commentators with the foreign correspondents who write, blog, podcast and broadcast from the dateline london. this week, a meeting between borisjohnson and the energy companies about the ticking time bomb which is the capping of energy bills. the cap will rise further in october. the meeting achieved nothing. the british have a government that apparently must wait for action until the conservatives have chosen their leader, the country s next prime minister. there was another meeting which ended without result too, new york s attorney general summoned donald trump to quiz him about his tax affairs. he pleaded the fifth then repeated the words same answer to every question she put to him. the former president, who would be president again, hadn t kept shtum when the fbi had raided his florida home. to discuss those events in the studio with me are eunice goes, a portuguese academic and writer who teaches comparative government. janet daley, born in the united states. a 60s progressive
leaders, they are visited by the men in grey suits , political grandees. the verdict in the dateline studio is delivered by men and women with grey hairs in other words, with decades of experience between them of writing and broadcasting about the uk. janet daley s weekly column appears in the sunday telegraph, a source of succour to british conservatives. though he hails from the country which hosts the european union, the belgian economist marc roche who writes for le point in france shared borisjohnson s enthusiasm for brexit. and thomas kielinger has been explaining the british to his fellow germans for a quarter of a century, although he first lived in this country back in the 1960s. a warm welcome to all of you. you have seen so many british prime ministers come in a blaze of optimism and glory or force majeure because they ve succeeded somebody else who has gone, and then you ve seen them end, sadly, as i think it was suggested, always
where your private life and your public life have to stick together, which is a good thing. and yet, thomas, his party tolerated this behaviour or misbehaviour on more than one occasion, and some might say it is not a great reflection on the conservative party or conservative parliamentary party, that many of them were willing to go into tv studios, parroting the line he had given him and, clearly, on more than one occasion, not really believing it themselves or not being convincing in delivering it. is there a danger for the conservatives that they might think, we have cauterized the wound. he s gone. or he will have gone after the election of his successor. but the voters might not be quite as tolerant of that and quite as willing to forgive past sins? the conservatives fell victim to the mantra, |
minister. he did not have any of the qualities of seriousness, partnership. gravitas. ..gravitas that you need in a prime minister or french president, and unfortunately, there is a different mould. marc roche, janet daley, thomas kielinger, thank you very much. one name we have not mentioned, you may want to go back and look in the history books, david lloyd george. a great and successful wartime prime minister who split his party and continued to undermine it by leading his own faction. borisjohnson might want to reflect on that. that is it for dateline london this week. we are back same time next week. goodbye.
now, he had other talents which were so huge. - great communicator. yeah! but he forgot about the entire political rule book. janet? i think that he will be rehabilitated as a personality, as thomas says, but he must get out of the way quickly. i wish he had gone on the day he made that statement. it is unacceptable, as i said, for someone whose party has decided he was dishonourable. and so overwhelmingly. yes. ex sun acceptable for him to carry on and he should have allowed dominic raad, who would have been the caretaker, to take over. the worst prime minister ever, ithink, because he is a serial liar. and for me, british politics has always been that people are moral. of course, blair did lie also with iraq, and he is having that cross to bear. anthony eden lied. well, he didn t stay long after. but in the case ofjohnson, he should have never been prime