13/04/2017 Newsnight

10,000 kilograms of bomb, the biggest no-nuke ever deployed,

dropped onto the tunnels used by Isis in Afghanistan.

Is America trying to tell us something?

We are so proud of our military and it was another successful event.

Uh, everybody knows exactly what happened, so what

The US military made the decision to use it.

We'll ask if it's a sign of a military more willing

We've been hearing for ages about the squeezed middles

and the just about managing, but now the Government is helpfully

We now know that Enceladus has almost all of the ingredients

to support life as we know it on Earth.

But should we even be looking for extra-terrestrials?

GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB.

And it was dropped in Afghanistan earlier today, aimed at the tunnels

used by the Afghan branch of so-called Islamic State.

The Americans have never used a conventional weapon

this powerful in combat, and given everything that has been

happening in US foreign policy, it is no wonder that everybody

Now, don't fall for some of the hyperbole - it's huge,

but it would take more than a thousand of these

But does it tell us something about the willingness of the US

military to flex its muscle in the world?

I'm joined by our diplomatic editor Mark Urban.

As a bomb, is this a big threshold through which the world has passed

today? I'm not sure. The RAF's Grand Slam that was dropped in World War

II was just slightly below this in size. These sort of super bombs are

clearly meant to have some kind of propaganda or psychological

operations effect. But if you go back in Afghanistan to the early

days of American operations after 9/11 in 2001-2, they dropped several

examples of a thing called the BLU82 daisy cutter which is only slightly

smaller than this. So this mega- bomb theory has been tried before.

You could argue that they were doing it in 2001 and they are still doing

it, so the effect can't be that great. Do you think it is political

signalling, or is it a political tactic or that someone has tried? It

was characterised today by the White House as a thing that came from the

military. It was mentioned that the commander in Afghanistan wanted this

to deal with this cave system. And I think it is an iPod with other

things we have been seeing. You have a military which under President

Obama, there were often chafing at the bit and would be complaining to

us that they felt restricted in what they could do. Now under President

Trump, far less so. It seems general Matias is fully empowered to take

all kinds of decisions and we are seeing the consequences of that in

many different places. The announcement was certainly

headline-grabbing - the use of a huge munition to attack

a cave complex in Afghanistan. The so-called mother of all bombs

is so big that it drops from the tail ramp of a Hercules

transport aircraft. When it detonates, it creates

a one-mile-radius shock wave. The White House characterised it

as a military decision. The United States takes the fight

against Isis very seriously. In order to defeat the group,

we must deny them operational The United States took

all precautions necessary to prevent civilian casualties and collateral

damage as a result of the operation. A little later, President Trump

was asked about it. We're very, very proud

of our military. Just like we're proud

of the folks in this room, we are so proud of our military,

and it was another successful event. Everybody knows

exactly what happened. What I do is,

I authorise my military. We have the greatest military

in the world, and they have So we have given them

total authorisation. The new administration launched

a special operations raid It stepped up activities in Libya

and Newsnight understands that it has also deployed US special

operators in Mogadishu, Somalia, But the biggest operational change

has come in the campaign against the IS group

in Iraq and Syria. There, raids have been stepped up

and the rules of engagement relaxed, leading to claims that civilian

casualties have In fact, the number of actions in

Syria for March were down slightly. The number of targets hit

by the Americans was down. But the number of civilian deaths

we think likely went up sixfold. We think more than 300

civilians died in March We've never seen numbers

like that before. I think that is the clearest

indication yet that and civilians are at greater risk

of harm because of that. Early reports suggest

that it was a military decision to drop such a big weapon

in Afghanistan, and that seems to be the pattern of a president who has

devolved considerable powers to the Pentagon to prosecute

a more aggressive campaign Kurt Volker is the former

US Ambassador to Nato Do you think this is a significant

change in the relationship between the government of the US and the

military? Have they unleashed the military to do what they will? I

would phrase that differently. There is a change, but the change is to

give the military a clearer and more ambitious mission and to then give

them the authorisation to carry that out, not to act without any

constraint of law, not to act in ways that would have the US

committing war crimes, but to say the mission is to destroy Isis. The

mission is to stabilise Afghanistan. Go and do that. What we had

previously was a lot of micromanagement of decisions. What

ordnance will we use? How much free reign with the military have? The

mission for Isis was to degrade rather than destroy it? This is

giving the military a clear mission and giving them authority to carry

that out. Do you welcome that? I certainly do. It is important not

only for the military to be effective, it is an important signal

to adversaries, whether it is Isis or the Taliban, that they will now

face an American and a coalition force that is prepared to do what is

necessary to do the job. That will have an effect on their morale,

psychology and operations. It will give momentum back to the

international effort. You have used the word I was going to put in my

next question, which is signalling. Do you think that is an important

part of a military strategy? You mentioned Syria and Isis. The one a

lot of people are thinking about is Kim Jong-Un and North Korea. Do you

think there is any element of deciding on these things in order to

say to someone like him, watch out? It does start as an operational and

effectiveness question. What does it take to be effective? Here, it is

targeting the mission in Afghanistan, targeting Isis and the

Taliban. That is the starting point. That said, when you are conveying to

the world that the United States is willing to take decisions and act

and will be effective, that is a signal that will be picked up by

people around the world, probably in a fortuitous way. Someone like Kim

Jong-Un in North Korea will be thinking twice about the seriousness

and effectiveness of the US. What do we think about the civilian deaths?

We have been hearing more of them in Syria. One of the things Obama

wanted to do was to improve the reputation and image of the US

around the world. It seemed that every civilian death paying him

personally. I wonder whether that pendulum is going to swing back the

other way and the US will take some brand damage if it is shown to be

more willing to have collateral damage. Actually, it speaks well of

President Obama that he was so pained at civilian deaths. We should

do everything possible to minimise that. We have to balance this in

terms of proportionality and achieving the mission. The reason we

are in Afghanistan, the reason we are in Syria is because of Isis Arma

because of the Assad regime, because of the chemical weapons used in

Syria, what they have done to their own populations. Without US

involvement, there are already 11 million refugees that have spilled

out of Syria fleeing the conflict, 500,000 people killed. So I agree

with the sentiment that we need to do what we can to minimise civilian

casualties, but we can't minimise to the extent that we are not having an

impact on the conflict. Do you think the president knew this was about to

happen this afternoon, or do you think he has delegated so much that

he is told afterwards or sees it on CNN? I don't have a window into the

way the briefings work inside the White House. I do believe he is

someone who is going to give the military and General Mattis in

mission and say, go do it. I also believe General Mattis and others

will be briefing constantly. They will be letting the president know

the status of operations. So in normal circumstances, I think he

would have been briefed. Ambassador, thanks very much.

The Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2011

It was the group identified by Ed Miliband as needing a bit

of tender loving care, working people, often

Mr Miliband famously struggled to define the group.

It was around average income, he said, not on six-figure salaries.

Well, hard-working families have long been politically appealing.

Then Theresa May famously talked of JAMs - the just about managing.

Then JAMs became OWFs - ordinary working families.

But it is only now that any government has tried

As part of its thinking on grammar schools, the Government has tied

itself to a definition of who they are.

It's the group of working families on below average income,

Is it useful to think about this group as a defined tribe?

We'll discuss that shortly, but first here's Chris Cook.

Today, we got some clarity about an important question. Who exactly are

these ordinary working families that the Government keeps going on about?

We want to provide a clear analysis of the situation of how these

children of ordinary working families are faring in our education

system and for measuring how our wider reforms can do better for

these families and so better for the country. This group, the OWFs, our

success soars to a previous favourite of Theresa May's, the just

about managings, or Jams. Let's think about who we are talking about

when I talk about the just about managing. These are people who have

a job but worry about their job security or have a home but worry

about paying the mortgage. Who, then, goes in the jamjar? Who it is

and General Mattis? -- who is and OWF? Below median income, but not on

free school meals is an OWF. What is median income? The median income for

up two parent family with two teenage children is ?33,000. For a

lone parent with one young child, it is ?70,000. The amount varies with

your family type. Education purists have been puzzling today about why

the Government is so interested in these so-called OWFs. That is

because the research that ministers have published doesn't really make

the case that the OWFs have been particularly overlooked. For

example, the OWFs, unlike the poorest children, don't seem to have

particular trouble getting into good schools, be they comprehensive or

selective. And while it is true that across England, the richer you are,

the better your grades seem to be, and that is a particular problem for

the OWFs. It is not unique to them, it is a problem for the whole

education system. But the OWF analysis helps the Government Selt

grammar schools. A lot more OWFs schools getting to selective schools

than the poorest. But many remain sceptical. We have looked at the

outcome of all of those living in selected areas and factored in the

losers as well as winners. Where you have an area with a concentration of

grammar schools, the children who don't get into those schools suffer

a GCSE penalty by comparison with similar children who live in a

comprehensive area. What we see from this new ordinary working families

group is that while they may have their access to grammar schools,

actually, the majority of them would expect not to get a place in a

grammar school. That means that they would not be benefiting. They would

be in the group that are missing out. Ms Greening today hinted at

measures to address the fact that grammars do take disproportionate

numbers of wealthier children. But the politics get a little muddy

here. Some of her supporters don't want her to push too hard there. I

certainly don't think quotas are a good idea and I would be concerned

to see a dramatic reduction in the pass mark. I think we should be put

back -- pragmatic about how we do this, but it would be reasonable to

say to existing grammar schools and to new ones, let's try our hardest

to make this system is fair as it can be. We want to make sure that

opportunities are open to everybody who can benefit from them. There is

another reason to focus on the Jams, though, or the OWFs, - politics. In

focus groups all the time, people talk and define themselves as the

people stuck in the middle who are too well off to get the support that

poor people get and not well enough to manage without it. They feel

neglected by politicians. It is certainly helpful for this Prime

Minister to pitch to people in the middle. There may be a more coherent

group at the ballot box and they are in the classroom. Chris Cook, there.

Phillip Blond is director of the ResPublica think tank,

and one of the brains behind the Conservative's

Polly Billington was special advisor to Ed Miliband,

who as Labour leader promised to stand up for the

Jams, and Alfs we are using them interchangeably, we prefer Jams

because they make better graphics, but there was a shift? As I

understand that there was a shift when the mandarins, now not popular

with Theresa May, looked at what just about managing looked like,

firstly there was not enough of them and secondly they looked too poor to

switch to voting Tory anyway. Out is a slightly broader... A broader

term, includes more people and does go further up the income scale. Big

question, is it useful to focus on this group because we are talking

about one third of families. I think it is worth asking who has politics

been about since the times of Mrs Thatcher? I would argue

predominantly for the most part it has only been about the top 10% and

the bottom 10%. And arguably all policy and politics has really been

in the interests of the top 10% and the concern for the bottom 10% is

done so to justify that settlement. So I think the concern with

something else is more than welcome and is desperately and urgently

needed because if unless you can eat actually speak to those who haven't

spoken to before, things like Brexit, Trump, going beyond button

or become explainable. What is clear is that we have significant groups

in this country who feel something and fair is being done to them, who

feel they are being ignored so it is not wrong to try to centre policy

around them, and I think in part, you know, this is to be welcomed. Is

that what your former boss tried to do, Polly? What I think you have a

problem with here, is you will come unstuck of your politics and policy

are not aligned. So pretty much everyone will think of themselves as

being part of the squeezed middle, that is part of their campaigning

allure, the same with the just about managing. People think they are

ordinary then they are extraordinary, they think they are

ordinary working people are not working, they think they are a

family when they are not family. So you can include everybody. If your

policy only affects a small number of people, and everyone else will

think, wait a minute, I thought this was for the many, not the few, and I

am not entitled to it. That is where things get unstuck. What you have

you with this grammar school policy which in principle I would be

against anyway, you have one where only one third of places are

available for this 50% core of people. How can that be seen as a

progressive their policy when two thirds of the places will be kept

for the 50% that are the richest? But the basic question is, why would

you focus on the people who are between half and 20% rather than the

bottom 20%. What is the effective argument that says, I should be more

worried about the person who is 60th in the list of poor people rather

than the person who is... You can deploy a range of arguments to make

this point. I repeat, these other people who have been ignored over

the past goodness knows how long. I thought Ed Miliband, who's made some

great contributions to Conservative thinking, really hit it right with

the squeeze medal. But where Labour went wrong was that they came with a

small-bore offer, only speaking to those on limited incomes, or those

on benefits, let's go mad, look at the now famous elephant graph which

shows basically over the last 30 years that globalisation has not

benefited middle or working-class people only super rich people and

the poor in the third World. So he makes the argument quite

convincingly that these people haven't experienced any real

increase in incomes for long time. That's why it makes sense to speak

to them. Not only that but if you look at modern Britain today it is

like a ladder where the runs on the ladder of further and further apart.

And unless you are at the very top, you are experiencing relative

decline or relative stagnation almost anywhere on that ladder so

people feel, wherever they are, the middle is by definition... People

are feeling penalised so I think it is good politics and if the

Conservatives come up with a... Which I would encourage them to do

so they don't sacrifice policy... I don't think this is that and that is

part of the problem. If you talk about something everyone identifies

with India to offer doesn't meet that, you won't get anything out of

it. The only way you can persuade everyone else to consider giving

money to a certain group of people is that it is somewhere in the

national interest. I want an example apart from grammar schools, what's

an example of something you would do we would say, this is not about

people in the top half and not about people in the bottom, it's about the

people in between. Just one example of policy. Massively expanded

maternity and career rights for women. Women, when they leave a job,

they want to look after their children, as many do, they often go

back part Time low wage, no longer on a career path. Set of victory and

a massively expanded career -- so if we expand massively career path that

would help all women in that area. Polly, can you think of an area?

Financial security more generally, Phillip makes a good point but if

you think of accessing work that is more secure, because work is

becoming more flexible that means people spend more time feeling a bit

on the edge, and making sure that people have something they could

fall back on, not for ever but while they are flexing between jobs, the

fact that more people are experiencing that flexibility, not

just hipsters on their laptop but the people on the street corner

waiting... We have no through life education option for people. We

educate ourselves intensely at 221 and then nothing. What we have to

develop, and this will be another Jams policy is a 2- life education

officer so anyone can retrain at any point in their lives. With robotics

and AI, everyone will suffer. Lots to say about the Jams and the Alfs.

It's going to be hugely important weekend in Turkey, a referendum on

the weekend could transform the country from a slightly

dysfunctional parliamentary democracy to a full on presidential

system. The man who stands to reign supreme is President Erdogan, very

much to the concern of civil libertarians and liberal

secularists. He has dominated Turkish politics for 14 years, an

authoritarian rationalist seeking the backing of the nation to

potentially put more emphasis on the authoritarian. Practically, there

will be no Prime Minister, he will be the leader of his party and the

president so there will be no one who can limit his powers. In the

dying days of the Ottoman empire through the new Republic of, or

Ataturk or the later years, the Turkish people have repeatedly found

themselves with strong leaders, or that aspire to be, President Erdogan

fits that bill. It does not like opposition and has cracked down on

the press. This former editor of an opposition newspaper is now exiled

in Berlin. Politically he is the kind of leader, like Putin or Trump,

who hates criticism, and takes every kind of criticism as an insult to

himself. Last summer's attempted coup briefly raised the prospect of

turmoil in Turkey, a violent Kurdish insurgency and attacks by the

Islamic State group have all been used to justify a state of emergency

so would a newly empowered president be better equipped to face these

challenges? And would it bolster Turkey's

power in the Middle East? If Turkey is able to play

a stronger, assertive role in those countries in the multiple conflicts

engulfing the region, then that is a good thing

for the region. But only if a stronger Erdogan

means a more stable, I spoke earlier to Ilnur Cevik,

chief adviser to President Erdogan. Started by asking him if we should

be worried the proposed constitutional changes will give

President Erdogan much power. Not really, because actually

what he is doing is, the president at the moment

has dictatorial powers. He has the powers of a junta leader

because the presidential powers were given, designed for a junta

leader after the 1980 coup. But let's just be clear,

does President Erdogan, after the referendum,

if he gets his way, he will have power to appoint

half the senior judges, his own vice presidents,

he will be able to make law? He can only appoint only four

of the judges and seven judges are being appointed

by the Parliament. By the Parliament,

of the senior judges, yes, He can hire and fire civil servants

and of course he can make The reason why constitutional

experts are worried about it is precisely because it

gives them so much power. The presidential executive orders

can be overruled by the Parliament. If there is any law that clashes

with the executive orders, then, the law overrides

the executive order. Why do you think so many

constitutional experts and others are worried as hell

about what Turkey looks like it's Truly, it's hard to understand

why, because we wanted To bring a new system, scrap

the military drafted constitution, But we didn't have the

majority to do that, so all we could do is suffice

with the changes that will just bring a clear-cut distinction

between separation of power and allow the president to run

the country while the legislative And was the president wrong

when he said on February 12th that the referendum would be

an answer to the coup and that those who vote No,

vote against him in the referendum, will be siding with the coup

and siding with terrorists, as some of the AKP party leaders

have been saying? The coup was a stark reminder

of what is in store for Turkey The coup was a kind of,

unfortunately, referendum by the people who flocked

into the streets and They braved tanks, they braved F-16

fighters, and the people of Turkey And now we are saying that we're

switching to a new system Would you be happy if President

Erdogan saw out another full two terms under the new constitution

and would thus have been Does that strike you as good

governance, good leadership Well, if the people vote for it,

if they are satisfied with the way he runs

the country, why not? They may get fed up with him

in the next two years, nobody knows. And if Erdogan shows bad leadership,

let's put it this way, if people are unhappy with the way he's

running the country, the Parliament can easily take

the country to early elections. The EU does not seem very

enthusiastic about these constitutional changes,

to say the least. Does it bother

you that the EU and your prospect of EU membership is receding

further into the distant, Not really, because we're not sure

where the EU is going anyway. We are trying to get

into the EU, while you guys The irony is, we have been pushing

and pushing and pushing and they haven't accepted us

for the past 54 years. We've been at the doorstep,

being treated like beggars. And our people are very,

very unhappy about that and we see our friends back

in Britain with Brexit coming out of the EU, and we are saying,

is it really worth all the effort? But we will see after

the referendum, the president will sit down with the EU leaders,

and I think we will really ask for an account of what has

happened until now. Ilnur Cevik, very nice to talk

to you, thank you very much. A pause for thought now,

because it's time for Viewsnight. Tonight, heart surgeon

Stephen Westaby wonders whether we are unwittingly

pushing his profession into a culture that

runs away from risk. Politics is destroying

British heart surgery. British heart surgery used to be

the best in the world. We were at the centre

of research and innovation. Over the past 35 years,

I've performed almost 12,000 But now heart surgery has been

suffocated by a culture of blame. British heart surgeons

are becoming a rare breed. After the Bristol children's

heart inquiry and the hospitals scandal, NHS

England decided to publish surgeons' death rates

under the banner of Mortality rates were published

hastily, newspapers named The implication was that surgeons

have responsibility for every death. Most deaths actually occur

when a common post-operative This happens most at nights

and weekends in the presence Surely the best surgeon should

have the highest death rates Now we have an elephant

in the consulting room. Surgeons are becoming risk

averse and the sickest Prospective surgeons are now

discouraged from entering such In 2000, 70% of heart

surgery trainees came So the NHS now relies

on heart surgeons who have He has recently written his memoir -

Fragile Lives - about his work Now, this next story

should probably have been the lead on this programme,

but it is just possible that it is a lot of hype

and one to be ignored. The news is that Nasa has made

a pretty dramatic statement about the possibility of life

existing inside one Nasa tells us that its Cassini

spacecraft has flown within 120 kilometres of the moon Enceladus,

where they use metric measurements, and they have found hydrogen

molecules, which was the last piece of evidence they were looking

for that microbial life may exist. In a moment, we'll discuss

whether humans should be looking for alien life at all -

but first, we are joined from Washington by Dr

Mary Voytek, the head How big a moment is this? This is an

incredible moment. We have been waiting for evidence just like this

since we first discovered that there were oche world outside of our own

Earth -- ocean worlds. The mantra of Nasa has been, follow the water. If

we find lots of water in these oceans, we find evidence of the

building blocks of life and now we have found a source of energy. What

is the terrain we are talking about and how similar is it to anything

you might find on this planet? The hydrogen is being produced because

the core of Enceladus is very porous. So ocean water can move

through it, get heated by energy from the core, interact with the

rocks and then vent in some fashion into the overlying ocean water. A

good example of this is what we find in our deep oceans, known as

hydrothermal vents. We are not sure that we have these tall structures,

but it's the same kind of chemistry. As you may know, when we discovered

these 40 years ago, we found them because they were surrounded by

incredibly complex and beautiful ecosystems, giant worms, shrimp,

fish, basically supported by energy coming out of these fluids from

beneath the surface. I am not going to ask you to put a percentage

chance on it, but when we say life is possible, does that mean we can't

rule it out, or does it mean we are talking 50-50? Give us a sense of

how likely it would be. Well, this is the first step in knowing that

this environment could support life. Whether or not life emerged, it is

probably likely that it has emerged somewhere. I am not sure if it is on

this particular moon or if this moon has had enough time. On our own

planet, recent results suggest that life emerged maybe within 400

million years of the formation of our planet. We think that this moon

might be as young as 100 million years, we are not sure of its age.

So we have all the ingredients, we are just not sure if there has been

enough time for life to have emerged and started to take advantage of

this food source. Where would this life come from? This hasn't come

from a meteorite flying around the solar system and planting life, this

is life evolving out of the chemistry of the soup it sits in?

Absolutely. The idea of panspermia is something we talk about, which is

sharing a Genesis on one body by ceding the second one. That is

something that could happen between the Earth and Mars where there has

been a significant amount of material exchanged. This is very far

from us. Enceladus is a billion kilometres away, so the likelihood

that there would be seeding from Earth out there is almost nil. So we

would be talking about a second Genesis. Mary, thanks for joining

us. Professor Nick Bostrom,

director and founder of the Future of Humanity Institute,

at Oxford University where he looks at understudied existential threats

to the future of humanity. He wrote: "Where are they -

why I hope the search for extraterrestrial

life finds nothing". Do you really feel that you don't

want us to find it? I think no news is good news as far as the search

for extraterrestrial life is concerned. It would be tremendously

exciting and scientifically interesting, but I think it would be

a bad omen for our own future. Explain this to us, because it is

quite a complicated argument. Why would it be bad to discover worms on

another planet? In a nutshell, the idea is that we look out at the

universe and we see a grand total of zero advanced to extraterrestrial

civilisations. As far as we know, it looks empty out there. We know there

are a lot of planets and moons. So there has got to be some great

filter or something that takes these billions of planets and moons a hard

that for life that then produces zero space colonising civilisations

that we would have seen. There are two possibilities. This great filter

could be behind us in our evolutionary past. Maybe it is just

really hard for life to produce even the simplest organisms or to evolve

more compact life. Or it could be in our future. Maybe all this

sufficiently advanced civilisations destroyed themselves before they can

colonise the universe. So if we do find life, it might be a sign that

they are poised to destroy us? Which would be bad news. The other

argument, maybe inspired by films we have seen, is that we become

infected. If we find a little thing there and bring it back here, is

that a plausible risk? It is a small risk, but a risk. On the one hand,

we might discover a lot of useful stuff by investigating the different

biochemistry. Maybe we could find new drugs or organisms that would be

useful. But you can't rule out the possibility that this life would

have discovered some different metabolic pathway that is more

efficient than Earth's so if you brought it back, it could outcompete

our microorganisms. As somebody who thinks about the future of humanity

in quite a deep way, how likely is it, do you think, that we will

encounter intelligent life at any point? A lot of people speculate on

UFOs. Is that tiny? It is very small. Of course, a lot of

cosmologists think the universe is literally infinite, in which case we

can be pretty sure that there is intelligent life out there, but it

might be so far away that we will never come into contact. But isn't

that why we haven't encountered these intelligent species, it is

because it takes too long to get around? But we know that even within

a reasonable sea, and remember that the timescales are very large

because the universe has been around for billions of years, so that would

be a long time to cover quite far. Even within the radius that we know

a civilisation could have travelled, there are billions of planets and

none of those has produced any space-faring civilisation so far as

we can tell. Mick, thanks very much. Now, before we go, all of that data

about life on Enceladus came Cassini was launched in 1997,

and has been sending back astonishing information and images

ever since it reached It will run out of fuel this autumn,

and for its final, doomed, mission, it has been programmed to plunge

through Saturn's rings and burn out as it enters

the planet's atmosphere. This is what Nasa thinks

the mission will look like. Some of us may end up being a little

disappointed with the weather on Good Friday. It is looking pretty

overcast and there is some rain on the way, but most of it should be

light and it will not last all