24/06/2017 The Papers

On Meet the Author, my guest is bestselling crime writer Martina

Cole. We will talk about her latest novel the Betrayal 25 years after

her first, Dangerous Lady. who's deputy head of sport

at The Sun, and the journalist

and broadcaster Rachel Shabi. We start with tomorrow's

front pages. The Observer leads with fire safety

in schools, saying proposals to relax standards

are to be dropped by ministers. Prince Harry dominates the front

page of the Mail of Sunday, saying he considered

quitting his royal role, Blackmail fears after MPs hit

by cyber attack. The cyber attack is also the main

story on the Sunday Times, who report there was fury

at the time it took for the incident And the Express leads

with an image of Jeremy Corbyn, saying he ignored Armed Forces Day

invitations to appear Lots of concerns over the safety of

high rise buildings to the fore. The Observer leads with that - ministers

in panic over fire safety at schools. Assist guests and they

would relax standards to save money but now they have thought better of

it -- a suggestion. It appears to be a plan that was due to be in

fermented post-election with the Department of education. --

implemented. However, the events of ten days ago seemed to have focused

minds. According to the draft guidelines, school buildings do not

need to be completely protected to achieve a reasonable standard of

life safety, so it would no longer include an expectation that most new

school buildings would be fitted with them. Unsurprisingly, things

have changed somewhat. Yes, no one can afford to take that risk, can

they, and that's where the tension rises between the cost it's going to

take and the amount it's going to cost and the requirement to keep

everybody safe? Yeah, and this is what the story on the front page of

the Observer is pointing out, that this U-turn over the fire safety

proposals is signalling a shift in the government, so moving away from

prioritising cost-cutting to prioritising health and safety,

which is of course what you'd hope they'd have done to begin with. But

it does... This whole issue of regulations around fire safety,

around building materials, it does shine a light on what has been

conservative practice for some years. This is the government that

under Cameron was gloating about cutting red tape because there were

ridiculous health and safety measures that were getting in the

way of companies making money. This is what they were talking about a

few years ago. That was very much a line they were pursuing, and, you

know, things like that do have consequences, and tragically in this

case. If we look back, there will be potentially many, many years where

successive governments of all colours will not have necessarily

spent the money on these buildings that they might have. We've all seen

for many years these tower blocks all over the country. We are

talking, at the moment, 34 blocks in 17 areas. That's 600 blocks that

still have to be tested and there are concerns about those. This is a

systemic failure, this is not one government, one council. This is

over a period of time. I accept what you're saying because their result

that talk about red tape and all that nonsense... That was under

Cameron. Nevertheless this is a wider issue because in Camden I saw

they put out a press release a couple of days ago where they

thought a certain type of cladding could be put on the buildings, and

they've now tested it and found out it was an inferior, cheaper version

of the cladding that they didn't know had been put on the buildings.

So is this contractual, the local government or councils themselves

not doing sufficient testing? What we do know is that this is going to

be a hugely expensive, frighteningly expensive issue now for government,

because local government simply can't afford to find the money for

this. It hasn't got the money to pay for these revamps and retests. Where

does the money come from and what other budgets will be found? This

was never even considered as a concept until ten days ago. That's

how huge the impact is, because this will have an impact for years and

years to come. The Sunday Telegraph is talking about another problem,

not just cladding, but this time installation, which is the real

threat, safety experts are warning, and they are quoting fire safety

experts in this, a man in charge of the Tall Buildings Fire Safety

Network, saying this material should be removed from all of those, and

that material inside properties. This is material behind the

panelling, so still cladding, but behind the panels. It's not the

visible stuff. Yes, and that's the stuff that is highly flammable. What

they are saying is, why would you test the coating, the panel, and not

the material that is behind it, that is the insulating material? So we

are all, every piece of this points to just more and more potential

problems and risks in buildings that are being used, and buildings that

people are living in, and, yeah, it does point to something that does

need to be co-ordinated on a national scale, because the

consequences are huge. Some aspects of safety and regulations are not

just national, are they? They are European Union regulations as well.

So we are supposed to have got safer and safer with increasing

regulations. We have been told that some of the materials used in the UK

are legal in the UK but not in Europe, not in the United States.

Are our lives worth less than those elsewhere? It's astonishing. It's

also surprising given we are signed up, still, the regulations that have

been, that we've agreed to, with the rest of Europe, that we don't seem

to observe the same regulations. It is surprising, but then it isn't

when you look at this culture of seeing red tape is annoying and

getting in the way and something we have to find a way to navigate

around, which has been the political culture here for quite some time.

Shall we move on to politics? In its purest form! The Telegraph again.

Tory plot to skip toxic generation and install younger face is next

leader. Another headline Theresa May won't want to hear, I'm sure.

Wondering how long she has got. So the Conservatives, both MPs and

Conservative donors, have decided that their toxicity might skip a

gene, skip a generation, rather, so they've decided that the Boris

Johnsons and the Davis Daviss had had their day, and they need the

younger faces of the party to restore them to their former glory,

so they are looking at what they described as a golden generation,

which I didn't know was that thing in the Conservative and - apparently

it is - and it's the 2010 intake with people like Boris Johnson's

brother, Joe. Their arm or Johnson is in the fold! This -- there are

more Johnsons. The cross that has been hung on the neck of England

football teams for 20 years - I think if you'd said a month ago that

Jeremy Corbyn would be unquestionably the dominant force in

the Labour Party without any threat to his position, that Vince Cable,

who wasn't even in the House of Commons, would be the next Liberal

Democrat leader, and that the Tories would be fighting like ferrets in a

sack with the Prime Minister clearly on her last legs - nobody would have

believed it. And yet you've got this ludicrous concept of the Young Turks

now trying to fight for prominence within the Conservative. You've got

all these people - a year ago, Stephen Crabb was standing for Prime

Minister. Goodness me, how could we forget? He is only in his 40s. He is

passe already! That's why we love politics and working on stories like

this, isn't it? It's that it happens so quickly. It is the speed, that's

it. I always love the next Prime Minister label. Speaking of

politicians who risen from, well, difficult times, ministers want

Spreadsheet Phil as next Prime Minister! The Chancellor, in case

you didn't know. Clearly there is a rift inside the Conservative to.

They are all united in not wanting to reason and that she is toxic, and

her brand is irredeemably damaged -- do not want Theresa May to stay. Of

course there's a section the party that is a bit more remain-y and

backs Philip Hammond. There is a quote that the former Chancellor

believes he is equipped for the job because, if Theresa May could be

Prime Minister, so could he! Which is one way to look at things, but it

does in one way shine a light on this incredible crisis going on. Do

you really believe that Philip Hammond, who clearly has got an

animosity, we can say, towards Theresa May, given what's gone on in

the last month, would think about coming in for two years, go through

the hard yards of Brexit negotiations alongside David Davis

and say, right, I've now steered this country through these choppy

waters, and I'm going to give it all away? I've gone past the idea of

those two working together on anything frankly. I can't imagine

that in any scenario. Imagine them job sharing as Prime Minister? I'm

going to look, just for balance, of course, back at the Observer, and

Jeremy Corbyn - I don't know if I can find my copy of it. Jeremy

Corbyn with microphone. He tells Glastonbury, build bridges, not

walls. There he was, Martin, on the main Pyramid Stage. It is truly

remarkable that this fellow, who, for much of his political existence

was a voice in the wilderness - he was a prophet without honour in any

land, let alone his own. And now he is a mess I nick figure with banners

for him at Glastonbury? -- messianic figure. He has become the political

zeitgeist, the spirit of the aged in a way that no one could really have

foreseen, and his voice has a degree of resonance, quite clearly, with an

awful lot of young people. But how tricky time is he going to have when

it comes to the nature of Brexit? Given that many who are Labour

voters opted to leave that many young people who are now turning

towards Labour would like to stay, and we've now got beneath this the

unions saying, we need a soft Brexit. He's going to disappoint

somebody, isn't he? It's interesting to me that the minute we talk about

Jeremy Corbyn being incredibly popular, a political and cultural

phenomenon of the likes of which we have not seen - whatever your

opinion, you cannot look at this and say it's not something extraordinary

that's happening, his capacity to connect with people in this way will

stop and the minute we talk about that, we immediately talk about

things that might derail it, as opposed to trying to understand why

it is happening in the first place, and that's because whatever he is

saying, the vision of this country that he is offering, which is

collectivism in the face of rampant individualism, a vision of is a

different kind of politics to the one we've had for so many decades,

that's been quite ravaging, that's created these huge divides in

society, that has brought upon a crisis in the welfare state - you

know, the minute you have somebody like Jeremy Corbyn saying that in a

political capacity, people respond to it, because it resonates. But he

still has to deal with the issue of Brexit because labour is split as

much as the Tories are. Yes, but the overarching theme in context of

framework within which that will happen is a very changed framework.

He has managed to shift politics and the framework of our discussion to

the left in a really significant way. It was mentioned, 50 senior

Labour MPs, and we saw the list of them, you know - they are still to a

degree and oppositionist wing within the PLP, and they will represent the

majority view within that Parliamentary party as well. There

has been criticism that he didn't go to Armed Forces Day as well. Just

put that in very quickly because some papers are taking exception to

that. The Mail on Sunday. Quick comment from both of you. I wanted

out, says Harry, the reluctant Prince, saying he considered giving

up his royal role. It's a very interesting and brave thing for him

to say. I think, given the knowledge of the crisis that was caused to his

grandmother, she wouldn't take kindly to this. His

great-grandmother his grandmother's background... The reason she became

Queen was because her dad had to become king. It's about duty, isn't

it? It's about duty, but I think Prince Harry and his honesty over a

range of things is refreshing, and has kind of created a much different

image of the Royal family. I was just about to say, Martin has done

his conveyor belt of papers. Never let us down.

Coming up next it's Meet the Author.