his blog is called the first rough draft of history. the much travelled ian birrell, who writes for the mail on sunday. and damian grammaticas, who s been based in the past in beijing, brussels and delhi, and is now a political correspondent at westminster, is here in the studio. welcome to all of you. it is lovely to have you with us here. this is very interesting weekend in terms of domestic politics. let s begin there. we still don t know whether a party took place in downing street last christmas nor whether strict covid rules which affected the whole of the country at the time were broken. yet, thanks to a video leaked on wednesday, apparently by someone inside the british government, an allegation knocking around for more than a week has become weaponised. borisjohnson insists he wasn t in number ten at the time. if he fumbles this one, he may not be in there for very much longer. damian, how did an allegation about a party become a threat to boris johnson s longevity i
bells dashcams, mobile phones and the power of google more crime victims believe they have good evidence to catch the culprits but that is low in incidence as police going after criminals in such incidents. never oh no firth s says it has agreement from police to set “p it has agreement from police to set up will pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry of a perpetrator could be apprehended. since 2015 forces have had to say how many of the offences they record results in someone being charged. back then comic it was 16% but none ofjust under 6%. political pressure to improve that number is coming from all sides. i ve come across far too many complaints and stories from people about their phone being stolen, their watch being stolen, their car being stolen, them calling up the police only to be given a crime reference number for insurance purposes. and the police not following up, not taking any further action. that is totally unacceptable. as i said, there is no such thing
power from ukraine to syria and internally opposition has been repressed, intimidated and silenced. but not altogether. my guest today is the most prominent leader of russia s anti putin opposition, alexei navalny. now he has committed to fighting putin in the 2018 presidential election but will his defiance cost him dear? alexei navalny, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me here. you have been involved in opposition politics of one form or another for almost ten years, maybe more, and itjust seems to me that right now your position is perhaps more dispiriting, more depressing than it s ever been before. would you agree? absolutely not. actually, i. ironically, i can call vladimir putin as my godfather in politics. because when he came to power and the way he talks and what he s saying, what he s doing, the laws he s passing through duma, told me that russia is done with a democracy and i should do something. i should join the opposition movement, but, you know, i did