29/04/2017 The Papers

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

With me are John Rentoul, the Chief Political Columnist

at The Independent, Ruth Lea, Economic Adviser

for Arbuthnot Banking Group and the broadcaster,

Welcome. Thank you for being here tonight.

Tomorrow's front pages, starting with this.

The Observer leads on today's summit of EU leaders saying they want

the UK to provide guarantees to EU citizens living in Britain before

The Sunday Times reports that the other EU member states have

rejected Theresa May's negotiating position and accused her of living

The Sunday Telegraph says the Prime Minister has rejected

the demands coming from Brussels with politicians on both sides

of the Channel warning that the talks could turn nasty.

The Mail on Sunday focuses on pensions, reporting that

Theresa May will bring in new laws to prevent a repeat

of the Sir Philip Green BHS scandal if she wins the election.

The Independent has a photo of Theresa May campaigning

in Scotland but its lead story is about Jeremy Corbyn.

It says the Labour leader is looking at curbing arms sales to repressive

And the Sunday Express concentrates on the investigation

into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann,

It says Scotland Yard's prime suspect is a woman.

And now we will look at how some of the papers have been covering the

meeting in Brussels of the 27 states you want to remain part of the EU.

The Observer. Give us our rights or no trade talks. They urge a spirit

of good will in the talks. Do they really? I think there is a bit of

posturing in these talks. There is no question about citizens' rights.

Everyone has agreed on that. What will be an issue is the price. How

much will the exit deal cost? I could take a long time. That is

where all the outlandish phrases about Theresa May living in another

galaxy or a parallel universe are coming from. The amount we want to

pay and how much they want us to pay are so far apart. Who will win that

argument? They both will. Yes. I am an economist. You never see a person

who is an economist with one hand. They say they will start with the

divorce proceedings. I quite agree. The financial settlement will be the

big Rob them. There has to be substantial progress before with dot

discussing the new relationship between the EU and the UK. --

problem. But if there is significant progress made, they will start trade

talks. It is easy, Charlie, to think that Britain needs the trade deal

more than anyone elsebut of course we do a lot of business with the EU.

Exactly. I don't see why we need to pay to leave. I don't get the

concept. I believe in a thing called powers of state and statecraft. Will

they come and collect the money? Will they take us to court? If you

have agreed to chip in to something, shouldn't you on that? Not like

this. This is like a Hollywood divorce. It is almost like, who was

it, Judge Ida bore, -- Zsa Zsa. You know, I will keep the house. To me,

it just shows what the EU is all about. I will always believe this.

We don't need them. We will happily trade with the individual states or

with the EU as a whole. They will want to sell their products. We need

a deal to do that. We will come back to the deal. The front of The

Observer. Labour pledged to put a halt to unpaid internships and zero

contracts. It is really small thinking. I would rather have an

economy that is moving and giving people the chance to participate in

it than this. We are supposed to be grown-ups. If the deal is not good,

don't take the deal. But if you are desperate for a job? Then the deal

is good. It is still your decision at the end of the day. Again, I

would rather have, in certain situations, a job at low pay, at

least knowing I am working, and have the ability to, you know... There

have been some bad press things written about zero-hours contracts.

What he is saying is an arguable, a job is better than no job. But you

don't exploit workers, that is part of the. -- inarguable. Labour's

policy is that they are against exploitative zero-hour contracts. I

think they can be good ones sometimes. But the band altogether

is a bit heavy-handed, actually. You risk people losing jobs. Taking the

pay cap off of public sector workers, well, where is the money

going to come from? We are still running a deficit of 2.5% of GDP.

Will Jeremy Corbyn raise another ?20 billion? I worry about that and his

attitudes to finance. When it comes to these, minimum wages, living

wages, the ones it affects and lose out are in minorities. They are the

ones that need to get on the ladder at any place and build up

experience. They are the ones that suffer the most. Unskilled. Both of

them have a stunt of raising the minimum wage. They are campaigning

and using some other guy's money. If they want benefit out of the tax

funds, you can argue about it. But I don't want Martine's money to get me

a vote. I am so relieved. The Telegraph. Theresa May rejects

Brussels' demands no sooner than they have been thrown out. Posturing

and posturing. She won't, in my view. It is facetious to expect they

will both win. What happens in a negotiation ordinarily? If you don't

like it, don't agree. When she gave her speech in January, she said a

bad deal is worse than no deal. Fair enough. But I do think she is very

keen to get some sort of deal. And I hope that we do get a deal. Because

I don't think it is a good idea strategically or indeed economically

if you simply just walked away from the EU. It would be bad form or

all-round. But I am optimistic there is enough good will. I think there

is reasonable good will on all sides. It is in the interests of

everybody. But there are constraints. She cannot offer a

large amount of money, Theresa May, because voters back home will not

buy it. She said we will fulfil our obligations. That could be 40

billion pounds! Soon you will be talking large sums of money! I am

disputing that. I think they are very keen to do a deal. Why would

the papers exaggerate this? Because they are papers. Journalists, ay!

Yeah, yeah, they just want a good headline. They are scandalous rags!

There is a very good Matt cartoon on The Telegraph. We will not take part

but we have to keep paying, like gym membership. Somebody reading the

Brexit bill. Theresa May keeps saying she needs a big majority so

she has got the mandate to negotiate how she wants to within Brexit. Is

there any chance you will hold onto the single market or the customs

union? This is an area I am not totally an expert on. I don't think

we really need to copy from people I have spoken to that none more about

these things than I do, I think that in a sense you are still a member of

Europe by the backdoor because you will still have these laws affecting

it. -- that know. I want three and fair trade. I am not against Europe.

-- free. These people are leaks that are above everything. They have no

democratic mandate as far as I am concerned. But I want to trade with

Europe, I want to do and travel in Europe. But we believe Europe and

make it more difficult. We will are leaving the single market, the

customs union, no doubt about it. That will cause economic harm to

this nation. I am not convinced that is true. Things will continue as

they are doing. Even under the WTO this will continue. But we will have

to pay tariffs and there will be less of it. They will pay more to us

then we will do them because they have a very huge trade deficit. --

them. 60 billion quid! What is? The trade deficit! Don't argue with an

economist. Tory sidestep Heathrow split. The manifesto, will it

mention Heathrow? I don't think so. We are one week away from the

publication of the manifesto. Theresa May looks like she will

dodge one issue that is difficult because Boris Johnson and Zac

Goldsmith, who wants to be an MP again, are both opposed to it. Don't

mention the war or Heathrow. What does that suggest to you about when

a decision will be made, then? They will be kicking this down the

runway, pretty much. Runway? This election is all about Brexit. This

is giving her that referendum before the referendum so she can argue

under her own terms, which, in some respects, I think, is needed. We

decided to get out. This is negotiating. You have to live it to

one person to take the lead-up to that makes sense. I can see it.

Jeremy Corbyn, talking to some Labour people the other night, they

told me they were scared to death of him. But Jeremy Corbyn has

incredible grassroots support. He made not the popular among his

parliamentary party... But that will not go. If they lose the next

election, we should not really assume they will, but I think they

have odds against them for a win. But if they do and Jeremy Corbyn

steps down, does he go as leader? The membership could vote him back

again. Opinion polls keep saying he will. The gap is slightly closer

than it has been under three opinion polls, though. 50? 40? 11, 17, and

13. I was in favour of him getting involved. I thought we could hear

from the other side of the fair enough. Have a say. Then we will go

back to normalcy. That is never a good idea. It isn't. I hang my head

in shame. The Independent. An exclusive festival from Watts. --

article. Jeremy Corbyn sets his sights on the arms industry.

Considering a pledge on curbing arm sales. That has been in their

manifestoes since year dot. The problem for Jeremy Corbyn is he does

not have a reputation on national security. Anything which looks like

an attack on the arms industry, however justified I think he is, is

going to feed into perceptions he is weak on defence. In the arms is

profitable which is embarrassing. But it contributes to trade. It

amuses me, it says here, Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary,

praised a US firm that sold missiles to Gaddafi as a role model. This is

always the thing, the ethical considerations versus how much money

it makes. And if you aren't going to sell to one or the other, who do you

not be friends with and have a relationship with? The one thing

that truly scares me about Jeremy Corbyn, I am not going to agree with

him politically, there enough. I got a quote out of him, the one about

when Osama Bin Laden was taken out. I was on press TV with him and we

were talking about not shooting him. I said, we can agree to not agree on

the death penalty. At if you can't send your soldiers into the country

to kill the enemy... When you have someone say, I will never press the

button, that's avoidance of duty. You are supposed to be sitting in

that seat at Number 10. But for some people that's an honest and south.

But not when you are responsible for the safety of your country, security

of the country. It is what we use and every day that we don't get

attacked by somebody else and every day that things it's their... It's a

deterrent and hopefully no one ever has to make that decision. The

problem that Jeremy Corbyn has is Labour's policies to the deterrent,

but his personal policy is to never use it, in which case it is useless.

So there is a genuine political problem. John's story is called,

Theresa May must abolish the Lord's. That's a provocative headline!

Please explain. My point is that the one thing that could stop the recent

May achieving a Brexit deal that she wants is the House of Lords. I am

wondering whether she ought to put her commitment in the manifesto to

reform or a abolish the Lord's in order to stop them stopping her. She

isn't going to abolish the Lord's, is she? I think it is unlikely, but

she ought to consider constraining the Lord's as the power further in

order to prevent them causing problems during the Brexit

negotiations. Well, they've got an election chamber, but they are meant

to hold the government to account. I thought the behaviour when they were

pushing out of the 53... The triggering of Article 50 was the EU

notification bill. The way the Lord's behaved over that I thought

was disgraceful. Why? Because they are on a late it. I didn't elect any

lord and they just said... They were frustrating the will of the British

people. I voted for Brexit. There was a referendum that said we should

leave the EU and there were all of these unelected people who were

potentially frustrating that particular position. A lot of people

argued that Brexit was necessary to return powers to our Parliament,

which is where sovereignty lies. Elected Parliament. Parliament is

two houses, an upper and lower change -- chamber. How can you

separate that? The Lord's are unelected! Where there is a

difference is, in the system it is the Queen and Parliament. In the US

system it is we the people. We've had a referendum and the people have

spoken. Here it is we, the Queen. Ultimately it is... Yes. Seriously.

We, the people. The people have spoken. Now the power that's been

vested in the Lord's and the Parliament, even though it comes

through the Queen, it comes to the people and they have spoken. Of

everyone around the desk tonight, you were not the one I thought I

would have trouble with! I am a well-behaved person usually. Not

tonight, when I am in charge! I am a pensioner so I have to indulge! I am

nearly 105! Where are we going next? Donald Trump. 100 days. How would

you sum up his first 100 days? It thinks it has done extremely well,

even better than FDR... Obama on a disaster, but this was wonderful!

What's... He has had some stuff that hasn't gone well. His attempts to

stop people coming in from certain countries were thwarted by the

courts. They have the power to do it, but I think it was the wrong

decision. He has the constitutional right to do what he did. He has a

title law that backed him up. You could tell us anything! He did have

the power. That's his jurisdiction to do that. For instance, the court,

when he reject the thing, they were using staffie said on the campaign

trail. That's ludicrous! But not just one judge made this decision.

Successive judges made the decision. It was a nasty campaign on all

sides. The press don't like him because he isn't part of the club.

Everyone thinks he is this buffoon. Jon Sopel found out that you don't

mess with the chief. He got slapped out of the press conference. But it

doesn't make you think that he believes in free speech, does it?

That press conference was all about the leaking of information and I

could be where he was really hacked off, because he said, listen, you

want to write bad stories about me, fine, if they are true. A lot of the

stories haven't suited his purpose. A lot of them turn out to be true.

100 days is an arbitrary marker. That said, he said it himself. He is

going to have to live with some of it. It's been like no one has ever

seen before, the first 100 days. He has changed his mind. Clearly

somebody has advised him that he had thought that of his original idea. I

am delighted. A lot of people said during the election campaign, don't

listen to Donald Trump. Don't take it seriously. And so it turns out

that in the 180 has tried to do all sort of things and as soon as he has

resistance he does rethink it. When people were complaining about things

not getting through Congress, that's how it is supposed to be. With

President Obama... I am just going to sign the executive order, by

people off... Donald Trump side plenty of executive orders as well.

I am very glad he is settling down because I thought some of his

comments were horrendously extreme. It is the checks and balances in the

American city. It seems to be functioning incredibly well and he

hasn't as an opposition from some of the judges, he has also had

opposition from Congress, not least of all his own party. This is his

own party, saying, hang on. So when it comes to all of this cut, I'm not

sure he will get it through Congress. Let us finish with one

other story. A comb. HS2 trains bulk up for the bulking. -- a comb.

People are getting more fat. Broader? Taller and bigger. So they

need to have bigger seats. This is HS2 so it gives me a great

opportunity to say that I think HS2 is a dreadful white elephant and

there should be banned forthwith! That will make it more expensive! I

think it's a waste of money and I think it will further increase the

pulling power of London in the UK economy because it is just another

railway out of London, which will attract more commuters. The

economics are rubbish. We should be spending the money on better

transport links in the rest of the UK. Better roads. I think our roads

are disgraceful, as someone who spent a lot of time on motorways. I

take the train to Manchester. How fast the you need to get there? It's

a small country! Maybe you should get a rocket from London to

Manchester. Two hours! You read and you work. And you watch the

pretty... I'm sorry but HS2 has no takers around this table. Many

people who have lobbied for it, she says... That's it for the night. We

should try and do this more often. Three guests, half an hour, yes!

Thank you all very much. Coming up next, it must be time for the

weather!