02/09/2017 The Papers

my guess is Marcel Thereux, and we are talking about his story about

storytelling, and why it matters. Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the papers will be With me are Nigel Nelson,

who is the political editor at the Sunday Mirror

and Sunday People, and the political Tomorrow's front pages: The Observer

says that the Prime Minister, Theresa May, is facing a revolt

from remain supporting Conservative The same story leads

the Sunday Telegraph, with Tory rebels being told to back

Brexit or get Corbyn. The Sunday Times also leads

with a Brexit story. It says Theresa May has secretly

agreed a ?50 billion divorce bill The Mail on Sunday claims that

Theresa May ignored a memo from Sir Lynton Crosby

telling her not to risk a snap And the Express front page has

the news that Moors Murderer, Ian Brady, who died in May,

left presents to pen-pals including So let's begin, and Nigel, I will

get you to kick us off this time. We will start with the Sunday Telegraph

where we are going Brexit to begin with. Tory rebels being rapped over

the knuckles in advance of a busy week. Parliament comes back on

Tuesday after a long break and the first thing they are faced with is

the great repeal bill, now they have dropped the great. That puts all EU

law into British law on Brexit date, which is basically quite sensible.

However, a lot of Tory MPs do not like this very much. They are

worried about the government basically taking too many powers

away from Parliament and handing it to Whitehall. So the Telegraph as

saying that six of them may well rebel. It could be even more than

that. At the same time, Labour objects to the bill because it

doesn't put in the protections they want to see in it and they will be

voting against it and they are encouraging the Tories to come

across. In the Sunday papers, a charm offensive by Damian Green,

first Secretary of State, who was effectively Theresa May's Deputy

Prime Minister. He is appealing for Tory unity. Theresa May is in every

paper asking for Tory unity as well. David Davis is in another Sunday

paper doing the same thing. It is quite a co-ordinated effort.

Probably she will get through this week. If she doesn't, the government

falls, which is their warning. And as the Telegraph says, then you end

up with Jeremy Corbyn, as they would be a general election. Probably

these MPs will hold their fire and try and amend the bill in committee.

Still a problem for her because she relies completely on this bill to

get Brexit through. It is all about numbers, isn't it? It undermines

completely her slim majority, this absolutely way the then seeing which

is going to be the difference between her staying in power and

Jeremy Corbyn getting in -- wafer-thin thing. Or possibly Brexit

never happening and ending up with a hung parliament again. We were

talking earlier and saying I feel like I have heard this argument

about could the Tories be united and put their splits to one side? I feel

like I have heard that all my adult life. And there is Bill Cash quoted,

just to make sure it feels like a rerun. You think either get on and

do the job that you have got us into by calling the referendum that David

Cameron... And we will come at him later, and just get to it. But this

is all the worst sort of venal party politics. You have Corbyn who

doesn't want an election, you have Theresa May, who doesn't want an

election because Corbyn might win. Then you have the SNP and Democrats

and a few rebels and you have Conservative MPs saying don't bully

us, we will do what we think is right for the country. I think that

is probably right. And the election is quite important. Although Jeremy

Corbyn has to say he wants an election, he doesn't really want to

have to negotiate Brexit. Much better to pick up the pieces right

at the end of it and try and put right anything that might be wrong.

Talking about election, much has been made this week, and it has

picked up in articles tomorrow, about Theresa May saying she is in

it for the long-term and will be around for the next election. That

has caused some disquiet. I read a story last week naming the date that

she would go. This is making the assumption that as she had indicated

to Tory MPs, she wouldn't stay beyond September 20 19. I did a

story working out the date from that with Tory election rules and the

Parliamentary timetable, and 30 August 2019, a Friday, when she

would have to quit. Suddenly she goes to Japan and make the

announcement she will stay, which astonished all of us. Not least the

Tory party. You had Lord Heseltine coming out, Grant Shapps, pointing

out that this is not in her gift. The Tory party decides the leader,

not the leader. And she was asked directly by one of our BBC political

correspondent, and once she says she is not Steyn, people will say it is

unstable, and we can't negotiate with her. She showed the ability to

mess up the election and what she has said is I will stay as long as

the Tory party and the country want me. That is all you have to say. You

are not putting a timetable on it. The next question is does that mean

after Brexit? She could repeat the same answer, I will stay as long as

and so on. It has gone down well, calming the waters in the Tory

party. Suddenly she says this and kicks up a huge storm again. Another

huge storm brewing in the Sunday Times, suggesting she is getting too

busy and making secret deals before anything is announced. And as Chris

Mason said when you were talking to him earlier, it is so secret it is

on the front page of the Sunday Times. Allegedly she has agreed a

?50 billion Brexit deal, so she wants to approve this after the

Conservative Party conference in October, in a bid to try and

kickstart talks with the European Union, and Britain would pay between

?7 billion and ?17 billion a year to Brussels, and Downing Street

completely denying this and saying there is no truth in it. A source

close to Tim Shipman or close to Number Ten, I should say, sorry, a

source close to Theresa May, says they are planning how to do the

Brexit Bill, and whether to do it as an early payment. Again, it is

coming back to numbers, and we still don't know what the bill is going to

be. We still don't know what the cost of the negotiations is going to

be. And over what a long period of time. And rather oddly, I think,

given that most Sunday papers rather like doing polls and things, they

have a survey saying seven out of ten voters and four out of ten

Tories disagreed with Mrs May's assertion that she should fight the

next election. 30% of voters want her to fight on, 40% want her to

quit before 2022. I find it odd that they didn't put that further up.

When it comes to this, it is time we got figures out there. A whole of

the negotiation is being held up as of money, and if Barnier says this

is the money we want from you, then we are in a negotiation. It is David

Davis's duty to beat him down on whatever it is but at least we have

a starting point. It is the fact we have no figure which means we are

having talks about talks six months after Article 50 was triggered.

Let's go back in time with the Mail on Sunday, because they have a story

which takes us back to the snap general election and that Theresa

May was warned it was a catastrophic mistake. Yes, so this is a secret

paper which has been leaked to the Mail on Sunday, and it is a memo

from Sir Lynton Crosby, the Australian election guru who helped

David Cameron wind two elections and Boris Johnson when two terms as

Mayor of London. He was away in Fiji on a long planned family holiday for

his wife's birthday. Does he wish he had stayed there now? I suspect he

probably does. He was told that they were thinking of going for an early

election and he said I don't think that is a very good idea, mate. Not

to the Prime Minister, but somebody quite senior, and said what research

have you been doing? He is... I don't know him, you probably do,

Nigel, but he is renowned for being absolutely rigid. His message was

who do you trust on the economy, and not on foxhunting and everything

else. His advice was clearly this is a high-risk strategy, there is no

guarantee you will get the landslide the polls are currently predicting.

And of course, she ignored it and we all know now what a total shambles

it was. And mainly the blame game, inevitably, goes back to Fiona Hill

and Nick Timothy. You have a fascinating, a great... Well, an

interesting picture comparing Nick Timothy to Rasputin, mostly in line

with the beard. The character has a bit to do with it as well. Or a Mac

and we hear this thing that we have heard so often, that Theresa May's

him ignored Crosby's advice out of spite. You get an adviser who thinks

they have more power, and they exclude other people, and that is

where you end up with a shambles. What did you make of this, Nigel?

There is a lot of unpicking of who said what. It is a blame game. What

is interesting about the article is Lynton Crosby was responsible for

making a presidential campaign and making Theresa May the centre of it.

Clearly a mistake, she wasn't up to that. Equally you had Nick Timothy

and Fiona Hill, with an iron grip on Downing Street already causing

problems, and making a huge cache of the party manifesto. Everybody takes

the blame for it. Ultimately it is with the Prime Minister because it

was her choice to call the election in the first place. We will move

away from Brexit to something totally different. This is in the

Sunday express, about health tourism, particularly on the issue

of cancer. It is a fascinating piece, this one. It is from Doctor

Thomas, a cancer specialist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and

he says that one in 20 patients he treats as a health tourist.

Interestingly he is talking about the fact that the bill for health

tourism is probably hugely underrated. At the moment it is

reckoned at about ?2 billion, he thinks it is much higher. The

government are trying to do something about this. They want

people who come in and are not entitled to NHS treatment to put a

deposit down, at least to pay for the nonurgent treatment they have.

What Doctor Thomas says it is they don't have the staff in hospitals to

actually administer that. So effectively not working. Clearly

warning like that from a person like that needs to be taken seriously.

They have a way of dealing with it. If it is not working they need to

make it work. I will have to rattle through, because there is a lot we

want to get through. Onto the Observer, and at the bottom, not

their main story because they were on Brexit as well. A clampdown on

fixed odds betting. There has been a lot of concern about this,

particularly from gambling addiction charities, because touchscreen

roulette things, and the argument is that gamblers at the moment can play

casino games with stakes of up to ?100 every 20 seconds, which in

extreme cases means a player can gamble away ?80,000 in an hour.

Gambling charities, addiction charities, want the stakes to be

lowered to about ?2. Now, obviously that would have implications for the

Treasury, and so there has been a bit of... Sort of I think, that the

Treasury wanted to keep money but obviously be seen to do the right

thing. You have the Department of culture, media and sport saying they

must do something about this. In a letter to the Bishop of St Albans,

one Doctor Alan Smith, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has

assured the Bishop that they are going to do something about it, and

they are going to look at it. It is four columns of a story that is the

government rights to the Bishop to say don't worry about it, we are

looking at it. But they have to lower the stakes, because there is

not a lot else you can do to control this. And have fewer of them on the

high street. They target poorer areas. We have been running a

campaign on the Sunday people the two years about this. It is

essential you have fewer of them, the stakes are much lower, and stop

targeting poorer and vulnerable people.

Let's go back to the Sunday Telegraph

Let's go back to the Sunday Telegraph and the bottom of the

page, tucked away, a story about the NHS terrifying older women who

choose to have a child in later life. This has come from Professor

Cathy Warwick, the outgoing chief executive of the Royal College of

midwives and a midwife herself, saying health professionals have

overstated the risks attached to age of older mothers... I think as you

probably know, I think it is something like 35 or 36 and you are

a geriatric as a mother. Devastating. Terribly upsetting for

women. What she is saying is the sensible, if you are healthy, your

risks are only a little bit greater than if you have a baby in your 20s

but there are a lot more women having children in their 40s, there

are more children born to women over 40 than under 20 but nevertheless,

the facts speak for themselves, rates of stillbirth and Down's

syndrome do increase with older pregnancies. My mother was over 40

and I'm still here. And perfectly normal as far as we can tell! Let's

finish on the story tucked inside the Sunday express, Nigel, a picture

of David Cameron with this shorts on at the corn free music festival but

he's planning on going further afield? He's going to south Dakota,

to the wild west. A lovely story, he has an ?800,000 publishing deal, he

makes ?125,000 an hour for a speech, he's not really on this uppers but

he's going to Rapids city in South Dakota and he's going to give a talk

for ?5 a head and I hope they thoroughly enjoy it. Apparently the

tickets are selling rather well. Rapids city is a place where there's

a civics centre and its organised by... It's the Jonty Bloom Vukovic

foundation speaker series. In 1994 Mrs Thatcher gave a speech in the

town, it is close to the town of Devon. They have heard Colin Powell

and Benazir Bhutto. The place to be for ?5, $11, and ?2 30 if you are a

student. The suggestion from the headline would be it is all going

down the pan but he is esteemed company. I hope he puts some better

clothes on! Thanks very much, Jo and Nigel, great to have you with us

again. Coming up next it's time

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