calling for resume

change... Do you not recognise that if you divert away from Isis, as

your main target here, then actually, that side of the wall gets

lost and that is the most immediate priority? Emily, governments are

capable of doing two things at once. Not in the same place to people on

different sides? Actually, they are. No one is talking that diverted away

from Isis. What we are saying is if you stop the killing of civilians in

Syria, you then help the fight against Isis, because you get rid of

a radicalised factor. You also enable the moderate groups on the

ground, and there are still moderate groups on the ground, to fight Isis

more effectively, and they cannot do that now while they are being bombed

by their own government. There needs to be a comprehensive approach here.

Thank you both. Thank you for coming in.

Spice is the drug that turns people into zombies,

And it's being treated as a major problem in some

Nearly 60 cases of Spice related incidents were reported to police

in Greater Manchester over the course of the weekend.

So is it actually getting worse - or does the epidemic

Katie Razzall has been with Spice users to ask.

Mamba is the worst drug out, worse than class A.

Psychotic zombie-rendering Spice, of which Mamba is a variety,

the synthetic drug which Manchester police have described as a problem

This weekend, they dealt with 58 Spice related incidents,

but the drug's reach is much wider than Manchester.

I haven't had it for three days and I've had night sweats,

pains in my side, can't sleep, can't go to the toilet.

The woman was filmed with other drug users in Wolverhampton,

before the government cracked down again on so-called legal highs

and banned their sale on the High Street.

So what do we know about the prevalence of a drug that locks

onto the same receptors in the brain is cannabis,

If you're talking about how many people smoke Spice,

Before May last year, it was legal, or a lot of it was legal,

so there wasn't much counting going on.

And other than to say, there are clearly pockets of use

in major cities all over the UK, and in our prisons, you can't really

A recent Panorama investigation into the chaotic state of prisons

found many of the problems Spice-related.

This shocking footage shows the effects of the drug

on one of the inmates in HMP Northumberland.

You can buy Spice, you can dissolve the active ingredient in water,

you can soak an A4 sheet of paper in that active ingredient and dry it

out, you can pretend it's a letter to yourself or a prisoner,

and you can cut up that A4 sheet of paper and that will go from maybe

?5 worth of Spice to a thousand pounds worth of pieces of Spice

So there's an enormous profit in prisons.

Bristol prison, every day, an ambulance full of big male

paramedics goes in to deal with someone who's gone crazy

Spice users outside prison, the majority rough sleepers,

also put pressure on public services, according

to Greater Manchester Police, with users often aggressive

and a danger to themselves and others.

Ambulance call-outs and NHS treatment can be costly.

And in cities across the UK, even in the heart of

London's Westminster, under the noses of those

who made the drug illegal, the effects are obvious.

He's homeless and spending ?5 a time for a cigarette worth's of Spice,

the same used to cost around ?2 he says.

What does it make you feel like when you#re on it?

So you were on the streets, and you realised everyone was doing

it, so that's how you got involved in the Spice?

Can you imagine if you slept rough, you woke up and you feel shit,

then you take some Spice and you're OK, ready to go.

If it was going to become popular, it would have happened

And by popular, I mean among young people, people who go to festivals,

It's only ever really been a drug adopted by prisoners and rough

sleepers. For the moment then this drug

is used almost entirely by prison inmates and rough sleepers,

but they're often doing it in plain sight, and Spice's psychological

and physiological effects on them mean in places like central

Manchester, its impact is being felt

far more widely. If you're going to write

a novel about Donald Trump, Howard Jacobson explains to me -

there's really only And so, this Thursday will see

the publication of Pussy - his turbo-charged satire of the man

who won the US Presidency. It is part comic pastiche,

part venomous diatribe on a man Jacobson describes as vacuous,

absurd and dangerous. A man who spurred him on to write

quickly as he feared Trump would be shot or impeached

before he finished. I met him at his house earlier,

where I asked him why he'd chosen such a naked,

raw form of satire for his work. And there was, there was a kind

of the absurdity of the whole thing, in my eyes, the total absurdity

of the man. I had never seen anybody,

it seemed to me, quite so absurd. And then you realise, well,

you know, the absurdity This is somebody who wields enormous

power, so then there's rage. How do you balance the rage

and the sense of comedy? And you feel it

differently every day. You feel it differently

within an hour. So I had to come up with some tale

that enabled me to be funny and not funny and furious

and the rest of it. So it had to be some kind

of fairy tale, borrowing And you describe this leader

who is imbecillic or absurd, in your words, yet he is the product

of a democratic system that has lasted what,

300 years or more? Do not feel you are railing

against the wrong thing here? He is the product of a system that

has lasted a long time and he might last a long time and everything

might be well. Do you think democracy

got this wrong then? Between ourselves, if nobody

is listening, I'd like to say democracy gets a hell

of a lot wrong. Part of my anger in writing this

book was fuelled by Brexit. I was starting to hear all that

stuff, any time anybody looked back at Brexit and didn't

like what they had seen, they were a Remoaner,

there was all that bitterness stuff, that get over it stuff as though

you are obliged to get over it. And you cannot deny

the will of the people. Well, that's not true,

you can deny the will of the people, and indeed, if you believe

that the will of the people has taken you into a disastrous

situation, it is your positive duty But we have this fantasy going on,

the people have spoken But the people speak whenever

there's a general election And if democracy is to work,

the people have to be given the opportunity

to change their mind. Are you suggesting that the people

shouldn't have voted that way because they didn't know

what they were doing? I'm suggesting that I think

that they voted the wrong way, I'm suggesting that I think

they were ill-informed and misinformed, and I'm also highly

conscious of the fact that you're not allowed to be

rude to the people. They are a sacred entity,

the people are sacrosanct. Well, nothing should be sacrosanct

and I think that if you have voted for Donald Trump,

I don't care what your reasoning is, to have voted for a man offering

such a meagre, meagre view of the world, with so few words

to describe the world, or to imagine the world,

and imprisoned in this minuscule vocabulary,

because if you've got no vocabulary, you've got no thoughts,

to have voted for such a person Some people watching this will say

wow, he's fallen into that classic liberal trap,

they only like democracy when their people win,

they only like tolerance and decency Democracy works best

when I think the people, the demos are making

the right decisions. And is it the language question that

offends you the most? And is that because you're a writer

or because you think that lies I think it lies at the heart

of civilisation, and I want to be clear, that I'm not complaining that

Trump is not an orator or a poet, that he doesn't speak beautifully,

that's not the issue. The issue is how words free one

into thought and how language frees one out of prejudice and bias

and a narrowness of viewpoint which is no good for anybody

to be locked in. This isn't someone from a university

complaining about the fact that Trump doesn't speak

like a university lecturer, but do you remember he once said,

I think it was at a Nevada rally, It didn't mean, even though you're

not educated I love you, and what I will then try to do

in my years as president He loved the state

of uneducatedness. At the moment it is part of the way

populism is going at the moment, that you turn the people,

that you make the people love themselves for not having this

horrible thing that the enemy has, And if you turn the people

against the very idea of education, you're not giving them anything,

you're taking something from them, What happens if this turns out to be

an incredibly successful presidency? If everything you think now

is proved wrong and actually, you know, he makes

a good fist of it? And if he does, well, I will have

to have a little think again. Do you remember 92-year-old

George Montague, who appeared He was reacting to the news

that the government was to grant a pardon to gay men like himself

who were convicted of sexual offences where the act in question

is no longer illegal today. If I get the apology,

I don't need a pardon, I don't mind in the least,

I just want an apology. Not only me, there's apparently

still 11,000 older men like me, still alive, and I talk

to some of them. My great friend Lord

Edward Montague, take him, I said to him one day, come on,

surely, you deserve an apology, and he said, like lots of others,

my contemporaries say to me when I talk to them, oh, George,

just leave it, let it lie. Well, now our colleagues

at the World at One on Radio 4 have revealed that George has finally

got his apology - as part of a week of reports 50

years on from the decriminalisation It is very nice to welcome you back.

Tell us what happened, George. Just over a year ago, I decided that I

would get people to sign a petition and we spent the whole day at

Kemptown Carnival in Brighton and then about six months later, my

partner and I took it up to Number 10 and the media were there and they

filmed us. I put my fingerprints on that door knockers and banged the

door and handed in the petition and now, at long last, to my great

delight, we have got the result. When you have got a letter, is that

right? I have got the letter in front of me. Read it out. It is from

the Home Office, addressed to me personally. Dear Mr Montague, thank

you for your letter of the 1st of November to the Prime Minister about

past convictions incurred by gay men to which I have been asked to

respond. Euro quest, an apology from the government, on behalf of his

predecessors. Now, many more are lived in fear of being criminalised

because they were being treated in a very different way from heterosexual

couples. Actually, understand that we offer this full apology. Their

treatment was unfair, what happened to these men is a matter of the

greatest regret and I should be glad so to all of us, I am sure to the

members across the House, for this we are today deeply sorry. The House

of Commons, Hansard Number 10 and dated January, 2017. And on the

back, I hope this address, addresses the concerns you have raised. Yours

sincerely, John Woodward, who I understand is a very senior member

of the Home Office, John would stop. Congratulations, George, tell us

what that feels like? Is the campaign over now? I can only say

that when I arrived, the letter was in my home for at least a couple of

weeks before we came back from Thailand about ten days ago and

there was this letter. And I cannot describe my delight when I opened

it. I couldn't believe, I had hoped we would get something, but I did

not think we would get such a detailed letter of apology.

Wonderful. And does it rest here now? Do you feel that we have a

quality? Well, absolutely! The only thing I am a little bit concerned

about is the whole thing is to me, personally, now there are 16 or

17,000 other men, many of them did nothing but they were persecuted by

the police and ended up with convictions. Some of them committed

suicide. OK, we cannot apologise to them, but we could at least a

posthumous apology, going back to Oscar Wilde. He served time in

prison for two years and has never received any sort of apology, give

him up postmaster must apology and Lord Edward Montagu, other men went

to prison and when I said to my friend, come on, you ought to

deserve, he said old George, most people have forgotten about it now,

just leave it. I thought about it and I thought, why should I leave

it? So I haven't left it and I fought and I have got the letter.

George, you make a very sobering point and a good one, thank you very

much indeed for joining us this evening. Congratulations.

We are finishing with the look of the papers. The Daily Telegraph has

Donald Trump saying that Putin will not fully us. The cruise missile

attack proves he is not only the fresh air and will not be pushed

around by Vladimir Putin. It has that picture of the last respects

been paid to the policeman who died defending Parliament in the

Westminster attack. The Times has that Scotland gets a cancer drug too

expensive for England and Britain will be defined on sanctions.

Theresa May throwing her weight behind plans to impose sanctions on

Putin. Scotland leads the way with the anti-HIV drug in the Guardian.

And Rex Torres's line that the US will protect innocents from

aggressors putting America's safety first and their Financial Times has

the story of the Berkeley 's chief who faces sanctions and a pay cut

for pursuit of a whistle-blower. Much more tomorrow.

We leave you with pictures of the Great Barrier Reef,

two thirds of which, we learned today, has now succumbed

to severe coral bleaching, as the warming oceans kill the algae

Scientists have described it as the terminal stage in the reef's

Here's what it look like now, accompanied by David Attenborough

People say to me what was the most magical thing

What was the most magical moment in your career as a naturalist?

And I always say, the first time I put on a mask

and went below the surface, and moved in three-dimensions,

just with a flick of my fin, and suddenly saw all these amazingly

multi-coloured things living in communities right there.

Just astounding things, unforgettable beauty.

I first came to the Barrier Reef nearly 60 years ago,

and I remember very clearly how amazed I was to see such

a complexity of life, one of the greatest treasures

Good evening. Turning to quite quickly out there and a chilly start

to Tuesday morning but a lovely