Hello and welcome to the programme, which brings together some of the uks leading political columnists, bbc specialists and the foreign correspondents who file their stories for audiences back home with the dateline london. This week a promise of relief from the pandemic a vaccine that works. Asjoe biden tries to trigger transition, President Trumps first admission that someone other than donald trump may soon be in the white house. And has beijing hastened hong kongs transition away from Accountable Government . Joining me this week henry chu, london editor for the los angeles times. Steve richards, who hosts the podcast rock n roll politics. Hes been reporting british politics since the days of madchester and britpop. And with me in the studio is celia hatton, the bbcs asia pacific editor. Welcome to you, and to both of you, henry and steve, joining us remotely. Lovely to talk to you all. Now, mondays announcement of a vaccine, said by the Drug Companies to be effective against the covid virus in 90 of cases, holds out the hope of an end to the pandemic. Here in the uk, the number of people whove died from the virus passed 50,000 not the highest number globally but one of the highest rates. What impact Government Communication has had on the health of the nation is debatable. That many in the governing conservative party think its been poor, though, was evidenced by the semi public struggle which erupted in downing street this week, and ended on friday with the departure from number 10 of Dominic Cummings, until this weekend an adviser so important to borisjohnson that he refused to fire him, even when he was accused of breaking lockdown rules. Steve, from unsackable to being sacked what changed . Borisjohnsons opinion of him. When special advisers go or, indeed, when they are appointed it tells you much more about the character of a Prime Minister, the character of the special adviser. These are the people Prime Ministers have the freedom to choose without any constraint. When they appoint cabinet ministers, they have to take into account all of political factors. With their advisors, it is their personal choice. And he though johnson thought that cummings was a genius, i think, and was one of the few people that he listened to and followed. He didnt rate much of the cabinet, but he rated cummings until recently. So it raises big questions, i think, about the judgement of borisjohnson and his capacity for a key element of leadership, to manage a team. Because when downing street implodes, it looks like a very incestuous, parochial story. But it is very significant because advisers have power, and when there is disruption, Prime Ministers contrary to mythology, theres a lot of talk in the uk about this could be a reset forjohnson actually, they are quite traumatised by it. There was an implosion in number 10 when gordon brown was Prime Minister, there have been others, and its deeply disruptive on many levels, so it is a big story, and it matters becausejohnson gave cummings so much power. But it is aboutjohnson, not cummings. And in terms of, henry, how that affects the public, it is partly about the inability of the government during the course of this pandemic to get its message across simply, clearly and effectively in a way that enough people have confidence in. Yeah, the messaging here in britain has been all over the map and i mean that literally in a sense that you also have the different nations wales, scotland, england and also Northern Ireland having different rules so it is very hard to have some kind of unified message coming outjust from london. But as steve was also mentioning in terms of cummings, when your special adviser becomes a watchword, a byword, for breaking the very rules that you have been trying to promulgate to the rest of the public, that is not a good sign. Its actually, to me, it is quite stunning that that cummings lasted as long as he did. The messaging now that were getting, in the beginning was a little bit easier when an entire nation was in lockdown and everyone was subject to the same rules. And then you had this tiered system that came in, where some areas of the country were under greater restrictions than others. But even then, some of those limitations seemed to be very hard to follow, and to quite understand how it was that, you know, in one city, these rules had to be followed and then you stepped over the line and over the border into another city, and they werent. So all of this has been undermined, as steve said, by the internal workings in number 10, the very highest corridors of power, and that is not going to translate very well to the rest of the population. Celia, a lot of the message for the future which the British Government and other governments around the world will be trying to project is about the vaccine. We have had the good news and everybody has been celebrating, but now the hard work as if the scientists havent had enough hard work in getting this far but the hard work begins of regulating and distributing it and hopefully bringing the virus under control. It is a herculean task. Absolutely. You said everybody was celebrating and that was really good news that a vaccine might be on its way. But it has been interesting to look across the globe to see how Different Countries have been responding to this news, and some countries really havent even acknowledged it at all. For example, vietnam. You know, theyve have done an amazing job of keeping the virus at bay around 1,200 cases across the whole country, 35 deaths but they have been very clear to say look, we dont even have the money to even get in line for this vaccine. We are not going to bother to try to do that. We are going to stick with containment. We are not even going to be able to administer our own home grown vaccine until the end of next year. Another country, indonesia, says, oh, we want the vaccine but they have the fourth biggest population in the world 270 Million People so they will get it from whoever they can, including chinese vaccine makers, but the people who are going to get it first are the police, the military and hospital workers. So every country is making decisions right now about whether they are even going to bother with a vaccine and if so, who gets it first. And that takes us back to this question of managing expectations. So you when you look at your region, particularly in the asia pacific, do you think some governments have got that right better than others in terms of communicating the need for social distancing and rules, but also offering assurance and support . Absolutely. That has been a massive case study on how to communicate with your own people. We have seen the example of taiwan, which is a self ruled island near china, and they have done an incredible job of being able to really use Grassroots Health workers to try to communicate to keep the messaging very, very consistent, very strong. We also seeing in south korea similar things. They have done a really good job of keeping messaging consistent. But in other countries the philippines, for example there has been a lot of mixed messages or malaysia, a lot of examples where government officials are seen breaking the rules a la Dominic Cummings and so the government then has to quickly work to solve that problem. And so really, it has been a bit all over the board when you look at the asia . Pacific. Henry, i was talking to dr chen chien jen, the Vice President of taiwan and the Health Minister who was in charge during sars, and is now in place to try to deal with coronavirus, and he was very diplomatic about the efforts happening elsewhere in the world but in the end, he said it is all about Public Confidence in public faith. We have seen that writ large in the United States, reinforced this week as well by the transition debate betweenjoe biden and donald trump donald trump finally just, almost sotto voce, acknowledging he might not be president after the 20th of january. But biden desperate to get started on coronavirus and transition. But until transition is formally acknowledged, there is no transition money, there is no kind of transition mechanism . Thats right. Biden is being hampered by the fact of trumps obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge the results of the election and also to start that process of transition. You know, the machinery of the Us Government is absolutely massive, and so is its security infrastructure around the world, and you dont inherit that in one day, for one day to the next, and know what is going on. You need to have the time to have a proper transition, where officials from the Outgoing Administration speak to those from the incoming. And that really isnt happening. But we do see that biden contrary to that sleepyjoe stereotype that donald trump was trying to put out is working on this. He talked about the Coronavirus Campaign and that damage it was wreaking across the us and about the mismanagement of the Trump Administration and it continues to be the message he wants to hammer home. The very first thing he did, as the First Step Towards an administration, is to appoint this Expert Task Force dedicated solely to the coronavirus, staffed with respected scientists and experts whose advice he says that he will follow in a way that the Trump Administration hasnt. And unfortunately, because of that kind of misinformation that has also been put out by the Trump Administration, you get a lot of distrust down at the state level, and that is something that biden will need to overcome as well. You have a state like mine, california, and also new york the two most populous the states with the biggest city populations saying that they are not going to trust federal government in terms of its okaying of a vaccine they want to test it themselves. That is kind of unheard of in American History that that kind of mistrust would happen between the state level and the federal level in a pandemic situation like this. And henry, we have some states that are particularly badly affected i think south dakota is one where, even allowing for the numbers which are pretty horrendous in terms of infections and the number of people in hospital who are needing treatment the governor is saying look, he is still not convinced by the case of things like face masks. I mean, that debate, which in a sense has largely been won in the uk not entirely, but most of the population accepts that these kind of restrictions are being imposed and cooperate with them, however grudgingly it is still moot in large parts of the United States, and with large numbers of people. And again, presumably that is partly down to the tone and message that was set at the start by federal government . Thats right, and unfortunately, it has become a partisan issue, it has become a red and a blue state issue. You mentioned south dakota. Now, lookjust north to that to north dakota and there, the republican governor was also denying this was a major problem or refuse to put his state into any kind of lockdown or to impose any restrictions. Just last night, however, he has had to do a reverse on that course because the number of cases there is rising, north dakotas hospitals are woefully understaffed he even had to issue a rule that said nurses who tested positive for covid could continue working as long as they didnt have any symptoms, because they are so short staffed. So even some of these red states now are coming to realise that letting the virus run rampant, as has been happening with these galloping rates of infection, is no longer going to work in terms of their own states, the patches they have to govern. And luckily, with biden, once he becomes president , he can model the very behaviour that trump has so far refused to in terms of wearing a mask, which is also true throughout his campaign, and where trump used the presidency, the bully pulpit of the presidency is huge he used it more to bully than as a pulpit, i think biden will use it as a pulpit to spread the message of, look, we need to wear masks, we need to wash our hands, we need to keep social distance, rather than trying to bully in the way that trump did. Yeah, youre right. Apart from maybe flourishing the bible towards the end of his presidency, i think you are probably right about the pulpit. And of course, we know that joe biden makes much of his faith, and his catholicism will doubtless be in evidence, and of course, that has made him also be concerned about the pandemic because of the problem of people being able to carry out collective worship. You very diplomatically pointed out rightly that i think i got my dakotas confused you were quite right with that, with the governor. Steve, joe biden trying to shake off the sleepyjoe tag, but he will need his wits about him if, as predicted, the republicans hold on the two senate seats up for run offs in georgia in january, which would effectively deny him control of the senate . Yeah, a theme of your last conversation was really about where power lies in the United States, and different states taking different decisions in their response to the pandemic, as well as the kind of president ial role as well, and now we are going to get another example of that as to the limits of president ial power if he doesnt have control of the senate, as seems likely. And that is the way america decides to do politics. I think i know all the arguments about the constraints and so on, but at times, it seems to me that it leads to a kind of depressing paralysis. I think biden will have a lot going for him in his early phase and, incidentally during this phase, of course, it is an issue that trump is not acknowledging his victory and not giving him access to Important Information in the so called handover, but i think already as president elect, he is having the authority to make certain moves. He has made key appointments and so on. So i dont think authority matters a lot at this point in a president ial career, the early phase, and i think he will have space early on to make a mark. But what we tend to see in these situations is when things go wrong, the president ial self confidence starts to fall, and if he it will be he for the time being doesnt have the control in the senate, there is a big danger of all kinds of things not being done. And im told hes very skilful at working the senate and so on from his past, but hes going to have to do a lot of that, as well as face this mountainous legacy of issues linked to the pandemic and otherfactors from the trump era. Henry, do you want to come back briefly . Then celia. Just to say that i think the georgia run off races for the senate are really actually far from decided. Trump is not going to be on that ballot and trump was a big draw for Republican Voters and so it still remains to be seen in terms of that outcome. But it is true that if it should go in the way that steve mentions, where the republicans maintain control of the senate, that will be harder for biden. But he was a senator himself for decades and knows the players, so hopefully there could be some better cooperation than we have seen in the past. And certainly his personal relations with Mitch Mcconnell are at least well established. Celia, in terms of the allies in the Asia Pacific Region and sitting in london, we often tend to think of america as an atlantic nation, but it looks less and less to the atlantic and more and more towards the pacific, and of course president obama talked about a tilt towards the pacific, which never really worked itself through. Do you get a sense that there is an expectation that joe biden will have a different approach to how he treats us allies in that region . Absolutely. I think we have already seen south korea and japan trying to make nice with each other. They fought quite a bit under the Trump Administration and i think theyre really seeing that theyre going to have to work to get a little bit more. But there has been a lot of concern over this weak point that the United States finds itself in, and there are many people questioning whether some us allies, some of the more vulnerable, smaller us allies, and thinking really of who just mentioned, will this be the point, some are asking, where china might take the initiative to really make a move militarily on taiwan which it considers to be part of its own territory . And it is the time when beijing might decide that this is the point when it might see that window of opportunity before a Biden Administration has time to get in and really get its feet wet . That is intriguing prospect, because it is something we are going to talk about now for a few minutes, and that is hong kong, of course. Hong kong is another part of china but has distinctive status. It isnt foreigners like the british who humiliated china and took control of hong kong in the 19th century, who say beijing has abrogated the rights of hong kongers. Its members of legco, the islands law making body. The executive used powers granted to it by beijing to dismiss four opposition members. The remaining critics of chinas government say theyll resign. The chairman of the Democratic Party told journalists we can no longer tell the world that we still have one country, two systems this declares its official death. The Chinese Government continues to tell the world, its none of your business. And in a sense, i suppose, celia, that china might say much the same if people were to protest if it takes action against taiwan, given that its been successful in convincing so many countries not to treat taiwan as a separate country at all. Yes, china was successful in stopping taiwan acting as an observer at the World Health Organizations main annual meeting, and there were a lot of people who fought for taiwan to be included, including the United States, they felt that it had done such a good job of keeping covid 19 at bay, they wanted to hear. It was kind of perverse to ignore it. Yes, without going to lockdown. I think they had eight deaths from covid 19. So there was a big push to try to get taiwan included as an observer, and taiwan and the United States lost that battle, and china was able to keep taiwan at bay and to argue that it is part of china, therefore they dont need a separate spot. So china is continuing its quite strong foreign policy. And what of hong kong . Because here is some part of china which was taken as part of the kind of imperial wars of the 19th century, there was a deal to return it from the uk to china in 97, but an arrangement was supposed to last half a century and it hasnt quite lasted 25 years. Is it all over . Its not looking good, lets put it that way. There are two camps. There are people who would say, look, china always intended to subsume, subvert hong kong, this was always on the cards. And people in beijing argue, look, part of the deal with the uk was that hong kong would put in its own National Security law, it never did this, therefore we have our it is within our rights to impose a natural security law on hong kong, and we have seen now that has been playing out for the past few months. Others say look, beijing were simply scared off, they saw the umbrella protest in 2014, they saw huge pushing in protest in 2019, and again theyve seized their moment. They took the moment when protests were really taken off the streets because of covid 19, the United States really isnt in a position right now to go against beijing and speak out, therefore they seize their moment to try to do away with the legislature, and many people are saying this is the death of one country, two systems, it is really one country, one system. Henry, your thoughts on that . Yeah, i agree that were less than halfway through that 50 year agreement, and yet it seems to be in tatters at this point. And in terms of the us pushing back, there is actually one area in which there is more bipartisan agreement in the us than anything else, in terms of hardening attitudes towards china, and the Biden Administration probably wont be that different from the Trump Administration in terms of the stance that it takes towards beijing, in terms of what they can actually do, we will have to see. With hong kong having been a british colony, its good that britain has spoken out, and joining with the us, australia, the eu, in terms of condemning chinas crackdown there. I think britain needs to be a little bit careful, though, because it itself is about to break an International Law when it comes to the Northern Irish accords, and so its words can bring a little bit hollow, and towards the end of its rule over hong kong, it tried to put in some more democratic processes, but it was no beacon of democracy in hong kong up till now, but still it is very worrisome what is happening there. I have said before on this programme that hong kongs importance to china at the time of the handover in 1997 economically was much larger. It accounted for Something Like 15 of the gdp. Now it is only about maybe 2 of gdp because the rest of china has developed so strongly. And what beijing needs from hong kong economically is no longer there. Steve richards, just in terms of hong kong, were up against it time wise, but i wanted to pick up on that thought. Is it possible that now the uk has left the eu and the transition ends at the end of this year that we are not hamstrung by the attitudes of other european countries, for example, like Angela Merkel in germany, who was keen to get along for economic reasons, that we might take a tougher line . Probably, but borisjohnson has been quite ambiguous about china. Whenever he talks about china, he prefaces all his comments with, i am not a sinophobe, and that recently has changed, partly because of pressure from his own backbenches, and he will take a tough line, and that is one of the areas where i gather there was some kind of rapport when he had his conversation Withjoe Biden this week, so that is likely. But in terms of where power lies, the theme of this weeks programme, the power lies with china in this dynamic. Right. We have only a very short time left just for you each to mark our cards about a story you think we should be paying more attention to if we havent spotted it already. Steve first. If you would. Very quickly, under normal times, in britain anyway, there would be quite a lot of focus on the labour party, traumatised by four election defeats, can its new leader, keir starmer, change it and turn it into an election Winning Force . When neil kinnock was trying to do the same in the 80s, he got about as much Media Attention as the then Prime Minister margaret thatcher. Because of all the other dramas that we have been discussing, keir starmer has got very little attention, but under the radar, he this week basically took control in inverted commas of the labour partys ruling executive, the National Executive committee, which, without wanting to overstate its significance, at the very least makes his life a little easier. Its a difficult party to lead at the best of times, and a leader needs to control the levers, and quietly and without eruptions of a civil war as happened in the 80s, he is doing that. And given the disruption in number 10 that we discussed earlier, excuse me. Thats quite a contrast. It is a contrast that works in his favour. Hes got a mountain to climb, but he does need the Labour Party Needs a degree of control, and he very quietly is doing that. Steve, were going to im going to have to interrupt you and bring henry in. You have about 30 seconds, henry, then i can give celia 30 seconds as well. The story we should be keeping an eye on . Well, the worlds attention a year ago was on ethiopia because its Prime Minister, abiy ahmed, won the Nobel Peace Prize for the reforms he wanted to put in. The attention should still be there because of what is happening in tigray in the north, where it looks like possible civil war could break out and the destabilisation along the horn of africa would be something that the world needs to actually really be keeping its eye on. Indeed, reports of a massacre in tigray emerged overnight, friday and saturday. Im going to bring you a story from my native canada, where everyones been talking this week about the fate of the two michaels, as they are known, Michael Kovrig and michael spavor, this week marked 700 days since they were both put in detention in china, and charged subsequently with espionage. There is a little bit of hope, then, that some people hope that maybe because joe biden will be entering the white house, that maybe he will be able to pressure china to release the two men. That would be some good news for the transition indeed if they could finally be transitioned out ofjail. Celia hatton, steve richards, henry chu, thank you all very much for being with us. Thats it for dateline london for this week were back next week at the same time. Bye bye. Hello. Some drier, brighter weather for a time during monday, but the next atlantic weather system will eventually bring some rain back in for some of us. And there will be a fair amount of cloud to begin the day and some patchy rain around. A lot of that, though, will die away. By lunchtime, much of the uk is dry. There will be a few sunny spells, but here comes the next spell of rain into Northern Ireland, wales, western parts of england and south west scotland before the end of the afternoon. Eastern areas staying dry during daylight hours. Afternoon a bit milder, in fact, monday night is very mild as the rain continues to push north and east to those that parts that stay dry during the day. And once into north west scotland, that rain will stick around for tuesday into wednesday. And in the hills we could see up to 150mm of rain, so there could be some flooding. So the rain continues here on tuesday. Elsewhere are a lot of cloud around, you may see a bit of patchy rain over the west, but some drier weather as well. Some hazy brightness around, and what will be across the board a very mild tuesday. He will have space early on to make a mark. This is bbc news. Welcome if youre watching here in the uk or around the globe. Im james reynolds. Our top stories spacexs first operational crewed flight is hurtling towards the International Space station after launching from cape canaveral. Barack obama tells the bbc his successor President Trump is partly responsible for polarisation in america today. Some of that is attributable to our current president , who actively fanned division because he felt it was good for his politics. The british Prime Minister borisjohnson is self isolating at 10 downing street after meeting an mp who later tested positive for coronavirus. And its a magnificent seventh world title for Lewis Hamilton as he wins the turkish grand prix to become the most