27/12/2017 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be

bringing us tomorrow.

With me are Josie Cox,

business editor at the Independent,

and Tom Bergin, business

correspondent for Reuters.

Here for the Long Haul -

The i reports that Jeremy Corbyn

says he's ready to fight an election

at any time, and will wait

until 2022 if the Government

survives for a full term.

The Times claims that

the Metropolitan Police is failing

to protect vulnerable children.

The Financial Times reports that

companies have made a record amount

from floating on stock exchanges,

mainly because of deals

in the US and China.

The Daily Express runs

with a story about people

seeing their pension funds whittled

away by hidden charges.

The Telegraph leads

with a warning that patients

are going blind while waiting

for cataract operations.

The Guardian leads with a story

claiming the rise of automation

and the machine will affect

the poorest hardest.

The Mirror claims hospitals made

£500,000 a day from NHS carparks.

The Mail's front page has a report

claiming half of local authorities

haven't had a bobby on the beat

for the past year.

So, let's begin...

Your stablemate at the Independent

has Jeremy Corbyn in for the long

haul, he says. He has been giving

interviews, one suspects, to make

everyone realise he's still around?

Yes, absolutely, it looks like it.

To me, this looks like a bit of a

battle cry. There have been some

developments around Theresa May

which might give the impression that

she has stabilised a little bit and

I think that this could be a

response to that, Jeremy Corbyn just

saying, I am here, too. All these

election promises that we made, they

still count, we're still to be

reckoned with. He doesn't really say

anything particularly new however,

he's reiterating what we've already

heard from him, that he expects he

could be Prime Minister next year,

reiterating all his commitments to

education and health care and

housing. All of these really

traditional Jeremy Corbyn promises.

So, it's reaffirming most of what

he's already put out there. But Tom,

is there a sense also that perhaps

Labour haven't kicked on the way

that those within the labour

movement would have hoped following

the relative success that they

enjoyed back in the summer in the

election?

True, may be one challenge

they face in that area is around

Brexit, an issue on which they're

being deliberately ambiguous. And in

this interview he talks about

clarifying the position, which has

been quite confused of late,

regarding a second referendum.

Earlier in the month Tom Watson

indicated he was possibly supportive

of a second referendum, but he has

come out and apparently settled the

issue by saying they're not

advocating a second referendum! Of

course that's very different to

actually explaining your position on

it!

I'm none the wiser! Is that

fundamentally part of the problem,

then, that they do have a poor

constituency in some of the

traditional Labour Heartlands

Hospital were pro-Brexit, sorry, who

were pro-Remain, but then you have

got a lot of other people who would

see themselves as middle of the road

Labour supporters who believe that

Europe is in fact the future?

Absolutely. So, is it a problem or

is it a strength? It is working out

pretty good if you take the view

that the Brexit will unravel,

because the promises they made

cannot be delivered, and we've seen

some of that already, the fact that

we could walk away without paying

any money - well, that didn't work

out. So, from his perspective may be

the thing is to sit back and not

Express a view and let everyone

else's view be shown to be

inaccurate.

That's Theresa May has

now moved onto the second stage of

negotiations to talk trade - and it

could go swimmingly from there, so

it is a fine line for Labour?

I

think for them it is about momentum

and keeping it up, and as Thomas

says, clarifying some of the issues

which got them the support in the

first place. I think there was

definitely a ground swell,

particularly amongst younger voters

perhaps, for clarity - they want to

know where Labour stands.

The Daily

Telegraph, Tom, Mr Heseltine, he

should lose the whip apparently?

Yes, some very outraged people!

Current and former Tory grandees. It

is a statement made by Michael has a

time in the past day or two around

the conundrum that people may face

upon whether to vote Corbyn with the

aim of having a softer Brexit, or

potentially remaining, and doing it

out of interest for the economy and

the country generally, or voting

Conservative, and I gets the

calculus here is, if you don't

support naturally Labour, if you're

a Tory, you might think, he's got

all these terrible ideas, he wants

to nationalise the railways,

increase taxes... And the view of Mr

has a time is that if it all comes

to pass, and, of course, that is

uncertain, then we could change it

in four years' time, whereas Brexit,

that is forever. And these are the

kind of things which come up, we had

people like the Bush family coming

out and saying that would not be

voting for Trump. He's not looking

for a Cabinet is a shot at this

point in time, Mr Heseltine, but of

course many people are happy to say

he should lose the whip.

Why should

he lose the whip over saying

something like this, I don't

understand?

I agree with you, I

think the rhetoric itself is not

actually that surprising, coming

from him as well. But I think taking

the sea word, Corbyn, it is another

level I suppose! But these aren't

Labour supporters who are angry that

he mentioned Jeremy Corbyn, these

are people within the Conservative

Party, so why are they angry that he

has spoken about Brexit in this way,

because we know he was a Remainer,

we know he is pro-EU.

As Josey said,

mentioning his name and Prime

Minister in the same sentence

perhaps! Before the election we had

the position of the Conservative

Party that it was just inconceivable

that Jeremy Corbyn would be Prime

Minister, because his policies were

too left-field. Now, we're actually

seeing a senior Conservative talking

about, actually it might not be such

a bad thing. So, for them...

So, is

it the calculation that it would be

better...?

I had a conversation with

a senior banker a few days ago who

said, absolutely Labour would be a

better option, because the concern

is that the Conservative Party has

already taken their industry to the

edge of the cliff, and many of them

seem to want to go over it as

quickly as possible. So, this banker

is saying, I could face higher tax

but the other alternative is no

industry whatsoever, if we continue

to go with a hard Brexit with the

Conservative Party.

OK. Well, if

that is what he is saying, then that

is very interesting! The Times,

Josie, apparently David Davis, the

Brexit secretary, has been sidelined

as a civil servant takes over the

Brexit negotiations - could this be

true?

If it is, it is certainly a

very worrying development. The

person in question apparently taking

over response abilities is Oliver

Robins, the former Permanent

Secretary. The Times cites these

sources and it would be quite

worrying. They say that he has gone

on a significantly more official

visits to Brussels than Mr Davies

between July and September, and that

he now also reports directly to

Theresa May. Now, I think the

interesting thing here is that David

Davis has of course been the face of

Brexit

Davis has of course been the face of

Brexit, and as we all know, the

negotiations have not exactly gone

swimmingly despite the recent

breakthrough. So, perhaps this is a

development which is from the EU

side, a move away from David Davis

in an attempt to try and sort of

make that process easier, and try

and remove some of the barriers that

have perhaps been in place.

Has

David Davis been seen as a stumbling

block?

One of the things, of course,

with the latest breakthrough, which

was basically Britain gave the EU

most of what it wanted, so it is a

capitulation...! I'm sure Theresa

May would not look at it that way,

she would say she has done rather

well! When you get to about 90% of

what they're asking for, most people

would consider that to be a good

negotiation! But there have been

questions, in that case, of course,

people say Theresa May stepped in to

confirm her hand and this particular

civil servant is now of course HER

civil servant, within her

department. But also over recent

months, the depiction of David

Davis' competence is not quite what

it used to be.

The depiction, or his

competence itself?!

I cannot speak

in detail about that! But certainly

arriving for the beginning of the

negotiations with no paperwork

whatsoever across the table from

people who have stacks of it, which

is of course going to be

photographed and tweeted almost

instantaneously, did not start off

very well, giving interviews where

he said, I don't have to be clever

in my job, I just have to be very

calm. Calmness is not necessarily

associated with cleverness in terms

of the intellectual spectrum, so

he's choosing words and things where

he does not really elevate himself

necessarily. So, the position, his

position, does not seem to be one

but has really been enhanced through

the last six months or so.

But he

will still be there at the press

conference with Michel Barnier,

right? After whatever discussions

take place?

You would think so but I

guess... Anything could happen! It

could be the civil servant! OK!

Staying with the Guardian, the

poorest, Josie, will be faring worse

in the age of automation with jobs

threatened and £90 billion in wages?

I suppose it is not very surprising

that we got the robot story between

Christmas and New Year, because it

is a traditionally quieter news time

and robots always make for good

discussion. It is a report from a

left-leaning think-tank, which is

saying that robots, I should say

automation, isn't necessarily going

to take over jobs, it is not going

to create a society where robots do

all of our jobs for us, but it could

contribute to a reader tradition of

wealth, which could lead to more

inequality. The logic behind it is

that the low-wage jobs are most

likely to be automated in future,

and that as a result of that, wages

will get pushed up at the top end.

The think-tank is calling on the

government to do whatever it can to

prevent that from happening, to

maintain the balance.

What would you

do, then?

A lot of it is about

including things in the industrial

strategy that will educate employers

around retraining staff where

necessary, making sure that people

can be redeployed into different

roles that aren't automated. And

just making the workforce future

proof, I suppose.

I suppose making

sure that society is aware of the

spectrum of consequences that there

could well be as a result of

automation.

Very much. The question

is, do you take incremental measures

like that, or do you look more

fundamentally at things like minimum

wage, universal... Robot taxes, an

idea that Bill Gates came up with.

So, we have not necessarily, we have

had the gig economy but we have not

adopted regulations very quickly to

that and we have ended up in

situations - the question is, can we

move faster on this trend?

And

finally, the Daily Express, new

pensions disaster, rip-off fees, we

knew this, didn't we?

We did, it

seems the City regulator has come

out with some new data to show that

most people are staying with an

existing provider when they ask the

provider to take it out and put it

into something which is more

accessible to them. And the provider

typically charges higher fees. Fees

are the kind of things which can

destroy your pension, if you listen

to Warren Buffett, he said that's

the surest thing to make you poorer.

These were very controversial

measures, giving people access to

use their money as they wish rather

than to purchase an annuity. We're

really starting to see more and more

data that raises the question as to

whether people will be financially

better off as a result of this.

But

putting power into people's hands

was seen as a good thing by some

people, when Mr Osborne decided to

make these changes?

And it was

welcome to largely at the time. But

I think increasingly over the last

couple of years, what we've seen is

that the responsibility that comes

with that is perhaps not hatched by

the education that pensioners have

around this. And we've seen examples

of this which are terrible but also

examples of scams, where pensioners

are accessing their pension pot,

because they want that money, and

they haven't got, returns are

terrible elsewhere, in bonds, for

example, and they're accessing that

money, and doing irresponsible

things with it just because they

don't have the education. So this is

going to shine a fresh light on the

responsibility of the regulators

etc.

All does yellow Lamborghinis

that we're seeing whizzing around

out there as a result of this! Thank

you to both of you. Coming up next,

it's the weather.