11/01/2018 This Week

Be prepared for highly offensive

language and adult themes.

Political Big Brother is back. Yes,

it's Dave four in the Downing Street

house, and confusion reigns. Has

anyone been evicted?

I can't believe

Michael Gove wouldn't move, and what

about Justine having to go, it's

ridiculous.

Did public opinion or

mob rule leads to Toby Young's

decision to quit his new job.

Stanley Johnson is in our happy

house.

Has anyone got wifi login?

In

the Diary Room, James Delingpole has

been confessing Truelove, but for

whom?

President Trump is amazing. I

want him to stay forever in the Big

Brother house.

Will anyone walk out

when we pump up the volume?

Let's

hope Andrew walks out.

Yeah, he's

really irritating.

Nominate and

evict on This Week.

Evenin' all.

Welcome to This Week.

And the more astute among

you who were not in a permanent

Blue Nun haze over the festive

season, will have noticed

that a loser lickspittle

of the mainstream media has just

published a farrago of lies

and inventions about me.

Since I'm better with

pictures than words,

I had to have the wife

read it to me.

This seemed to give her

an inordinate pleasure,

which somewhat baffled me,

as did the thick east

European accent.

After all, the book makes

me out to be thicker

than Jack Thick McThick the year

he won the Thick Man

of the Year Competition,

also claiming I'm a sandwich short

of a picnic and two

stairs short of an attic.

But how is this double-shuffling,

honeyfugling, hornswoggler

of a journalist in a position

to say that?

He's only known me since

we were in primary school together

and he's only been beside me every

waking hour for the past year.

Come to think of it,

he did spend some nights

at the bottom of the bed too.

Even so, he doesn't know me the way

the people know me and you know I'm

so smart I'm bordering on genius.

In fact, strike the word bordering.

Or I'll build a wall.

Anyway, I called my Britisher

friend Mother Theresa,

who's always ready to hold my hand

when fake news surrounds me.

She said not to trust the This Week

team, who've clearly spoken

bigly to this loser,

loser, loser of an author,

who I've never met, and to announce

an immediate reshuffle of the team,

including some public sackings.

Then to make absolutely

no changes whatsoever.

That will baffle everybody,

said Mother Theresa.

It worked for me, she added.

So I did.

And she's right.

Nobody has a clue what I'm doing.

Not even me.

If that's not genius

I don't know what is.

Speaking of those to

whom the appellation "literary

giant" has never been applied, I'm

joined on the sofa tonight by one

man who's written so many books

about himself that there's nothing

left to say for any biographer.

And another to whom only

a particularly deranged

biographer would be attracted.

Which explains why his

Boswell is Michael Gove.

I speak, of course, of

Michael #sadmanonatrain Portillo

and Alan #sadmanontheleft Johnson.

Happy new year. Great to see you

back. Your moment of the week?

Whatever frightful things Toby Young

might have said, I was upset to see

him driven out by an online mob, an

online witchhunt, an online sale. I

don't think it was really because of

the things he said. I think it was a

partisan operation because there was

no similar operation about John

McDonnell and the very bad things he

has said about Esther McVey. I was

equally upset that Virgin Trains has

banned the Daily Mail. I dislike the

Daily Mail intensely and have

campaigned against it.

Campaign to

ban it?

Campaign that it should not

influence the Tory party too much. I

just think every day we are moving

towards a world which is less

diverse, less tolerant, less just,

actually less safe, to use that word

much used by the left, because it is

very, very important that we should

not be allowed to ostracise people

and things of which we disapprove.

That is a clear moment. Yours?

Cressida Dick, the fairly new

Commissioner of the Metropolitan

Police, continues to impress me. She

told the London authority last week

that we should treat knife crime,

which is an epidemic, as a public

health issue. There was press

coverage but there was puzzlement at

what she meant. She meant this is

something where the NHS, social

services and education should work

together to prevent, as well as the

sentencing and all that, stop and

search, they should work together to

prevent it. Three young men in

London were knifed to death on New

Year's Eve. That made 80 in London

for the year. That is a 30%

increase. In the rest of Britain

there were 35. There were none in

Scotland. Scotland introduced this,

treating knife crime is a public

health issue, in 2005. In Glasgow,

one of what used to be the most

dangerous places, not a single knife

death last year. I am glad Cressida

Dick is leading on this, but we do

not -- if we do not learn from the

Scottish experience, we will have

more of these statistics.

Two

excellent moments, a good start. You

are not the first person who has

said they are impressed by the new

chief of police in London. As a

former Home Secretary, what you say

carries some weight on that.

"In Defence of Trump".

Not words you hear every day,

especially on this side of Atlantic.

The default mainstream position

towards the President

is a combination of despair,

horror and grim, even

embarrassed fascination.

Just when you think things can't

get any more farcical,

he tells us of his genius

and boasts about the size

of his nuclear button.

But he's still there,

the US economy is growing fast,

the stock market is at an all-time

high and unemployment

at modern record lows.

He's managed the first major tax

reform since Reagan and even

North Korea's Rocket Man

is now inclined to talk.

So are we overdoing

the anti-Trump hysteria?

Are we suckers for the Trump circus

while ignoring the substance?

Is there any substance?

Here's journalist James Delingpole

with his Take of the Week.

He's a laughing stock.

His hair is a mess.

No, it's a wig.

He can't string a sentence together,

yet we can't stop quoting him.

Somehow, though, this clown

managed to become President

of the United States.

Let's cut the crap.

Donald Trump is amazing.

The US economy is going gangbusters.

The Dow is soaring.

Growth is over 3%.

Hourly wages are 2.5% higher

than this time last year.

Unemployment for African Americans

is at record lows.

And after Trump's sweeping tax

reforms, something that lesser

Republicans have been trying

and failing to achieve for years,

we can expect massive growth ahead.

And because he's so frank

and fearless, he's even dared

to take on the green crazies.

He's brushed off all their

scaremongering nonsense

and told it like it is.

Global warming is just an excuse

to bomb the global economy

back to the dark ages.

Au revoir, Paris climate accord.

Hello, freedom, scientific

integrity and prosperity.

President Trump is on a mission

to make the world great again.

He's crushed Isis, he's blown

the Middle East peace

process back on course.

And, as the President

of South Korea said this week,

he deserves big credit for bringing

North and South Korea back

to the negotiating table.

So is President Donald

Trump really an idiot?

Well, if he is, he's the luckiest

idiot in presidential history.

Our thanks to Porter's

Barbers in East Dulwich.

We promise not to send

Donald Trump there again!

The hair-raising James

Delingpole joins me now.

If Mr Trump is doing better than

most of us think on this side of the

Atlantic, and actually doing really

well in your view in so many fields,

why are his personal ratings so bad

in America?

Do you know what, I

don't care what his personal ratings

are doing. I care about what he is

achieving so far. It seems possible

that he is going to achieve

something no President has

achieved... They have been trying to

achieve it for years, bringing about

peace in the Middle East. He has

been negotiating with Israel and

Saudi Arabia and it looks like his

policies are helping the revolution

in Iran as well.

We are in the

foothills of any new peace process.

I totally agree, this is the

beginning. In the same way with

North and South Korea. He got so

much stick for his alleged

warmongering gestures towards North

Korea.

If he is bringing peace on

Earth, Utopia to the American

economy, our money where there was

once discord, why at this stage in

his presidency does he have lower

ratings among the American people

than any recent President at this

stage in the cycle?

Maybe it is

because if you want to get stuff

done, you have to be prepared to be

disliked. Think about Margaret

Thatcher. She was very divisive,

wasn't she, but she got stuff done?

Trump is a Marmite character. Some

people, for example, think his use

of Twitter is inappropriate for a

President, but my god it is

effective.

Are we in danger, on both

sides of the Atlantic in the

political classes and the media, of

concentrating too much on the froth,

the Twitter, the histrionics of the

Trump presidency, and ignoring the

substance?

Yes, probably. Because

every time there is a reaction

against Trump, core support, which

have elected him because of his role

as an outsider. There is a

resemblance to Corbyn in that

respect, that this is someone who

breaks all the rules and is

different, etc. Then the Liberal

elite, which would be all of us, I

guess...

Not James. Pre-1.

The more

we throw rocks at him, the better he

looks. But what you have to look at

is what has he actually done? What

has been his contribution to the

upsurge in the American economy?

What has he introduced? He has not

introduced the wall. He has not been

able to ban Muslims, which he said

he would do. There is a projection

from the previous presidency as

well. These things did not start on

January one, and the world economy

has improved, the EU economy has

improved. When the world economy

picks up, the US economy picks up.

I

love hearing you criticise him for

not building the wall.

What I mean

is his campaign promises, campaign

promises.

He gave an interview today

which has just come out. He is still

talking about the wall and he is

saying he is going to renegotiate

the Nafta deal, the free trade deal

with Mexico and Canada and America

will be quids Inn and that will pay

for the wall, so it has not gone

away yet.

Lets see if he achieves

that.

The US economy is growing

quickly, gathering speed since last

year. As James says, unemployment

among American blacks is now about

8% and falling. It has not been 8%

four years and years and years. I

had not realised until I saw that.

The stock market is soaring. All

that will probably matter more to

his tweets that we in the media seem

to be obsessed with.

I am surprised

James did not give this answer to

your previous question. The personal

ratings are emitted a real because

he will face re-election in about

three years. If the American economy

is going like this at them moment,

and if it is having this impact on

unemployment at the moment, and if

it has an impact on real standards

of living, then all of those things

are likely to add up to President

Trump being re-elected, if that is

what he chooses. I am not at all

sure he will choose to be a

candidate.

He will if he thinks he

can win.

There is also a possibility

that he will fall along the wayside

for one reason or another. I want to

pay tribute to James, because

whenever there is a Republican in

the White House, the British media

falls into extraordinary laziness.

They simply dismiss as moronic

everything that any Republican

President says. This was true of

both the Bush presidents, true of

Reagan, and it is lazy journalism.

One has to try to understand

American presidents in the context

of the American people. You have to

understand why this person was

elected.

Do you accept that many on

the wane -- on the mainstream right,

forget the left-wing critics, and

even centre left liberals, but many

on the mainstream right, when

mainstream Republicans required Mr

Trump is unfit to be president?

Yes,

and I think they are part of the

problem. This is why what Trump is

achieved is remarkable. It isn't

just fighting the Democrats but the

GOP, is own party. He is fighting

the media. But I totally agree with

your point about Ronald Reagan. I

was at school when Ronald Reagan

became president. I vividly remember

how everyone said he was a dumb

cowboy, how he was unfit to be

president, all the same thing. I

think Trump will be recognised as

one of the great presidents.

James

is kind of over egging his

achievements, because there haven't

been any, because the tax reform is

there. You can be for or against it,

but is the biggest tax reform since

Reagan. On foreign policy, despite

all of the Gloucester and the rocket

man, he said in the Wall Street

Journal tonight that he has actually

got a good relationship with Kim

Jong-un in North Korea. And that he

encouraged North Korea to come to

the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Again, it makes me wonder, because

you can see things that Mr Trump

says, and you shake your head in

disbelief that this is coming out of

the White House in the greatest and

biggest democracy in the world but,

when you look at the actual policy,

North Korea is going to the South

Korea Olympics, and they are going

to march into ever, iron told, and

unlike Mr bush or other previous

presidents, he hasn't declared war

and invaded anywhere else.

If you

want to give him credit for what Tim

Jonny Hill has done -- Kim Jong-un

has done, it changed the election in

South Korea where someone the --

suddenly there was a president keen

to establish a relationship with

North Korea, and you could argue

that Kim Jong-il -- Kim Jong-un has

been strengthened by Trump's

blustered and now feels able to the

next stage. If you look at what he

has done the climate change

agreement, which he might opt back

into, with the Iran deal, the

nuclear deal, which I think is very

important, and all the do...

He

backed the Iranian demonstrators,

which only hasn't done,.

We are

talking about Trump, not coping at

the moment. In terms of his

interventions, to pull out of that

Iranian deal, on all of those

fronts, and on the Middle East, I'm

afraid he could have the best peace

plan in the world but, if America is

seen as being suddenly partial

rather than impartial, they are not

going to be able to bring the sides

together.

It's always known to be

pro-Israel, under Democrat and

republican.

But the Senate wanted to

be the honest brokers.

People still

get worried, Michael, when there is

a president who seems, he is, the

most powerful in the world, running

the most powerful country, in one of

the most taxing jobs known to man or

woman, and he seems to spend most of

his time watching television and

tweeting about it.

Gorillas. The

gorilla channel. Read the book.

I

find that worrying, but I think one

of the things that the Michael Wolff

book says to me is that the first

year was characterised by

pandemonium, in which a very large

number of unsuitable people were in

the White House, mainly making war

with each other. And most of those

people, including Steve Bannon, have

fallen by the wayside. And now the

government appears to be run mainly

by rather good generals as opposed

to the rather bad general he had to

begin with. And therefore I suspect

that, whatever Trump may be saying,

the government is now in rather

better hands than it was six months

ago.

Would he be fatally wounded

with a bad election result in the

crucial midterms in November? Reed

what do you think is going to

happen? You could lose the house and

get in the Senate is narrow. In the

house, that would open the door to

impeachment.

He is fighting tooth

and nail to preserve this

presidency. And I'm afraid this is

how the left roles in America, as in

Britain. They don't like the fact

that they've got Trump, a

Conservative Trump president in

power. They will do everything to

unseat him, even if it means using

the legal system.

The conservative

don't think he is a conservative. Do

you think he will run again?

I think

he will if he is winning, and I

think he will be at the of a second

term.

A different point of view from

what we normally hear, not right or

wrong, but it's different, and we

like that. Thank you.

Now it's late -

Barack and Dave late.

Except that it's now being claimed

that the bromance between our former

PM and America's former

President was a sham.

Is nothing sacred these days?

It's even claimed that Call-Me-Dave

thought Barack one of the "most

narcissistic and self-absorbed

people" he'd ever met.

And he was at Eton

with Boris Johnson!

But the words come from Mr Cameron's

very own former Mr Blue Sky Thinker,

Steve Hilton, who has a TV show

to fill in America and scores

to settle with his former boss.

Call-Me-Dave's spinners are putting

it about that Blue Sky Steve

is the real narcissist.

When pals fall out, eh?

Of course, my little joke

about Boris has no basis in fact.

It is well known across the length

and breadth of the land

that there are no egos

or self-obsession anywhere

in the Johnson clan,

which is why we've invited his shy,

self-effacing dad Stanley to put

Twitter in the Spotlight.

And talking of anti-social media

you can of course, if you must,

contact us on the Tweeter,

the Fleecebook and

good old SnapNumpty.

But we never look at any of it

and our Spectrum 500

is on permanent delete mode.

So why not do yourself a favour

and make it a New Year's resolution

to give up your cyber-whining and

wittering?

British actor Gary Oldman picked up

a Golden Globe in Hollywood this

week for his portrayal

of Winston Churchill in

the new feature film Darkest Hour.

I'm told they're now

working on Darkest Hour 2,

the story of a MayBot that

mysteriously became Prime Minister

and was immediately pitched

into a series of gargantuan

struggles - from a failed election

campaign and a brutal Brexit

to a reshuffle shambles and a crisis

in the NHS.

Challenges that would surely

have done for any human.

But clearly machines are made

of sterner stuff, and as we speak

tonight it's still fighting

on all fronts.

Here's Isabel Hardman

with the latest dispatch

from the war zone.

Parliament was back this week

and the PM returned to the fray full

of the Dunkirk spirit,

ready to relaunch her

government with a reshuffle.

Who's in and who's out?

The trouble is, it didn't seem

to be entirely up to her.

She couldn't tinker

with the top jobs, obviously.

But, hey, there were still plenty

of important roles to be filled,

like the role of party chairman.

Chris Grayling!

Oh, no, sorry.

Brandon Lewis.

And there were big changes afoot

at Health and Business.

Oh, no, they refused to move.

But she moved Justine Greening

from Education to...

Oh, no, wait...

Greening resigned.

V for virtually the same?

The Prime Minister has

balanced it very well.

We've got some stability at Cabinet

level and we've got some new blood

coming through into the other layers

of government, so I think

the balancing act she's got right.

As if Cabinet colleagues aren't bad

enough, someone else the PM can't

get rid of is Nigel Farage.

Nigel feels that the Brexit

negotiations aren't holding

up to the Leave vote.

So he headed to Brussels for some

guerilla negotiating

with Michel Barnier.

Did you bring him a present?

No.

We're not going through all that,

though football shirts,

nothing like that.

I don't expect anything in return.

What I have brought him are some

questions that have come

from 17.4 million people,

a small sample of them, I agree,

and there's just this feeling

that the 17.4 million voted

for border controls, did not vote

for a transitional deal,

and that their view to date has not

been represented yet.

One way of dealing with the noisy

Brexiteers is to keep them busy,

preferably for the next 25 years.

The Prime Minister has

recycled Michael Gove

as Environment Secretary,

and sent him forth with

the government's 25-year

plan on the environment,

saving the world one

plastic bag at a time.

It's already the case that we have

introduced a very successful charge,

which is the 5p charge

on plastic bags.

Your challenge and your premise is,

hey, Gove, you haven't done enough.

Meanwhile, after a huge public

outcry over the decision to release

prolific sex attacker John Worboys,

the newly appointed Justice

Secretary is considering

making parole board

hearings more transparent.

MPs expressed incredulity over

the decision to release

the black cab rapist early.

What happened to the concept

that the punishment

should fit the crime?

It is impossible for people

to understand how the board

could possibly have deemed this man

to be safe.

Would my right honourable

friend agree with me that,

unless and until the board explains,

publicly explains the rationale

behind the decision it took,

people can't possibly have

confidence in our

criminal justice system?

Watch This Week on the beaches,

watch it in the fields.

Never, never, never!

Watch Newsnight!

Oh!

I think I've broken it.

This broadcasting is much

harder than it looks,

and you don't always get paid

as much as the men either.

This week, after another row

about pay equality at the BBC,

the Culture Secretary urged

the organisation to address the row.

This isn't just a matter

of levelling women's pay up,

it's a matter of pay equality.

Working for the BBC is public

service and a great privilege,

yet some men at the BBC are paid far

more than other equivalent

public servants.

The BBC have begun to act,

and I welcome that, but more action,

much more action is needed.

Oh, time for another

NHS winter crisis.

Jeremy Hunt, who is, yes,

still the Health Secretary,

insisted that the health service

was well prepared for the winter,

but he did tell MPs that there

was a need for a longer-term

debate about funding.

We do need to look to find

a consensus for the next

stage for the NHS.

We will need significantly more

funding in the years ahead.

We need to build a national

consensus as to how we're

going to find that funding,

and my own view is that we should

try and do that for a 10-year period

or a five-year period.

At PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn attacked

Theresa May on the NHS,

accusing her of being too weak

to sack her Health Secretary.

Theresa May responded

to the criticism of tried and tested

Health Secretary with

tried and tested lines

on economic competence.

Tax cuts for the super rich and big

business, are paid for...

Yes, Mr Speaker.

They are paid for by longer waiting

lists, ambulance delays,

staff shortages and cuts

to social care.

Creeping privatisation

is dragging our NHS down.

The Health Secretary,

during his occupation

of her office to keep his job,

said he won't abandon ship.

Isn't that an admission that,

under his captaincy,

the ship is indeed sinking?

This government is putting

more money into the

National Health Service.

We see more doctors in our NHS,

more nurses in our NHS,

more operations taking place

in our NHS.

The Labour Party's economic

policy was high risk.

Now, that means high risk

for taxpayers, high risk for jobs

and high risk for our NHS.

So, when This Week told me

they wanted to do a Churchillian

round-up, I was a bit worried.

Big shoes to fill and all that.

But, actually, it's not that hard.

SHE HICCUPS.

Ms Hardman, you are drunk.

That may be true but,

in the morning, I will be sober.

It is the morning and you are

channelling the wrong Churchill.

Oh, no, no, no.

Thanks to the In and Out Club

in St James's, central London.

We can only apologise for Isabel.

You never should have let her in.

And the lovely Miranda

Green is with us now.

Welcome back and Happy New Year to

you. Was there any point to this

cabinet reshuffle?

Well, it's hard

to discern what it was. It was

billed as a huge domestic policy

refresh, but all of the main

positions were left untouched. And

then there were these unseemly

castles with ministers who didn't

want to go, one of whom stays in

place, the Health Secretary.

Seemingly, this surprised me,

because if you're going to make a

big change like that, you sent out

the shoppers to have a quiet word

with them behind the scenes, if this

was to be suggested, and it may not

be, but he is saying that he knew

nothing about it until he went

there.

Its peculiar, but

unfortunately if a sort of action

replay of the election, and exercise

supposed to real but -- to reassert

authority and backfires, not least

by the refusal of her ministers to

do what she says.

At the end of last

year, we were saying, Mrs May has

finished the year a little bit

better than she was, things are

coming together now, and the year

was barely a week old and we are in

the middle of the reshuffle

shambles.

I agree it was adjudged to

be a shambles but the net effect on

the public might be the following,

that there are more women and ethnic

minorities brought into government

and that therefore the government is

trying to say something new to a

different group of people. And with

a great deal of emphasis today on

the environment, speaking of a 25

plan and so on, again I think the

government has been heard saying

something. I have often sat on this

sofa and said that the government is

saying nothing to anybody. This

week, it may have communicated

something.

I would suggest the other

way of looking at it is that the

composition of the Cabinet has not

changed, and if anything it is a

little more traditional, the same

number of women, fewer comprehensive

kids, fewer non-Oxbridge types, the

racial make-up has not changed. And

for voters, what really happened is

that politicians most people have

not heard of have been replaced by

politicians nobody has heard of.

Supposing the result were that a new

dynamism was put into education

policy, a dynamism that we saw from

Michael Gove when he was in that

position and a dynamism that we see

from Michael Gove in his new

position at environment? That might

be very consequential, because

whether you believe what has been

written about Justine Greening today

or not, it is the case that

education policy was making no

impact on the public.

What is your

take?

What Michael has described is

what Number Ten hoped this would do

for Theresa May. The public do not

take much notice of reshuffles,

particularly when they are so low

key. But it is another unforced

error. It is like Les Dawson playing

the piano. You know he is supposed

to be all right at this. If you are

having an inconsequential reshuffle,

why go on the Andrew Marr Show and

talk it up? Why did journalists

start putting out stuff like Hunt is

going to leave hell? And then you

get this! Central office, the Chris

Grayling tweet. This is what is in

the public's mine.

Listen to

Michael! It is all really going

well.

At 11:56am, Chris Grayling is

the chairman of the Tory party, and

at 11:59am he is not.

Describe the

state of the government.

They are

very confused. This attempt to

wrench energy and attention off

Brexit and onto these important

domestic agenda issues, it is

looking stumbling but it is

something they probably need to do

if they have any hope of winning the

next election. Since we think most

of the Tory party is resigned to

hanging onto Mrs May, then they have

got to try and form some sort of

positive agenda.

We wondered after

the election, after the Tory

conference, remember that, another

triumph that you easily dismissed.

Going to Brussels without talking to

her DUP partners and having to come

back.

The excellent reasons that

emerged during the course of last

year for keeping Mrs May, the

excellent reasons that emerged,

which were firstly that there was no

one else and secondly that there

would be a bloodbath to put someone

else in, those excellent reasons for

keeping her remain.

Were you not the

one who said she would be gone by

Christmas?

I did indeed.

Square that

with what you just said.

I said

these reasons emerged during the

course of the year. Either way, on

this programme, luckily, we are not

paid results. No matter how often we

are wrong, we are back here. And I

can tell the licence payer -- the

licence fee payer, it does not

affect my fee.

There is a lot of

talk about this being a watershed

moment for the NHS. My instinct is

that it probably isn't, because the

instinct of politicians and the NHS

is just to stumble through another

winter.

Two things. First, the NHS

has always managed its budgets by

something called a waiting list.

They stopped operating in November.

And at the end of the financial

year, they would start again. When

the government, my government, put

in these performance measures

Michael was talking about, and put

them into the NHS Constitution, that

you are not going to delay, not

going to wait two years for a

cataract operation, as soon as that

happened, they could not use the

waiting list any more. And attention

you are seeing now, if we can't use

the waiting list and the money we

spend on pay, which has gone up by

4% per year since 1955, has now gone

up by 1.4% since 2010, eight, nation

of that and the terrible shortage of

nursing. Theresa May was saying we

have more nurses. For the first

time, the register of the National

nurses and midwives has gone down.

Since 2005, it has started to go

down and has been going down. There

is a deficit.

One in ten unfilled.

During the course of all the

apocalyptic pronouncements that were

made today by the providers' bodies,

one of the things they said was that

the situation was the turning point,

the worst it has been for 15 years.

Guess who was in power 15 years ago.

I am not making a partisan point,

but one of the great annual

traditions of the British people is

that in the winter the NHS comes out

and moans about needing more money.

Sometimes the government gives it

more, sometimes it doesn't. There is

nothing new about this whatsoever.

The thing that is a bit depressing

as we go through this again is that

on both front benches there is no

appetite for any kind of real reform

of the NHS any more. It is down to

an argument just about money, isn't

it?

It is, except for this idea of

the way that the NHS and social care

fit together. What has happened in

recent years is the NHS has borne

the brunt of the local government

cuts and social care. Bed blocking

and people being sent into the

health system who could be cared for

elsewhere, because austerities was

imposed much more stringently on

local government. You have to look

at the two together or you can't

help the health service. If that is

on the agenda, and it would bring

England into alignment with the rest

of the UK, and there is quite a lot

of cross-party consensus on it, so

maybe that will bring the NHS

through this crisis. But it does

need more money. We have an ageing

population, more expensive,

sophisticated treatments.

sophisticated treatments.

I was

Health Secretary ten years ago. The

policy on social care has always

rested with the NHS. The money is

with local government.

You need Alan

Johnson to tell us what the truth

is. But we also need Miranda. Thank

you. Michael Portillo, not so much.

Social media like Twitter

were originally seen

as a democratic advance,

giving everybody, not just

politicians, the media

and the powerful a voice

in our public discourse.

And it still fulfils that role.

But it's also been a voice for some

of the darker forces in our society.

And for those on the wrong end

of a Twitter mob, it's become

a modern-day inquisition.

In the pre-digital age,

what you said usually disappeared

into the mists of time,

unless you were a public figure.

Now it's forever recorded

for posterity to resurrect even

when you've moved on,

as Toby Young found out to his cost.

Is this healthy disclosure

and transparency?

Or are we creating a climate

in which anybody who aspires

to public life would be well advised

to remain studiously anodyne?

Important questions,

which is why we're putting

Twitter in the spotlight.

Toby Young alienated enough people

with his own tweets this week,

he ended up losing his job.

Masturbating over

images of refugees.

He talks about women's breasts

constantly on Twitter.

About their knockers, their breasts,

their boobs, on and on.

So, in the age of the inter-web,

is the past no longer

a foreign country?

What do we all think

about Meghan Markle?

I think she's trouble.

Why do you think she's trouble?

Background...

Well, Ann, Meghan Markle's

not taking any risks.

She's deactivating the Tweeter,

Instagranny and the Fleecebook -

as has Lewis Hamilton.

But don't worry, Twitter ain't

going to force very stable genius

Donald Trump to log off.

There is a public interest

in people seeing what elected

world leaders are saying.

Let's bear in mind that this

is the elected leader

of the biggest power in the world.

But is social media

always #megalolz?

It's everyone's responsibility

to stand up and make change,

so that's why I'm wearing it.

Maybe not when it's

used amid allegations

of sexual harassment.

You got criticised for wearing that.

Do you know why?

The things that I heard that went

on Twitter are not accurate.

So should we like and re-tweet

everything we read?

Chris Grayling is to be

the new party chairman.

Well, not if it comes

from the Conservative Party's

Twitter account on the day

of a Cabinet reshuffle.

We are going to go back

to Downing Street.

Chris Grayling hasn't been confirmed

as Conservative Party chairman.

Not much more than

confusion central.

What absolute nonsense!

Believe it or not, septuagenarian

and jungle giant Stanley Johnson's

got thousands of followers

on social media.

But is it a force for good or bad?

And Stanley is with us now.

Welcome back. Are we in an age in

which

which Twitter has become a kind of

mob caught?

I am incredibly

intrigued by this because I went

into the jungle, not actually a

jungle but a jolly nice forest. I

went in and as far as I knew I only

had four followers, my siblings. I

came out and found there were 17,500

followers on Twitter and 140,000 on

Instagram. I didn't know about

Twitter or Instagram. But now I am

beginning to feel my way a bit. It

seems interesting.

You are a new kid

on the block on this. Others like

Toby Young, who have been using it

for a long while, sometimes not

wisely, find that it comes back to

haunt them big time.

That is the

moral of the story. Just to go back

half a second to this jungle thing.

One thing that was made absolutely

clear to me, you are on 24 hours a

day, on-air and being filmed. I

think you have to treat social media

in the same context. If you don't

want to be overheard saying

something, don't say it on social

media.

You may have got that, a man

of maturity and experience, but if

you are 17 you are not going to

think that, are you? Just like at 17

you do not think about building a

pension, the last thing on your

mind, 17, 18, 19. You don't really

think that 12 years down the road,

when I apply for this job

somewhere...

You raise a good point.

Is there a statute of limitations?

Do you go back and say, you can't go

back more than seven years? I used

to know Toby Young when he shared

digs with my daughter at Oxford. He

wrote some pretty nasty stuff.

People have dug it up. My son, Joe,

defended him for 40 minutes House of

Commons. He got a brilliant defence

from him and the next morning Toby

Young resign, so there is no

gratitude in politics.

My policy...

You never joined Twitter.

I don't

tweet because I drink. I don't think

you should drink and tweet, and I am

not prepared to give up drinking.

You are wise beyond your years!

Is

that -- is that not the problem a

lot of people are falling into? A

lot of these tweets are late at

night and people have had a drink or

two. I am sure you have never

regretted anything that you tweet.

I

tend to tweet economic statistics.

The President of America tweets

later Mike and in the morning.

He

doesn't drink.

We have a couple of

hours in our time zone when he has

gone to bed but before he wakes up

when it is quiet and at 6am it is

East Coast time coming up to 11 and

all hell breaks loose. If you want

to cover him, you have to follow

him. What do you make of what is

happening on social media? Putting

aside Toby Young, which has been

done to death as a debate, but are

we holding, do the dangers we did

not foresee in all this?

Maybe, but

I do not have anything to do with it

and I never have. I am probably the

last generation of politicians who

can get away with that, Michael and

I. Now, I see politicians who find

it very difficult if their

politicians are not able to follow

them on Twitter. Therefore, they get

involved. It is a medium which is

good in many ways, but a medium for

bullying. That is what worries me.

Younger people in particular.

That

is my second reason for not doing

it. I don't want to read stuff about

myself.

Look at what happened today.

There was a report out in America,

Russian involvement in the Brexit

referendum, largely activated

through Twitter. All of these troll

farms. There is a downside.

There

is, and I'm glad we have raised it

and I am glad we got you back in one

piece.

I haven't then shunned my

book.

book. It is my book about how the

Russians fixed Brexit.

But it is

fiction?

It is truth.

Alternative

factor.

And that's your lot

for tonight, folks.

Wardrobe by Army Surplus, studio

courtesy of the London Dungeon,

transport provided by

Chris Grayling's minicab,

online research by Damian Green,

failed reshuffling of the cast

by Theresa May, and

scripts written by...

Yes, contrary to popular belief,

there is a script for this show,

but nobody will own up to it.

All complaints to the Director

General, c/o The Presidential Suite,

the Four Seasons Hotel,

Cayman Islands.

Don't bother contacting us.

We're off to Lou Lou's

to celebrate our 15th birthday.

Yes, this show was launched

in January 2003, when Alan Johnson

had a burgeoning political career

and Diane Abbott didn't,

and Choo Choo thought

Trainspotting was a film rather

than a career choice.

If we can find any friends

or viewers or money, we might throw

a proper party in a few weeks' time.

Watch this space and you

might get an invite.

Nighty-night, don't let

Choo Choo's latest hobby bite.

Bravo. What's it all about?

Fertility rites and things like

that, you see.

No. I'll give it a

go. Hello, do you mind if I step in.