this is bbc news, the headlines: a fifth night of protests in minneapolis following the death of george floyd, a black man, in police custody. protesters and officers clash again despite a curfew. protests spread to at least 30 other us cities including tampa in florida where tear gas has been fired. president trump blames looters and left wing radicals for the unrest. after ten weeks at home, more than two million people in england who ve been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. how dutch classrooms have been managing coronavirus but governors of english primary schools say all children shouldn t have to return before summer holidays. hello and welcome to our look at today s front pages. with me are journalist and author shyama perera and the business journalistjohn crowley. let s look at the front pages. according to the observer britain s top public health leaders and scientists have warned boris johnson that trust in the government has been shattered by the dominic cummings affair, and now poses a real danger to life when lockdown measures are lifted this week. it also carries a striking picture of a protester in minnesota clashing with a national guardsman following the death of george floyd, who was filmed being restrained by police officers. the mail on sunday claims that borisjohnson has issued a stern rebuke to his senior aide, dominic cummings, warning that he will not tolerate another media frenzy. the sunday people describe the uk s test and trace system as a national disgrace and says doctors fear a second wave if the system isn t fixed. the sunday telegraph says that according to official documents, the uk s decision to abandon testing for coronavirus back in february occurred because health systems could only cope with just five cases a week. it also features a picture of the falcon 9 rocket taking off from the kennedy space centre in florida yesterday evening. the sunday express reports that the 2.2 million vulnerable people in the uk ordered to shield in their homes for the past ten weeks will be allowed out in a limited way from monday, but experts are warning that people should act with caution and within the rules. and in an interview with the sunday times, the eu s chief negotiator has warned borisjohnson that he must keep his promises if he wants to avoid the double economic hit of a no deal brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. so, let s start off, shyama, let s kick off with the observer. top scientists have said dominic cummings has broken trust in coronavirus policy. dominic cummings still much on the front pages. absolutely, this is the sage report, which says the dominic cummings incident, series of incidents, has led to such a devaluation of the authority of the guv mac that there are genuine fears for public health as we go forward. and of course the timing couldn t be worse because we are taking up a load of measures this weekend, and the real test is going to be over the next three weeks. so it s a worrying piece, it s a damning piece but i think in a strange way, that s pretty much what all of the coverage this morning about covid i9 boils down to. john, the cummings row has been rumbling on for days, borisjohnson kept saying let s draw a line under it, let s move on. do you think the country has moved on, do you think the press has moved on? well, certainly not for the guardian and the observer. since the story broke they have slashed on this story each day and in a way, this is how government accountability works, you know, it s a slugfest, like a heavyweight battle on the ropes, particularly when the government is failing to take responsibility for this and when dominic cummings has even failed to apologise. so it s not pretty and some of the public might think, why don t we move on with this, but i guess you could point to mp5 inboxes, we will talk about this letter, like the polling figures in which the conservatives have dropped in popularity. so this is notjust a have dropped in popularity. so this is not just a westminster bubble story but the government desperately wants it to go away but it isn t at the moment. it was interesting, shyama, at the briefing yesterday, the deputy chief medical officer was asked about this and he stressed, in my opinion, everybody should obey the rules photo he was pretty clear. absolutely, but i think what is interesting about the wayjohn has highlighted it was the observer and the guardian who have been continuing and this is of interest because the cummings story in microcosm highlights all our problems with this particular cabinet in this government, which is that we don t trust them, we think they have always got to some other story going on, and they look us in the eye and say one thing while doing another. it s quite hard to examine that if you are looking at brexit as a whole or if you are looking at management of covid i9 as a whole, but if you pull out this single story and just really start tearing it to pieces, it represents all of the fears, the anxieties and the anger that the public has focused towards their management like the management of our country since december. john, let s go to the mail on sunday. they have got this story where they say that they reveal the witness who first alerted the police actually broke lockdown rules himself and also another so called witness admitted he invented the story. the headline, you couldn t make it up. there are a lot of good stories in the mail on sunday today, i would urge you to go and buy it, i don t think this is the best one, this is a case of saying, the witness who flagged this up saying, the witness who flagged this up broke the rules allegedly himself, and somebody else apparently made this up. as you said, it doesn t alter the facts, what dominic cummings did. the real fa ct what dominic cummings did. the real fact in this story for me, according to the polling, the tory lead, which was some 19 percentage points in april, has now fallen to five percentage points and just backing up percentage points and just backing up what shyama says, this has broken through with the public, this is not a westminster bubble story, people are incredibly angry about this because they have made sacrifices. at the top of the story, apparently from borisjohnson s people, they are saying dominic is on his last chance and if you read further insight, he has been banned from blogging or making any public pronouncements. i think he would probably agree with that for now. shyama, it s a slightly confused front page. the headline is all about the alleged unreliability of the witnesses, but they lead off on borisjohnson the witnesses, but they lead off on boris johnson apparently saying that dominic cummings will not be tolerated if there is another media firestorm. this is his last chance, that kind of thing. i thought it was a very safe story because you couldn t make it up, you can guess thatis couldn t make it up, you can guess that is the truth even if nobody has told you it. but i thought it was interesting that they said robin lees, who was the teacher who fingered dominic for having broken cu rfew, fingered dominic for having broken curfew, broke it himself. what he actually did was go and collect an isolating teenager, she had been in self isolation at her boyfriend s and once she got past the isolation period he went to get her, which was clearly highlighted as one of the things you could do but you needed to isolate first. the interesting point about tim matthews, who they allege doctor hurd his running app in order to make the second set of allegations is, why are they not gunning for him? doctored. he also has a light and as far as i can see, if the story is true, this would be a deception. so i m not quite sure what they are saying here about the person who made the story up. it s very confusing. they seem angry with the person who went to collect his child, and the one who made upa collect his child, and the one who made up a totally, allegedly made up a story that was not true. than the one. the sunday times, emergency budget to save 2 million jobs, speculation rishi sunak could have an emergency budget in earlyjuly. to try to save 2 million jobs particularly in the pubs and restau ra nts a nd particularly in the pubs and restaurants and hospitality industry. so many people fear it is going to be on its knees after this. welcome all of these stories and this one encapsulates the problem that government has, it has a balancing act, trying to protect the health of the public, protect the economy, and also protect people who are isolated and alone. rishi sunak is probably the only politician in the cabinet who has emerged with only credibility during this lockdown. and it s obviously clear to him and the treasury that they are looking at figures and looking further down the line at what s going to happen, and within the story is interesting, there is a briefing from him, reported briefing, but he said up to 2 millionjobs in the hospitality industry could go buy some unless the pubs and restaurants are both stood up. there is a public debate going on about if we should open up, if we are doing it too soon, and obviously the hawks and the treasury are saying, we need to do this now because we will not have an economy to save. so a lot of criticism for the government at the moment, but they ve got a really delicate balancing act to maintain. it is a tightrope, isn t it? are some of the scientists have been saying, it s a really dangerous moment. scientists have been saying, it s a really dangerous momentlj scientists have been saying, it s a really dangerous moment. i think so. i think actually, i am withjohn and probably most of the country, the one politician who really seems to think about what he s doing and tries to to stay several steps ahead is rishi sunak so one hopes he is getting it right with this particular plan. i think it s interesting from a grassroots level, i helped out with our local mutual aid group and it s interesting that actually a lot of the big restaurant change have been employed i believe, on government money, to make food which is going out to people in need, going out to the public service workers etc, certainly we are delivering them. the thing is, catering is so vital to every single pa rt catering is so vital to every single part of our day and our lives, you know, even if it s below the line catering that we are not seeing. he needs to do something and i hope he does it quickly, particularly from someone does it quickly, particularly from someone living in london where the hospitality industry is really what keeps this city alive. john, another store in the sunday times about and doubts about the new grading, suggestion is that as many as many as one in five a level grades could be inaccurate according to the modelling for the exams regulator. quual has looked at exam result from other years and 78% of those predicted grades, some 22% of those who were predicted to get grades didn t receive it. the experts are saying these predictions do not allow for mavericks, unconventional people who pull it out of the bag at the last moment in the exam, they are on a different trajectory to arguably more scholarly pupils. they are going to suffer. we all know who “ someone are going to suffer. we all know who someone who is kind of like that, and this is a big number. it s another problem for the government to deal with. are you worried about this, shyama? i guess to be worried about it when my kids are at that stage was that i always used to say that exams are much easier now, then i saw what they did and realised it was much harder because we had learned in a very structured way, whereas they learn from a smorgasbord system so it is all over the place, learning and a modular way so it is more difficult. and i imagine that for some kids, it s just. it s not the learning that is difficult, it s the method of learning, and that impacts their results. do we need a new system? yes, we have been saying that. but i m ancient and i believe they were seeing it when i was young and they got rid of all levels and brought in gcses, or cses as it was at that stage. they ve been changing the system for decades and still can t get it right. no wonder the predicted grades don t work. the sunday telegraph, officials could only cope with five covid chris s a week, this was in the early days when they abandoned the test and tray system. covid cases. it is interesting, the sunday papers, a lot of them looking ahead but a lot of them also looking backwards to the mistakes allegedly that were made in the early days of the under mac. made in the early days of the under-mac. well, this is potentially going to be the next albatross around the neck of the government following ppe, respirators, care homes. it is test entries. it beggars belief, this kind of number, they only had this capacity. in 2016 they only had this capacity. in 2016 they had a test run, operation signet, you have seen stories about that, how it was shown to not really be built for purpose and it was designed to test on an influenza epidemic, not a coronavirus epidemic. when the government stopped testing, when i gave up in march, some 400 people were testing positive for a coronavirus. yesterday, it was 8000 people, some 20 times more. so how are they government going to get its head around test and tracing? it fingers crossed. that is still a big number and it goes to the heart of this debate about, are we stopping lockdown to early? and is it frankly too early to start testing and tracing when the numbers are so high? shyama, i was tracing when the numbers are so high? shyama, iwas reading tracing when the numbers are so high? shyama, i was reading last week, the sunday times had a massive 3 page investigation, piecing together the early days, all the decisions that were made are not made by the government. it is fascinating to go back over those crucial early weeks. it is, and what is interesting, i think also, the sunday times has been looking about the government did and i think that was the second part of what has been a continuing, highly forensic investigation of the way we ve dealt with coronavirus. but it s how much knowledge we have, and i think when we are receiving information from other countries, how china have dealt with it, singapore, we ve had so much information, so why did we make the decisions that we made? and it s interesting that in the telegraph, they suggest this is the giving up on testing, that was the single reason why our numbers are so great. i m just going back to what john was saying, i think it s the same sage report that the observer used to follow their comings line. it s interesting that the sunday telegraph as being so critical about the government, using the part that s looking back at what we ve done. john, also in the sunday telegraph, shielded people leave their homes from for the first time in ten weeks, this is the 2.2 million people with medical conditions in england who have been shielded. for them, it conditions in england who have been shielded. forthem, it must conditions in england who have been shielded. for them, it must have been psychologically so difficult to just stay at home all the time, effectively kind of prisoners in their own homes. there is a really emotional interview with someone on bbc breakfast this morning, a man who is suffering from muscularjust for. he says, i m getting the old me back. most of us have been living in lockdown but we have been able to go foran lockdown but we have been able to go for an hour long walk or go out and go to the shops and so forth, but the 2.2 million people have had to stay in. so it s unimaginable what it has been like for the past few months. it does feel like this is being rushed out a little, this was supposed to happen towards the end ofjune, not at the start ofjune. so againi ofjune, not at the start ofjune. so again i am wondering why this has been rushed out, maybe there is other news that the government doesn t want to hear and see about. but for 2.2 million people, this is fantastic news, a great release for them. i read that scientists say the average chance of contracting the disease has gone down from one in 40 to one in 1000. but always there as with any of these things a risk. absolutely and those who are shielding still remain at the greatest risk. i understand why the government has done it, my mother is 89 and she rang me up and said, i have normalised, i ve been to audi! i have been delivering shopping to her and she said, i went and queued for ten minutes and i went in. i realised then how important it was for her tojust go realised then how important it was for her to just go out and do something that was normal. and i think ina something that was normal. and i think in a strange way, what we should do is give them an amnesty for a week and shove them back behind closed doors, because i think the instinct of the country, the instincts have been pretty good so far, is that this is all happening too early. just looking at the situation in the united states, pictures of the writing which swept american cities on the front pages. very good picture on the front of the sunday times with a man on his skateboard in front of a burning car, that s in atlanta. what do you make of it? america burns is the headline. so, 40 million people unemployed, 100,000 dead from coronavirus, and cities across the states in guv, and during this tinderbox situation, president trump is playing with matches, issuing kind of incendiary racial statements. but it is deeper than trump, isn t it? this is a real divide that s been in america were arguably centuries. yes, but you are looking to your commander to kind of steady people. commander in chief. he is talking to his coterie for people to go out and counter demonstrate. this issue has gone on, as we all know, for decades and has reared up in other situations. you just think, this is going to keep on happening and happening, there has to bea happening and happening, there has to be a gear change in the way that people are treated. i fear this moment will come and pass, unfortunately. shyama, it s a question of how people demonstrate and protest against this, and killer mike is quoted in the sunday times, the hip hop star, summoning his eloquence and moral authority to tell protesters not to resort to violence? doubt bone burn your house down, is what he said. don t burn your houston. because there are plenty of black cops and all of these forces, i m quite sure in the chicago force and in. i say chicago because i ve been watching chicago because i ve been watching chicago pd! in minneapolis, there are black police officers, there are black mayors, we had a black president, but ultimately they take on the culture of the institutions that they enter. having their faces there does not actually change the experience of the black community on the streets. what you re seeing here, don t burn your own house down, it s not their house, even if it belongs to a black person, it s a black person who has bought into an institution and do nothing to change what s happening on the ground. this is what you re going to get, exactly whatjohn has said, i m unemployed, the unemployed, they are furious because they have been locked away, getting mixed messaging, they have had for worse makes messaging than we ve had. and it is hot, it is summer we ve had. and it is hot, it is summerand we ve had. and it is hot, it is summer and people are just angry. we ve had. and it is hot, it is summer and people arejust angry. in that film, quite frankly, of floyd being killed, was horrendous. it must also be said that if you look, there are thousands of peaceful demonstrations that happened in the us overnight, it wasn tjust writing. and this is the really important moment. john, the sunday times, we mention brexit at the beginning, this is michelle barnier, the brexit negotiator saying, keep your promises orface the brexit negotiator saying, keep your promises or face a no deal brexit. warning that britain risks a double economic why me, you know, no deal brexit plus coronavirus. yes, i experienced a frisson of excitement reading a brexit story ain! excitement reading a brexit story again! we were sick of it last year. ican, you again! we were sick of it last year. i can, you look into this, so it s a good interview with michelle barnier. what it is saying is, this is what s going to happen before the end of the year, we are in negotiating stage and its hard bargaining and the eu says the uk are not keeping to their promises and there are quotes from senior government sources saying, we and there are quotes from senior government sources saying, we are ready to go, it is the eu that is holding it up. its she said, i m afraid. so it doesn t really take it that much forward for me. shyama, let s finish off looking at the sunday telegraph, great picture of falcon 9 lifting off from kennedy space center, the first manned flight space center, the first manned flight of spacex. it s sort of the privatisation of the space industry, isn t it? that s going to come under examination later, obviously false that we are up too preoccupied at the moment. elon musk has said some very strange things, do i want him in charge of this? i suppose i don t mind if he is in charge of few astronauts, i just don t want mind if he is in charge of few astronauts, ijust don t want him owning any satellites beyond what he already owns. i have to say, my daughter and i drove to hampstead heath to try and see spacex and the international space station. because for the last few days, it has been visible. but unfortunately we realised we had been given the gmt time is, not british summer time. so we sat and waited and it didn t come, and of course it went whizzing past while we were driving back. so you are blaming the bbc! nobody was nearest for miles. john, you are excited by this? yes, given the way the world is going, who would not wa nt the world is going, who would not want to leave the planet at 70,000 mph right now? the interesting thing is that it s the business model, nasa is kind of renting out this craft like a taxi, it s like taking an uber into space. good analogy! where just an uber into space. good analogy! wherejust admiring an uber into space. good analogy! where just admiring your backdrops once again. that is a 2000 piece jigsaw i m just starting.|j once again. that is a 2000 piece jigsaw i m just starting. i noticed that! you re just starting? jigsaw i m just starting. i noticed that! you rejust starting? well, something to do during lockdown. that! you rejust starting? well, something to do during lockdownlj will have it done by the evening. john, lovely pictures behind you, what are those photographs?‘ john, lovely pictures behind you, what are those photographs? a couple of pictures of where we have been to in the world. we are just showing how well travelled we are. john and shyama, great to have you with us, many thanks indeed for reviewing the papers. that s it for the papers. my thanks tojohn and shyama. goodbye for now. hello there. it s been a very sunny spring and a pretty dry may for many. the final day of the month brings more warmth, more sunshine and more dry weather across the country. as we go through this afternoon, then, we are going to see some areas of patchy fairweather cloud developing across england and wales, perhaps some high cloud turning the sunshine hazy at times in scotland and northern ireland. you will notice the strength of this easterly breeze, just like yesterday, that will make it feel a little bit cool close to some north sea coasts. so aberdeen, 18 degrees, not bad for this time of year, but with some shelter in inverness, more like 25 degrees. warmest weather in northern ireland will be found across western counties county tyrone, county fermanagh. the east coast of england on the cool side, exposed to that breeze. but come further west, through the midlands, wales, north west england, towards the west country as well, some spots will get up to 26 or 27. strong sunshine with high uv levels and high pollen levels for most as well. through tonight, we keep clear skies overhead, except for this lump of low cloud and fog, which i think is likely to work into some coasts of eastern scotland and north east england. temperatures between 7 and 13 degrees for most. tomorrow we could start off with some mist and murk for some of these eastern coasts. should tend to retreat back out to sea as the day wears on. then we see patchy cloud and sunny spells, but just the very small chance of an afternoon shower across scotland or northern ireland. those temperatures again, 19 to 25 degrees across most parts of the uk. things do start to change as we move out of monday into tuesday. this frontal system starts to sink in across scotland, that will bring some outbreaks of rain southwards. that rain could turn fairly heavy for a time, and behind the rain band, to the north of it, notice where the winds are coming from, coming down from the north. so that is going to introduce some cooler air. temperatures in the north west highlands much lower than they have been over the last few days. further south, more sunshine and more one, 27, maybe 28 degrees towards the south east. however, as we head deeper into the week, we see cooler air sweeping southwards across all parts of the uk and with that, there will be some outbreaks of rain, perhaps not an awful lot of rain down towards the south, but still there will be some. and we really could do with it.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a fifth night of protests in minneapolis following the death of george floyd, a black man, in police custody. protestors and officers clash again despite a curfew. protests spread to at least 30 other us cities, including seattle, where crowds have looted a department store. president trump blames looters, and left wing radicals for the unrest. after 10 weeks at home, more than two million people in england who ve been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. the government has defended its decision to ease lockdown measures. because that we have made that progress, steadily, slowly, surely, week in, week out, we can
this is bbc news, the headlines: china says it will introduce a new national security law in hong kong that looks set to limit freedoms in the territory. proposals suggest there would be a ban on what are described as subversive activities. there are already calls in hong kong for protests against the planned legislation. another 2.4 million americans have sought unemployment benefits in the past week. the new claims brought the total since mid march to nearly a0 million almost a quarter of the workforce. the latest total shows the ongoing painful economic impact the coronavirus pandemic is having on the world s largest economy. one week after some children returned to school in france, the education minister has expressed concerns that poorer children are not returning to schools as much as those from wealthier families. around 40,000 primary schools and nurseries reopened last week but parents are being allowed to make the final decision. now it s time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. much of the world responded to the covid 19 pandemic with a lockdown strategy. now the focus is on finding a way out of lockdown without prompting a second wave of infection. could sweden provide a model? well, my guest today is sweden s chief epidemiologist, anders tegnell. now, he was the architect of a controversial no lockdown strategy, which continues to stir interest right across the world. has it worked? anders tegnell in stockholm, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let s begin with the latest picture in sweden. your death figures every day from covid 19, they go up, they go down, sometimes by significant margins. it s hard to get a real sense of whether you are really in control of the spread of covid 19 in sweden or not. what do you say? yeah, we know that the death toll is a bit complicated because the registration of death is sometimes a few days late. so what we do is we now collect data on actual date of death and we do it in that way that we do not worry too much about the last ten days because we know they are unsure, a lot of things happening and they fill out every day. instead, we look at the days before that and then we follow the trend much better and we have a clear declining trend. i think we topped just under 100 cases a day and now we are down to slightly more than 80 a day on the average. the trend seems to keep going that way. that trend is clearly very good news. but is not the brutal truth that you have had many more deaths in sweden than you would have had if, like your scandinavian neighbours, you had imposed an early and very strict lockdown policy? i think that is very difficult to know. the death toll in sweden is mainly in the long term facilities for long term ill, elderly people and we had very much an unfortunate spread in those facilities in a way that some of the countries had, but not our nordic neighbours. why we had a spread in sweden and not our neighbouring countries, that is something we are trying to investigate now. but with respect, isn t that part of my point? that you probably would not have had that catastrophic spread of covid 19 through your care homes, particularly around stockholm, if you had run a more strict, a less open policy for the general population? yeah, i mean, these people meet a lot of people, even if you have a lockdown, so you cannot isolate them. in that way, a lockdown would not have stopped the spread into them and we can see now, when we are starting to look at these places, we see a decline in the incidences in those places, once we start really focusing, get them to focus on basic hygiene procedures. let me ask you this. as the country s chief epidemiologist, the man, let us be honest, the man who, in many ways, is the architect of the swedish government s strategy for coping with covid 19 can you regard a situation in which your country has, getting on for 30,000 infections of covid 19 in the population, has a death toll, which is significantly higher than your neighbours, standing at around 3,500 can you regard that as success or do you have to acknowledge that in some ways, your strategy failed? yeah, that is true. when it comes to the death toll, this didn t work out the way we hoped it. 0n the other hand, i mean, the connection between our basic strategy in slowing down the spread, if that s really, in the long run, will affect the total death toll in the society or not, that is not clear yet. i mean, we know that our neighbouring countries by now have around i% of the population who had some kind of immunity, has had the disease. the investigations we have had in sweden so far we have a major one going on that will give us a better answer it points that we have at least ten, maybe 20 times higher level of immunity in the population, which means that we are much further into the spread than our other countries, and if that means that the other countries will reach similar death tolls to us or not, i think that s very difficult tojudge. that is a very interesting answer because you are inviting me there to consider the long term significance of this notion, this concept of herd immunity. now, your own government says that the strategy that you implemented, the more moderate, the less strict emergency response to covid i9 was not about establishing herd immunity, but you seem to be suggesting that actually it is about getting to that point where so many people in the general population have had covid i9 and, therefore, we can assume have some resistance to getting it again, that you have this concept of herd immunity in your population. was that the working strategy or not? no, it was not. i m just pointing out one way that shows that you cannot make this kind of easy comparison at this stage, because the epidemic has hit different countries in many different ways. the point is really about comparisons with your nordic, scandinavian neighbours. because they took a different approach, they were much stricter in their lockdowns, as you ve acknowledged, and the death toll, denmark has just over 500, finland, over 200, norway, just over 200. they are strikingly different from sweden s, and the point really is that they now feel they are in a position to ease their strict lockdowns, to bring some sense of normality back to their populations and to quote one of the senior ministers in denmark, they feel that there s very little chance of a second spike in infections because of what they have achieved. so they are as far along the curve as you are, but they ve prevented hundreds and hundreds of deaths that you failed to prevent. but i don t really understand what you mean that they are as far along the curve as we are. 0bviously they are not. if only i% or 2% of their population has been infected, they are not very far along any kind of curve. but they are very confident that because of measures that they took and the social distancing and the public consciousness that they now have, that the disease will not spread and will not kill the numbers that have been killed in sweden. yeah, and only the future can tell. if you look at similar kind of diseases, we have never really been able to stop anything. we can sometimes delay things. like, they have been successful in doing that, our nordic neighbours, but to stop them forever, i do not think that s going to be possible with covid i9, just as it has never been possible with flus or any other viral diseases in this way. we ll come back to your vision of future in a moment, but i am very interested in the philosophical point that your approach has tested, and that is the notion of not conducting your emergency response through the heavy hand of government, through strict mandatory lockdown, but talking to your people, placing trust in your own population and saying to them, we are relying on you voluntarily to adopt behaviours that we think will best control the spread of this disease. do you think your policy of trust has worked? yes, i really do. because we can really see that we have big impacts and that comes back a bit to a comparison with other countries and so on. if we look at some statistics that we have, we can look at the travel patterns travel during easter in sweden was only 10% of normal easter, showing that people really tried to minimise their social contact. we can also see that some of our other viral diseases, like flu and so on, which has the same kind of pattern every year, suddenly stopped in the middle of that pattern and disappeared. also, once again, showing that social distancing really worked and you can see trains in sweden runs at 10% of capacity, domestic flights are almost not running anymore, and so really, people really took this on in a way that is more or less equal to people and countries who did it by illegal measures. indeed, yours was not illegal a mandatory crackdown. in that sense, do you think some governments, particularly in europe, where the lockdowns have been severe, have infantilised their populations and, therefore, when they release the brakes, people may not act in the responsible way that you say swedes continue to act. i don t know if i canjudge that, but i can say one very important thing for us is what you are alluding to, and that is sustainability. these kind of measures, voluntary measures, with a big understanding in a population of why we re doing things, have a much higher level of sustainability. we all know that this is something that we are going to have to handle for a long time and, as you said, our nordic neighbours now believe that they can handle it in the long term, going over to something, which is fairly similar to what sweden is doing today. but we really need to then have sustainable solutions. and, sure, i mean, there are signs of a reaction in some countries that when you turn things free, then you really use your freedom to the maximum extent. here in sweden, even if people are getting slightly more mobile and so on now as we head into summer, we still have a great level of social distancing in place. let me, if i may, get a little bit personal with you. i said earlier you became seen as the architect of a maverick policy, which went against the grain of the scientific consensus in many other parts of the world where scientists were backing very strict mandatory lockdown. it did put you in the spotlight, notjust in sweden, but right around the world, and as the death toll has mounted in sweden, and you ve been open about that, how has that affected you personally? do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for those lives lost? i mean, this is not my decision or anything like that. we are a big agency, i have my director who backs this whole thing. yeah, but i think you are a modest man, but i think you would accept that much of the groundwork and strategy and the thinking behind sweden s policy came from you, and it does seem to me that that is quite a burden for you to bear when we see what has happened. i mean, of course, this death toll is highly regrettable. it s a terrible thing that we are seeing. i think we have a number of explanations why this happened, not directly connected to our strategy. now, when we are investigating these long term facilities, there are obviously a lot of things that can be done to improve the quality of hygiene and other things there, and most likely would diminish the death toll over time in those facilities. it is highly regrettable that that was not seen by the people responsible before this happened, but it did happen and, of course, it s terrible. 0n the other hand, we re not too sure a strict lockdown would have changed so much. it didn t change very much in the netherlands, in the uk and many other places. and what about the debate in the scientific community? it s very notable, i think it was pretty much 2,000 doctors, scientists, professors, learned people signed a petition calling on the government to reverse your policy and impose stricter measures that was back in late march, and even in april, on april 22, some very respected scientists in sweden wrote a piece condemning, officials without talent, which undoubtedly included you, saying that the decisions were wrong and to quote one leading immunologist, cecilia soderberg naucler, she said, we are not testing, we re not tracking and the people behind this strategy are leading us to catastrophe. how did you cope with all that? yeah, i can cope with all that because i know that of the other 40,000 scientists in sweden, the majority is really behind us. we have an expert group that we talk to every week who are very much behind us, completely in line with what we re trying to do and we are really trying to the best we can under the circumstances we re in, that we are trying to sacrifice some of it to have an easier burden on the economy, that is definitely false. the 2,000 was a big mixture of different kinds of scientists and the smaller group of 22 is not our leading scientists in the field. the leading scientist in the field is behind us. what about the public? so that doesn t worry me too much. the death toll definitely worries me, but that small group of scientists does not worry me too much. interesting, and what about the public? because you ve had a lot of support. you have even had people putting tattoos of your face on their bodies and wearing t shirts proclaiming their support for you. but you ve had others, and i dare say some of those were the family members of people who have died, who have been very critical. that s tough. yes, but i think that also shows that the agency and the policy has strong support in the population. we have done several investigations, and not only us, many others have done investigations, and the level of people who are behind what we re doing is like 70 80%, which is an incredibly high number for any kind of measure from a public health agency in sweden. and only like 5 10% think that we should think more about the health of the population. another 10 20% are worried about the economy. and i think that s it s a great support for what we re doing, that the population is definitely behind us. and then we have some extremes, with tattoos and things like that, which i try not to think about too much. it must be a strange feeling when you see yourself on somebody else s body, i can imagine. but you say that you didn t do any of this in terms of the strategy and the policy that you scientists came up with, and that the government adopted, you didn t do it for economic reasons. but surely the truth is that, when it came to the crunch, and making these big decisions, people at the top of government in sweden did want to keep the economy functioning as well as it possibly could. they wanted to avoid long term damage, and surely that was a very important element in this strategy. not the way we delivered it. i mean, we didn t do those calculations. 0n the other hand, we did calculations on the broader public health impact. i mean, when it comes to closing schools, there s a lot of science behind that closing schools does a lot of damage to children, especially children who are vulnerable already, from the beginning. being out of work is also very dangerous from a public health perspective. so i think you re onto something here. i mean, our strategy includes broader public health perspectives. there may be many others in other countries. when it comes to the economic consequences, that s on the government level, and of course they will make adjustments to the things we suggest, taking the economy into account. but it s definitely not our part of the development of this strategy. right, so when you look across europe and the world at other countries and the way they are doing things, and i m thinking of where i am, the united kingdom, where the lockdown is still pretty much in place, with a very few minor easings of it, and schools are still closed, and there is a very great debate about whether any schools beyond primary age will open before september it seems they won t are you saying that is just plain wrong, it s a mistake? it s getting the balance between tackling covid and wider public health and social issues it s getting the balance wrong? yes, i mean, only the future can tell, and i think what is the science behind this and what is not the science behind dealings with covid i9 is definitely not clear. i mean, not anybody can claim that they have the science that lockdowns are good and the more open strategy in sweden is wrong, because there is no science, really, supporting anything. what is supporting what we re doing in sweden is we re following a long tradition of how we work in public health. we are also taking into account the public health effect of closing schools and other things which would give you a lot of long term problems in the area of public health, and that needs to be taken into account when you close schools. and so not doing that, i think, would not be ethical and not be a correct public health way of working. i will tell you what is striking in this interview, and i would say honest on your part, is that you keep telling me that on many aspects of this covid i9 response, the science isn t clear. i want to, in that context, bring you back to the notion of herd immunity. because you have said, you said itjust a few weeks ago, that you believe by the end of may that there will be a form of herd immunity in play in stockholm. i think you suggested that by then you could imagine that maybe 30% or 40% of the population will have had covid i9, and will have, therefore, a form of immunity. but it seems to me you have no scientific evidence for that. you re not doing enough testing to know whether that 40% figure is real, and you also, frankly, don t know the science of covid i9. you don t know that having had covid i9 gives you any long term immunity at all. so where is your science? we are just now doing a major investigation in sweden, as they have done in other countries, taking a sample of the total population and looking at the level of immunity they are having right now, so we get that data. what we re basing it on so far is a few minor investigations showing levels between 10% and 15% of different smaller groups have immunity, which supports the modelling that s been done by two or three different scientists in sweden. and when it comes to immunity, just recently, i had a discussion with the top scientist on coronavirus and immunity in sweden, and everybody says of course there s immunity. we can measure antibodies, we can measure other aspects of immunity, and why should covid i9 be different than all other infectious diseases? but what about these cases, dr tegnell, what about these cases i read about from china to california of people who have had covid i9, recovered, test negative after they recovered, and then two months later test positive again? apparently they have caught it again. that is not a real infection. i have just discussed this with the top people in sweden. some of them are what they call a recurrence. i mean, you can have part of this virus and carry it obviously for a very long time, which explains some of the cases. other cases were obviously contaminations when they were tested the first time. there is no, as far as they knew, and i really trust these people, there is no confirmed cases of somebody who really had the infection twice. we have a very good system of register in sweden. among all the cases we have had in sweden, not one of them have had it more than once. well, to be really sure, then, about how much immunity there is in the general population, you do need the antibody test. roche, the pharmaceutical giant in switzerland, has now developed an antibody test that the us, the eu, and now the uk governments are all saying they approve of. is sweden intending to test pretty much everybody over the next few months? we are doing as i said, we are doing a test of a sample of the population to look at the level of immunity in the whole population right now. the samples have been tested, a few of them have been random, but in the next week we ll be able to tell what s the level of immunity. and we re using a number of different methods to look at that, because there is a number of methods out there, and we have developed some ourselves, with the help of the top immunologist in sweden doing this. so, towards the end of next week, we can say better what level of immunity we have in the population. i want to end, if i may we re short of time, dr tegnell. i m sorry to interrupt, we re short of time. i just want to end with some thoughts about the future, because throughout this interview, you ve indicated you don t think that, if we can call it the fight, the fight against covid i9 will come to any sort of end until there is an effective vaccine that is deliverable to the world s population. so we re talking, let s say, a year or 18 months at the best, in most people s view. in the meantime, how much normality can there be? if we take sweden as one of the more advanced countries, that s thought about this a lot, do you think that we, for example, can return before a vaccine to a world in which there is widespread travel, even between countries, where crowds can gather at music concerts or football stadiums, where hugs and handshakes can become routine again, where people do not have to wear facemasks on public transport, or has our life fundamentally changed for the long term ? nobody knows the answer to that question. i think certain things we can be quite sure about. i think for a long time we re going to need to protect our elderly in different ways. because they are always going to be susceptible to this disease, and they are always going to have a very high death toll to it, unless we find a vaccine that will work in that part of the population, which is not going to be easy, or a treatment, and that s not going to be easy either. when it comes to other things, this is not only one nation that can decide, about travel and so on. i think that we in sweden would feel rather confident to ease down on some of the things. maybe travelling around could be ok, maybe a few other things could be ok. if we sometime get an immunity test that works a bit better on the individual level, which they unfortunately don t do yet, we don t have enough experience on that, we can probably ease a few other things too. oui’ main concern now is really the elderly, who have been very isolated, and we need to find different ways of easing that isolation, because that will also affect our health, both in the short term and the long term, and i think that s one of our main concerns right now. and i m just very interested in one point. do you go out every time you go out now, do you wear a facemask? nope, in sweden we don t wearfacemasks. in sweden, we stay home when we are sick. i think that makes a big difference. anders tegnell, it has been fascinating getting your insights from sweden. thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. most of us will have at least a little welcome rain through the day ahead, but it does look fresher for all. the south and the east held on to the sunniest weather and the warmth at 28 celsius, but for most it felt a little fresher during the day on thursday. this huge swirl of cloud will be responsible for the transition and for the rain. now, as that comes and it s really quite deep for this time of year so it will bring some unseasonably windy weather, gales are being warned about all ready for part of northern ireland, scotland met office warning in force here. and it hangs around, as you can see, for much of the weekend bringing further strong winds and more rain. it looks as if parts of northern ireland and the north west of scotland could see the highest rainfall totals. in fact, in some of the highlands we could have a month s worth of rainfall over the coming few days. look at the strength of the wind, anywhere from north wales northwards, 50 mile an hour gusts of wind, which with the trees in full leaf is clearly a concern. very mild to start our friday and as you can see, cloudier with some rain. it clears away, there may be some thundery showers in eastern areas first thing and then the showers rattle in with sunshine in between but the showers will be frequent and heavy in the north and west and even thundery. and as you can see, those strong and gusty winds affecting all areas, 30 to a0 miles an hour even across the far south. so despite temperatures around about average for this time of year, add in those showers, add in the brisk to strong wind and it will feel much fresherfor all. but there will be some sunshine and some drier weather around. the showers just keep coming though, as we go through the night. but temperatures will fall a little lower than the night we are currently in, slightly fresher air is with us, but still for most, nine or 10 degrees will be the overnight low and that s because of the strength of the wind, which will still be with us on saturday. that low pressure still firmly in charge, giving further showers or longer spells of rain across scotland and northern ireland in particular. there will be plenty of showers further south as well and they could well be on the heavy side, even the odd rumble of thunder. but here, across southern areas the sunny spells will be lengthier in between. another fresh feeling day, given the fact we ve got atlantic winds and those showers and those brisk winds too, which will start to ease just a little in the south as we get into sunday but there will be further pulses of rain across scotland and northern ireland, as you can see. but just fewer showers in the south and sunday and lengthy spells of sunshine. temperatures a little higher by that stage as well. there s more online.
this is bbc news, i m lewis vaughan jones. the latest headlines: china tightens its grip on hong kong, a new security law would give beijing more power, raising fears of new limits on freedom of speech. another two and a half million americans claim unemployment benefits, now it s middle class suburbia queuing at the food banks. lessons from france, one week after schools re opened, parents having to decide whether to send their children back to the classroom. getting into greece. we look at how tourists will be screened this summer, as hopes rise of reviving the multi billion pound tourist industry.
a majority of the minneapolis city council has promised to dismantle its police department. the move follows the death of an unarmed black man, george floyd, in minneapolis police custody, nearly two weeks ago. council members said they would create a new system of public safety. in the us, large numbers of people are continuing to take part in peaceful protests against police brutality and racism. tens of thousands gathered in cities including washington and new york, as well as small towns across the country. new zealand has announced that it has no active cases of covid 19 for the first time since the end of february. the health ministry says the last person who was being monitored for coronavirus has now been released from isolation as he s been symptom free and is regarded as having recovered. now on bbc news it s time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to the performing arts. no one knows when theatres like this one will be able to unlock their doors. so what happens to all the writers the performers, the venues themselves that enrich our cultural life? my guest today is arguably the best british playwright of his generation, james graham. what are we prepared to do to protect our culture? james graham, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. theatres are closed right now. yourjob is very difficult to do in many ways. does it feel like this pandemic has brought your world crashing down? it does feel like that way but it must feel like that across every sector at the moment. the only problem is that even though the virus affects all sectors, it will affect the theatre the worst because of the nature of what we do. what makes theatres so special and brilliant to hundreds of millions of people around the world is it requires you to be close to people and that is one thing we cannot do at the moment and we are unsure, based on the science, when that will ever happen. so as companies. as bars and restaurants open up over this summer, we will have to admit that will not be the case for theatre. people have used phrases like ‘existential threat‘ a lot during this pandemic about different businesses in different sectors. perhaps more than any, they have used it about theatre. some theatres say that they are very close to going bankrupt. you, obviously, are very well connected in the industry. is that exaggeration or is that true? it is really true. it is really devastating and upsetting. they were the very first buildings to close, they closed because the government told them to because public safety is obviously the most important thing. because the business model is a mix of box office, both ticket sales for the show that night, and also the majority of that is advance bookings so booking to see hamilton next spring, they have completely dried up for an audience that does not necessarily have the confidence to book far in advance. so there is no income, these are buildings that are expensive to run, expensive rents, expensive everything else, but with zero income. it s such a fragile model. you have called for, and i m quoting you here, an aggressive government bailout. others have said they want an emergency relief fund specifically for the performing arts and in particular for theatre. yet, i am mindful of, for example, th national theatre, which has talked about the degree to which it faces a real existential threat, it gets a substantial government grant already. in this time of crisis where the entire economy is facing a severe long term recession, do you think the public really believes the government should pump special targeted money into theatres? it is the most important point and i do not disagree with you. these are hard arguments to make against the backdrop of every person in the country suffering economically. i wish i hadn t used the word bailout. that was a few months ago. the actual term is investment. it s an investment that the government always gets back and if the economy is going to recover and the one benefit of this kind of crisis is that it is not all these industries are basketcase businesses, they are profitable in normal times. once people re emerge into the light they can be profitable again. it is just that theatres are uniquely and disproportionately affected in that they will be the very last buildings to open. if that is the case, in the last decade, the arts and culture and entertainment were almost the fastest growing sector of the entire economy. nurses and hospital beds and teachers are going to need those businesses that do return a profit to the economy to be firing on all cylinders and we can do that and want to do that you cannot do that with zero income for up to nine months. i want to get a little personal if i may. for you, as a writer, for both screen and theatre, what has happened to your creative juices, your creative impulse while you, like all of us, have been wrestling with lockdown, with isolation. you are living on your own, right? so there is a sense of isolation. what has that done to you? it s weird, isn t it? i live on my own and i normally enjoy my own company because i am a writer and i need to be in my own head a lot. but what is really beautiful and i am so grateful to be allowed to be a creative is that you have these moments of a self imposed lockdown where you can just be in your own head and creative and then you emerge and have wonderful moments of real collective action, making a play in a rehearsal room with a company of actors over four weeks and then sharing that with hundreds of audience members is almost the most public thing you can do. it s so collective and so shared. and now none of that is happening. is that getting to you? but i don t think i am more special than anybody else but it is getting to me in the sense that it is. writing is a bit of a weird job. you are sat in your office, your room, your kitchen table, making things up. there will always be a level of imposter syndrome, i feel, and silliness about it not being a properjob but i know it means a lot to many people to watch tv dramas and films and plays so what motivates you in that weirdness is knowing that eventually one day you will share it and it will be a real thing, and it will notjust be something abstract you make up. it is just very hard to find yourself in that situation when you do worry about an industry, the oldest industry in the world, theatre, and its ability to survive. it is hard to motiviate you. also, like everybody else, like you, i spent a vast amount of my time just being really worried for people that i love, my friends, and the part of your head that really worries about people and society is the part of your head you have to enter to do the work and sometimes you just do not want to go in there. you used an interesting phrase a minute ago about imposter syndrome and i know you are talking specifically about how you feel right now under lockdown but ijust wonder whether you are being honest about something deeper? you come from a background that most people in theatre probably do not come from. your mum and dad raised you in north nottinghamshire in a coalfield area, depressed economically, you went to a local school there, frankly the ambition for most kids was probably not to aim at the west end or the theatre or even think about it. do you think that has fed into the way you feel about where you are today? in terms of. yes, it must have done. it feeds into everything doesn t it? nottinghamshire, uniquely, is such an interesting political and cultural place because it is not quite north and it is not quite southern. that has had political consequences in moments of great tension like the miner strike in the 1980s when it was a county split down the middle and i can only assume that has impacted upon in my political writing it has a desire oi’ sense, area. desire to create empathy for multiple different points of view when it comes to politics and not have my work be an activist and agenda towards one particular point. in the 1960s there was a wave of writing drama that was written very much by working class writers. some from nottinghamshire, from the places you are from. do you identify today as a working class writer? i struggle with it but don t know why i do and i shouldn t. the language i normally tentatively use is that i am from a working class background but i accept, even though i sort of reject the idea behind it, that you can t be an artist and you can t working class. be an artist and you can t be working class. ijust know it is hard to have a play in the west end with the lights and the glamour and to feel authentically working class. i can only assume that i am because i am from that background and it is important for me to get those voices into my plays. and it is certainly important, looking at your life, that your mother, for example, and your teachers at school, they always encouraged you to think big when came to your love of performance, of theatre, of the arts. you were fed a hope and an expectation that you could do it. it is not billy elliot, not the hollywood story where i faced resistance all the time from teachers or from my family. they thought it was brilliant. they loved coming to see me appear in a school play. they d not think it was silly, nor non masculine, any of those things you normally associate with the arts in working class communities. i remember my mother burst into tears when i got on a train for the first time to head to london, because you didn t go to london from nottinghamshire, when i was moving down here. the only reason i am now a playwright with, fortunately, having plays on broadway or having tv dramas and films in america and finding myself at the emmy awards last year in hollywood is because i went to a comprehensive school with the teacher who thought that working class kids should read plays and that is the only reason i am doing what i do today. and yet in a funny sort of way, you are not really a political writer. you do not have, it seems to me, a strong political set of views which colour all of your work. it is more that you are trying to find the humanity in politics. is that true? i suppose i have a real geekyjoy in looking at systems and processes and institutions and trying to work out what makes them tick. with this house which is set in 1970s westminster, the last dramatic hung parliament we had prior to the coalition. i deliberately kept margaret thatcher and keith joseph and james callaghan off stage because it. itjust did not interest me. i feel like we were familiar with the ideology of left and right and the tensions between them but we are less familiar with i certainly was when i looked at that gothic palace and how impenetrable and intimidating it is, i did not know how it worked. i did not know how legislation passes through the house. i didn t know how a whip manipulates, encourages, persuades a member of parliament who does not want to vote a certain way to eventually walk through that particular lobby and i always think it is a bit of a gift to be a british playwright in particular because we are so old and our systems are so old they naturally they lean towards absurdity. you turned the arcane detail of westminster process into a successful play in this house but then you did something also fascinating with a different sort of political complicated situation. you turned the brexit furore in the uk into a successful tv drama called the uncivil war. at the heart of that was not david cameron or borisjohnson, it was a guy who at the time very few people had heard of, called dominic cummings. yeah, what happened to him?! most of us know of him now as boris johnson s most important advisor. but why did you, long before cummings attached himself to prime ministerjohnson, why did you see him as a fascinating character? he really is a fascinating character in the world of politics that often sounds increasingly stale in terms of the sound of it and the level of conversation. as you have seen, he is a disruptive and unpredictable surprising catherine wheel of conversation and linguistics. did you meet him and talk to him as research? it was quite late. we had a tactic which is sometimes effective you identify your sun in the middle of the universe, dominic cummings, and you start on the outskirts of planets and rotate your way in gradually just so you can gather information and feel confident when you get there. so i interviewed as many people as i could from vote leave interns or marketing and communications people. and i arrived at dominic cummings once there was a draft and i needed him, i had specific things i wanted to know and i was grateful. he devoted a lot of time to it. you need to strike the balance between spending time with people but you maybe start to feel a sense of. . not loyalty but you want to represent them fairly. and that is where it gets complicated. you are portraying real life and real events but in a fictionalised form and some critics, i will quote to you a campaigning journalist, carol cadwalladr. you got involved in a public debate with her about the veracity, the trueness to life of your brexit screenplay and she said that your dominic cummings, the one you created on screen, is a sherlock character. a maverick polymath who brilliantly solves problems no one else can. and your portrayal made out that he won through genius and not through allegedly criminal methods. because all that in the end got investigated. and because you created a performance and a screenplay that was so great, that is what sticks in people s minds. the positive take on a guy that so many people in britain have grave reservations about. you have to take that responsibility really seriously. i respect her but i disagree. on the night of the broadcast, i retweeted all of my twitter followers to her feed so they could see someone telling them how terrible my drama was. to be fair, she really likes the drama, but she just disagrees. she almost liked it too much. she felt it invited people to not dig into the real difficult detail of the brexit campaign, but actually to just admire the sort of personality, the fizzy whizbang personality of the guy you put centrestage. i also accept that when you cast someone like benedict cumberbatch that comes with that baggage of great intellectual genius from sherlock, some of that will be there. i fundamentally disagree. i think brexit creates a frame for everybody through which we see it based on our own political prejudices, so with no disrespect to her, that is why i wanted to engage with her all the way through, is that she wants a certain kind of film and i didn t want to give it to her. you are not a campaigner. and what you are also is an entertainer. it strikes me that what is absolutely amazing about you is you can make people laugh, cry, feel empathy and sympathy in stories which to most folks are about politicians who they are deeply cynical about, politics they don t want to hear more of, yet you take that and turn it into entertainment. it has to be because whether you are a journalist like carol, or a writer like me, you have the subject matter which feels very far away and it is just an exercise and bringing them closer to most people s understanding, so of course it has to be funny and you have to be moved. unlike journalism, drama s greatest political weapon is empathy and humanising people we don t normally see as human beings. which take you as far, in the play ink, as rupert murdoch. isn t nobody that you can t empathise with? i really believe the best way. we are in such a divisive time, and my question is always, how do you convert people? how do you win? the best people to hold difficult and problematic people to account is not to just demonise them, because when you are just getting the view back that you want to see. the best way to hold them under a great deal of scrutiny is to first give them a defence. whether we like rupert murdoch or not, has revolutionised and transformed the news industry and has certain skills we can either admire or malign, but let s not pretend. it is simply a question of asking an audience to go, what motivates them? what do they think they are doing that is good? at the end, i can disagree with them and the negative impact it has on society, but over the course of two hours of theatre, that is the time to get more reasonable, a guardian reading audience for the first time to say what is it about the sun that appeals to more people than appeal to my paper, and then you just do both things prosecute and defend. people listenign to watching this all over the world may be wondering he sounds fascinating and his plays sound incredibly multifaceted, but he writes such british stories, they are not relevant to me. is there something universal that goes far beyond the detail of westminster process or the tabloid newspapers in the uk? i definitely do, because there is a rule i keeping my head that the more specific you get about a time period or a culture, a nation s story, the more universal it is. as well as exporting work across the world, we receive work across the world, whether it is an arthur miller play from the 1950s, or parasite, a south korean film. the specificity doesn t narrow the appeal. they widen it because they strangely make it more timeless. you have talked about the importance of pure entertainment. are you thinking about going in different directions, getting away from the straight play? without a doubt. i probably saw more musicals than straight plays growing up, and that is my access to theatre, and the artform is more theatrical than plays often. yes, i am writing a musical with eltonjohn at the moment. it is a story that he found, actually. it is about 1980s televangelism and how the television ministries with often quite big hair shoulder padded characters became the largest ministries in the world with millions of worshippers. it is set in reaganite america and the tension between faith and religion, that s sort of my bit. i am trying to make it a little bit of political and i have a conversation about that. can you and eltonjohn actually work on it collaboratively and collectively even now in a time of pandemic? it is not easy. none of the great 20th century musicals were written over skype, the joy of that collaboration is that you are around a piano together and you feel vulnerable enough to make bad ideas and make bad choices, but you can improve. it is difficult. you and eltonjohn are currently zooming and sharing ideas. we are starting to. there is a script i have written and songs, but i don t know how anyone else does it, but i get new ideas for a script and inspire him and his assistant to do a song so you have a back and forth tennis match where he comes up with a song idea that i have to rewrite the script for. look, i am not going to try and play it cool when i am in my house and eltonjohn zooms me, i have to check my background is cool enough because he is in my house. but he is one of our greatest artist and he wrote one of the most successful musicals of all time in terms of the lion king which is running in cities around the world. but it is a valid artform and you can sneak in some really important questions and that is what i will try and do. when can we see it? we will try and finish it in lockdown and then i guess hopefully next year when theatres reopen. you have written very frankly about mixed feeling you have that incredibly turbulent times we are living through, which include obviously right now coronavirus and also the rise of populism and nationalism, deep polarisation within societies, be it the uk, us, or many other countries. you have said on the one hand it is extremely disturbing to live through these times, but as a writer, one selfishly thinks what an amazing amount of subject matter and material. right now, are you finding particularly in this covid i9 pandemic all sorts of ideas coming to you about new humans story to tell in the midst of crisis? i think you have to balance it with feeling every human instinct for the nature of the tragedy, but you can t silence. basically the political part of your brain, which is if we believe, and i do, that storytelling isn tjust a distraction or a confection, it is a tool that we can use at difficult times to make sense of things that feel so hard to make sense of, that you feel, as i m sure many of my peers do, a sense of responsibility to getting in the mix, despite the messiness that sometimes comes with it, in cases like the brexit film, i think the arts and culture need a seat at this table because we have to, it has always been since flipping greek times, the way that we make sense of the world. you can t look around, what happened in the last year, the proroguing of parliament, this incredible pandemic, what is happening now in america and spreading around the world in terms of the justifiable anger, we can dig into it. the question you have and the anxiety you have as a writer is what is my story and what is my role here? even though as you recognise i come from a working class community that was often ignored and deserves a voice at the table, i m a white man and i don t think it is my place to make sense of what is happening in minnesota at the moment. it is my responsibility to step aside at that point and find people have that voice and the anger that is really authentic. a final thought about anger. is anger a very positive creative fuel, or can actually be corrosive? that is a very good and difficult question. historically, especially in british theatre, anger has always played a role. the angry young man in the 1950s that came out of a burning sense of class anger and a burning sense of injustice, and if that motivates you to write them, absolutely own it. it is not always my starting point. did you write as an angry man? i get angry, but what i don t want, and i think we need a theatre that it is provocative, that is dangerous, but the things that i want to write personally, something very sentimental and possibly some people might think i am not the right political playwright for this time, is that i think there is a power in drama that is unifying and that can bring people together to see different points of view when those points of view are legitimate and exist. so sometimes i might write because i am angry, angry about how toxic that exit referendum was, but that won t be the outcome i want to engender in the audience. james graham, it has been a pleasure to have you on hardtalk. thank you very much. i can t shake your hand but i can at least. i can nod politely. thank you. hello there. the first week of summer has certainly brought a big change over the weekend, cool northerly winds, some rain, and a good deal of cloud around as well. interestingly, at loftus, in redcar and cleveland, there s been more rain in the last week than we ve had during the whole of spring. the start of the new week, though, looks a lot drier. the winds won t be as strong either. that s because we ve got this area of high pressure, or at least the nose of it, heading towards the uk. may not last long, but for a while, it will keep those weather fronts at bay from the north west of the uk. now, many places will have a dry day on monday, the sunshine coming and going. there ll still be a few light showers blown onto some of those north sea coasts, and during the afternoon, watch out for some heavy, slow moving showers in wales and the south west of england. but, on the whole, a lot of dry weather around. temperatures not very different from what we had on sunday, but you will find that the winds are a good deal lighter today. and those light winds continue into the evening. it shouldn t be too long before we see the back of those showers from the south west, and overnight into tuesday morning, it s going to be dry pretty much everywhere. a fair bit of cloud around, perhaps not quite as chilly across scotland and the north east of england as it will be first thing on monday morning. well, moving into tuesday, and there s still quite a lot of cloud in the picture. and whilst most places will be dry, there s the odd shower developing through the day ahead of the main change, which is this band of rain here arriving into western scotland and northern ireland, probably very late on in the day on tuesday, if not into the evening. temperatures still on the cool side, though, for many. 15 17 degrees. and then more significant changes arrive from mid week onwards. we ve got that weather front driving some rain southwards. pressure is dropping, we end up with an area of low pressure a cross the uk on wednesday. so we ve got some cloud, we ve got some outbreaks of rain pushing towards the south east. and whilst it may well brighten up a bit further north, look at all the showers developing, and those actually could be heavy and thundery. and because there s more cloud, because there s more rain around, temperatures will be a bit lower, 14 16 degrees. that area of low pressure is still going to be around during thursday and perhaps into friday. it s drifting further south, as well. so the wetter weather as we head towards the latter part of the week more likely to be across england and wales. we ll see the winds picking up, but by the end of the week, it could be a warmer wind.
this is bbc news. i m sally bundock with the latest headlines, for viewers in the uk and around the world. quarantine rules have come into force, meaning most travellers arriving in the uk must self isolate for two weeks. council members in minneapolis pledge to dismantle the city s police force, following the death in custody there of george floyd. outcome is to end and policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe. our commitment. hundreds of people have demonstrated in brazil against president bolsonaro‘s response to the coronavirus.
the brother of george floyd, whose death in police custody in minneapolis has ignited anti racism protests around the world, has called for meaningful changes in american policing. philonise floyd told a congressional hearing his brother s death did not have to be in vain. democrats have introduced legislation on police reforms in congress. authorities in delhi have warned that coronavirus infections in the indian capital could shoot up to more than half a million by the end ofjuly. they say the city will need 80,000 hospital beds by then. delhi s current capacity isjustjust 9,000. russian investigators have detained three managers of the norilsk power plant in siberia on suspicion of breaching environmental protection regulations. it follows the spilling of 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil into local rivers and a lake. environmentalists say it s the worst accident of its kind in post soviet russia. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i am stephen sackur. a year ago, massive pro democracy demonstrations in hong kong seriously rattled the chinese government. a little later in the summer government. a little later in the summer of 2019, my guest today simon cheng, an employee of the uk consulate in hong kong, was arrested by the chinese authorities. he said he was then interrogated and tortured. now, simon cheng is in london, seeking political asylum and the chinese government is about to impose new, national security laws in hong kong. so, willanything impose new, national security laws in hong kong. so, will anything stop the chinese government imposing its will and its system in hong kong? simon cheng, welcome to hardtalk. nice to meet you, stephen. you have been through a truly extraordinary year. one year ago you were living a normal life in hong kong. today, we sit together in london, your state is uncertain. what is your current situation here in the uk? well, i have now come to london using the working visa that is a de facto holiday visa and now i m at applying for political asylum from the home 0ffice for political asylum from the home office and and i will have a result by latejune. office and and i will have a result by late june. in essence, you are in political exile aren t you? yeah, yeah, you can say that. having look back on everything that happened, do you think that the united kingdom government, who was your employer, you re working for the consulate in hong kong, do you feel that they failed ina hong kong, do you feel that they failed in a duty of care to you? well, i would say that at least apply political asylum. i would like to wait and see whether they will grant me the political asylum. if they do, then i think that will be good for me and essentially i could live here and stay here. sanctuary? that is what you need, is that? yes. because you feel that events just under a year ago, when he travelled ona under a year ago, when he travelled on a business mission for the uk government, to china, what they ended up with you facing a very real and continued threat, in your view, from the chinese government? yes, exactly, i was on a business trip for my department within the british consulate in hong kong and when i went back to xinjiang and finished the trip and went back to the hong kong west current highway station, i was stalked and delivered back to xinjiang where i experienced torture and political interrogation by the secret police, the state security police. why do you think the chinese authorities detained you and we will discuss treatment of you in a second but why did they detain you? firstly, i think it was because i wa nted firstly, i think it was because i wanted to collect information that i was in the protests in the midst of the anti extradition bill in hong kong and also i worked for the british consulate and i had been instructed to collect information about the protests. that is the way they wanted to get the information and also they are wanting to blame me and also to prove and to prove that that the uk instigated the protest. i am already puzzled and i m thinking that if i was saying the position of a chinese official looking at you, i would be somewhat concerned about your role because your official title is involved in trade and business missions from the uk consulate in hong kong but in fa ct uk consulate in hong kong but in fact you have just told me that you we re fact you have just told me that you were instructed by your diplomatic masters to observe and report upon the democracy demonstrations which of course a very large last summer in hong kong. we use some sort of an undercover spy? not exactly undercover spy? not exactly undercover spy. i mean, undercover spy? not exactly undercoverspy. i mean, iwas undercover spy? not exactly undercover spy. i mean, iwas on undercover spy? not exactly undercover spy. i mean, i was on the frontline. i mean, when i was.. but you were on the front lines to report back to your masters?” but you were on the front lines to report back to your masters? i was not on the frontline because of that, i personally support the pro democracy movement and i only joined the political rainy and in the meanwhile i was instructed by the meanwhile i was instructed by the consulate that i needed to collect information political rally about those news channels. just typically because of the notion that you are someway spying, you did not declare who you were to either your pro democracy colleagues on the front line or to any police or authorities that may have tried to intervene. you were there, ostensibly, as a private hong kong citizen but in fact you were there working for the british government. isn t that a slightly odd conflict of interest? indeed, that is slightly odd but.. but of interest? indeed, that is slightly odd but. . .. but you are a spyr slightly odd but. . .. but you are a spy, simon cheng? i mean, i have a few identities, one i work for the consulate that is nothing relevant to politics but meanwhile i am a hong kong citizen. that is a clear guidelines that the consulate saying that you as a hong kong citizen, you have your own right, you are free to join the legal rallies in hong kong. when the british first asked you to report back to give them information on what you are learning about the pro democracy demonstrations, did you, at any point, stop forethought and think, hmmm. this could get me into trouble? at that time, no. at that time i do believe there was a great chance for me to keep tag for the british government as to why the protests will go on the street. that is why ijoined because it was meaningful to me. who is is why ijoined because it was meaningfulto me. who is your is why ijoined because it was meaningful to me. who is your first loyalty, the british government or hong kong which is ultimately someone hong kong which is ultimately someone territory of china. he was your loyalty? to the hong kong people because i am a citizen and of course i work for the uk government because i believe in a democratic system and i do believe that it is not to safeguarding the interests of the uk but because it can reinforce the uk but because it can reinforce the people voice for democracy. so, so the people voice for democracy. so, so to fast forward a little bit, you 110w so to fast forward a little bit, you now tell me that the chinese detained you in xinjiang because they had either filmed you, had some record of you being involved in the pro democracy protest. the chinese of course are quite clear that you are picked up because you had illegally solicited for sex in xinjiang. at the very least, you violated chinese security administration punishment law. is that true? not true. is said afterwards that you had visited a massage parlour. a massage parlour but nothing else. what they claim andi but nothing else. what they claim and i clearly denied that accusation, especially the accusations through a legal process including torture and coercion. right, because there are videos, a video of your confession, notjust to soliciting prostitution but betrayal of the motherland. why did you record those videos? well, i think that is for public relations. imean, think that is for public relations. i mean, when i was asked out for doing the enforced confession tapes, i was relieved because i guessed at that time that my situation had been exposed to the news and so had to do something to try to persuade the people that are, i so called solicited prostitution is, which is not true. if you can see that footage, that is a very decent massage parlour with very decent business certification on the wall and you carefully watch the footage at the end, there are a bunch of family members, including children, and if that country is very careful about the rule of law, they don t have enough evidence to prove anything. you have already listen, you have used the word torture and in previous descriptions of what happened to you, you have used words like that you were shackled, blindfolded, hoarded and he said your hands were cuffed and you were hungin your hands were cuffed and you were hung ina your hands were cuffed and you were hung in a difficult and uncomfortable position and forced to sit in an uncomfortable position. is there anyway you can prove any of this because of the chinese have denied absolutely that they used any form of physical abuse or force on you. i would that is absolutely lies and nonsense. although i cannot prove that, prove that i have been tortured, but, as i am the first hand experience, i experienced the torture. i clearly saw the detention centre, the doctors within the detention centre in the first week, and in the first week, they chopped my papers, and i owned the medical papers and if the chinese authority did slightly did a very small investigation, they would know, they would know that within the detention centre the medical records, if they checked the first week, they would see i already got hurt. you have any marks on your body now? just a bit but they are recovering because one of the prerequisites i had to be let out was because i had to be fully recovered. in the second week, the secret police brought people to help me. to get rid of the bruises and the marks? exactly. you also said that while you are in detention and what you claim suffering a physical abuse, you saw a bunch of other hong kong people getting interrogated. you were aware there were other hong kong people involved in the pro democracy demonstrations who presumably, like you, had been taken to xinjiang to be interrogated. any proof of that? because that is an extremely inflammatory claim at least viewed from china. stephen, if you ask me to prove that of that situation, at that situation i was detained, i cannot. did you gather any names 01’ names you detained, i cannot. did you gather any names or names you could follow up afterwards to see what happened? i m not allowed to have contact with them because i am being put into solitary confinement but in the past and i saw that bunch of people from the bottom of my heart, i guessed they were hong kong protesters but from two different sources, from the interrogators, and interrogators told me that had been arrested because of the protests in hong kong. as you say, you eventually, after two weeks in detention, you are allowed to leave china andi detention, you are allowed to leave china and i believe you went to taiwan for a couple of months and then you came to the united kingdom, where you are now pursuing your claim for asylum which is they will be settled in just a couple of weeks. have you any contact at all with your family and hong kong? no. you know, early this year, i was still maintaining contact with my family members in hong kong but afterwards, that was the first time, i received the media in cantonese, in chinese, and after that i cut ties with my family. you many cut ties with my family. you many cut ties with my family. you many cut ties with a permanent basis with them? at least for the security reason, yes, because severalfamily members in mainland china are afraid because i chose to speak out, especially in cantonese and in effect, the chinese audience. do you feel that since this happened to you, the british government has responded with sufficient vigor to the seriousness of your case? you after a ll the seriousness of your case? you after all were an employee of the uk consulate in hong kong when you were detained and according to yourself when you were tortured by the chinese authorities. this happened less tha n chinese authorities. this happened less than one year ago. are you satisfied with the way the british government responded to your case? well, at least the foreign secretary dominic raabe called the chinese ambassador in the uk and at least the official statement made by the foreign secretary recognise that my treatment and torture, that is quite enough already. because i don t expect too much from the uk government because usually when i worked for the uk government and what i saw, usually a statement to hong kong is very very more direct. in your experience, the uk government, as both an employee and as you say as a private citizen who supports the pro democracy movement, you feel over a long period that the british government has been, to use your, euphemistic term, very moderate in its dealings with china? yeah, definitely. iwould moderate in its dealings with china? yeah, definitely. i would say for example because of the british government and those people living in the uk, they are not on the front line to deal with the authoritarianism so that they could naturally, and that was one of the admission and why wanted to inform them that they have to stand with them that they have to stand with the hong kong people. let s bring it up the hong kong people. let s bring it up to the present day because things have become even more sensitive in recent times since you left hong kong, with the chinese government, thanks to the latest decision from the national people s congress, about to impose a raft of national security laws that apply inside china on the mainland, apply them to hong kong as well. that will criminalise people who are said to be advocating separatism, subversion, terrorism, acts of foreign interference, hong kong citizens who are part of the movement believe that national security law will be used to repress all of theirfreedom of security law will be used to repress all of their freedom of speech. what is your view of what the chinese government is doing now? it s very ha rd to government is doing now? it s very hard to imagine less than a year what i entreat would be applied to all the hong kong people now in hong kong. before, this national security law that i have been threatened, if i spoke out when i got back to hong kong, i would i spoke out when i got back to hong kong, iwould be i spoke out when i got back to hong kong, i would be secretly abducted from hong kong to mainland china. that happened long before this law. afterwards, the main point is that they legalise their behaviour. it means that they are not secretly doing it, they willjust openly do it, and they have legal grounds to do it. we are in a dark room because we don t know exactly what they will execute, and what is the distinction between mainland china and hong kong, that is what i am so worried about. you are worried that the chinese government has a very clear message. the director of the hong kong affairs office in beijing says it s quite clear the security laws that have now been applied to hong kong will give the majority there much more freedom and protection, because they will no longer fear violence, they will be able to speak the truth on the street without being beaten up, and they will no longer have to worry about the young people of the territory being brainwashed by people like you. know, totally nonsense. because of course you can check, you can simply check all the statements on the courts on mainland china. does all the people, they just courts on mainland china. does all the people, theyjust leave a critical comment on chinese leadership and chain authority, then, they will be criminalised as making trouble, or provoking quarrels. sure, but hong kong does have its own government, and the chief of the hong kong government, she says she supports the new national security law, because she says it will bring an end to chaos. chaos that has badly affected the hong kong economy, so the hong kong government, under the one country two systems edict, the hong kong government itself is supporting the national security law. government itself is supporting the national-security law. it means they have ruined the two systems already. that introduce the secret police to come to hong kong, they will charge you, titania, torture you, deliver you, titania, torture you, deliver you back to mainland china because what is said, and that is the thing we are worried about, and the chaos they claim is caused by those powerful fears, by the authorities, not by the people. do you really believe that the system of one country believe that the system of one cou ntry two believe that the system of one country two systems and all the basic law that is supposed to guarantee hong kong s special status under chinese sovereignty, you believe all that is now dead, do you? all that, already. a few years ago, people will say that it was just a pretend it was still a lie when the chinese authorities say that the declaration of independence isa that the declaration of independence is a historical document, that attitude of the chinese is very clear. let s bring it back to the british. you have seen in the last month or so the british government make a clear commitment that because of their concerns about the application of this new national security law, they are now promising to meet their obligations to british national overseas passport holders, the number more than 300,000 in hong kong, thanks to the andover agreement of 97, and potentially, up to two and a half or 3 million more hong kong citizens could potentially get access to those so called passports, and it seems would be allowed to come to the uk for at least one year and maybe even apply for citizenship. what you make of what you have heard from borisjohnson what you make of what you have heard from boris johnson on what you make of what you have heard from borisjohnson on that issue?|j from borisjohnson on that issue?” would say that is a very encouraging signal, at least we finally see that as the uk government, the attitudes to china have been made, u turn, and is encouraging to most people. you area is encouraging to most people. you are a hong kong citizen, you said to mei are a hong kong citizen, you said to me i always think in the end is a loyal resident of hong kong. do you really wa nt loyal resident of hong kong. do you really want to see hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of the brightest and the best in hong kong making it exodus, a rush for the exit door and leaving the territory? i would say why not? at least we need to protect the people of hong kong, that is the first duty. me to safeguard them because if they are still staying in hong kong, and they have sacrificed their lives, it is worthless to me. i would say that is notjust to rescue the hong kong people, we need to rescue all of democracy, and we need to rescue british citizens as well. you think many hong kong citizens will choose to leave? at least we need to give lifeboats for them, and if they can help themselves, they have a way to leave. it is about more thanjust have a way to leave. it is about more than just the capacity for those who have the passports to leave, it is about whether the international community will try to put real pressure on china in terms of economic sanctions, joshua wong, one of the prominent, young pro democracy activist in hong kong has called on the uk government to impose hotel sanctions in order to push for the withdrawal of the national security bill by the chinese. he says we should at the very least expel the telecoms giant huawei from involvement in the uk 56 network. are you now as an activist here in the uk, who actually wants asylu m here in the uk, who actually wants asylum in the uk, are you pushing for the uk government to be much tougher? yes, we are working on it, and that is good news for us. at least what boris johnson said, and that is good news for us. at least what borisjohnson said, it will sort it out by 2023, and i do believe that is the uk government and also the west, they can stand up to china. interesting, because indian the most important player he is donald trump in the united states stopper his messages are very mixed. 0n the one hand he has blamed china for covid 19 pandemic, he talks tough on china, but he has not, in very notably has not torn up the phase one trade deal with china. do you believe donald trump is serious about putting pressure on beijing? we will wait and see, but at least what we see compared with other western countries, the us, unless they show the strongest point to stand against china, and what we see, the statement made by the secretary of state, they are brave enough, they would retreat the special status to hong kong, so i do believe they have a determination to save hong kong. i want to and with a personal thought. i think i m right in saying, a young man who is still under 30, is that right? yes. you have made a massive life decision stop given your experience last year, you have come to the uk, you are seeking political asylum, you have chosen to speak out, you are now part of the worldwide pro democracy the hong kong movement. your life has changed for ever, you will always, at least in the foreseeable future, be regarded as an enemy by china. do you believe that in some ways, you will always face threat in your life? definitely. that is the threat and the smear and definitely. that is the threat and the smearand campaign definitely. that is the threat and the smear and campaign against me will be for the rest of my life. people ask me if i have solicited prostitution, if i am a traitor, and iam prostitution, if i am a traitor, and i am well prepared for it because i do not regret, i believe we need to fight for democracy, not only in hong kong, but in china. no regrets at all? because you have handled things very differently stop you could have refused the british government, refused to report for the government, the british government, on the pro democracy demonstrations, and i am just wondering, sitting here with you whether you don t have some regrets about your decisions? no, not at all. iam about your decisions? no, not at all. i am very determined, i do believe at that time, i collected information for the better good, for the world, and we can learn and hear about the voice of the true hong kong people, the people that have no power, nothing they can do any more but the only way they can do, is go on the street, fight for democracy. simon cheng, thank you very much indeed for being a hardtalk. thank you so much. well, it doesn t look like the weather is in any hurry to settle down over the next day or two. more rain bearing clouds on the way. in fact, it has already been raining quite heavily across the south west of england, western parts of wales, all thanks to this weather front that s been moving across the uk. quite sluggishly really. 0vercast skies across much of the country. for most of us it has just been patchy rain here and there, and the heaviest of the rain has indeed been across parts of cornwall, devon. it is now clearing away from wales. the little bits of pieces further north and actually scotland and northern ireland escaping most of that rain. 10 degrees will be morning temperature. so here are the occasional showers during the middle of the day. a lot of cloud across england and wales, with a few glimmers of brightness. and then we see another spell of rain heading towards eastern parts of the uk, thursday, late afternoon and evening. and that rain is sort of going to barrel across the uk, across the pennines, into parts of wales but, all the while, scotland and northern ireland escape all of that weather so actually, during thursday, this is where the best weather will be, in northern ireland, and particularly western parts of scotland. low pressure is pretty much stuck end of the week to the south of us, it s stuck around the bay of biscay but, within this area of low pressure, there is actually quite a lot of fairly warm and humid aircircling. that warm and humid air heading our way but, with it, also comes the return of this weather front so that does mean that on friday we are anticipating again a dose of heavy rain, particularly across the south south west, and into wales as well and, again, the best of the weather will be the further north you are, in fact cracking weather there in the north of scotland but it will be cooler there, around 1a degrees. that weather front will make its journey a little bit further north during saturday and to the south of that, we ll probably see showers breaking up, the possibility of some thunderstorms as well. this is actually humid air streaming in from the south. those temperatures will be rising. given a bit of sunshine, we could see highs into the mid 20s across the south. 20 degrees or so on saturday in glasgow. but in western scotland, still a lot of sunshine around. and here s sunday again, the best of the weather i think the further north you are. in the south we still could catch some thunderstorms. bye bye.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i m maryam moshiri. another statue down: protestors try to destroy a confederate monument in the city of portsmouth, virginia. britain could have halved the number of virus deaths if it had locked down just one week earlier says the government s former scientific advisor. russia says a massive diesel spill in the arctic could take years to clean up. and the authorjk rowling speaks out about being a victim of domestic abuse. in business, a long road to recovery. the federal reserve weighs up the damage to the us economy and says fixing it will take years.
thousands of people defied the ban on mass gatherings to join rallies triggered by the killing of george floyd, in police custody in the us. demonstrators in bristol pulled down a bronze statue of a 17th century slave trader, edward colston, and threw it into the harbour britain s prime minister, borisjohnson, has said that the anti racism demonstrations have been subverted by thuggery , after a small number of protestors attacked police officers in central london for a second day in a row. mrjohnson said the violence was a betrayal of the cause the marches purport to serve. large numbers of people are continuing to take part in peaceful protests against police brutality and racism in the us. tens of thousands gathered in cities including washington and new york, as well as small towns across the country. the protests began as an expression of anger over the police killing of george floyd, but now encompass many local causes as well. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. i m stephen sackur. the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to the performing arts. no one knows when theatres like this one will be able to unlock the doors. so what happens? do the riders performers, the venues themselves that enrich our cultural life? iam themselves that enrich our cultural life? i am speaking today to arguably the best british playwright of his generation, james graham. what do we do to protect our culture ? what do we do to protect our culture? james graham, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. theatres are closed right now. yourjob is very difficult to do in many ways. does it feel like this pandemic has brought your world crashing down? it feel like this pandemic has brought your world crashing down7m does feel like that way but it must feel like that across every sector at the moment. the only problem is that even though the virus affects all actors sectors it will affect the theatre the most. it s what makes theatres so special, it requires you to be close to people and that is one thing we cannot do at the moment and we are unsure, based on the science, when that will ever happen. so companyjohnson bars can open up this summer, that will not be the case for theatre. people have used phrases like existential threat a lot during this pandemic about different businesses in different sectors. perhaps more than any they have used it about theatre. some theatres say they are very close to going bankrupt. you, obviously, a well connected in the industry. is that exaggeration or is it true? it is really true. it is devastating and upsetting. the very first buildings to close, they closed because the government told them to because public safety is the most important thing. because the business model is a mix of rock s office, both ticket sales for the show that night and also the majority of that is advance booking and booking to see hamilton next spring, they have dried up for an audience for an audience they have dried up another an audience who does not the confidence to book ahead. they still have expensive rents but zero income. you have called for an aggressive government bailout and others have said they wa nt bailout and others have said they wantan bailout and others have said they want an emergency relief specifically for the performing arts and in particular for theatre. specifically for the performing arts and in particularfor theatre. yet i am mindful of than national theatre, it gets a substantial government grant already. in this time of crisis where the entire economy is facing a severe long term recession, using the public really believes that government should pump special targeted money into theatres?m that government should pump special targeted money into theatres? it is the most important point and i do not disagree. it is a hard argument to make against the black drop of every person in the country suffering economically. i wish i hadn t used the word bailout. the actual term is investment. an investment that the government a lwa ys investment that the government always gets back and if the economy is going to recover and the one benefit of this kind of crisis is that it benefit of this kind of crisis is thatitis benefit of this kind of crisis is that it is not all these industries are basketcase businesses, they are profitable in normal times. once people re emerge into the light they can be profitable again. it isjust that theatres are uniquely and disproportionately affected in that they will be the very last buildings to open. if that is the case, in the last decade, the arts and culture and entertainment were almost the fastest growing sector of the entire economy. nurses and hospital beds and teachers are going to need those businesses that do return a profit to the economy to be firing on all cylinders and we can do that and wa nt to cylinders and we can do that and want to do that you cannot do that with zero income for up to nine months. i want to get a little personal if i may. for you, as a writer, for both screen and theatre, what has happened to your creative juices, your creative impulse while you, like all of us, have been wrestling with lock down, with isolation. you are living on your own, right? so there is a sense of isolation. what is that done to you? i live on my own and i normally enjoy my own company because i am a writer and a need to be in my own head a lot. but what is really beautiful and i am so grateful to be allowed to be a creative is that you have these moments of self imposed lockdown where you can just be in your own head and creative and then your own head and creative and then you emerge and have wonderful moments of real collective action, making a play in a rehearsal with a company of actors over four weeks and then sharing that with audience members is almost the most public thing you can do. so collective and so thing you can do. so collective and so shared. is that getting to you? but i don t think i am more special than anybody else but it is getting to and a sense that it is. writing isa to and a sense that it is. writing is a bit ofa to and a sense that it is. writing is a bit of a weird job. you are sat in your office, your room, your kitchen table, making things up. there will always be a level of imposter syndrome and silliness about it not being a properjob but i know it means a lot to many people to watch tv dramas and films and plays so what motivates you when that weirdness is knowing that eventually one day you will share it and it will notjust be something a bstra ct and it will notjust be something abstract you make up. it is just very ha rd to abstract you make up. it is just very hard to find yourself in that situation when you do worry about an industry, the oldest industry in the world, theatre, and its ability to survive. also, like everybody else, like you, i spent a vast amount of my timejust being like you, i spent a vast amount of my time just being really worried for people, those i loved, my friends and the part of your head that really worries about people and society is the part of your head you have to enter to do the work and sometimes you just do not want to go when there. you mentioned an interesting phrase a minute ago about imposter syndrome and i know you are talking specifically about how you feel right now under lockdown but i just how you feel right now under lockdown but ijust wonder whether you, being are being honest about something deeper? you come from a background that most people in theatre probably do not come from. your mum and dad raised you in north nottinghamshire in a coalfield area, depressed economically, you went to a local school there, frankly the ambition for most kids was probably not to aim at west end or even think about it. do you think that has fed into the way you feel about where you are today? in terms of. yes, it must have done. it feeds into everything doesn t it? nottinghamshire, uniquely, is an interesting political and cultural place because it is not quite north and it is not quite southern and pulitzer pots actors in terms like in times like the miners strike andi in times like the miners strike and i can only assume that has impacted on in my writing it has impacted on in my writing it has impacted a desire or sense, a desire to create empathy for multiple different points of view when it comes to politics and not have my work be an activist and agenda towards one particular point. in the 19605 towards one particular point. in the 1960s there was a wave of writing drama that was written very much by working class writers. some from nottinghamshire, from the places you are from. do you identify today as a working class writer?|j are from. do you identify today as a working class writer? i struggle with it but don t know why i do and i shouldn t. the language attentively use is that i am from a working class background but i accept, even though i sort of reject the idea behind it, that you cannot have an artist and working class. i know it is hard to have a play in the west end with the lights in the glamour and to feel authentically working class. i can only assume that i am because i am from that background and it is important for me to get those book voices into my plays. and it is looking at your life, that your mother, for example, and your teachers at school, they a lwa ys and your teachers at school, they always encourage you to think big when it of and the arts. you were fed a hope and an expectation that you could do it. it is not billy elliot, not the hollywood story where i faced resisted i am from teachers or from my family it was brilliant. they love coming to see me appear in a school play. they d not think it was silly, nor non masculine, any of those things you normally associate with the arts in working class communities. normally associate with the arts in working class communitieslj working class communities.” remember my mother burst onto tears and burst into tears when i got ona train and burst into tears when i got on a train for the first time to head to london. the only reason i am now a playwright with, fortunately, having plays on broadway or having tv dramas and films in america and finding myself at the emmy awards last year in hollywood is because i went to a comprehensive school where the teacher who thought that working class kids should read plays and that is the only reason i am doing what i do today. and yet you are not doing what i do today. and yet you a re not really doing what i do today. and yet you are not really a political writer. you do not have, it seems to me, a strong political set of views which colour all of your work. it is more that you are trying to find the humanity in politics. is that true? i suppose i have a real geekyjoy in looking at systems and processes and institutions and trying to work out what makes them tick. with this house which is set in 1970s westminster, the last parliament we had prior to the coalition. i kept margaret thatcher and others off stage because it. itjust did not interest me. i thought we were familiar with the ideology of left and right in the tension between them but we are less familiar with, i certainly was, with that gothic palace and how impenetrable it is, i did not know how it works. i did not know how legislation passes through the house. how a whip persuades a member of parliament who does not wa nt to member of parliament who does not want to vote a certain way to walk through that lobby and i always think it is a bit of a gift to be a british playwright in particular because we are so old and our systems a re because we are so old and our systems are so old that naturally they lean towards absurdity. he turned the arcane detail of westminster process into a successful play but then you did something fascinating with a different sort of political complicated situation. you turned the brexit few role in the uk into a successful tv drama called the uncivil war. in the heart of that was not david cameron or boris johnson, it was a guy who at the time very few people had heard of, called dominic cummings. yeah, what happened to him?! most of us know of him now is borisjohnson is most important advisor. but why did you, long before he attached himself to prime ministerjohnson, why did you see him as a fascinating character? he really is a fascinating character and that often sounds increasingly stale in terms of the sound level of conversation. as you have seen he is a disruptive and unpredictable surprising catherine wheel of conversation and linguistics. did you meet him and talk to him as research? it was late. we had a tactic is sometimes effective, you identify your person in the middle of the universe, dominic cummings, and you start on the outskirts and rotate your way in graduallyjust so you can gather information and feel confident when you get there. i interviewed as many people are so called from vote leave, interns or marketing and communications people. and once there was a draft and i needed cummings, i had things i wa nted needed cummings, i had things i wanted to know and i was grateful. he devoted a lot of time to it. you need to strike the balance between spending time with people and you may be start to feel a sense of wanting to represent them fairly. and that is where it gets complicated. you are portraying and real events but in a fictionalised form and some critics, i will quote to you a campaigning journalist. you got involved in a public debate with her about the veracity, the trueness to live of your brexit screenplay and she said that your dominic cummings, the one you created on screen is a shalott character. a maverick polymath who solves problems no one else can. in your portrayal made out that he won through genius and not through allegedly criminal methods. and because you created a performance and wrote a screenplay that was so great, that is what sticks in people s minds. the positive take on a guy that so many people in britain have grave reservations about. you have grave reservations about. you have to take that responsibility really seriously. i respect her but i disagree. on the night of the broadcast, i retweeted all of my twitter followers to her feed so they could see someone telling them how terrible my genre was. to be fair, she really likes the drama, but she just disagrees. she fair, she really likes the drama, but she just disagrees. .. she almost liked it too much. she felt it invited people to not dig into the real difficult detail of the brexit campaign, but actually to just admire the sort of personality, the fizzy whizbang personality of the quy fizzy whizbang personality of the guy you fizzy whizbang personality of the guy you put centrestage.” fizzy whizbang personality of the guy you put centrestage. i also accept the man that comes with that intellectual ‘s, some of that will be there. i disagree. i think brexit creates a frame for everybody through which we see it based on our own political prejudices, so no disrespect to her, that is why i wa nted disrespect to her, that is why i wanted to engage with her all the way through is that she wants a certain kind of film and i didn t wa nt to certain kind of film and i didn t want to give it to her. you are not a campaigner. and what you are also as an entertainer. it strikes me that what is absolutely amazing about you is you can make people laugh, cry, feel empathy and sympathy in stories which to most folks are about politicians who they are deeply cynical about, politics they don t want to hear more of, yet you take that and turn it. it has to be because whether you are a journalist or a writer like me, you have the subject matter which feels very far away and it is just an exercise and ringing them closer to most people ‘s understanding, so of course it has to be funny and you have to be moved. unlikejournalism, the greatest political weapon is empathy and humanising people we don t normally see as human beings. which take you as far as rupert murdoch. isn t nobody that you can t empathise with? i really believe the best way. we are in such a divisive time, and my question is always, how do you convert people? how do you win? the best people to hold diplomatic and problematic people to account is not to just demonise them, because when you are just getting the view back that you wa nt to just getting the view back that you want to see. the best way to hold them under a great deal of scrutiny is to first give them a defence. whether we like rupert murdoch or not, has revolutionised and transformed the news industry and has certain skills we can either admire or malign, but that got pretend. it is simply a question of asking an audience to go, what motivates them? what do they think they are doing that is good? at the end, ican they are doing that is good? at the end, i can disagree and the negative impact it has on society, but over the course of two hours of theatre, thatis the course of two hours of theatre, that is the time to get more reasonable, a guardian reading audience for the first time to say, what is it about the summit appears to more people than appeal to my paper, and then you justin moore both things. as acute and the people watching is all over the world i may be wondering he sounds fascinating in his plays sound incredibly multifaceted, but he writes such a british stories, they are not releva nt to british stories, they are not relevant to me. is there something universal that goes far beyond the detail of westminster process or the tabloid newspapers in the uk?” definitely do, because there is a ruler keeping my head that the more specific you get about a time. or a culture, a nation ‘s story, the more universal it is. as well as exporting work across the world, we receive work across the world, whether it is an arthur miller play from the 1950s parasite, korean film. the specificity doesn t narrow the appeal. they widen it because they strangely make it more timeless. you have talked about the importance of pure entertainment. are you thinking about going in different directions, getting away from the straight play? without a doubt. i probably saw more musicals going up, and that is my access to theatre, and the artform is more theatrical than plays often. yes, i am writing a musical with eltonjohn at the moment. it is a story that he found, actually. it is about 1980s tell evangelism and how the television industries were often quite big, and they became the largest ministries in the world with millions of worshippers. it is set in reagan america and the tension between faith and religion, that sort of my bed. i am trying to make ita sort of my bed. i am trying to make it a little bit of political and i have a conversation about that. can you and elton john have a conversation about that. can you and eltonjohn actually work on it collaboratively and collectively even now in a time of pandemic?m is not easy. none of the great 20th century musicals were written over skype, the joy of that collaboration is that you are around a piano together and you feel vulnerable enough to make bad ideas and make bad choices, but you can improve. it is difficult. you and elton john are currently zooming and sharing ideas. currently zooming and sharing ideas. . . we currently zooming and sharing ideas. we are starting to. there isa ideas. we are starting to. there is a script and songs, but i don t know how anyone else does it but i get new ideas for a script and inspire him to do a song, so you have a back and forth tennis match where he comes up with a song idea that i have to rewrite the script for. look, iam not going that i have to rewrite the script for. look, i am not going to try and play it cool when i am in my house and elton john zooms, play it cool when i am in my house and eltonjohn zooms, i have to check my background is cool enough because he is in my house. but he is one of our greatest artist and he wrote one of the most successful musicals of all time in terms of the lion king. you can sneak in some really important questions and that is what i will try and do. when can we see it? we will try and finish it in lockdown and then i guess hopefully next year when theatres reopen. you have written very frankly about mixed feeling you have that incredibly turbulent times we are living through, which include obviously right now coronavirus and also the rise of realism and nationalism, deep polarisation within societies, uk, us, or many other countries. you have set on the one hand it is extremely disturbing to live through these times, but has a writer, one selfishly thinks what an amazing amount of subject matter and material. right now, you finding particularly in this covid i9 pandemic all sorts of ideas coming to you about new humans story to tell in the midst of crisis?” to you about new humans story to tell in the midst of crisis? i think you have to balance it with feeling every human instinct for the nature of the tragedy, but you can t silence. basically the political pa rt silence. basically the political part of your brain, which is if we believe, and i do, that storytelling isn t just a believe, and i do, that storytelling isn tjust a distraction or a conviction, it is a tool that we can use at difficult times to make sense of things that feel so hard to make sense of, that you feel, as i m sure many of my peers do, a sense of response ability to getting in the mix despite the messiness that sometimes comes with it, in terms of the brexit film, the arts and culture need a seat at this table because we have two, it has always been since greek times the way that we make sense of the world. you can t look around, what happened in the last year, the parading of parliament, this incredible pandemic happening now in america and spreading around the world in terms of they justify their anger, we spreading around the world in terms of theyjustify their anger, we can dig into it. the question you have any anxiety you have as a writer is what is my story and what is my role here? even though as you recognise i come from a working class community that was often ignored and deserves a voice at the table in the right man, and! a voice at the table in the right man, and i don t think it is my place to make sense of what is happening in minnesota at the moment. it is my responsibility to step aside at that point and find people have that voice and the anger thatis people have that voice and the anger that is really authentic. a final thought about anger. is anger a very positive creative fuel, or can actually be corrosive? that is a very good and difficult question. historically, especially in british theatre, anger has always played a role. the angry man in the 1950s that came out of a burning sense of injustice, and if that motivates you to write them, absolutely own it. it is always not always my starting point. i get angry, but what i don t want, and! point. i get angry, but what i don t want, and i think we need a theatre that it want, and i think we need a theatre thatitis want, and i think we need a theatre that it is provocative, that is dangerous, but the things that i wa nt to dangerous, but the things that i want to write personally, something very sentimental and possibly some people might think i am not the political right political playwright for this time, it is unifying and that can bring people together to see different points of view when those points of view are legitimate and exist. so sometimes i might write because i am angry, angry about how toxic that exit referendum was, but that won t be the outcome i want to engender in the outcome i want to engender in the audience. james graham, it has been a pleasure to have you on hardtalk. thank you very much.” can t shake your hand .my thank you. hello there. the first week of summer has certainly brought a big change in the weather pattern. over the weekend, cool northerly winds, some rain and a good deal of cloud around as well. interestingly, at loftus in redcar in cleveland, there s been more rain in the last week than we ve had during the whole of spring. the start of the new week, though, looks a lot drier, the winds won t be as strong either. that s because we ve got this area of high pressure, or at least the nose of it heading towards the uk. it may not last long, but for a while, it will keep those weather fronts at bay from the north west of the uk. now, many places will have a dry day on monday, the sunshine coming and going. there ll still be a few light showers blown onto some of those north sea coasts. during the afternoon, watch out for some heavy slow moving showers in wales and the south west of england. but on the whole, a lot of dry weather around. temperatures not very different from what we had on sunday, but we ll find that the winds are a good deal lighter today. and those light winds continue into the evening. it shouldn t be too long before we see the back of those showers from the south west, and overnight into tuesday morning, it s going to be dry pretty much everywhere. a fair bit of cloud around, perhaps not quite as chilly across scotland and the north east of england as it will be first thing on monday morning. moving into tuesday, and there s still quite a lot of cloud in the picture. whilst most places will be dry, there s the odd shower developing through the day ahead of the main change, which is this band of rain here arriving into western scotland and northern ireland, probably very late on in the day on tuesday if not into the evening. temperatures on the cool side for many, 15 to 17 degrees. then more significant changes arrive from mid week onwards. we ve got that weather front driving some rain southwards, pressure is dropping, we end up with an area of low pressure across the uk on wednesday. we have got some cloud, some outbreaks of rain pushing towards the south east, and whilst it may well brighten up a bit further north, look at all the showers developing, and those actually could be heavy and thundery. because there is more cloud and more rain around, temperatures will be a bit lower, 14to16 degrees. that area of low pressure is still going to be around during thursday and perhaps into friday. it s drifting further south as well. so the wetter weather as we head towards the latter part of the week more likely to be across england and wales, we will see the winds picking up, but by the end of the week, it could be a warmer wind.
this is bbc news, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i m aaron safir. thousands of people across britain take part in more anti racism protests. in bristol, a statue of a 17th century slave trader is torn down and rolled into the river. it represents years of hurt and just a lot of emotion and hatred that has been built up inside of us that we have internalised. it is utterly disgraceful and speaks to the act of disorder, public disorder that have now become distracting from the cause in which people are actually protesting about and trying to empathise and sympathise with. in london, a huge crowd gathered at the us embassy as anger over the killing of george floyd in minneapolis