22/05/2016 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our Sunday morning edition of The Papers.

With me are Eleanor Mills, editorial director of

The Sunday Times, and Hugh Muir, columnist for The Guardian.

Today's front pages: The Sunday Times leads

with the much-delayed Chilcott Report into the Iraq War.

The paper claims the report will deliver a 'brutal verdict'

on senior government figures including Tony Blair.

The Sunday Telegraph leads with the EU referendum,

it says a government leak has laid bare a trade war

The Mail on Sunday has a warning from high street bosses

claiming prices will soar if Britain leaves the EU.

It reports 12 million Turkish migrants will head to the UK

The Sunday Times leads with the much-delayed

Seven years on, it is meant to be released on July the 6th. We have

got a really good read out of what we think is going to be in it.

Basically, it's interesting because it kind of tells us what we already

knew, that there were real problems around the intelligence and the way

that it was spun, and the whole dodgy dossier, but it also paints a

bleak picture of the lack of pace invasion planning, so we know that

the British had big problems in Basra, and the Americans had to help

us out. It is saying that actually the second half of the report, which

looks at not what got us into war, but what happened while we were

there, shows real problems within the whole UK administration of

Basra, southern Iraqi, and that we didn't know what we were doing. We

would like to pride ourselves that we did, so having got rid of Saddam

Hussein, dismantling all of his structure was not a great idea, and

these rather naive ideas in Whitehall that this was immediately

going to be a peaceful transition to democracy did not help. Yes, that

they would welcome democracy with flowers, but instability was what

was left. Yes, people were nervous about seeing this report and they

will be even more nervous now. Jack Straw was named as someone who would

have a particular reason to worry and he was strongly criticised. That

is part of the reason for the delay. Chilcott was forced to tell them,

this is the kind of criticism you will encounter and give them an

opportunity to reply. One of the problems as Alan says, a lot of it

is going to be familiar to us, and it has taken so long, and you do

wonder what the impact will be, given that we know the broad themes.

There are villains here, we kind of note who they are, and we know what

they did, so really the report will be on the majorly, but that will

sack some of its impact. I'm not sure we are going to learn anything

new. A fair point, but it does play into our reluctance to get involved

in foreign adventures, the public's reluctance. If you break it, you own

it, as Colin Powell just said, ... That is interesting. What we did not

know about this report is what it is saying about the aftermath and how

bad things really had got in Basra, and who is responsible for that. A

lot of the argument about this report has been the general saying

yes, this went wrong, but these were political decisions. We are implying

that Jack Straw is going to come in for a much bigger troubling than

people had expected. Things like Tony Blair has had to push a year

out that he would support him in a ruck by backing military action, all

of those kind of things we know, but it may be the granular detail of

actually what a hash we made of it on the ground, that people will be

light shocked by. The remit of this report was that he wanted government

in the future to make better decisions, and a real tragedy of all

of this is that we have left Iraqi where the whole of northern Iraqi

has been overrun by Isis. The Americans got out of there very

quickly. We decided it had all been a decided and we had messed it up so

we were getting out, so we have created this nightmare dystopian

chaos in northern Iraq and Syria, where people are dying in their

hundreds and thousands. It'll be interesting how this moves us

forward because as you say we have got into other ventures since then,

and we haven't handled the aftermath any better. As someone once said we

don't do nation-building. An Iraqi friend of mine says an Arab proverb

says 1000 years of tyranny is better than one year of chaos. A depressing

thought. The male is very interesting -- the Mail on Sunday.

Prices to soar if we whip the EU. Catastrophe on the high street. For

giants of UK retail break silence. It has got stuff about Boris Johnson

on page eight. Boris offers Number 11 keys to three MPs when he is at

number ten. What is going on here? It is almost a special EU edition of

the Mail on Sunday. You have got different angles coming at you from

different sides. One may have chosen to give most prominent is too is, as

you say, these high Street bosses, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks Spencer

is and B, saying that if we leave the EU that will have a devastating

effect on the economy. This is the camera crew remained strategy to

say, never mind the romanticism of it, which is the Leave campaign main

card, here are the hard nuts and bolts, this is what actually happens

to the economy if you decide to make this decision. We have got a month

of this to go, but I think the remaining campaign will focus almost

exclusively on this because they can't read compete in terms of the

romanticism and if we leave we will make Britain great again. They can't

match that, but they can say, folks, think hard, it will cost you. Your

mortgage, the country's economy is fragile. It won't be pretty, but it

could be quite effective. This is project fear. Yesterday, George

Osborne was saying house prices will drop 18%, now all the supermarket

bosses are going to say ever they will get more expensive. The IMF is

saying it is a disaster. I think there is a risk here that people get

a bit sick of the doom mongering, and we have a lot of it is about

whether we should join the euro or not, and if we don't join it it'll

be a disaster. We had in Scotland around the referendum there, and

there's a danger the public feel Banged Up Abroad the establishment.

Of course these big businesses, being in the EU help them, but if

you look at small businesses, they are less keen. They talk about the

red tape and the amount of money it costs them. If you talk about the

romanticism of the Leave campaign, that is also getting pretty grim.

It's increasingly about immigration. All this scaremongering about

Turkey. The cover of the Daily Express today. Yes, let's look at

that now. 12 million Turkish people say they will come to the UK. Have

they talked to all of them? This is a survey. They know them all

personally. They are much more likely to go to Germany, in the

unlikely event of Turkey joining the EU any time soon. Exactly. The level

of debate on both sides is pretty pathetic. We have got a project fear

going you are going to be skint, it is a disaster, and Vote Leave saying

we are going to get swamped, these horrible phrases about the kind of

people who will come here. And the Sunday express is really about how

they are all criminals, murderers, they have higher rates of crime in

Turkey, and all the students and unemployed are coming here. They

have spoken to 2000 -- 2600 people, but to extrapolate that is 12

million people arriving on our doors! Then there is a little thing

from Nigel Farage. Their enthusiasm from the Germans or the French, and

given away that Austrian politics are going today O'Groats really

scary. There is always this assumption that if people can come

to this country then they will. A lot of people will, but a lot of

people won't. It is a big decision to move to another country. When you

see a headline like this, it does its job, it attracts attention, but

you really have to question it. I remember when he talked about

Romanians coming here, the original figure was 29 million. That didn't

happen either. The Blair government said yes we can open the EU to all

these countries in Eastern Europe. I think they said it would be about

40,000 people. It was more like 500,000 or a million, it has been a

lot. I do think that people have rightful... That's because this is a

great country! And London is a great centre and people want to be here.

But it does not mean everyone wants to be here! When you get outside

London, people are much more worried about it than they are in London. In

London, we feel we are a melting pot, the whole world is in London

and it is exciting, but out of London people worry about their

jobs, they see their wages going down and they don't like it. The

less familiar you are with immigration and how that can be

great, the more worried you are about it. When the Leave campaign

talk about project fear, will they talk about headlines like this? It

is the other side of the coin. The level of debate is dire and we have

got another month to go. The Battle of Britain on a 32 days to go, this

is in the Mail on Sunday. This piece about Boris Johnson, there are some

people quietly within the Leave campaign who think that he has not

hit a lot of the right votes, that he is not the master of detail, and

that the rhetoric has been wrong. What do you think? In a way, this is

a little bit unsurprising. People who watched him as the Mayor of

London, people who watched him closely won't be surprised at all.

He is great entertainment and he adds great gaiety to our nation in

terms of politics, but when has been a hot political issue to address, he

has never been that good at doing it. It really was a risk making him

the figurehead of the Leave campaign in the way that they have. There are

several flaws. One of them is that Boris must always be Boris, so it's

difficult for him to address a political subject in a sober way. In

some ways, this is quite a sober argument. Boris almost takes the

schoolboy throwing the stink bomb in the room approach, and that was

never going to work. I think the wheels are coming off that as well,

this does not look good for him. Him offering the Treasury job to three

different MPs. What they are actually saying is that with all the

shambling and the messing around, a does not look very statesman-like.

Some senior Tories come out, like Michael Heseltine, what he is saying

about the Hitler project unifying Europe last weekend showed a total

lack of John O'Groats and the limerick about the Turkish

president. It does not feel very statesman-like. Boris is funny and

he is great, he is jolly company, but this is serious and he does not

really seem to be making the transition to the politician that

can reach parts other can't reach, the Heineken Boris. Someone who

looks capable of being a leader. And that is a problem. The problem is he

is brand Boris and he makes the cut relation that he is to Sirius and he

will damage Rand Boris and he needs that for the future. It's

interesting that the latest conservative survey, which had put

him ahead as toys of leader, now put him behind Liam Fox. It is Willie

not working. -- choice of leader. For me, one of the most interesting

stories, students back back on freeze reach. Most students support

a ban on people speaking offensively on campuses. What did you make of

this question mark what is going on in our universities? 76% want

speakers who they don't agree with, what they term offensive, they want

them banned. We said earlier, what about Galileo, suggesting the Earth

microbes he would have been banned. All Martin Luther. The whole point

about university is to make everyone think about ideas that they they

find unpalatable and to argue them out and to use rational debate and

discussion to say, I may not agree with you, but this is how I demolish

argument. Also, the whole point about free speech is that you may

hear things that you find offensive, that is somebody else's freedom to

say it. So the idea that the place where somebody goes to expand their

mind becomes a place where nothing offensive can ever be mentioned is

appalling. We need a campaign for real students! I don't mind the fact

they object to a lot of this stuff, but what real students do is to get

the speaker come and then give them a really hard time. Exactly! You

note there may be a picket outside, or someone with a bucket full of

rotten fruit, but that was the point of it. It is not like in our day! It

is this health and safety culture gone mad. Is this the generation

that have been brought up in such a coddled way that they feel that

their human rights are offended if somebody says something that they

don't agree with? It is ready worrying and narrowing. The Times

had a front-page story this week about students at a certain

university being forbidden for throwing mortarboards in the air for

a photograph because they could be injured, but they could pretend to

do so and they would photo shop them in. But isn't that all about what it

looks like and not what it is? That's another thing. The other

story is a school bans whistles as to offensive or aggressive soap

schools can't blow a whistle at the end of break time because pupils

find it scary. The world is a tough place. There is a lack of confidence

in some places, universities don't have confidence that their students

can adapt and deal with this. And students don't seem to have

confidence in themselves. There were people who said Donald Trump, his

views many people disagree with, should not be allowed to come to the

United Kingdom. He could be the president of the United States. It

would be interesting to see who wants to ban him then. You can't

lock yourself in a cupboard with earphones on saying, I can't hear

you, none of this exists. It is pathetic and not grown up. This is a

point where they are meant to be spreading their intellectual wings

and trying to understand things. We are going to end up with the Sunday

Times Magazine. Young attractive educated female and single, she

relents the man drought. Yes, women now outnumber men at British

universities. By the time they graduate, there are 29% more women

than men. This young woman is writing about what that means in

your 20s when there are so many less men who might be the kind of people

that might end up as your long-term partner. It is called assault if --

she has written a very good piece about that, and I think there is a

kind of irony in all these women who have done so well, and now they find

themselves slightly marooned. We call it left on the shelf. This is a

blatant plug because I am editor of the magazine, but it is a really

good piece! So there are no attractive plumbers? Opposite track.

There are fewer male students, beware the alert mortarboards. It is

all the girls faults! It is all gone mad. Thank you, that is it for the

papers.