09/04/2017 The Papers

That is all the sport, now on BBC news here is Maxine with The Papers.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be

With me are the Home Affairs Editor for the Evening Standard Martin

Bentham and the journalist and broadcaster Rachel Shabi.

So let's look at the front pages this morning. We're starting with

the Mail. Boris Johnson's decision

to cancel his trip to Russia The Mail on Sunday

reports the criticism from the Kremlin as well as Liberal

Democrat MPs here. The Sunday Times says

Britain and America are preparing to accuse Russia

of complicity in war The Telegraph says Vladimir Putin

will be told to pull troops from Syria and withdraw support for Putin

in an age dish and it headed by the UK.

The Observer leads with a story about Len McCluskey,

the leader of the Unite union, who wants the Labour party

to investigate MPs who he says are plotting against him

about Eastenders actress June Brown - who plays Dot Cotton -

who's had eye surgery lasting 60 seconds -

that she says allows her to see again!

Let's begin. Most of the papers talk about the Syria- Russia situation

and what the allies will do about it. The Sunday Times splashes on a

piece by Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, setting out what

the forthcoming agenda will be which will be, as it says here, turning

the screws on the Kremlin, holding them responsible for every death

that happened last week because of this gas attack and saying that the

Russians must do much more to bring Assad to heal and bring peace in

Syria. That is the rhetoric that is coming out. Later this week the

United Nations is set to deliver a strong message, the question is if

the Russians will listen to that, it must be hoped that they do that this

is going on for a long time and it is not clear this will happen.

That's the thing. Now Boris Johnson says he isn't going. Boris Johnson

was due to go to Moscow. He has called off that mission. The theory

is, I don't know if that is true or not, but the working theory is that

the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to visit Moscow

this week and they have divided the workload in the sense that Boris

Johnson will be going to the summit this Tuesday to try to rally Western

support for this sort of US-led position on Russia while Rex

Tillerson handles the Russian side, I don't know if that is true or not,

some people have criticised Boris Johnson, saying he is clearly seen

as a liability, the fact that he has postpunk this engagement makes him

look like a poodle -- post-poll engagement. If you look at the front

page of the Mail on Sunday that is the headline! They call him a

poodle. It's a difficult one. The Kremlin is not easy to negotiate

with and is a huge supporter of Assad. Is a quote in the Observer

saying that this, the positive scenario of what happened last week

because the crucial question is whether the effect of America

showing military force in that area suddenly changes the dynamic and

makes the Russians listen more rather than less, because previously

they had just gone on supporting Assad ever since the previous

failure to carry out an air strike in the wake of a chemical attack,

the Russians have got ever more deeply involved, overtly supporting

Assad on the ground and so on, and whether this air strike last week

changes the dynamic and this Russian analyst in the Observer suggests

that it might. The Russians will see America as a serious player with

some weight, that's the positive part of it, the negative part is

that there's the risk of confrontation things getting worse!

That's what we have to see as the next week unfolds and the weeks

afterwards, as to whether Putin, who clearly believes in strength himself

and shows of force, response to someone doing the same. It is

interesting that, is it not, Rachel, that the USA has changed its tone on

Syria following this chemical attack. Speaking to Russian analysts

earlier today, they were saying that having gone from "We are not

interested in Assad and Syria, we are keeping everything inside the

United States" they have now gone the other way. Do you think that

will make any difference to Russia, the fact that the US has taken

action? Well. This idea, none of this would have been possible

without Russia backing President Assad along with other players in

the region, that precisely has been the tragic problem with the Syria

war, that it has been sustained in a deadly way by outside players on

both sides, so that any escalation on one side is met with an

escalation on the other side. And that has been the worry. And that is

why in 2013, President Obama decided not to go ahead. And if we look at

what has happened since the very limited US air strike in retaliation

for that gas attack, while Russia has amassed warships in Syria since

that happened, bombing has resumed in the area that was subjected to

that horrendous gas attack. And that is the worry. It is not like this

doesn't have consequences, and the consequences have to be calculated.

There is no point, of course we want to see something as horrendous as a

chemical attack like this. Of course we want to see some kind of response

to that. It is a very human reaction. But it is not something

that should factor into a calibration as serious and as

dangerous as this. I just want to move on, it's a continuation of the

same discussion with the bombers backing new strikes. It is the point

Rachel made, the bombing continues. I suppose if you say that the

chemical weapons are a step too far, it's an arguable position, because

clearly those things kill people as these bombs have killed some people

in the last day or so, every bomb is likely to kill somebody. From that

point of view we can understand the argument but the world in general

draws the line at chemical weapons. If you calculate too much, as Obama

did, and do nothing, it doesn't help the situation necessarily. So I

don't think responding to this one thing means the whole problem will

be solved. If it were to happen again what would the response be? If

you've done it once...? That's the worry, it's right that chemical

weapons are a red line. There are lots of things that are red lines

that we have not respected either in Syria or elsewhere. But let's look

at what happened. In 2013 to an agreement was brokered by Russia

whereby Bashir al-Assad was supposed to get rid of his stockpile and his

capacity to generate more weapons. But clearly hasn't happened. And

Russia has known that it wouldn't. There have been 120 red strikes,

it's just as horrifying to be subjected to that so we don't have

any consistency and that is the problem. If you are going to have a

policy needs to be consistent and consistent throughout the Middle

East. Possibly although nowhere else is using chemical weapons at the

moment, is there? That would be the argument of the Trump

administration, that they have set a new tone, and the previous failure

of Syria to disarm is the result of the inaction before. Setting a new

tone is not diplomacy. Saying Assad must go, as they now say, is not,

what are you going to do them, who will replace them, how will you

broker that agreement? Look at what happened when we said that in Libya

and Iraq. Surely those are signs of what happens if you leave a vacuum

where there once was... A brief comment because I want to move onto

some other stories! The point is, by saying, do nothing, the example of

Syria... Right, I'm calling a halt! Let's move on. The Syria vacuum has

created a massive problem. We could discuss this for a long time, we

must move on now. Dirty tricks, Labour MPs accused of dirty tricks

in union vote, says Unite. Len McCluskey is up for reaction. He is

arguing, he is a big Jeremy Corbyn supporter and is claiming that the

right wing of the Labour Party, people like Tom Watson, the deputy

leader and so on, are backing his opponent in the election because

they want to oust him to get at Jeremy Corbyn, basically. He alleges

dirty tricks. We don't know the rights and wrongs of it. What does

that tell us about the closeness of unions and political parties? It is

a weird one, this. This is quite an interesting interview with Len

McCluskey in the inside pages. I think there is perhaps a more

interesting points than the sort of political stuff that has made the

front pages, which is how unions are going to respond and stand up for a

workforce in a workplace that is increasingly zero hours, contracts,

that sort of gig economy climate. It's possibly a more useful

conversation to the public. That this will get the headlines! The

right of the party of Labour will be saying, if you can't stand up for

things, you can't achieve things if you are not in power and that is

their argument, to save Len McCluskey's propping up Jeremy

Corbyn, to say that is heading for electoral disasters of the party

needs someone with a different approach. That will be their

argument. I'm going to jump over a couple of papers and go to the

Sunday express. This is interesting. Fly-tippers. They will be forced to

clean up, pick up litter, if they can be found in the first place!

Yes! Fly-tipping is a big issue. You can see it. Beside the road. Utterly

selfish. The story is exactly that, they are trying to do something

about it. The gimmick is that they say that these people will be forced

to clean up, if they can be caught first! They will have to be caught

first to clear up as part of community service. Unfortunately

there's quite a lot of control over what you can do, community service

and so on, how many of those people would actually do it is

questionable. Everyone would like it stopped, the question must be

educating people not to do it in the first place. Will it put people off

if they think they might get caught and have to pick up litter? No. The

other angle of this story apart from what you said is that the government

wants to stop councils charging to take non-household rubbish to the

tip. Which is the responsible thing to do when you have non-household

rubbish like loads of DIY materials and that kind of stuff. So that is

the argument, that if people knew that they did not have to pay for

that, then they would responsibly go to the tip. One of the charging

issues is to stop builders and commercial people taking stuff to

the tip. You can't go with enormous skip loads of things and say it is

all household waste! This is all-day YY! -- this is all DIY! On the other

hand, people have bins that they can put normal litter in and a lot of

people don't do that! I don't think this issue will go away because of

this. The final story, did you put a bet on the Grand National yesterday?

No. No, but a great story in the Sunday Telegraph of the golf widows.

I think it's fantastic. They are not really widows, they golf widows

because their husbands go out playing golf and they bought a horse

and it won. Two aspects to this story, one, it is encouraging if you

are busy and your wife or partner goes out and spends in this case

?30,000 each on a horse! They picked a winner, that's great! If they

spent ?30,000 because you were busy doing something else that is

alarming! Imagine if they did that every time you were busy. Although

it is a lovely story, very uplifting, I loved it and I loved

the picture. It is a great picture of the two ladies. Anything you'd be

tempted to do? By a horse with my spare 30p?

LAUGHTER What did they win? They won

?600,000. I might have that wrong. They did pretty well. They can

probably sell the horse now for more money. They could. They have won

all-round. On that note, while you are checking the numbers and

thinking of buying a horse I want to say thank you very much indeed for

coming to look at the papers. That's it for The Papers.

Keirin hello, yesterday just about everywhere enjoyed the warmth