Transcripts For BBCNEWS Newsnight 20170113

We ask if disillusioned mps should stick or quit. More data from the nhs shows four out of 10 hospitals in england declared a major alert in the first week of the year. Well hear from some of those on the frontline this week. One of the things that worried me was it was taking up to two hours to arrive at the hospital to hand over their patients from the ambulance to the a e floor. Well, i see were trying a new experiment this morning. I hope it doesnt prove to be a disturbing influence. The president and the press it used to sound so different. How will we know what to believe in a new era of president ial tweets and accusations of fake news . Good evening. It was not meant as an act of insurgency, Tristram Hunt warned today, explaining his resignation as a labour mp shouldnt be interpreted as a desire to rock the boat. But whether or not it was intended, the boat today, was definitely rocked. The mp for Stoke Central stepped down to become head of the v a museum an attractive proposal for a historian by any measure. But mr hunt is a centrist, with blairite Blood Coursing through his veins, at a time when they feel like an Endangered Species within labour. His close friend, lord mandelson, suggested the mp was stepping down as the chance of labour being elected to National Office became very remote. His leader, Jeremy Corbyn, seemed quite unharmed by The Departure. But the parliamentary seat in a part of the country where labour has ukip on its tail, now looks precarious. Is self deselection now a Career Choice . Will corbyns critics in parliament choose to follow mr hunt out of politics, or stay and fight for a party they believe is in deep trouble . The labour mp for Stoke Central knows a lot about fragile things. The pottery of the midlands. The ceramics of his new home, the v a, and perhaps, some would add, the labour party in its current state. He quit his seat today to become head of one of the countrys most prestigious museums, a move that in many ways requires little further explanation. Indeed, it was greeted by his leader, Jeremy Corbyn, with cheery pragmatism. We dont want anyone to resign. I dont want to lose mps. But he has taken this position as director of the v a. Good luck to him and we will have a by election. And corbyn may have quietly welcomed The Departure of someone who had little time for him. Im glad weve finally got a proper socialist leader willing to confront fascism wherever he sees it, be it in assads syria or putins russia. Laughter. A leader happy to promote political discussion and not seeking to silence internal debate by putting mps on hit lists. Laughter. And thankfully, an end to the kind of Irrational Leadership Cult that so disfigured our party in the past. Yet his going will leave a big hole in the party at a time when many mps feel shaky about its future. Hunts constituency of stoke on Trent Central is due to be scrapped in the proposed Boundary Changes and as an opponent of corbyn, some doubted his chances of reselection. In 2015, labour won a narrow margin of little more than 5000 votes over ukip, making stoke on Trent Central Fertile Ground for ukips challenge in the north. This was compounded last year when stoke on trent was branded brexit capital of the uk, with nearly 70 of people voting 0ut in the referendum. 0ne Resignation clearly doesnt spell the end of the partys chances in power. But this seat could be particularly problematic and a by election beckons. In a not too distant past, labour was a fairly comfortable coalition of the right and left. Indeed, Jeremy Corbyns first shadow cabinet attempted to build similar bridges. But now theres a growing sense that it is a party firmly of the socialist left, with little room for dissenting voices. In the last month, we have already seen one by election triggered in cumbria by the resignation of jamie reid. Meanwhile, if he wins election as manchester mayor in may, andy burnham will be stepping down to try to carve out a fiefdom of his own outside westminster. And there is concern hunts departure could trigger others. That argument, says one blairite from the right of the party, is both defeatist and wrong. Im disappointed. Hes obviously a talented politician and an effective parliamentarian and someone with politics on the moderate wing of the party. We are in an existential fight to save the labour party and return it to electability and we need fighters, not quitters in that scenario. So i would hope this is a one off. But what if the labour party is being simply reshaped and re grafted in a different mould of leadership, around a man elected head of his party, not once, but twice by popular vote . There will be splits and there will be cracks. We have seen those before. But as any curator will tell you, you dont throw the vessel away until it is broken beyond repair. We asked the labour party for an interview but no one was available. Joining me now are ayesha hazarika, who worked for ed miliband and harriet harman, and the journalist and author, rachel shabi. I guess essentially this was an opportunity he just couldnt turn down, it is a perfect fit for it a historian who loves museums . Absolutely. I genuinely dont think he was doing this to cause some kind of crisis. But its more symptomatic of the fact that the Overall Party is, as one of your contributors said, in an existential crisis. We have heard jamie read standing down. Again, a Good Opportunity coming his way. But lets be honest, if these politicians thought labour had a thrusting, vibrant future, i dont think they would be sending the signals to the outside world that they might be ready for an approach from anotherjob. The Deselection Process was always the threat, that the people who did not fit in with corbyn would find themselves deselected, and they have gone, they would ratherjump than quit . I dont think so. There is a massive malaise in the plp. There are a lot of people who didnt support corbyn. There was the failed coup. They have decided rightly to just pipe down, not have a go at corbyn the whole time. But the party does feel depressed. It feels moribund. It doesnt feel like we are a party near parity. When i worked with ed miliband, he said, we want to be a one term opposition. Now it feels like it will possibly be a five term opposition. That is not a great message. And look, i dont want to see any more mps stepping down. Im disappointed that these guys have. They are very talented people but i dont blame them at the same time. Its difficult. Rachel, does this make it easier forJeremy Corbyn, who is quietly seeing the filtering out of anybody who disagrees with him . Is that good or bad for a leader . First of all, i dont think it is great for the country to be facing another by election at a time when were trying to figure out how to leave the eu, when there is an nhs crisis, when there is all kinds of things that this is going to leak media and political attention away from. Its not great for the country. But it is true, i think, that there are elements of the right in the labour party who are not fully embracing the sort of left populism that corbyn is trying to present. There seems to be this idea. You think he has reached out to those on the right and they have failed to take up the challenge . Im not saying that. There seems to be a misconception that left populism means, we like trump. It doesnt mean that. It means connect with people in a democratic, accountable way. Is the labour Party Connecting with people at the moment . Speak to peoples concerns. Sometimes you will have a political and media establishment, part of it will be in your own party, you will be facing that. The way to get your message to the people is to ambush, to change the message, to change the frame, to find a way to speak directly. The right of the party has run out of things to say, hasnt it . I agree. Jeremy corbyn is not to blame for how the labour party became. He saw an opportunity in 2015 and he went for it. The moderate candidates did not have a satisfactory vision. Centrist, or however you want to terms. We did not have a particularly compelling vision last year. I accept that. Shouldnt they embrace the place where labour is in the moment, which is elected Jeremy Corbyn not once but twice . They have accepted the fact that jeremy has won again. They are letting him get on with being the leader. We all wantjeremy to do well. We want him to be the prime minister. He may well be on to a lot of things that people are keen about in the public, inequality, brexit. But we need him and his team to step up. It is not the plps fault. Rachel, would you agree with that . We can have the Leadership Election Conversation again. You are talking about competence. What im talking to you about is something much more fundamental. I dont know, its most like the plp doesnt have the ice to see it. Were talking about shaking things up in a way that is going to connect with people. That isnt about whether you think its working. Its about whether people on the streets think it is working. The fact that the matter is when he tried to do that on tuesday, when he tried to talk about pay caps under the massive inequalities. He didnt understand the message about immigration. We can talk about how it is lunatic. But the fact of the matter is we are talking about it. People were saying, that is a really good idea. This resonates. Rachel, there is no problem about the labour party talking about ip. But get your party sorted out. High pay. That might not be the way that works. There is a big test coming up. We have two by elections. We all want corbyn to do well. He has now got to go out and talk to the public, listen to the public and connect with the public. Its not about slagging off the plp. Its not about internal warfare. Its about getting the message out to the public. Do you think there is a clear message you can get out . When you listen to what Labour Voters talk about, when you listen to what people who have been disenfranchised from labour talk about, its very much the issues that hes connecting with. Wealth inequality, reinvestment in public infrastructure, nationalisation of the railways and utilities, support for the Welfare State and the nhs. Nobody is disagreeing with him. I thought i was going to get the last word we have run out of time. Were getting onto the nhs now. All week weve been covering the crisis in the nhs. Today, more evidence to suggest the service is struggling four out of ten hospitals in england declared a major alert in the first week of the year, as the Health Service came under increasing pressure. Bed shortages have intensified, a e departments have been overwhelmed, more than one third of the nhs trusts raised the alarm. Lets talk to chris cook, our policy editor about what we learned. The really striking thing is theres nothing going on right now in the english nss in particular. 66 trusts, a handful of them declared the highest level of national alert. They cant offer a safe and comments of care any more. That follows on from the discovery that a e rates are up, Trolley Rates are up. There is no indicator that is going the right direction. We are talking a lot about hospitals this week, because hospitals are the spine of the nhs system. But they actually reflect problems through the whole nhs and the Social Care System Run by government. We have actually got some films which we are going to show, with testimony from doctors on the front line. We had clare gerada on earlier in the week. She is a gp who has told us horror week has gone. Its been a fairly typical week, which means it has been exhausting. You spend most of your time apologising to patients because they come to see you, because you cant get appointments in hospital. You spend your time, as i have this week, Writing Letters for housing, for benefits, doing home visits. The other half of the week, i look after sick doctors and doctors with depression, anxiety. Doctors who are struggling, like i am, to give to their patients and cant. The nhs is actually making people sick. Its making those that work in it sick. And every day, i feel the pressure, and i feel guilty that the nhs that ive worked in now for nearly 40 years is not delivering the care that i think it should be delivering to the patients that i serve. I remember my last shift. I wasnt supposed to come in but i was asked to come in because it was so busy. One of the things that worried me was it was taking up to two hours for ambulances that arrived at the hospital to hand over their patients from the ambulance to the a e floor. In paediatrics, children deteriorate really quickly. So it is really important that when your sick child comes to the emergency department, they get seen quickly. Yet, children are stuck in ambulances, adults are stuck in ambulances. It can be a struggle to find a place for them to go. At one point there were no Intensive Care beds in london for paediatrics. And that is really unsettling. And its not only patients that are suffering. Doctors are suffering. Nurses are suffering. All of the staff in a system pushed to its very limit. One of my colleagues ended up working 19 hours in a row because the night team were too sick to come in. It is really hard and not sustainable. So this week has been one of unprecedented pressure, i think for all of us working in the nhs. I think on monday, i was scheduled to do an Operating List that was for elective ent surgery. We would normally hope to treat between eight and ten patients on that Operating List. We were able to accommodate two elective patients because of the bed constraints. That meant there were six patients that we would routinely wish to have treated that we were not able to that day. It makes us feel intensely distressed and unhappy that we are not able to look after the patients to the best of our ability. Having an operation is an incredibly stressful life event. For us to be delivering the care, it is perhaps the everyday but we are acutely aware that it is not every day for the patients we are treating. People on the front line there, but the politics are really weird. Very strange. More of this in the times tomorrow. Downing street and the Department Of Health are keen to argue these problems are the result of inefficiencies within the Health Service itself. The Health Service itself, led by Simon Stevens in england, are trying to argue this is a problem primarily caused by local authority underfunding of social care, which is causing backlogs into hospitals and further problems. But it is important to understand this very odd argument between effectively the government and this big chunk of the state. So we have a few odd things. Firstly, we are seeing the emergence of Simon Stevens as a sort of figure in his own right, a Civil Servant with unprecedented authority, thanks to the Andrew Lansley reforms, he is effectively having operational independence from the government and its a bit like the emergence of the chief inspector, chris woodhead, when we first created 0fsted in the 90s. These strange Civil Servants with their own authority. What that kind of means is the government is finding itself arguing with someone it cannot really just bat away. At the same time, there are two other thoughts going on in government. The first is, if we give more money to the nhs it will never learn that it has to constrain its costs. The second is, whitehall thinks in terms of who won and lost between departments. The Health Service has done better in relative terms than lots of other departments in recent years, so there is a sense in Downing Street that everyone else is coping, so why cant you . Thank you forjoining us. This time next week, the man we have watched with almost ceaseless wonder for the past 12 months will be sworn in as president of the United States. Donald trump emerged triumphant from the november election with a conciliatory note, talking of the need to bind the wounds of division. Since then, the rhetoric has been slightly less warm. After buzzfeed released, and cnn reported, an intelligence dossier about the President Elect, trump used a Press Conference on wednesday to hit back, rekindling the flames of his fight with the mainstream media, calling the stories they had published lies and fake news. He may find a lot of support for that particular battle. So will the relationship between president and press be reset for good . Remember how things used to be . And it is well for us to remember that this america of ours is the product of no single creed or race or class. We who have faith cannot afford to fall out among ourselves. Motion picture cameras join Newspaper Reporters in the Old State Department building for an historic president ial Press Conference. The first ever filmed in sound by newsreel cameramen. More than 200 correspondents crowd into the chamber as the president strides briskly in to face the press and the cameras. Well, i see were trying a new experiment this morning. I hope it doesnt prove to be a disturbing influence. Reporter sir, since youre attacking us, can you give us a question . Go ahead. Mr President Elect . Go ahead. No, not you. Not you. Your organisations terrible. Lets go. Joining us now, margaret sullivan, a Media Columnist at the Washington Post, and felix salmon, a Senior Editor at fusion, a digital news provider. Thank you forjoining us. I dont want to get bogged down talking about the buzzfeed document, but i do want to start with it. Were they right to publish it . Margaret . I dont think it was. I think that buzzfeed went too far in publishing a 35 page document that is completely unverified. I mean, that is beyond the norms of good journalism. I think it was a mistake. Felix . They did exactly the right thing. This document is a Primary Document which cnn and many other people were writing about. The president was looking at it, the President Elect was looking at it, the media all had it and a lot of congress. The idea it should be kept secret from the innocent public i think is ridiculous. This is an important document and buzzfeed said it was unverified. There was no question they were reporting it as true. You used the phrase, margaret, interesting, beyond the norm. I wonder if you think that trumps exceptionalism, everything unconventional about him has frankly destabilised the press, that it has almost become a situation of style overwhelming substance now . That is what the press is reporting. Theres no question that the norms in the direction of trump toward the media have been destroyed but i dont think that means we should lose our own standards and integrity, which i think happened here. I understand felixs well expressed Point Of View that the public ought to see what the elite media and politicians should see. But by releasing this whole thing out into the sort of, media ecosystem, many of this is essentially opposition research, undiluted, just sort of here. People will not be seeing that with the caveats and warnings that were on it but rather, just reading it per se. Felix, we saw what happened to cnn who chose to report the story, to buzzfeed who published the document. They were essentially ostracised in the room by donald trump in a very personal way. Do you think that News Organisations will feel cowed by that . I hope not because the fact is, cnn and buzzfeed and virtually all News Organisations, including mine and margarets, can and have and will be attacked by donald trump. This is what he does whenever we write something he does not like. Whether it is true. Not really matter. He will attack us. Why do you think they did not walk out en masse, why wasnt there more solidarity with those reporters who had taken the stance . I dont think that walking out of the First Press Conference in six months from donald trump is a particularly useful response to the fact that he has an oppositional stance with the media. Hes going to continue to oppose the media, complain about the media, say that we are corrupt and liars. We will continue to report on what he does in as best away as we can and i think that making futile statements about walking out of Press Conferences would actually distract from the hard job of reporting on his administration. But this is an important point, how do you hold someone to account who dismisses everything as fake news, who doesnt choose to take questions if he does not like the organisation very publicly, and whose supporters will back him when he says they are just lies and it is just scandal and you are just trying to bring down a popular man. Do you think there is any way to hold donald trump to account when it does not seem to make any difference . It doesnt seem to stick, you are right but i think we have to keep doing ourjobs as best we can and actually finding better ways to dig in, to ask tough questions come to remind our readers or viewers, consumers, that what was said was in fact a falsehood, a lie, if you will. To continually fact check and tell people the truth is what we are for. Doesnt that mean, to go back to the Famous Quote By Michelle 0bama, when she said, they go low and we have to go higher, when you see the press coming down to new lows, publishing stuff they have not verified, putting stuff out in the public which is not checked and they admit might be wrong, isnt that the new low . Isnt thatjoining the same level . I dont for a minute think that a single publication of an important Primary Document by buzzfeed is a new low for the press. I think the new low for the press, i can point to a dozen articles from breitbart and others which are much lower than that. I think margaret. I think Michelle 0bama is absolutely right, when he goes low, we go high and in the short term, he can respond to thatjust by bluster and saying, it is fake news, the media is corrupt, liars. Over the course of four years, it is very hard to pull that off and i hope, i can do nothing but hope that over the medium term, eventually the truth will make itself manifest. The truth could be that all three of us and our organisations are all anachronisms, quite frankly. In terms of donald trump, he goes straight to the American People on twitter. He can make companies, markets move with what he says. Basically, could we all be shut out of this conversation now because he can speak very directly to the people who elected him . You know, emily, it is interesting to see the amount of support that News Organisations like the New York Times and the Washington Post and many others have received in the wake of this election. Their subscriptions are soaring. Even News Literacy organisations are getting this huge influx of money. I think there are many people in the United States, and lets remember that donald trump lost the popular vote, there are many people in the United States who do want the truth and who do want the press to play its very Important Role in our democracy. So i am both hopeful and worried. And i guess the truth is, felix, hes not the first president and he wont be the last to pick a fight with the press but it is slightly more public. Once more, i think you are possibly overstating the degree to which he can avoid the mediation of the press byjust tweeting. At the moment, whenever he tweets, the press treated as a shiny object they need to chase and talk about for hours on end and i dont think that is sustainable either. Once the press starts talking, specifically Cable Tv News stops talking breathlessly about every single tweet, i think the influence of those tweets and the ability of trump to communicate directly to the public will be diminished. I wonder when that will be thank you forjoining us. A quick clarification before we go tonight. On tuesday, we ran an item about the ethics of studios featuring dead actors in movies through the miracle of cgi. In it, we said disney was negotiating with Carrie Fishers estate about using her image in future star wars productions. We got the wrong end of the stick. Although there have been reports that disney was considering using cgi to include fisher in a future production, the studio says disney is not in conversations with the estate of Carrie Fisher at this time and any reports to the contrary are false. We are happy to correct that. Apologies to any Carrie Fisher fans we excited or upset. Thats almost all for tonight, but before we go, we became aware of the danger of wearing too much white on television tonight. Forget the hazard of spaghetti bolognese, the perils of smeared chocolate no, the real trauma it seems is from over zealous colleagues as the team on australias channel 9 discovered. How lovely to be a single presenter goodnight. I need julie to put a jacket on because we are all in white. I asked her before we came on, julie, you need to put a jacket on. I didnt have time. I told you two hours ago. There cant be three of us. I made this clear two and a half hours ago. If its an issue, i can get on out of here. It is an issue. Go and grab a jacket. Im wearing blue, for one, amber. I dont want to be having this. No, it doesnt look like that. Someone. Jenny . Get someone, get a producer, i told her this two and a half. Theres one hanging up outside the control room. Just get it on. Time now to head into the chat room and joining me today, Psychologist Sandy Ray In Melbourne and julie snook in sydney, a big welcome to both of you. Thank you forjoining us