21/07/2017 Newsnight

Setting off on holiday and still in a job.

Theresa May has confounded many critics by being a little more

What does one of her former key advisors think

She has made clear she will not be here for ever and in due course the

Conservative Party will have to think about who takes on that

legacy, but we have a lot of work to do in the next two years.

can the Prime Minister really hold until 2019?

Any other questions? Yes, just mentally, are you OK? Are you

Tonight parody has lost one of its most generous donors.

Sean Spicer, the man who many considered to have his foot

almost permanently in his mouth, has quit.

I'll be joined by a White House correspondent who sat through most

of those famous briefings and asking what this means

for the tweeter in chief, President Trump.

Also tonight we investigate just how easy it is to buy the acid

It is sulphuric acid I believe, yeah, there it is.

And I said to the person, "Do I need to wear gloves?"

And he said, "Yes, wear gloves, keep well away from any skin contact,

wear gloves," so I knew it was the right one.

# Your favourite boy has gone back to help, Matilda is coming back to

And Scott Walker's music will be celebrated at the proms next week.

She was famously described by George Osborne, the former

Chancellor who likes to eat his political revenge cold,

as a "dead woman walking" three days after that pretty

Well, zombie or not, Theresa May is still with us and has

managed to beat the likes of Sir Alec Douglas Home

and the Duke of Devonshire in the battle not to be one

of Britain's shortest serving Prime Ministers.

As she packs the walking sticks and insect repellent for a summer

holiday with husband Philip in Switzerland and Italy,

we'll be asking was everyone wrong about Mrs May's staying power?

Do the Conservatives really want her to remain in post

until the end of the Brexit process, that's March 2019?

Or will events catch up with Mrs May, meaning she doesn't

have time to "clean up the mess she created", as she told her

And what about Jeremy Corbyn and his plea for the PM

With his take on Mrs May's long and tricky summer ahead

here's our Policy Editor, Chris Cook.

The Conservative Party candidate... Last month's general election did

not go to plan for the Prime Minister and shortly afterwards she

ran into trouble over her handling of the Grenfell Tower fire. It felt

for a spell that she might have to quit. It has been a month and a half

since that general election but Theresa May is still the Prime

Minister. There is talk of succession all the time but it is

not about imminent succession, it is about the medium term. What are the

factors that are keeping her wedged in here? One major reason is a fear

of Jeremy Corbyn. Tory MPs do not want to do anything that would make

a snap general election likely. Jeremy Corbyn has gone from being

the no-hoper joke to the very real threat, a proper socialist now much

closer to number ten and the whole country has woken up to that and the

Conservative Party certainly has. Tory MPs want to avoid upheaval

during the Brexit negotiations, not that they are not split about how

negotiations should proceed. That has been a major cause of recent

Cabinet tension. There is a lot of concern about business and the

effect of Brexit on investment. You are seeing David Davis, Liam Fox and

Boris Johnson begin to speak in more moderate terms about the Brexit

that, yes, put Britain back in charge but does not do so in a way

that damages our economic competitiveness. An important part

of the answer is there has been a blood-letting, the Prime Minister's

two Cochise of staff were forced to resign. It was a big decision to

have the election in the first place so when it went so spectacularly

wrong, the idea that someone had to be accountable, the removal of two

peer advisors very close to Theresa May, but at the same time were also

the subject of great criticism. Another element of the survival

strategy has been a more moderate strategy than before. She arrived in

Downing Street with grand ambitions. Fighting against the burning

injustice that if you are born to you will die on average nine years

earlier than others, if you are black you are treated more harshly

by the criminal justice system. If you are white, working-class boy,

you are less likely than anyone else in Britain to go to university. That

speech feels like a lot more than just a year ago. Since the general

election the government has only got a wafer thin majority in the Commons

and thanks to the DUP. It has no majority in the Lords. They are keen

to avoid unnecessary birds that they might lose and that means they have

had to ditch huge swathes of their domestic agenda. It is only things

like Brexit wearables have to be passed through Parliament that they

are persevering with legislation. The vast majority of that through

the campaign puts us in a different situation. The Prime Minister has

said, we need to reach out to other parties. You do not need legislation

on mental health, some of the social justice work I was working on for

her as chair of the policy board. There are cross-party alliances. It

remains to be seen whether the recent anonymous leadership briefing

will be seen as normal or whether the party might drift into

rebellion. The good thing is that keeps people occupied, not having a

nonexistent agenda in Parliament, that enables people to have these

conversations and it enables the discussions to go on about what next

and makes the government looked like it has not got enough to be doing.

We do not know how the crisis involved and in golfing Theresa May

six weeks ago will end. For neither party is keeping her out there the

I'm joined by Tim Shipman, who's political editor

at the Sunday Times, Ash Sarkar, senior editor at Novara Media,

and Polly Mackenzie former special advisor to Nick Clegg.

Tim, if I can start with you. I read every week in the Sunday Times the

cabinet riffs, the plot against Theresa May. The tone since the

general election seems to be that she would not survive, the party and

the Cabinet would turn against and maybe she would decide she had had

enough. What do you put the fact she is still here, she is going on

holiday, she is still on Prime Minister, there is no move against,

what do you put that down against? I think she is weak, but so is

everybody else and they are fighting like rats in a sack and nobody else

was to take her on. The Conservative Party generally has taken the view

it is better to have a bad Prime Minister than no Prime Minister. Any

minister that seeks to move against her will get punished. The most

significant thing is the 1922 committee, the group of

backbenchers, the shop stewards for the people without the top job have

said, if you want to sack any of these recalcitrant ministers, be our

guest. There are a good number of people who would like to lead the

Labour Party and the others have said they were not put up with it.

The party may not want her to go, but is she define Parliamentary

political gravity with the fact that she might not be able to get any

legislation through and in the end events will plot against her rather

than her party? They usually do and the summer is a time for people to

do a lot of thinking. There are some people who hope if she goes away

walking she will come up with a dramatic decision largely came up

away with the last time, this time to walk away. None of the other

ministers are strong enough to get rid of her, but if she decided to go

of her own accord, a lot of people would welcome it. You are a firm

supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour did better than many people

expected in the general election. He did not win is one point worth

making. What do you think about Theresa May's position and what you

think Jeremy Corbyn, if anything, can do to get himself to the

position he wants to be in, which is in number ten? I think we have a

strong but unstable government which is the worst of both worlds. There

is very little in the wake of democratic oversight or

accountability so we saw with the state pension age, the timescale to

increase it has been brought forward and there has been very little noise

about that made because once more our attention is focused on this

short time, petty analysis of personality rather than substantive

policies and that is where Jeremy Corbyn comes in. Our political

classes, our media classes all banked on him having a kind of

off-putting, socialist, grandad style that would put people off.

That was not the case. Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane

Abbott presented a fully costed and substantive manifesto and they

talked about issues and that appealed to people. The best thing

they can do is keep doing that over the summer and that will make

Theresa May look weaker because she will be away on holiday, and she

will look weak and Jeremy Corbyn will be addressing the real needs.

Is that anything in Parliamentary terms that Jeremy Corbyn can do to

spike the smooth that he wants to get into number ten? At the moment

he has not got the numbers he needs to be able to move. In my view the

best thing he can do is focus on modernising the Labour Party, making

it more open and democratic and focus on his policy platform. Let

the Tories rip each other to shreds because they are doing a very good

job of it right now. They look an absolute shambles to be honest. What

we have seen is that people find party infighting very unattractive.

If I was Jeremy Corbyn's advisor I would say lead them to it. So Vince

Cable, your new leader of the Liberal Democrats, what is the role

for the Liberal Democrats? 12 seats, not in coalition with anyone, does

not want to be in coalition with anyone. How does any engineer

anything different from Theresa May basically carry on for as long as

the Conservative Party once? That is right. What Vince is doing already

is being the only party in Parliament that is firmly against

Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn is backing up everything the government is doing,

making a hash of these negotiations, cheered on by the Labour benches, at

least the leadership. But there is very little anybody can do to get

rid of Theresa May. They are holding onto the nurse for the finding

anything worse, which is what they about Margaret Thatcher. You cannot

get an election to happen. In 2010 everybody said the coalition would

fall and it would fall over the first summer and then they said by

conference, by Christmas, by Easter. For years we were constantly told

there would be an election. But it was a proper, full coalition. That

is true, she has a majority, the DUP will not turn against her. There is

a lot you can do without legislating atoll and getting frozen and

carrying on in government for as long as they can, nobody wants that

poisoned chalice of eating the Brexit negotiations. Of course the

Conservatives are nervous about losing the tenuous control of power

they have, but remember Jeremy Corbyn lost a conference vote with

his backbenchers. They are not convinced they can robbed of victory

quickly either. Isn't the big danger for the voting public that the

parliament is there, but it is not doing any legislating? We have

already seen the Conservative Party bend a lot of its manifesto. The

focus is on Brexit, they are not dealing with social care, mental

health, the problems in the economy. This is called a zombie parliament,

that might be unfair to zombies because they move forward in some

way, but this parliament is static. A lot of people say politics is not

just about legislating and we have a chance to see whether the public by

that argument or not. It looks like chaos. When I announced on Twitter I

was coming on tonight to talk about politics, people tweeted back at me

comments like we are in search of a paddle but there are none. The

general view of politicians at the moment is this whole thing is a

shambles. If the Labour Party brings in all this democratisation, that

creates infighting in the Labour Party as well with the selection.

Was he lasts until 2019? Oh, God, no. Yes, but if she goes she is

replaced with another conservative and it does not change anything

anyway. He was a one-man media battle tank,

the provider of alternative facts. This was the largest

audience to ever witness an inauguration period,

both in person and around the globe. The dishonesty in the media,

the challenging, the bringing our nation together,

is making it more difficult. There has been a lot

of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold

Donald Trump accountable and I am here to tell

you that it goes two ways. We are going to hold the press

accountable as well. Sean Spicer, the President's

official spokesman and bulldog in chief,

resigned from the White House after Mr Trump hired

a new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci,

as Mr Spicer's boss, something that Mr Spicer found

hard to stomach. Now, let's admit it,

Mr Spicer may have broken the first cardinal rule of comms -

don't become the story - but some people are going to miss

him and his unique approach. Tamara Keith is the NPR

White House Correspondent. Good evening. That first point, if

nothing else, Mr Spicer was great sport and gave the press lobby in

the White House plenty to talk about, you will miss him? Yes, sure!

He definitely got good ratings as a President said in his statement

bidding him farewell, the press briefings became must see

television, those Saturday Night Live sketches that came out of it

and also there were quite a few viral videos including one with the

faces of correspondence in the room reacting to some of the things that

Sean Spicer said, that some of us would rather not have been part of,

but such is life. Why did the President should lose him to have

that role? Given that he did that role in a very different way from

his predecessors? That is exactly where the President would have

chosen him. Sean Spicer, from when he was at the Republican Party, he

showed an incredible amount of loyalty and an ability to speak up

for the candidate, Trump, and President Trump, in a way that the

sometimes out of sync with reality, like the clip about the size of the

crowds, that was a formative moment for Sean Spicer, during the

Republican convention, Melania Trump gave a speech that it turns out was

Seawright -- strikingly similar to a speech that Michelle Obama game

after -- at another convention and there were questions of plagiarism

and Sean Spicer said, I think that sparkle pony from my Little pony

said something similar. Was that plagiarism? One day later, the Trump

campaign said, yes, it was inspired and lifted from Michelle Obama but

Spicer again and again has defended the President and in the face of

days later, President Trump contradicted him. Tell us about

Scaramucci. His press briefing, he is a lot more brilliant in tone, he

said the media were a little bit biased rather than tremendous

enemies, has Mr Trump shown that he wants to change the tone with the

battle of the media and it might be eased down? That is not clear and it

is not clear that Mr Scaramucci will do the briefings, he announced that

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be the new press secretary, she has been

conducting lots of briefings off camera and she has been conducting

them. The thought is she will continue briefings and the role of

Scaramucci is one of strategy. What he really brings is loyalty to the

President and in that briefing he did today, time and again he said, I

love this President. And I love this team. He does not bring a lot of

communications experience, he is good on television, he has been on

cable defending the President as a private citizen but his background

is in finance and most of his political experience is as a

political donor. Thank you so much for joining us.

It is a new and frightening weapon, acid, often thrown in people's faces

Assaults involving corrosive substances have more than doubled

The question is should any potential weapon capable of disfiguring people

for life be readily available in the shops and available legally

to anyone of any age who wants to buy it?

After a series of attacks on moped riders in the last week,

But with MPs now on a lengthy summer break, will there be

It is illegal for anyone to buy acid but just so easy is it in practice

or a teenager to get rid -- hold of a litre bottle of sulphuric acid,

tonight be ask a 17-year-old to buy acid that can unblock drains but it

is fast becoming a weapon for the criminals of young London. In the

past few years, dozens of attacks of terrified Londoners, scarring some

people for life physically and mentally. On Tuesday, Stephen Timms

from Labour staged and debate calling for action. Carrying acid

without good reason should be as much as a criminal offence as

carrying a knife, there are legitimate reasons for obtaining

acid as from obtaining a knife but we do not want people carrying this

around the streets. Javed Hussain knows all about that, last week he

was the first victim in a series of five attacks staged by two youths,

reportedly to steal mopeds. He was at home when they struck. The skin

was burning on my face, I was looking in the windows. People were

scared, I was scared, I did not know what to do, I was running like

crazy. The acid hit me on that side. Physically, his helmet saved him but

mentally he is still suffering. When was the last time he went on your

own onto the street? Not since this happened. I will always take my

cousin or my brother with me. And I always keep my door unlocked as

well. For my safety. Have you lost trust in others? Yes. I don't trust

anyone passing by. How can this resolve itself? We cannot stay

locked up on your own forever? What will you do? I feel like if my

daughter came next to me, I can hug her, that will be OK, but this does

not work, even my wife, looking after me, I feel something dark

behind me. That is what I think. I need to get back to work and I have

to be safe. We ask the 17-year-old how difficult it would be for him to

get hold of some acid. Sulphuric acid, I believe? Verities. I said if

I needed to wear gloves, he said yes, keep well away from any skin

contact. Wear gloves. Did he ask for ID? He did but it was not enforced,

it was like reading from a script, do you have ID? I said, look at me?

Do I look under 18? All right, then. It costs ?7. I gave him ten times

and for the ?3, I said, this is between me and you. Of course.

Nothing happened. The latest numbers the police believe is 4000 acid

attacks at the last six months or so and it feels that the problem is

getting worse so what are authorities doing? The Home Office

promises and review by Parliament? The MPs have gone on holiday. There

is something horrible about using acid as a weapon. And something

troubling. The authorities, when they seem so slow about trying to

stop this. "We expect too much of new buildings

and too little of ourselves," so said the urban theorist

Jane Jacobs in her acclaimed 1961 book The Death and Life

of Great American Cities. Central to the development of cities

for more than half a century Seen first as the answer

to alleviating poverty and post-war slum housing,

and then as a monument to poor Is there a difference

between a "tower block" and an "apartment block",

terms which say a lot about the lens through

which we see high-rise living. Following the Grenfell

tragedy what is the future We asked the writer and chair

of New London Architecture, In the planning of our cities few

topics generate as much heated debate as tall buildings,

whether they are '60s council blocks, glass and steel offices

or modern apartments. Since the Grenfell tragedy,

council built towers have been under The discussion has not just been

about what the towers are made of or what risks they represent,

but how they become symbols of broken Britain, of inequality

and social disparity. Strange, really, when only last year

towers were being accused of being money boxes in the sky

for the offshore wealthy. Ghost buildings whose Chinese

and Middle Eastern investors kept them empty as they profited

from the UK's housing shortage. Strange, too, when you realise

that the millionaires who paid huge amounts for top floor flats did

so because of the spectacular views they provide, a luxury that

thousands of council tenants have enjoyed since towers were first

built to solve the housing crisis As authorities around

the country assess the risk of towers in their boroughs,

there are suggestions that the days NEWSREEL: From the home of war times

to the homes of people. Tall, modern new homes

where once there were slums. Constructed in great

numbers in the 1960s, The series Our Friends In The North

charted the shady dealings of Newcastle's council house

building boom and the social For all its inconveniences,

Lionel was satisfied JG Ballard's High Rise portrays

a dystopian future and a tower that falls apart as poor residents

on the lower floors revolt Yet there are billions of people

living successfully in tall buildings around the world

and the scale of tragedy that we saw at Grenfell Tower is,

thankfully, very rare. The safety record of tall buildings

tells us that a well-built, well-maintained tower block

is literally as safe as houses. Well, just look here

at the Barbican. It enjoys fantastic levels

of maintenance, the public space here is freed up by the towers,

the people in the towers have great views across London

and the concrete structure But most importantly,

it is dense, close to the city and the Barbican Cultural Centre,

allowing residents to easily enjoy the concerts, plays,

exhibitions and amenities Density is a good thing and should

be encouraged where there It is sustainable, reducing reliance

on the car and it is essential in the future as cities around

the world grow exponentially. But density doesn't necessarily

mean building high. The centres of Paris and Barcelona

are the densest in Europe but tall buildings do help to create greater

density in existing urban centres. After 9/11, some thought it was

the end of the tall office building. People would not want to work

in them, they would feel unsafe. The Leadenhall building,

with its dramatic glazed lifts, was designed just one year

after the destruction The Grenfell Tower tragedy

is unlikely to herald an end Over 400 new tower blocks

are planned in the capital alone, reflecting a desire for city centre

living which is fuelling a spate Nevertheless, we have

to up our game in the design and location of new towers

as well as the maintenance Post-Grenfell, the government,

which was responsible for ignoring the warnings of the Lakanal fire

in 2009, has much to do to upgrade to building regulations and to make

more money available. Local authorities need the resources

to retrofit sprinklers, ensure fire doors are in place,

that maintenance work is properly done and regular safety checks

are carried out in order to ensure that nothing like the Grenfell Tower

tragedy ever happens again. But we thought we'd leave

you with a taste of next week's prom which celebrates the songs

of Scott Walker, featuring Jarvis Cocker, John Grant,

Richard Hawley and Susanne Sundfor. You can catch it on BBC Four next

Tuesday but here's a taster. Here is Susanne singing Walker's

1969 song On Your Own Again. # Heroes died in

subways left behind. # I see it all the way

as far as anyone can see. # Except when it began I was

so happy I didn't feel like me.