london. hello, i'm shaun ley. welcome to the programme that brings together leading columnists in the uk, bbc specialists, and the foreign correspondents who send their stories to audiences back home from the dateline london. this week — the eu and uk agree to keep on talking. the us supreme court declines to hear. and borisjohnson sees no covid crisis because of christmas — provided it's a little one. joining us this week, iain martin, whose columns appear in the times newspaper. jeffrey kaufmann, a former network news anchor in the united states. and here in the studio with me is celia hatton, asia—pacific editor for the bbc. welcome to you and to both of you twojoining us remote. it was the english puritans who cancelled christmas. borisjohnson is no puritan. in the 17th century, the festival had become an excuse for licentiousness or — to use the lingo of 2020 — failing to observe social distancing. this week, the welsh government departed from the uk—wide consensus brokered just a week ago of up to three households able to meet indoors. in wales, it will be two households for christmas. mrjohnson didn't sing it, but he did plead with people around the uk to "have yourself a merry little christmas". celia, i wonder, is this a case of boris johnson wanting to have his christmas cake and eat it? it's tricky. we are seeing political leaders around the world struggling with this issue. now, in some countries — italy or germany — we've seen these pre—christmas lockdown is being imposed, but other countries are really struggling, too. and the patch that i watch, the asia—pacific, and the philippines in particular, really what we are seeing borisjohnson struggling with, we are seeing the philippines leader rodrigo duterte struggling with this as well. the philippines is 94% christian, so christmas is a really big deal. celebrations stretch on for months but mr duterte four weeks has been pleading with the population to keep gatherings small, to stop singing iso church choirs but also karaoke. he wants that to stop. and he is trying to introduce the idea that christmas should include small, solemn gatherings. but he has also admitted a lot of people are probably going to ignore him. it is really interesting watching that playing out in two different countries around the world. iain martin, how worried do think some of borisjohnson‘s parliamentary colleagues and his conservative party are about this, and about the decisions being taken on having a system or tiers or potentially and england—wide lockdown in the new year? very interesting, because of course at the time of talking live, there are meetings ongoing about what to do about the situation in the south—east of england and in london in particular, so it is that cluster around the capital where there are reports of a new strain. and that is re—forcing him to rethink the christmas rule. it is a issue across europe, it's obviously not unique to the uk. boris johnson, a few weeks ago you would have said — and i certainly wrote — that he would come under immense pressure in parliamentary terms to not cancel christmas. something he obviously doesn't want to do. but actually there is a sense of exhaustion — and i'm sure people feel it in countries around the world — but in the uk, politics is taking a back—seat here. people have had a really tough year and i think that actually, the expectation — and you mentioned the tory tribes, and he does have serious issues on his back benches — but that actually on the christmas issue, i do not think that he will face that much criticism. the battle will be early in the new year, because, of course, britain is already vaccinating — will be how quickly the post—christmas and some kind of post—january lockdown can the uk can open up and try and get the economy moving again. jeffrey kaufmann, you are joining us from spain. that is a country that locked down early and dramatically in the spring. it hasn't necessarily solved all of the problems it faces. how are things there at the moment? oh, i thinkjeffrey has frozen. iain, while we try to get him back, let's think about what will happen in the coming months. you mentioned the possibility ofa you mentioned the possibility of a post— christmas lockdown. given the pressure coming from the other parts of the uk, do you think that is looking more likely? ifear it is. i mean, iam not a lockdown sceptic, but i have argued for other approaches as well, but it seems pretty clear from the numbers what is happening in terms of case numbers but also admissions to hospitals. particularly in the south—east of england and parts of the south—east of england but not exclusively that. the concern is allowing people to mix more over christmas and new year, that five—day window in the uk will — a price will be paid for that in the middle ofjanuary. so as ever throughout this crisis, the concern of the uk government is this sense of the nhs, the national health service here being potentially swamped. it is not a uniquely british problem. across europe, you look what has happened in germany germany this week. you look how at sombre angela merkel was with the new restrictions in germany. a very big deal, obviously, for germans to face even tougher restrictions on christmas — a time that really matters in german culture — but i think it's just seen as, we are so close to if not to the finishing line then light at the end of the tunnel, probably in march. when, by which point — certainly in the uk and hopefully in other parts of europe — that large numbers, and hopefully all vulnerable populations, will be vaccinated. and the vaccination programme can then start to move further down the vulnerable list. so by march—april, the hope is you will have something that feels more like normality. i think, as i said earlier, i think that is where the crunch point is going to come. because many people will then say, look, the vulnerable in uk terms, say 15 million people, have already been vaccinated. we just have to — we cannot go on borrowing and spending in this way. we have to get the economy moving around easter time. so i think that will be the battleground. but i think anyone who is saying no lockdown injanuary i think is going to be disappointed. i think there will be really quite tough restrictions across europe. jeffrey, on that, you are in valencia. what is happening there now? there is a odd sense of dystopian normalcy. becayse everyone is open, everyone living life in a way that shows no sign of coronavirus, except everyone is wearing a mask — it is the law. on the street, when you are cycling, everyone does it. people have been terrified given what they have gone through in 2020. and they understand that this is no game. and it is particularly notable that young people, 18, 20 years old, all wearing masks. the compliance here inaudible. that being said there are lockdowns in spain and no interregional travel over the holidays. and you just have to look at the united states to see what happened in late november to see why spain and other countries are worried about the holiday inaudible it is really hitting. more and more records being shattered in the us — 300,000 dead now, 3600 deaths in the us on wednesday — that's the highest ever. and intensive care units in the us running out of beds. so every country inaudible philippines, germany, this virus knows no borders. it sets its own agenda. and political leaders and smart people everywhere are following it. what is extraordinary when you compare spain to the united states is that here, there seems to be a real consensus. in the us, of course, it is a very different story. we'll leave it there for now. jeffrey, thanks very much. donald rumsfeld, the former us defense secretary, wrote a book recently, when the center held, in which he argued that president gerald ford, for whom he worked back in the 19705, had helped to save american democracy after the turmoil of the late ‘60s and watergate and the corruption of ford's predecessor richard nixon. half a century on, despite donald trump's tirades against the "most corrupt election ever", the electoral college met this week to confirm joe biden‘s victory. injanuary, he will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the united states. jeffrey kofman, you're in spain, as i said, but looking back at what has been happening in the united states, it sounds a strange question to pose, but it's been a very strange period after the election — how close do you think america came to becoming a dictatorship? ask the spirit of francisco inaudible here in spain. there were certainly rumblings. there were moments when trump might have liked something like that, but thankfully, the institutions of american democracy have been tested and have survived. i think it could be overstating it to say that normality will return. the damage to the credibility of the electoral system, the damage to the institutions, the credibility of the voting systems, even though there is zero evidence they they in fact inaudible the ongoing narrative in american elections. so i don't think it's a question of a dictatorship of inaudible. iain, we had the former national security adviser michael flynn retweeting approvingly a comment from a campaign group in the us talking about limited martial law, a national reelection. it never came to any of that. but notwithstanding the us electoral college — like every much — a lot will still say the election was stolen. there are, but i think ultimately the concerns are overdone and michael flynn had his particular bizarre experience during the trump yea rs. and what is fascinating about the trump personality, or persona, now is watching the volume be turned down on his gradually. whole day can pass and you no longer have to think as a news consumer or a journalist what is trump thinking and doing? and whatever your method of thinking, that is a relief. it has been a very stressful period. the republic's not perfect. the founders were not perfect in how they designed it. however, they did a pretty good job. and actually on the whole, the institutions and constitution have held remarkably well. and the comparison i think with ford that rumsfeld makes is rather a good one. what america now needs is a period of relative calm and a president that can try and speak for if not all americans, then a far greater number of americans. but he's going to have huge difficulties. look at what he is inheriting. he's — america was hacked this week in the most spectacular way since the cold war. we just heard what is happening in terms of the disease and the virus in the us. hugely challenging economic circumstances. and i mean, america has always been divided, this is not a new development, but it is particularly vicious at the moment. and that marvellous thing about american politics is we have just had one electoral cycle and it all begins again. already, the republicans are thinking about reorganising for the midterms, coming up, and that is the beauty of the american system — it will move on and it will make it possible to forget, sort of, donald trump. i'm not sure everybody would use the word "marvellous" about the cycle beginning again! but celia, but in terms of the challengejoe biden faces, all very well for him to talk about consensus and reaching out, but quite a few people on the progressive side of the democratic party, the last thing they wanted him reaching out to republicans, that would mean further compromising an agenda that they don't think is radical enough in the first place. absolutely. a lot of people have been biding their time and waiting for a democrat to go into the white house again, and they are not looking for co—operation, they don't want the center to hold. they want the left to take its place and ideally roll back a lot of what donald trump put into action. so it's going to be really interesting to see how joe biden navigates this course. there is also a lot of pressure on him, as was said, to really get him to unite the two halves. a lot of people in the united states are tired of this ongoing split in us politics, and the challenges it puts up. geoffrey, do you think biden can be another gerald ford? you know, the potential criminal charges donald trump faces, will he pardon him? particularly given how much trump has tried to rig the system in his own favour. you can argue this both ways. on one level we should move on, the government should let it go and put this to rest... inaudible. the message cannot be that trump is above the law. this is not quite nixon. nixon did his dirty tricks and covered them up. trump faces a series of potential criminal charges that really make up a very long list. more than a dozen specific issues. it is an interesting question. there is a perception that the republicans govern themselves. and on the left there was a sense of wait a minute, we are inclusive and they get in and they... they get in and theyjust do what they want. i think biden has made it clear. if you look at his cabinet picks, given the exhaustion, the seriousness of the political divide, trying to build this is by far the wisest of choices even if it does in some cases alienate and upset some of the far left of his party. i do think biden is going to find it particularly difficult because the republicans actually are rather well placed, they do have to hope that trump gets tied up in litigation, which he probably will for the next three or four years, he will spend most of his time in court. they don't want him to set up his own party, a third party runa bit like ross perot in 1992. can the republican party rebuild itself post trump? a lot of the forces unleashed by trump, i would say the republicans are not in bad shape. brexit — it's the gift that keeps on giving. well, for headline writers at least. threats and deadlines are made and passed. on sunday, there was optimism after the latest deadline was reached — and the uk and eu decided to let it pass and keep on talking instead. at the end of the week pessimism — no trade deal, warned borisjohnson, unless europe moves "significa ntly" on fish. good job, as dateline was the first to reveal, that the prime minister is off to india next month in the hunt for a free trade deal. but again, things aren't always quite as they are presented. iain, why should we treat with some caution the things that the participants say about the negotiations at this stage? that is a good question. both sides, both negotiating parties, are obviously trying to brief for their domestic audiences and on the eu side, for the brussels machine. there are messages that they want to be heard, showing that they are being tough, and standing up to the other side. ultimately what it comes down to is almost all of the deal is done, hundreds of pages of text and individual agreements, it is all there, effectively, apart from a couple of minor things on level playing fields, we think. but the big issue is fish. the two sides, and this is why i think no deal is still really very possible, and people shouldn't be blase about it, simply because the can is always kicked down the road and people think this is what the european union does and there willjust be a deal at one minutes to midnight on the final day. the split on fish and the gulf in understanding is still so wide that one or both sides is going to have to move quite a lot on fishing rights and access to british waters after the transition period. it is perfectly possible, and sometimes this happens in history, you get a disaster or you get an outcome that no—one intended to happen, almost by accident, because both sides misread each other. at the moment they are genuinely stuck. the british negotiator, lord frost, very close to borisjohnson, issued his warning the other night, saying that the divisions, the stumbling blocks are serious. he was trying to put people on notice that no deal, it's a 50—50 potential outcome. and what is incredible about this is that fisheries is really such a small part of the european economy. depending on which numbers you read, it is about 0.01% or0.02% of the british economy. economically inconsequential, but let's not be dismissive, because clearly if you are a fisher in the coastal regions, involved in fishing or processing, it matters, it's yourjob. the thing about fishing, people understand territorial waters. they understand the ancient rights of fishing and the property rights associated with that. and so it becomes a tangible thing about taking back control, and that is the mantra brexit was sold on. so while it's inconsequential beyond the small group of people directly affected, it has a much bigger role, an outsized role i would say, given its place in the economy. so it becomes this political symbol that simply neither side wants to back down on. celia, this opportunity the prime minister has taken to visit india, to be a guest of honour at the independence celebrations in january, you can see the potential importance. but even the foreign secretary said it could take, he doesn't think it will take, but it could take up to ten years to seal the deal. around asia and the pacific region, what are the financial opportunities for a relatively small country geographically, a long way away, like britain? it is quite tricky. i think britain really has a difficult road ahead. let's look at china, britain's third—largest trading partner, china in particular, way before, when borisjohnson was touting the benefits of brexit, he was talking about signing a trade deal with china. well, now relations with china have plummeted in the past few years. and that is because china has changed its outlook on foreign policy. it's adopted a much more assertive foreign policy. this mantra that you're either with us or against us. we have seen this happen with several countries where china has taken trade and used it to punish many countries that have criticised beijing on human rights. australia, most obviously at the moment. australia now, but we have seen it play out with norway, south korea, canada, it has happened over and over. and now britain is wading into it as well, because we have seen borisjohnson and his colleagues criticising china on its treatment of the uighurs. and the decision on 5g. absolutely. to exclude huawei. when britain is looking at its biggest trading partners and wondering whether it can sign favourable trading deals, it's going to be very difficult for it to sign one with china, for example. so really, those trading deals which are plum for the picking, i'm not quite sure if they are there. a century ago we talked about imperial preference, there was a big debate about using the empire and getting favourable trade arrangements with countries like australia and so on. we have a commonwealth now. do the commonwealth nations open up much potential opportunity? did the australians and new zealanders feel well disposed towards the uk? the uk more or less abandoned them when itjoined europe. maybe a little, on the fringes. i have long been a sceptic on the centrality, the idea that trade deals are central to the whole project of brexit. actually quite a bit of progress seems to have been made by the department for international trade, they have rolled over a lot of deals and they seem optimistic about what comes. britain is largely a domestic economy. it is still one of the most open global economies in the world, but even so, more than 70% of its economy is domestic. the idea that because we can't sign a trade deal with china, which actually, the british certainly, after the experience of covid—19 and everything going on in security terms, there is no way a british government is going to want to sign a trade deal with china. are there other parts of asia where the brits will try and do favourable deals? of course they will, but it's a rolling process. 0n the united states, it's never been, other than a brief window before the midterms, when the republicans got hammered, there has never really been the likelihood of a big all—encompassing trade deal with the us. you might get smaller sectoral deals and progress, but the us and the uk do loads of trade at the moment now, without an all—encompassing trade deal, and with lots of sectoral agreements. so there'll be more of that. i think it's a process over the course of 10 or 20 years, there will be a huge adjustment post—covid with people wanting manufacturing to be closer to markets. that's going to take yea rs to resolve. and also the key thing with biden, is there going to be a reorganisation of the west around the democracies trying to resist china, organising around what boris johnson was talking about, the d10 notion. and will security and intelligence co—operation against china and russia, against the autocracies, does it have a trade connotation as well? it might do. jeffrey, a last word from you. i think that talking about australia, new zealand, even canada, they are really marginal, they are small economies. they are not going to affect the uk economy. the big deal is the one that has to be negotiated with the european union. i think all the focus needs to be on that right now. we have less than a fortnight before everything changes. either we go without a deal or we have a deal. borisjohnson needs a deal. his prime ministership is rocky. the coronavirus vaccine has helped. he needs to show he can put this country on a stable course. thank you all very much. that's it for this week. next week we will look back at the year that's been, and i will be with you in a fortnight to look ahead to the start of 2021. however you are celebrating the festive season, have a good one. hello. the chances of a white christmas are looking slim for most of us but it probably won't be a particularly wet christmas either, it should be drier if rather chilly by the end of the week but there is the more rain to get out of the way first of all particular wet across parts of england and wales the first part of monday, that rain moving through northern ireland, southern scotla nd northern ireland, southern scotland as well stopping something a little drier behind but still some further pulses of rain in southern counties. brightest guides for northern scotla nd brightest guides for northern scotland with sunny spells but showers as well, turning wintry 0hio ground. a chilly day in northern areas but a very mild one further south with highs of 14 one further south with highs of 1a or 15 degrees. through monday night, further rain physically across the south, clear skies further north with a scattering of showers. under those clear skies it will get quite chilly, two degrees for edinburgh, glasgow, newcastle, more like for london and plymouth stopping more rain in the southern tuesday and wednesday, dry air but cooler for all of us by the end of the week. welcome to bbc news. i'm rich preston. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the world. our top stories: dozens of countries ban travel to and from britain as a new coronavirus strain leads to a record in daily confirmed cases. the variant‘s said to be even more infectious. we'll explain how the virus has mutated. a $900 billion shot against coronavirus: republicans and democrats end months of wrangling to agree on a financial relief package for americans. make no mistake about it, this agreement is far from perfect. but it will deliver emergency relief to a nation in the throes of a genuine emergency. we're with italy's drugs squad as they burn a record haul of an amphetamine from syria.

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