Lots of sunshine once again and those temperatures quite into the low 20s. Im shaun ley,io0,000 people are gathering in hong kong for more pro democracy protests for the eleventh week running the Prime Minister will go to germany and france next week to insist the uk will leave the eu at the end of october with or witout a deal. The home secretary is examining how the families of Police Officers killed or injured on duty can be better supported after the death of pc Andrew Harper in berkshire. A suicide bomb attack on a wedding in the afghan capital, kabul, kills more than 60 people and injures 200 others. The three remaining cooling towers at didcot power station in oxfordshire have been demolished this morning in a controlled explosion and now dateline london. Hello, and welcome to the programme that brings together some of the uks leading commentators with the foreign correspondents who write for the folks back home with the dateline london. This week is a gnu the beast that can block the exit to the European Union if theres no deal . And is there a way out for the protestors in hong kong as chinas government warns it has enough power to quell a ny u nrest swiftly 7 with their take on those events diane wei liang, born in beijing, spent part of her childhood in a labour camp, where her parents were sent for rehabilitation during the cultural revolution. Diane is a novelist and a commentator on china. John fisher burns, a pullitzer prize winner, was chief International Correspondent at the new york times. David aaronovitch is a columnist with the times here in the uk. Bronwen maddox, a former newspaper foreign editor, now runs the Research Body the institute for government. Welcome to all of you, good to have you with us again today. That gnu is not an antelope, neither is it the gn uther gnu in the comic song by flanders and swann. Its equally unwieldy and almost as rare in this country its a beast known as a government of National Unity. Common in wartime, the last confirmed sighting in peacetime was in 1931, when a labour Prime Minister unable to get his cabinet to agree spending cuts during the World Economic crisis was persuaded to stay in the job at the head of a new ministry drawn from all Political Parties, although in fact, mostly the opposition. The question of what would happen if borisjohnson loses a vote of confidence next month is of more than academic interest. Mrjohnson is determined to leave the European Union on 31st october, ideally with a deal, otherwise without one. His government, though, has a majority in the commons ofjust one and 21 conservatives have signed a letter this week telling the Prime Minister his policy is wrong. Bronwyn, if they did support a vote of no confidence and ejected borisjohnson from downing street, can they prevent a no deal brexit . Thats a good question, and this government of National Unity is the kind of thing a nation reaches for and people begin suggesting when there absolutely is no unity. Jeremy corbyns plan this week was to try to get other opposition people to unite behind him, and he would become Prime Minister and then he promised them this would be limited, he didnt say for how long, with the aim but not certainty of delivering a general election and so on. At that point, unity such as there might be among the opposition people began to break up. If borisjohnson lost a vote of no confidence, there are two problems. One, he may not respect any alternative grouping that said we can form a government, particularly if there is the disarray that we have already seen in response toJeremy Corbyns government. He would also have the ability to call a general election himself, even if one were not forced on him by the ia day period of that. So he doesnt entirely lose room for manoeuvre if that happened. He could even, at the beginning of september when Parliament Comes back, call a general election at that point. He could catch everyone then. He could catch everyone unawares. He could, and there is not going into that. It is not a certainty, but what is happening is that both sides are plotting on exactly what they will do on the 3rd of september, because the anti no dealers dont want to give any room for the government to suspend parliament, and they are trying to get this in early. Notjust the no confidence stuff, but a lot of mps are trying to work out if they can get hold of the house of commons to pass legislation, forcing the government to have an extension, so there is a legislative drive, the no confidence lot, then the government itself is not passive, it is working out what it can do, calling an election might be one of those things. David, Jeremy Corbyn has a point to an extent. He is the Opposition Leader to her majestys government he is the obvious person to call on if borisjohnson loses a vote of confidence. We really are in this position of testing what the conventions and unwritten parts of the constitution do, and what they mean. One of the things that has been really interesting is when people say on the corbyn side, you cannot possibly have somebody who is not the leader of the opposition. And on the other side, they say it is a coup against borisjohnson, who has been selected by the vast number of people, 90,000 conservatives, not by anybody else, but that is the system. And then, bronwyn has quite rightly said, the 1931 National Government makes it quite clear that our constitution actually does permit somebody who can form a majority in parliament to become the head of government. The question is the mechanism by which that happens. As that happens, everybody is shouting coup at each other. I am taking a simplistic view of this. If borisjohnson does not have a majority in the house of commons and someone else can, then if you can discover who that someone else is, then that is actually as near to the will of the british people as far as can be expressed. Do you agree with that, bronwyn . I do, but it depends what they are commanding a majority for. There is no majority for having Jeremy Corbyn as the new Prime Minister, without any constraints. He said it would be time limited, would simply be for this purpose, but our constitution does not, despite the two month precedent in 1931, does not have such a thing as a temporary Prime Ministerjust for this purpose. But it could conceivably happen. And so people are talking, there was a beautiful interview this morning with ken clarke. Who just arrived back from holiday. The new leader of the lib dems had phoned him up on holiday and said, look, if this were to come about, he is the father of the house, he is the longest serving mp. Been there since 1970. He said, i took this call, i came back, and if they did want me to do it. He seemed tickled by the idea. And he could imagine himself being Prime Minister. It is funny how contagious it is. It is such a crazy world, and if you could possibly get ken clarke to be Prime Minister by some kind of mechanism, he would probably turn out to be far more popular than either Boris Johnson orJeremy Corbyn. It didnt go down well withJeremy Corbyn, because he is too divisive a figure. But then there is the question whether that is the mechanism, bronwyn is right, the other mechanisms that people were discussing is whether or not parliament could legislate for a further extension and beyond that, whether there could ever be a majority for a second referendum or a revocation. Diane, this is the difficulty, because what we are really talking about is whether or not the uk leaves without an agreement to leave on the 31st of october. The law, as it currently stands, says we leave on the 31st of october, whatever else happens. Everything else is a manoeuvre to ensure that happens or prevent it happening. Well, as a person who did not grow up in the uk, and i have very little understanding of how complex the constitution of british law can be, i am very confused, given that it has been three years. It seems more and more things are flying out of the pandora box and trying to get this sorted. I am not sure when and how this will be sorted. So far, the stock market and the market in general is expecting a no deal brexit, and from the european side, they are expecting a no deal brexit. It seems a lot of these manoeuvres, however effort people are putting in, i dont know how effective they would be, and so far, theresa may was not able to secure a majority to have her deal passed, i am not sure this will, at any point, come into effect, that will stop a no deal, would it . I think the momentum is not towards a no deal, he it doesnt seem to me that the government is making the overtures towards europe that we prepare for a no deal. Boris johnson meets Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel ahead of the g7 next weekend. That opens up some sort of potential for movement, doesnt it, on one side or the other . So far, borisjohnson has been standing with his arms folded and saying, provided they come and scrap the backstop, and we wont talk about that today, then we can talk. Then we can talk, but there is not much to say. He and his people let it be known that this is a tactic towards trying to get a better dealfrom europe by being focused on no deal, and sometimes there isnt that wrinkle. I think the momentum is now towards no deal, but people then start saying, look, after no deal, there has to be a deal, so lets start almost talking about that already. There are so many changes day by day, so towards the beginning of last week, we had this Great Campaign by the government and government supporters in favour of no deal, which is to try and convince everybody that no deal wouldnt be a great problem, possiblyjust to convince europe that we would possibly consider it in the great game of chicken that people. By the end of the week, the thing had begun to shift back again to the plausible or possible route by which Parliament May express a majority against no deal. What you could feel at the beginning of the week, you felt differently about it by the end of the week. This seesaw is going to go on now for the next month or so, i cannot see an interlude. I cannot see an end to it. I think it would help to step back from all of these manoeuvres and see what we can all agree on, and that is that there is no consensus. This country, the two main Political Parties, in fact, almost all the Political Parties are to one extent or another divided, and it is not like any manoeuvre currently being proposed will change that. It seems to me that the idea of having some kind of caretaker government that can lower the temperature, buy some time, allow for a more considered discussion of all this wouldnt be a bad idea. ButJeremy Corbyns idea, as has so often been the case in the past century or more from the hard right and hard left, had awkward overturns of a coup, or come in by the back door, and we can all of historical precedents for that, which ended badly in europe. The ken clarke idea has greater attractions. Would it be impossible for it Caretaker Administration composed not as is currently proposed of people who really want to remain dontjust want to head off and have a no deal brexit, but clearly are committed, at least all the names that have been in the public, are people who want to remain. That is not going to work, it certainly will not forge a consensus. That is when you get into the language the Prime Minister has used when he has talked about collaborators, people in politics here who in his view are collaborating with brussels, and that then has a very unpleasant sound to it. I think we can all agree that the country needs to move beyond that kind of combative language. How long it might take to come up with some sort of consensus, was it li. 8 margin at the time of the referendum 7 that was never going to be enough to persuade the remain voters that this was the best outcome for the country. The argument that speaks to, then, i would have thought, but apparently this is a view that can only be taken by remainers, is for the second referendum. That is where that one goes, because it allows you to settle that argument clearly, and to try to make an appeal or a series of appeals to what is a divided nation. Most of us who kind of take the long view of this, that immediately after the referendum, the people who had dominated the leave side treated the referendum as if it had been overwhelmingly won, and this was a huge error. Not least because they then couldnt deal, quite a lot of them, with the likely consequences of that position themselves. I would like to Say Something else about the virtues of buying time and all of this, as we all know, political energies have been exhausted over this fight over the last three years. In the meantime, there are serious threats to our peace and prosperity, which are not receiving a lot of attention. China and russia, both of them, set on courses which could be very hostile. Which could be very antithetical and hostile. We are on the edge of a recession. If we could find a mechanism to kick this down the road a little bit and find a government which would begin to address some of these serious threats to our peace and prosperity, and it is possible that in the end, this will all be resolved by some external mechanism, something that Vladimir Putin does or something that xi jinping in the south china sea, that will make people realise there is more to life than brexit. There is a question about whether this has come about due to the luxury of a lack of external enemy. I wish you were right, but if there is some way of suspending all of this, it does not seem easily available and we are heading for no deal, and the government has obviously been trying to be really reassuring about no deal in the past couple of weeks and saying much is being done, which it is. But we cannot control, as the uk, key elements of a no deal, we cannot control what france does with its ports and we cannot anticipate the many complexities and we cannot control the question of the irish border which still hangs there. If we are out with no deal, someone will want to close it. Vladimir putin andjinping are licking their lips, as they see both us and america in disarray, europe in disarray, the uk, which has been with the united states, a bastion of peace and prosperity in the world, certainly since the second world war, in disarray. Lets move on to another point in the world, which picks up on whatjohn was saying, of the importance of china. 22 years after the uks last governor of hong kong sailed into the sunset and the union flag was lowered for the last time, china says the British Government has no power to rule and no power to supervise hong kong. Pro democracy protests, now entering their eleventh week, and how to end them is an internal matter. Yet it was through its ambassador in london, liu xiaoming, that the government in beijing chose to signal to the world that its patience for the tumult in what is euphemistically called the special administratrive region, is all but over. On thursday, mr lui declared at a News Conference should the situation deteriorate further, the Central Government will not sit on its hands and watch. Diane, on saturday morning, we saw images in shenzhen, should the situation deteriorate further, the Central Government will not sit on its hands and watch. Diane, on saturday morning, we saw images in shenzhen, just over the border, of military vehicles all lined up for a practice, involving the armed police. What can protesters do to avoid the backlash that people fear . I thought a significant point was last week, when carrie lam appealed to the protesters in tears, saying, please think of hong kong, think of the welfare of the city and our hometown. It reminded me of the moment when we were in Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, the then chairman of the communist party came to see the students who were on Hunger Strike and said please go home. That was the turning point, the decision was made that perhaps a hard crackdown would happen. I think we have passed that point in hong kong, that china has made up its mind that if need be, china will intervene, and that, i think, is a dangerous point. Of course, now we see the military personnel is stationed in shenzhen, just across the border from hong kong. Then we also see the protesters in the streets again this weekend, so in a way, it has very much a parallel to tiananmen 30 years ago, when we as students thought we had the support of international community, in fact, we had possibly more support then than what the hong kong protesters have now. And we felt quite invisible, we felt that we had the upper hand, and of course, a History Lesson taught us that students never had the upper hand, it is the government that had the upper hand. And that is a very depressing precedent. There is a hope that hong kong has a visibility that the streets of beijing lacked 30 years ago, not least because we are seeing the events unfold live on our screens, our phones, all the other ways that people have of communicating. If you have a crackdown, you cannot hide it. Look at beijings point of view, the problem goes far beyond hong kong. When i visited china for the first time in 30 years, i lived in china throu