31/01/2013 This Week

$:/STARTFEED. In 2013, one political programme transformed the

coverage of politics in the British isles. This week, we take you on a

Great British train journey as the Prime Minister heads to north

Africa and commits more forces to the fight against the Islamist

threat. Where will the journey end? Former Security Minister, Admiral

Lord West knows the region and the threat better than most. This is a

highly dangerous and complex area and David Cameron should be very

wary of going full steam ahead. The Government unveils the next

stage of high speed rail. But it will cost over �30 billion and take

over 20 years to complete. Journalist and commentator Mary-Ann

Sieghart casts her eye over the table. I can't help thinking

there's a bit of toy bashing going on here, you know, his train's

bigger than my one. And the drama of politics, as House of Cards

causes a locomotion. We are joined by the star of Hit play This House,

actor Phil Daniels. Set in 1974 when you could tell the difference

Evening all. This is Molly the dog. Blue Peter have one, why can't we?

A hearty warm welcome to This Week! Unless, that is, you happen to be

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Britain and becoming a regular This Week drinker. In which case, we

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Please think again because we're not the people you think we are,

here in Broken Britain. We're a nation of few laughs, terrible TV,

as you can see, and even fewer good men. A nation where Chancellors

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in the bins behind Tesco where even old nags fear to shop, lest they

end up in the burgers. Where David Cameron - he's our PM you know -

would sooner visit Libya and Algeria than a food bank in his own

constituency. And where we still allow Nick Clegg to call himself

Deputy Prime Minister, and a man of integrity despite admitting his

political principles won't prevent him preaching equality for the rest

of us. And an expensive private education for the Cleggettes, the

little darlings. What's that, you say, my East European migrant

friends!? You've never heard of Intergrity Clegg.!? Well most folk

haven't! Sounds like you Romanians and Bulgarians will fit right in.

Don't forget to pick up a few crates of the old Blue Nun at duty

free, and we'll see you after the show. Speaking of damn good reasons

to emigrate, I'm joined on the sofa tonight by two men who most of us

would like to see blasted into orbit - the Iranian Space Monkeys

of late night political chat. I speak, of course, of #spinthebottle

Alastair Campbell. And #sadmanonatrain Michael 'choo choo'

Michael, your moment of the week? Hillary Clinton retired as

Secretary of State this week. did. Although her age is against

her, she would be a highly credible candidate for the presidency.

to beat. She has absolute recognition, not only across the

United States but across the world of course. The Republicans are in a

terrible mess. So are all the other democratic candidates if she runs?

Absolutely. They could succeed by having their first woman President

after having their first black President. The publication of the

Education Select Committee report because I think Mr Michael Gove is

slowly but surely being found out. I thought it would be going to see

the cast of Borgen? I'll come on to that later.

I seriously think Gove's big success is to be described

constantly as a success by right- wing commentators, I think he's a

disaster. You hope, you wish?! listened, Andrew, he's a disaster.

I don't know about you, but we thought Timbuktu only existed in

the Mr Men books, so imagine our surprise when we discovered it's a

real place and that there are Islamist militants offer operating.

The Government's worried so it's sending troops to support the

military campaign to make the place fit for democracy or at least fit

for our kind of dictator. It's a far cry from Mr Tickle having a

Barney with Mr Bump. We asked our Admiral Alan West to get out the

maps and give us his take of the week.

A Security Minister in the last Government, I was all too aware of

the threat from Islamic fundamentalists here in north

Africa. I was warning four years ago of the

security implications in this relatively ungoverned part of the

world with risks to Europe, the region and Britain. These warnings

of concern were not acted upon because the Al-Qaeda threats from

Afghanistan, Pakistan and subsequently Yemen seemed more

immediate. So when earlier this month French troops intervened

against extremists in Mali and British hostages were caught up in

an attack on a refinery in Algeria, which us -- I was not in the least

surprised. I'm surprised by how much on the front foot David

Cameron has been in this crisis. His initial reaction to support the

French was good, but he seems to have got carried away and is far

too eager to get further involved. Do we really need to send 350

troops to teach French-speaking Malian troops how to fight?

The Government needs to set out a very clear explanation of our

strategy, the limits of our intervention. Where does it stop?

It's always very easy to get increasingly entangled, but

extremely difficult to get out. Just look at what happened in

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Now, this is no Vietnam yet, but I'm

very worried that we are ging to see Mission Creek -- going to see.

I'm aware it's fantastic for Cameron's image to strut the

international stage, meeting with African leaders to discuss

international security and declaring he'll fight against

terrorism. But I urge him not to play on people's fear. It is wrong

to suggest that the terrorists in Mali pose an exste stential threat

to us in Britain. Thst a rag tag coalition of dissidents, criminal

gangsters, who're not on the one sole overall command. Let's leave

it to the French with our indirect support to sort out this problem in

what was one of their colonies. After all, we simply cannot afford

to get embroiled in more operations overseas. Despite talk of

ringfencing defence, there is no doubt that the Defence Forces of

this country have been cut too far and are unable to conduct all the

operations that Governments would seem to wish them to conduct.

So take a step back, Mr Cameron, because Timbuktu is not our highest

priority. Alan joins us now from his bunker

in Westminster to our little bunker in Westminster. Welcome. Thank you.

Michael, what has Timbuktu got to do with us? 99.9% of Brits couldn't

even find it on a map? I rather agree with that and I agree with

Alan as well. I saw why we supported the French but I did not

imagine that would imply we'd send 350 troops. I agree with Alan that

trying to teach people to speak French, it's hard to imagine how

the soldiers will do it. I'm afraid I go even further and I said it I

think in the last couple of weeks, but the British Government's policy

of knocking over dictators all over the map creates the voids in which

Al-Qaeda flourishes. What is happening in Mali is at least

partially a consequence of having knocked over the dictator in Libya.

What's happening in Syria leads me to believe that it should not be

our policy to knock over the dictator because we don't know what

disaster will follow. We have created a void in Iraq and Iraq

used too keep Iran in check so that that has all gone to pot. We are

about to leave Afghanistan in a very unstable situation. Oh, and

just for good measure, Egypt, we have destabilised as well.

would you respond to that, Alastair? Was the Arab Spring a

complete waste of time then and do we have no interest in the values

and the politics and do we believe in democracy? Also, when Alan said

- I thought it was interesting take on the whole thing - when he said

David Cameron should stand up now and say when all this would end. He

doesn't know when it will end so he should say that. If we say we

support the French in trying to deal with what they do consider to

be a serious threat, then I think that has to mean something other

than just standing up in the House of Commons and saying we support

what you are doing. I do by the way believe in democracy, but can you

give me an example of where it's broken out? I'm saying do we

believe in the Arab Spring. You are suggesting we have created a vacuum

in Egypt. Do we just want dictators all over the Middle East? The Arab

Spring is a slogan. We all signed up to it be, you but what have been

the consequences of it. Well, I've made the point. You have made a

serious accusation against the Prime Minister. Why would the Prime

Minister quote play on -- "Play on people's fears and play on the Al-

Qaeda threat?"? He's not been clear on what it's about. Maybe he's

using it for some other purpose and I'm not sure what it is. It's clear

to me that Al-Qaeda's fractured. AQP f L which was in Afghanistan,

got driven out of there and then was in the Fatah, was taken out. We

have managed to start stopping money going to them and managed to

start dog stuff to stop... He was on the brink of taking over money?

That's the leadership, the central control. What ULB did, he saw there

were groups, he pulled them together with one message. It's a

franchise. He franchised it out. We've shattered the leadership

really. Al-Qaeda in Yemen is now very dangerous and they've done

things like the underpants bomber and the Maghreb is dangerous but

it's not an exstential threat, not the same sort of threat as a

centralised and controlled as Al- Qaeda was. It's wrong to pretend it

is. It doesn't mean it's not dangerous. I think he was saying

that it's seriously dangerous and therefore we have a strategic

interest in being part of a response to it. It's right that we

should support the French but wait and see how the dice lie. We are

still in the middle of an operation. The French have taken Timbuktu and

we need to see now what is the situation on the ground, the

African Union are bringing in troops, let's see what we are going

to do. He moved very quickly to say we are going to send people to

train them. A lesson we might draw from Algeria, which is the opposite

lesson of what has been drawn because people have been critical

of them in drawing the terrorist. They have extremely well organised

forces capable of dealing lethal blows with terrorists and actually

seem to be able to keep the terrorist threat very much under

control. Therefore, the general strategy of trying to train up

local troops so that they are able to suppress Al-Qaeda locally is an

absolutely sound strategy. I happen to think that apparently Alan does

too. The British high command is clearly dismayed of taking on a new

commitment at a time of substantial job losses and cuts in defence

spending. What can they do?, the chiefs of staff? I thought it was

interesting to see Philip Hammond come out with the increased

spending cuts announcements. The agreement was that post-2015, there

would be a 1% increase in the defence budget. What's been agreed

by the Treasury is a 1% increase in the procurement budget. That means

it's less than 0.5%. And also from 2016. I don't believe he's resolved

the financial problem. There's not enough, I'm afraid, being sent on

defence. I think we are standing into danger as a nation if we get

involved without money being spent. The politicians in this country on

the left and the right have a habit of taking this country either to

war or into major military engagement on peacetime budgets? Mr

Blair did it five times, Mr Cameron's now done it twice?

don't think any of them do it lightly. I don't think David

Cameron's doing this lightly. if they want to do it, they should

increase defence spending? They should and David Cameron's played

fast and loose with the defence. The way he used to attack Gordon

Brown over lack of equipment and play politics with it, what he

hasn't done is set out a strategy plan, all the threats that he

believes to be real and then if you like, put together the Armed Forces

that could deal with the threats. He hasn't done that. He was right

to criticise Labour for not increasing the defence budget even

though you kept on deploying the forces. My criticism would be he's

doing the same? I don't think he was right. We did increase the

This is 1987. It fell to �26 billion by 2002. By 2009... It was

the Cold War. The Cold War had ended in 1989. My point is...

no, you increased it by less than 1% a year. Even though you were

going to war all that time. I do not believe the campaign that David

Cameron ran against Gordon Brown was justified or fair. At a time

when Gordon Brown was... My point is Mr Cameron's doing the same

thing. First of all, we went into two major theatres of war under

Labour. We were in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously with

thousands of troops in each and it was unsustainable. Yes, I believe

there is an inconsistency between the Prime Minister's position and

his defence spending. More than that, the defence budget, in my

view, is full of a load of junk. It is full of nuclear weapons which

are of no use to us and aircraft carriers of which we don't have a

surface fleet... He likes the carriers! For the moment, we don't

have any aircraft either! No. I guess the danger here is after Mali

where? If Al-Qaeda has dispersed, you close it down in one place, it

will pop up in the Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Syria? That is why I

identified it four years ago as being a dangerous area. It moves

into the Western Sahara. There are drug routes. There's drugs, arms

smuggling, tobacco and all sorts of other smuggling. That whole region

is a nightmare. As was said earlier, the Arab Spring, or the Arab

Awakening, is a mixed blessing. Al- Qaeda were very slow, they didn't

know it was coming, but we have been slower in working out our

strategy. Very briefly, how do you think this will pan out? I don't

think we know. Alan talked about the whole drugs business. That is

something elsewhere we have a strategic interest. Where it will

pan out is unclear, not least because these franchises you call

them, they are going to pick and choose their targets very carefully

and we have to be... We can't go everywhere. David Cameron will not

go between the 450 he's committed to Mali. There will be another Mali

next year. Thank you. Alan West, thank you.

Now, people are up in arms because the Government thinks only one

teacher is needed to control a room full of hyperactive toddlers. Well,

we think nursery care is a doddle compared to controlling these two

on a Thursday night. Alastair, shush, just for once!

Michael, put it away, nobody's interested.

And even though the This Week staff-to-children ratio is far too

high, we're prepared to go even further because waiting in the

wings, star of the smash-hit play This House, actor Phil Daniels is

here to talk about the appeal of political drama.

And for those who always feel the need to be center-stage, remember

there's plenty of room to forget your best lines on The Twitter, The

Fleecebook, and the good old black- and-white Interweb.

Now we know This Week isn't Michael's only paid gig - we have

to share him out occasionally - and there's not a lot to go round these

days. When he's not taking up the double seat in our studio, he can

usually be found taking up a double seat on the 2.38 stopper train from

Swindon to Chipping Sodbury on a Sunday afternoon. Ah, the high

life(!) Do people actually watch that stuff!?

Anyway, he'll be glad to know that, once the high-speed rail network is

built, he'll be able to go further and faster than he's ever been

before. Choo choo! What's that you say? He'll have to

wait at least 20 years! Oh well, never mind.

This week we turned to #sadwomanonatrain - that's Mary Ann

Sieghart to you and me - for her It's normally a certain sad man

squished on to a This Week sofa who gets to go careering around the

world on great railway journeys. He doesn't get to drive a train like

this! It's been all about how marvellous Britain's railways are

this week, or how they will be if we bang in another �35 billion quid.

There's been a lot of talks about how the benefits will outweigh the

costs. There is a bit of toy envy in there, you know, his train set

is bigger than mine! I think it's vital for Britain if we are going

to succeed in the global race. Other countries have high-speed

rail networks. We need to have them, too. I get some big names in the

back of my cab. Don't believe me? See! They look comfortable. So is

the opposition. They are happy to sit back and enjoy the ride towards

high-speed rail. We are 100% behind this project. We want to see it

built. We will continue to offer cross-party support. This route

plunges through rural Britain, rural Staffordshire and should use

existing transport corridors. It blights the environment, homes and

lives. Oh, I do hope that economic growth arrives faster than High

Speed Two! The coalition express suffered a bout of rail rage this

week. In fact, it led to a decoupling of the carriages as Lib

Dems voted against Government legislation and boundary changes.

The bill was in the coalition agreement, but the Lib Dems reneged

on it because they were cross with the Tories for dropping House of

Lords reform. Actually, the Tories had never promised Lords reform.

They had only promised to set up a committee to bring forward

proposals on it, which is what they did and no more. The unelected

House is seeking to frustrate the previously expressed will of this

Parliament, not a previous Parliament, to deny fairness and

equality in the franchise. Speaker, the Liberals have

exchanged their legendary sandals for flip-flops. I agreed to the

boundary changes, but in the knowledge that the rest of that

agreement acted as a counter-weight, mainly in my mind through Lords

reform. All aboard! The Government's embarked on a new

destination this week and no-one is sure where it is. All the signs

point to Timbuktu. David Cameron's initial offer of a couple of

transport planes to help the French in Mali has already escalated to

surveillance aircraft, a roll-on roll-off ferry, 350 trainers and a

military protection force. At this rate, half the Army will be there

by the end of the year! What is the exit strategy? It is very easy to

get drawn into these things, but not always clear what the endgame

and what the exit strategy is and indeed what does the endgame look

like? France has made it clear it envisages a short intervention to

stabilise the situation on the ground. Nick Clegg's been at the

end of some awkward questioning this week as it turns out that when

it comes to his children's education he is happy to pay for an

upgrade and his older son may end up at private school. Even a Labour

Prime Minister sent his children private! But it's become much more

politically toxic and now we have a Conservative Prime Minister with

children at state schools. The general feeling is that if

politicians are going to run our public services, they ought to use

them, too! I hope people would respect that our instinct is like

any parent to do the best... Difficult to swallow when cou come

out with such big statements -- you come out with such big statements

about the corrosiveness on society? When we make a decision, that will

be the subject of public commentary and criticism and so on. I hope

most people would accept that we want to protect the privacy of an

11-year-old boy and make a decision that we think is best for our son.

OK. Some of my passengers are always grumbling. On the benches

behind David Cameron a lot of them are cross that the Lib Dems have

grabbed some of their plum seats. They are also worried the Tory

train will hit the buffers at the next general election. This week,

we heard that a young charismatic backbencher called Adam Afriye was

in the early stages of planning a leadership challenge. He hotly

denies he is planning anything, but having been a shadow Minister

before 2010, he must sure I'll be disappointed that he is still

sitting in cattle class! Can the Prime Minister confirm that traces

of stocking horse have been found in the Conservative Party food

chain? I had somewhere in my briefing, I had some very

complicated information about the danger of particular drugs for

horses entering the food chain and I have to say he threw me

completely with that pivot! after this week, Cameron and his

team are certainly going to have to work hard and get on to win the

next election. Plots or no plots, the economy is heading for a triple

dip. So, it is not full steam ahead, is it? More like signal failure!

That was Mary Ann Sieghart at the wonderful Buckinghamshire Railway

Centre near Aylesbury. We are joined by Miranda Green. Michael,

the nation is gathered around its TV sets expectant, waiting for the

oracle to speak, so what does choo- choo say about HS2? I say that

Britain in the 19th Century led the world in railways and that today we

are 30 to 40 years behind France, Spain and China. I just don't see

why the British could possibly believe that while every other

developed and developing country is going for high-speed rail that we

could somehow sidestep it. I don't see how we can. Choo-choo says yes?

I do. You are nodding? I echo that view. I'm a big supporter of HS2.

The debate was MP after MP talking about how this related to their

green fields, to their homes, to their buildings. It is not what MPs

are for, is it? I thought there were two horrible bits of NINBYism

this week, the Cumbria thing and HS2 where the Tories say we can't

have it because it will go near our constituencies. We need high-speed

trains. Michael is right. It is not just European countries, in Asia,

Chinese, you are talking about countries that are light years

ahead of us. As you said, even if it does go ahead, we will be gone

by the time it is there! Is it a hat-trick here of HS2 support?

I'm with choo-choo, too! I'm glad you can say that! I do agree it is

a really bad example also of small politics. Why does it need - it

takes 20 years to build. It will probably take ten years for the

planning permissions to get through and there will be another 20 years

of construction? I can't imagine why it takes that long! Although,

what we normally do with railways, we have a parliamentary bill, a

private bill, and they do take quite a long time. We built the

Channel Tunnel faster than that. We built the link down to the Channel

Tunnel faster than that. The link to the Channel Tunnel took a long

while. I don't think it took 20 years. Look at the relatively short

period of time that the whole Olympics infrastructure was put

together. It can be done, if there is a national will for it. As we

have seen tonight, and it is true in Parliament as well, there is an

all-party consensus. There are rebels on each side. Overall

Parliament - so it should be able to get on with it. It will be very

difficult when you get these dots of what will be NIMBYism and these

bogus arguments where - Miranda is right. If there is an agreed

strategic interest, they should be allowed to get on and build it.

is not just on this particular rail issue. There was a really

interesting report this week from the LSE, from the growth commission,

which is people on both sides of the current debate about how we

handle the economy in the search for growth saying our political

system often gets in the way of these big decisions which have to

be taken over several decades. me come to boundary changes. Do you

think you would see a day when the Lib Dems voted to preserve rotten

$:/STARTFEED. My own feeling about this is that it's a very small

storm in an SW1 tea cup. I'm not sure that anyone cares very much

about this, nor did they care about Lord's reform - I'll whisper it

just amongst us - but this is old news. In the summer we knew the

deal broke down. AV referendum, the Lib Dems in return for House of

Lords reform. You got the AV referendum, the Tories'

backbenchers reneged on House of Lords reform. When I looked at the

agreement, it didn't seem to be linked to boundary changes? I think

if you are going to reform one part of Parliament, and going to reform

the other, Commons and Lord's together, it's a package. The

coalition afreement agreement broke down. Reform of the House of Lords

is a very big issue and there wasn't a satisfactory answer to it.

The Bill was a peace of rubbish, I'm afraid. Reform in the House of

Commons is about equalising sides of the boundaries and stopping the

- I mean we are so massively overrepresented - by the way, I

agree with David Davies, the Conservative MP who says he ought

to be shrinking the size of the Government. And that wasn't part of

the reform. Alastair, the Tories had, partly because of the

electoral map, even with boundary changes, a mountain to climb in

2015 to get an overall majority. Without the boundary changes, the

mountain becomes a sheer cliff? becomes a lot more difficult and,

let's be honest, Miranda, that's what the Liberal Democrats knew and

that's ultimately why they did it. I think within the coalition,

particularly at this stage, I think that you can have the coalition

agreement, but there's always going to be a bit of room for dirty

politics as well, and that was part of that. David Cameron should have

seen it coming, to be frank. It's pure real politics. In the Tory

interests, surely, to give the Liberal Democrats their reform. I'm

speaking purely on hard-power politics? That's the way the Prime

Minister was headed. He was recommending to the House of

Commons the most deplorable Bill for the reform for the House of

Lords because he wanted this reform of the House of Commons so very

very much. To which the man on the street says who cares. Quite.

another 100 peers in there. point is, all of this broke down

amidst extreme ill-feeling over the summer and it got really nasty and

that's passed. All this coverage this week about outrage and disgust,

I think that's gone now actually and we've moved on to other things.

Michael, we know who the next leader of the Conservative Party

will be, the MP for Windsor, great story on Sunday, slam dunk, job

done! Amazing! Unfortunately what we now know is who will not be the

leader of the Conservative Party. It's very bad news for him. I put

the phone lines in but I didn't stand. I don't know how I got that

one wrong! Loose connection there I think.

think he's on a Michael Portillo route to the Tory leadership?

least! Possibly even worse. It must have been put there by his enemies.

David Cameron's been unpopular with his backbenchers for a while. The

referendum core was popular with the backbenchers, so why would you

run it on the weekend after that? Maybe because the referendum wasn't

going to ever buy them off. There was a group that just don't like

him and they want him out. They want to be careful what they wish

for. What do you make of Mr Clegg's choice of school? It's pretty clear

he's aiming to get - Mr Campbell is tuting there - they did nothing but

private schools. Certainly didn't send my kids to them. Is it

anybody's business? It's unavoidibly people's business. It

has become so. What I think's interesting about this is that he

answered the question at all actually. People are interested and

it is sad that an 11-year-old boy should become the focus of the

media storm. It's every family's own business what they choose to do.

On the other hand, I went to the same school as Nick Clegg but, you

know, if you look at what's happened... Westminster? Yes, I

went to Westminster myself. If you look at what's happened to London

schools, they've improved immesurably and I would desperately

like not to send my own children to private schools and if everybody

participated in the school system, it would be good. You have to

respect every parent's right to do what they think is best for their

child quite seriously, but I think it's very sad. I think Clegg is

right when he said it's corrosive. The development and the flourishing

of the strong private sector is corrosive and he's leader and he

should take that on. I don't buy the idea that if you are a public

figure. It's not crazy at all. An xmpl of the private schools. --

example. Unfortunately, politicians like Nick Clegg and many of his

predecessors destroyed what was good in the state system and now

they have the hypocrisy to not send their children to a comprehensive

school. The idea that mandatory drug testing in the work place

hasn't gone down well in the This Week production office. Alastair's

fine of course, it's obvious to our viewers that he hasn't had anything

performance-enhancing in years but Michael's looking worried, all the

little blue pills beginning with the letter V and I'm not talking

about vitamins. It's certainly adding to the drama here on This

Week. That's why we have decided to ask why people are so interested in

fiction rather than fact and to put political dramas in This Week's

spotlight. Voters may find real life Westminster a turn yauch, but

viewers seem to disagree -- turnoff. Please don't insult my intelligence

by acting as if you are all so naive that you don't know how this

works. Everybody in this room has bent the rules to get in here. You

don't get in this room without bending the rules. Whether it's the

subtitled intrigue of the Danish Parliament in Borgen... Or the

smash hit play This House set in the Parliamentary whip's Office of

the 70s, audiences can't get enough of political dramas. With $100

million being spent on the new American version of House of cards,

the demand for fictional intrigue seems to know no financial limit.

Do you understand how you are to behave... And if I don't play

along? We'll clear you from the herd and watch you die in the

wilderness. Maybe that's why the rich and handsome are looking more

like a fantasy leader than a genuinely fantastic leader.

We are joined by Phil Daniels. You are starring in a play based in the

Whip's Office in the Commons in the 70s. I would suggest this is not

promising material and Yotel it's been a hit? Well, it seems that

everybody's very, very keen on it and, I mean, the audience, we've

got the Government whips, the Government benches, the opposition

benches and the audience sit in the benches. Like part of it? Yes and

we make lots of noise, us politicians, and the whip's offices

are in the middle. It's an interesting period and it's an

historical period and people are interested. When it was offered to

you, did you think that you wanted to do the electrification of the

Soviet opera as well? Did it strike you as... I felt that I read the

script and I felt James Graham wrote it as a young writer and what

a great script. It did it for you? Yes. I understand the political

establishment or part of it has been traipsing across the river to

see you? John Bercow, the speaker has been there? Yes, I shouted at

him one night. In the audience? I think Shirley Williams has seen

it, Malcolm Rifkind. Heseltine might have come, but someone says

put a sock in it Heseltine in the play and I thought I heard a seat

flip and someone leave. That would be too good to be true. It's

interesting, Phil, that the play, which I'm sure will be made into a

TV series at some stage, we have had Yes Prime Minister being

relaunched, Borgen and this one coming in the United States based

on the British House of Cards, they rate really well, yet engagement in

Party Politics does not rate well these days. It's a conundrum?

an odd one. Our play being about, you know, I think in the 70s, it

was much more interesting because there was the Government that had

no majority. So there was interesting things going on. That's

why James Graham wrote the play and got the idea for it because it's a

good paradi. In the Blair period, there was The Thick Of It, plays,

the Queen, the Kosovo stuff. We are living in an era where stuff gets

done instantly and it's maybe the more historic, the more reflective

stuff you are talking about twos down better. People love to know

the inside track. There was Absence of War, a play about Neil Kinnock.

People love to know what it's like on the inside and these plays are

pretty good at that. Chris Mullins Diaries was a terrific play.

have Ben in Denmark and met the cast of Borgen. I'm not sure the

ratings are enormous. Unbelievable in Denmark, everybody is watching

it. I can see that. They have a strong cult following. Do you think

that it's got anything to do, at all, with the fact it's all about

working a coalition and that we are in a coalition, unusually? No, I

don't think it is. I interviewed the Prime Minister character and

also Casper, the spin doctor. He said, and I think he's right, that

the success of the killing and Borgen is down to the fact that

they've taken traditional storylines where you normally see

men in the lead. So police movies, hugely a man, top politicians, it's

usually a man, they have two very strong women characters. So I think

that's it. Partly and quality will out. It's a wonderful drama,

beautifully written. Your play could be made into a TV series,

couldn't it? Easily, yes. Are you still packing them in? Yes and

moving to the Olivier Theatre. We have gone into the main one.

you surprised that there is huge interest in this? I mean the last

election was very closely fought, yet ethen then the turnout was 63%?

I remember turnouts in the 80s. remember the events in the 70s that

your play is about. So I'm not surprised. But I think people are

bored with what they see on the outside but are fascinated to have

the thing turned inside out to see what is underneath. The day-to-day

media politics, people find that a turnoff and they want more depth.

It's a macho culture in the whips and I wonder whether that's changed.

The whip's offices have lots of women in them. They've changed.

Anne Taylor was and is the only whip. Malcolm Tucker is obviously

an exact fax illly of you, Alastair, is that correct -- faximilie.

met him a few times. We had a charity swearoff to see who could

get the most F words in a minute and we didn't realise it was being

beamed into the creche downstairs so it was bad! Thank you very much,

Phil. That's your lot tonight folks. We are off to Lulu Eastonite, the

new an that bell's, don't you know, but posher and more expensive. We

have been banned ever since Michael talked about David Cameron's

generational struggle and attempted a detangle with the cloak room

attendant. We leave you with one of politics' most improbable stories,

two ordinary kids fooling around on the back seat of CBS News. Nightie-

night, don't let the President give you a love bite. Publicly say thank

you because I think Hillary Clinton will go down as within of the

finest Secretary of States we've had. It's been a great

collaboration over the last four years. I'm going to miss her. I

wish you were sticking around. But she has logged so many miles, I

can't begrudge her to take it easy for a little bit, but I want the