Add Spectator Ordered with airSlate SignNow

Add spectator ordered

[Music] tonight on the week in 60 minutes we're going to look at brexit vaccines and the u.s election and then we're going to take your questions both oral questions and written we thank again the nat west group for their support for this program they backed the first program we put out last week and they've kept the faith with us this week that west is the biggest supporter of businesses across the uk and is working hard during the pandemic to help businesses and personal customers get through this difficult period now to launch the spectator tv uh we're only one week old and we're giving viewers the opportunity to try 12 weeks of the magazine in print and online for just 12 pounds i mean we're almost giving it away and you receive a 20 pound amazon gift voucher absolutely free so i mean 12 pounds for 20 pounds even i can do the arithmetic there go to spectator dot co dot uk tv offer and become a spectator subscriber today uh with amazon there amazon as you know they struggle to make any money in britain and they pay such massive taxes i think last year they paid at least 50 quid so it's only right we give them a little boost as well now first to brexit brexit is back back with a vengeance this week and there's been some breaking news just in uh there's a dramatic week with brexit and boris gov johnson's government admitting that it plans to break international law to rewrite parts of the withdrawal agreement this afternoon surprise surprise brussels hit back the eu has threatened the uk with legal action if it does not ditch a bill to override key parts of the brexit divorce deal by the end of the month so how will the government respond are the brexit trade talks about to break down well before the prime minister's own deadline they were taking place this week not much of a breakthrough seems to have happened we have the spectators frieza nelson james forsyth and katy balls here to answer these questions and more james let me come to you first talks to a place this week not a lot seems to have happened the government admits that it's doing something illegal there's uproar the eu's now going to take us to court you can really say that we were heading seamlessly to a free trade deal could you yeah i think the drama is ramping up and i don't see either side backing down the government aren't going to drop this internal market bill that has so enraged the eu and the eu isn't going to stop insisting on the full enforcement of the withdrawal agreement and the northern ireland protocol the only way out of its deadlock i can see is a breakthrough in either the joint committee or the trade talks now the uk side are insistent that this is not a strategy to crash the talks they say that they're trying to create a moment of reality here and they argue that this week's talks have actually been uh low bar admittedly more constructive than the last few rounds they think that developments this week have made both sides look over the precipice of what would happen if there isn't a deal and they hope that might inject the urgency into the talks that might create the movement needed for a deal but i think this is a very very high risk high-stakes game they are playing because you not only see the eu threatening to take the uk to court but you see uh joe biden making clear but there's no trade deal on his watch if this happens and nancy pelosi has been making that clear as far as she's having the house and so i think this is they are playing a very high stakes game and they are trying to ramp the pressure up in the belief that some that that will create the space for concessions i think the danger is but the eu side are determined to kind of respond in kind and if you think back to last october there was an opportunity when you know boris johnson leo braga went to that hotel in cheshire and they walked around the place they could come up with a deal the problem now in that situation you only need to square the irish to get a deal this time around you need to square 27 countries and that is a far more difficult job katie what are the tory backbenchers saying i mean when you have a staunch brexiteer like michael howard former conservative leader leader of the opposition uh no one believes in brexit more than him and he says the government was wrong to go down this illegal route what's the mood on the tory back benches about this uh frankly pretty unprecedented situation the government's got itself into well i think in truth is actually quite a mixed reaction and we saw in the lords uh you mentioned michael howard also norman lamont it's not a great look when i suppose the most senior tory brexiteers in the house of zords are saying they can't support the government on this i think if you look in the house of commons there's a little bit more sympathy or perhaps necessity to stay on board with number 10 for various reasons so you're not seeing a big backlash we have had a handful of mps come forward some brexiteers some mps that you might call the usual suspects ones that are unhappy with propagation back when number 10 did that and speak out and voice their concerns tom tugan heart talking about the importance of the rule of law but i don't think we've seen that vocal uh rebellion which suggests that you'd have problems passing in this in the commons but behind the scenes there is a lot of disquiet and i think this is because what is clearly you know we can debate uh when international law has been broken previously and there's lots of people who want to do that but what is completely unprecedented is having a cabinet minister stand at the dispatch box and say we're breaking international law um and not even try and you know say well actually you can argue listen look here and i think that there are lots of tory mps who want to be supportive to the government on this they clearly see brexit as the flagship policy of this government but they feel as they've been given nothing that they can even point to you know not even a fig leaf here and i think that's led to uh quite a lot of annoyance even if it's not going public and also just a sense that there was no build up there was no uh you know ahead of this announcement and it wasn't a slip by brandon lewis as far as we know you know this this is the script there is nothing to let well that's the point i wanted to ask you about that when i saw the northern ireland secretary say this at the dispatch box in the commons the words uh yeah we are breaking the law but it's in a limited and specific way i wonder if he just blundered but am i right in thinking these words were scripted for the forum he had them written in front of him yes i mean i i i think a lot of people as you did when we saw that we thought that clearly can't be what he's supposed to say he's fumbled his lines actually i think that was the script and i think that was for a few reasons one being that there is a sense in number 10 that if you look at the bill that was later published there's not that much to quibble about it was quite obvious what they were doing um but also i think there was a sense that i mean i had one figure in government even say we're not getting any credit for being honest um thinking perhaps they want credit for being honest criminals is that the government like that i would say that it's a niche position but it is one i have heard uh in the past few days it did raise eyebrows so brandon lewis meant to say what he did and i think that is again another factor here because tory mps are getting quite frustrated thinking you're not giving us much to work with i think that people who are supportive generally still have faith that boris johnson and his team know what they're doing with brexit but i think what has happened this weekend as you were talking about earlier the backlash internationally and what we're seeing currently in the lords show that i think that you can argue this this has backfired james you wrote uh this week that the prime minister feels the eu has us the united kingdom over a barrel on northern ireland can you just remind me it wasn't the same prime minister that actually jumped into that barrel yeah i think this this is the issue this is the tension here which is it's not the uk isn't just proposing to break international law it is proposing to uh not abide by obligations that come from a treaty that this prime minister signed and that this parliament passed various people say oh no parliament combined its successor well the parliament that has bound itself is actually this current sitting parliament that voted through the withdrawal agreement and i think that is the tension i think what the uk side is trying to do is trying to say to the eu look there are going to be consequences in the event of no deal and we'll take action to preserve the integrity of the uk in those circumstances i think the danger though is that this is a kind of high risk strategy because you talk to those people who are veterans of no deal planning and they say one of the most unpredictable elements of it is how the eu behaves you know if the french decide to inspect every laureate calais there are going to be significant delays if they decide to operate a fairly pragmatic uh let's wave things through and only check things based on intelligence then things might be much more smooth and but if the talks break down in total acrimony it's not it's hard to imagine that the eu will be particularly inclined to take a pragmatic view i think i suspect they will want to prove a point and i think this is this is what the danger of the approach is now i would inject one note of caution here which is in some ways before there was going to be a deal there has to be a massive row of brussels now i i think that boris johnson is genuinely convinced of the need for this approach you know he was integral to the devising of this strategy it comes out of an away day that he held with his top political team uh about 10 days ago but i i think the point now is if there is some movement now on on the various issues we could suddenly see you know i think that boris johnson still does want a deal but he very much wants to deal kind of with the eu having moved rather than him frasier let's sum it up for us please can you can you see your way forward here uh i mean are we all just reacting too quickly to the news is this all just the kind of brinkmanship that you would expect at this stage of negotiations is there still a what are the chances of doing a deal or are we heading uh for no deal i am still optimistic about a deal i think it was always inevitable that there was going to be brinkmanship we were going to get this kind of theater coming in one form or another it's too kind to say the government intended to do this there's clearly been a massive mistake here and letting brandon lewis say what he said a massive gift to the eu who's exploiting it very cleverly um but ultimately you know for all of the missteps it is within the interest of both britain and the eu to do a deal so last time around we saw how the choreography went it looked to all the world as if there was going to be no deal we are preparing for it but at the last moment a deal came through i've always expected we'd have the same pattern this time and that a deal would come only at the last minute so i suspect we're going to see a few more of these dramas here and before the year is out i said that was the last word but i do want to just go back to james because something has just crossed my mind a number people have been asking it because james points out there was no need for brandon lewis to say what he said he could simply have invoked article 16 of the northern ireland protocol which has safeguards and uh ways if there are disagreements for the british government to pursue these things but james just mark our card on this if there is no deal does on a free trade agreement does the the withdrawal agreement which was which has already been signed and in law that still has legal status whether we sign a deal or no deal is that correct yeah exactly and that is why the government needs to legislate for this because if there is no deal and no agreement in the joint or government feels it needs to legislate this if there is no deal or no agreement in the joint committee you would be in a situation where every good that goes from great britain to northern ireland would have to pay tariffs and that money would be refunded in time if you could prove that that good had stayed in northern ireland but it didn't slip over the border into the republic but that would essentially dislocate northern ireland from the uk economy now the when you put it to people in senior people in government why didn't you use article 16 and say oh the problem with article 16 is that it would get adjudicated in the european court of justice and you wouldn't win the case i think the the argument is though is that the uk has massively stepped off the moral high ground here and i think that you could start saying that the eu's refusal to for example agree that supermarket british supermarkets that export to northern ireland can have their goods uh inspected at their depots rather than you know when they arrive in northern ireland you could say that that is not negotiating good faith and because the eu is not negotiating in good faith we're going to do this i think if you look at um michael howard and norman lamont's comments what is causing the unease is the uk government saying that it is going to be the first mover in terms of breaking the breaking the agreement rather than accusing the eu of breaking the agreement and i think you know as someone said to me this week you know this is what brandon lewis said is worse than a crime it's a mistake right that's a good point to leave it but of course we'll be back on brexit it's not going away and it has come back with a bang now this week as you all know the government tightened its uh covert restrictions it seems sometimes the only way out of this whole problem is uh the hundred billion pound moonshot testing project if you believe in that and in unicorns too or a vaccine this week there was concerning news for the uk's best hope in the vaccine race the oxford vaccine trials with astrazeneca were suspended after a trial patient fell ill however the race to find a covert job is more intense than ever there are seven major contenders in the final stages or at least what maybe the final stages across the globe and which one wins will have consequences not just for covet but for our lifestyles but for geopolitics is too let's go to fraser he's going to talk us through this week's spectator cover story which is on this very subject fraser thank you andrew well yes when we saw chris whitney and boris johnson declare last night that they're going to do these more restrictions there was also a phase in the presentation where they were saying they were optimistic very optimistic about not just the moonshot of doing um several rapid kind of do you have coverage or not tests but the vaccine itself now until a few days ago the british vaccine was seen to be the one um ahead the whole situation is depicted rather wonderfully by our cover artist morton morland this week so it is something equivalent to the space race here with each country coming up with its own vaccine now of course they're all doing it for the greater good of mankind but when you um look at the sort of names which they're given it's something out of a bond film you've got we talk about the oxford vaccine well it's half oxford half astrazeneca and here we can see um boris johnson's matt hancock clinging on to it there's 14 billion pounds of government money here and they are um they've been trying to minimize how much of a problem it was that and this week when one of the people who was on the trial feels seriously ill they've had to pause that trial now to while they investigate now matt hancock says this is perfectly normal for vaccines it happens all the time he said it was actually the second time this has happened um but nonetheless none of the other eight contenders have had to pause the trials so this has put some question as to whether the british vaccine which had been given to more people than any other really was in front but also this week we had some interesting news from the russian vaccine which is gloriously called sputnik now you um you might we might laugh at this but the lancets and did a review a few days ago saying it's actually been quite given very encouraging phase two trials um and mr putin i'm told has taken it and his daughter has taken it as well well he's given it putin has declared it safe personally he's actually gone so far as to approve it which is perhaps um going a bit today but he said his daughter is feeling very well that's um what he told us a few days ago um so there we are but the russian and the british vaccine are the same sorts of formula you you will give um so they're they're very similar both now of course there's questions asked as to how real the phase ii russian m trials were one of the experts there is said it looks photoshopped to him but we'll see we can expect this sort of um comings and goings but not to be outdone we've got donald trump on operation warp speed this is seriously the name which he's given to the attempts to get something like 300 000 vaccines ready 53 million vaccine story ready by january now he rather unnerved people um a few days ago by saying that he's confident the american vaccine will be ready by a certain date of course we all know what deity meant he meant election date and now that had led all eight vaccine manufacturers to put out a statement assuring the world that they would not be rushing this there would not be any undue haste in finding a vaccine but this does matter of course because there's two major theories about coverage right now um the swedish approach is that you the unbiased might never emerge so you've got to learn to live with the virus that you will keep managing it as long as a virus doesn't overwhelm the health facilities then that's okay now the swedish approach after or went wrong initially it ended up almost as bad as britain in terms of deaths per capita but as of a few hours ago sweden is now back on the list to which brits can travel because its levels are are so um far down that about half the level of belgium but belgium is still the model which the british government is following because it saw a rise in cases and the british government thinks that belgium acted quickly and effectively to reverse that rise in cases so strangely we are now on the belgian so this is why we're getting the cycle of the rule of six as boris johnson calls it this rather game of thrones style name is given to his rule that nobody more than six people are allowed to to gather together we can expect more i understand ministers were discussing a curfew we're discussing exemplary and police raids where they go and raise some bunch of unsuspecting students because number 10 thinks that britain as a country needs to be a lot less confident a little bit more concerned even a bit more fearful and that that behavior might slow the stem of the virus when the swedes had and test surging they thought well as long as hospital numbers don't go up it doesn't matter so two very different approaches as i understand that belgium has the worst record in terms of fatalities uh per million uh even worse than the united kingdom exactly why are we following belgium well we had chris whitey the chief medical officer and describe it as a choice between three countries approach spain france and belgium he shows some graphs saying that spain has allowed their second wave infections if it really is that to surge out of control that france did the same thing but belgium moved quickly and whitty's graph shows the second wave of belgian infections stopping halfway through and then falling away because they brought in restrictions they did they brought in curfews and antwerp you weren't allowed to go out after half past 11 there was even a supermarket sweep style rule where you're only allowed to spend 30 minutes in the supermarket so um rules in belgium which went way beyond what we had even in lockdown but if that's the model if we are pursuing a strategy which wants to have as few coveted infections as possible then we can expect a lot more of restrictions this week's cut curbs could be the beginning of a lot more to come the the government and its chief medical officer is undoubtedly right that there's been a resurgence in cases in france and spain uh that's been happening for several weeks now but as of yet there's been no dramatic change in the number of fatalities in these countries they've risen but they've risen from a very small base the the relationship in france and spain between cases and fatalities is nothing like what it was at the height of the crisis in april may and june that's right that ratio between the number of deaths and a number of cases is through the floor all over europe right now now what chris whittie would say is that don't be fooled there is a lag you might think for cases arising now and there's not deaths but those deaths will come because the young transfer it to the old then there's a lag of hospital numbers then there's a lag of death so if the quizzy hypothesis is correct then we will start to see a rise in french deaths and a rise in spanish deaths before too long he says there's about a three-week lag between the actions he's taking now and what he expects to see in britain so in a way he's gambling he's gambling that the swedes are wrong to think but you can tolerate a rise in infections as long as there's no hospital levels he wants to preemptively move now but he hasn't convincingly explained why he's sure but the belgian approach is so much better than the swedish approach okay fraser thank you for that let's look more at this vaccine issue now i'm delighted to say we're joined by dr elizabeth grappelli a virologist and lecturer in global health at st george's university of london she's an expert on the development of novel and affordable vaccines uh dr grappelli welcome to the week in 60 minutes can i just clarify because we all got a bit nervous when we saw this setback uh of the oxford vaccine as we're calling it this week but am i right in thinking that actually what has happened is entirely normal in the development of these vaccines absolutely it is a very frequent that clinical trials especially as they go into the last phase which is called phase three which also involves lots of thousands of volunteers but also involves different countries it's very very often that it happens that the trials needs to be posed because trials are skewed very much towards the side of caution in the sense that as soon as something uh and happens everything just pauses so that an investigation can occur and sometimes uh the most important question is actually to investigate if what's being detected as an adverse reaction is actually due to the vaccination and as we've heard for the oxford astrazeneca um vaccination vaccine there has been already a pose only a couple of months ago that actually was not linked to the vaccine and therefore the trial could it could go ahead but this is also why normally we do take years decades to develop to develop a vaccine and so this is expected and i would like to put into the context at the moment there have been two poses in the vaccine trial for oxford out of at least 18 000 people who have received the vaccine or the placebo and this astonishing these are human beings that actually go about their own lives and it's found that actually out of 18 000 people someone will fall ill also independently of the vaccine so we need to take this into consideration as well and i understand you are one of the 18 000 doctor you've had you've been a volunteer for the vaccine tell us what the process is like yes absolutely um it's uh for me it was absolutely a no-brainer in terms of uh signing up as a volunteer of course i have the benefits of the uh of the knowledge of virology and also knowing my colleagues but it's also virology in action um i was um assigned i signed up for the trial uh as soon as he opened in the uk outside of oxford i am based in london and this was early in uh in may and then there's been a follow-up visit so that uh so my i could uh get a blood test to see how my body was reacting uh at that moment i didn't know if i had been given at the oxford vaccine or all the placebo and that's basically i have i can obviously share that i am perfectly fine and although obviously i am being monitored because this is part of the trial so earlier this week i did receive an email from the trial organizer and notifying me about the adverse um case that the the illness that had been diagnosed and the investigation that was pending and to be honest again as a virologist i was kind of expecting it so for me there hasn't been any apprehension or any disappointment just take it in a stride and wait for the investigators independently to assess what it is and keep feeling in the questionnaires about my potential exposures and how i feel because i understand that what hangs over all these every time we try to develop a vaccine for something is a case that goes back to america the carter case in the 1950s when when i think they were trying to develop something for polio and they ended up with the injections actually injected a lot of young people with the polio itself and that was such a horrendous outcome that ever since we've had to be very cautious in going down this road is that correct absolutely i mean it has to be said that now we do have a different platforms and different technologies that actually do not rely on what we call a growing virus or a live virus and that actually has to be killed before it can be given to volunteers and this is also why uh these vaccines like uh the the uh oxford vaccine can be uh fast strapped without the shortcuts but they can be fast-tracked because they are very different they are very novel generation of vaccines that already because of the neurological principles that are at the fundamentals of their designs are already safer having said that they could be fast-tracked but the experiment or the experimentations actually still needs to be done according to the new rules or the rules you know the current rules which are very much safety first and this is also phase one and phase two and then uh efficacy and i'll just would like to comment about uh you know the the russian vaccine the sputnik five which uh has been just pointed out um that is a is a technology very similar to the to the one uh with oxford and in that case however um it has only been given to less than a hundred uh people when they are maxing already eighteen thousand so this is the massive difference when we talk about a front runner when we talk about different vaccines being in developed uh actually you know there are quite a lot of differences in the numbers that actually can give us a little bit of an insight if a setback is important or not two out of 18 000 it's pretty good stance at the moment for me does it worry you that we seem to have a there's almost like a sort of geopolitical vaccine nationalism going on here and and the giveaway from the spectators cover story this week of course it it is that russia has called it sputnik 5. mr trump is calling his the the operation warp speed uh i mean is this a good thing in that they're all competing like mad and to try and be the first or is it actually something that's a bit scary uh well in science actually a little bit of competition even if it comes from national pride and you know a little bit of stereotypical cold war scenarios it's actually quite good because uh you know the more uh you know the more brains we have are tackling a problem uh the better we are at coming up with a solution and a solution that might not be just one but because we might need actually more than one so a little bit of competition that actually fuel and bring the best out of us absolutely is fantastic however this has to stop the moment something a vaccine has been deemed safe and effective because this is the moment when we need to absolutely make sure that a vaccine is made available for the entire world this is a pandemic fine let's have a race if we want when it comes to developing a little bit of national pride but let's not forget that this is a nasty virus it causes death and and and the vaccine the solution uh needs to be available for every human being across the globe indeed should we be worried though supposing russia uh it gets on well with its vaccine given the number of people has been tested they may add more to it and so on more trials but would we in britain and europe and the united states would we not be a bit nervous about this because it might it would not have seemed to have mounted the hurdles that we would expect for our own vaccines absolutely the most important thing is that there are european regulators and also uh uk regulators that they want to and need to assess the data before anything is approved at the moment there is also a little bit of debate about obviously we said you know about brexit about exactly what's going to be the path that the uk will use to actually approve a vaccine that has not been developed in the uk itself but one thing is clear whatever applies in terms of criteria for safety and efficacy to the oxford vaccine will apply to any other vaccine that comes out anywhere in the world and therefore we will want to see the data solid transparency before it is actually allowed for use for license for use in the uk so if our authorities and our regulators and medical experts like you if they say that this chinese vaccine all this russian vaccine it is safe to use you'll be saying that on the basis that it's passed all the tests uh that we would have expected the oxford vaccine to pass to absolutely before before we can allow it in in this country we will want to see the data but also there will be uh so data not as as published but also the nitty-gritty of the data and be absolutely convinced uh by the data there cannot be any any doubt that maybe something has been photoshopped absolutely that's the case and so it's great to see that there is a competition speed but there cannot be shortcuts and the the transparency of the data will have to be there for actually make sure that or get convinced that uh whatever the russian or the chinese vaccines are actually appropriate for our country dr group just one final uh question um this this as i understand it covert is a variant of the common code and we don't have a vaccine for the common cold even though it's been around forever that would strike me that we're trying to do it all at huge speed as well as you've been telling us that would strike me is that it's a i mean it's a hell of a challenge yes it is vaccines are viruses are and so many other pathogens um i i need to point out that the common cold so what we call the common cold is actually caused by a variety of viruses some are coronaviruses some are called picornoviruses but you're absolutely right we do not have a vaccine for you know the common cold either caused by the picorino viruses or caused by the coronaviruses and so um for the corona viruses especially is that they are also quite new they've been identified only a few decades ago but the most important thing is that so far the common cold has been for the majority of us all over the world not a particularly nasty infection and it's only natural when it's man flu of course it's very serious as you know absolutely absolutely absolutely and i hope for you know we should devote more resources actually to cure that ameliorate that for the benefit of women as well absolutely dr grapelli thank you very much for uh marking our garden that has been fascinating to listen to you and good luck with all the wonderful work you're doing thank you very much now let's move and go across the pond to the u.s elections you're watching the week in 60 minutes it's coming to you from spectator tv we thank our sponsor the natwest group for supporting our second broadcast and for the support they're giving businesses up and down the country in these difficult covered times we're two months away from the u.s election a little less than that it's early this year on november the 3rd the campaign started late because labor day came late uh this year as well the race for the 270 electoral college votes is well underway now the national polls have mr biden comfortably ahead but in some of the key battleground states uh that will determine the election things are beginning to look a little tighter wouldn't overdo that but they're looking a little tighter let's go to the editor of the spectators us edition freddie gray for an update freddie what can you tell us well andrew i think the the major theme at the moment in the american election is uncertainty and that's not just because the polls are dubious it's because uh the actual process is in doubt at the moment we we're going to have a huge increase in the number of mail-in ballots we think um postal votes as we call in in britain uh could be up to half the number of votes and already there are huge political fights erupting over whether they're legitimate um who counts what in each state and so on and so you could get a situation i think we're probably going to have a situation where we're not going to have a usual election night and in the weeks that follow we're going to have terrible contesting of results that will go on and on and on and things will get very very ugly i saw freddie some u.s commentators saying that on election night as the results come in and they're being counted these are the people who've gone to vote donald trump will likely emerge the winner and then when the mail-in votes from the postal votes are counted in and that could all be done perhaps by the sunday most of it joe biden could be the winner well that's the great fear at the moment is if trump clearly wins on election night without the full counts in a lot of states he declares victory and then five days later it's cancelled by the actual results but there are also great fears that if if trump wins by a margin a lot of democrats are going to say the postal votes weren't counted properly and it will be contested so i think fascinating as it is to look at the various states and i hope we'll do that in a moment i think the real worry at the moment is that whatever the result is no one will be happy with it why did they take so long to count the postal votes i mean i think in this country we sometimes count them beforehand or we count them on the day along with all the actual votes well there are a lot of people saying this is all fear-mongering and that actually the postal service will work fine but there do seem to be substantial delays in the post-op in the american postal service at the moment and the worry is the overload will be so huge that it will cause substantial delays freddie take us through some of these swing states i think you've got some data on places like florida which is key for mr trump i don't think he can win without north carolina pennsylvania mr biden's home state minnesota which is i understand i think it shows one of the states that mrs clinton won and maybe one of the few states that went democrat that could go mr trump's way well precisely if we if we get this share screen going that's the overall uh polling uh average which i don't actually think is is that useful because it shows that's nationwide nationwide yeah uh and it still shows biden uh substantially ahead a little tightening uh in the last few months and then a little pulling away in the most recent polls if we then move on to what is effectively the betting market on the next president's chances you see around the time of the national convention you see a massive crossover which is where the betting people decided that trump was going to win uh and then again as we got away from those conventions people start to trust biden's victory a bit more and i think that's very telling i think the betting market's a much more reliable indicator than the national polls people place their money is uh a better uh indicator than what people tell posters i absolutely do i think it i think it is i think um a lot of people uh don't you know we know there's a shy trump factor nobody knows quite how big it will be the shy trump factor would be people who don't tell pollsters they're going to vote for trump and then do but those people might just say to vote to pollsters yes i think trump's going to do it so i think the betting market is more interesting but even in the betting market you see biden as the head so that's not necessarily good news seven points for trump uh but the so the interesting thing comes down to these various key battleground states and the biggest one the big one for trump in 2016 was florida so if we look at that uh we can see that it it's getting tighter again you see a little flick towards biden recently one percentage point is well within any margin of error well so a pollster told me last weekend that uh you can probably account five points for a shy trump vote so that would suggest that florida is looking pretty good for trump at the moment and then and then of course it moves on to other states and we look to somewhere like north carolina because as in 2016 freddie he has to win mr trump has to win florida but that's not enough uh it's not enough i mean he can lose florida and still win yes i think he can but i think it's it's a very very difficult path to do so uh and here's north carolina you're showing us again he has north carolina is going to be very very tight and the big question north carolina is a large african-american vote the african-american folk famously was quite depressed in 2016 they weren't that excited about hillary clinton the early indications are that they were quite keen on joe but the african-american voters were keen on joe biden will they come out for him in november that would be very telling in north carolina at the moment again it's a total toss-up as you can see from this chart uh and so let's look to another state which is pennsylvania which is a very interesting one because trump won that by a very very small margin in 2016 and biden has this tremendous home advantage she's a scranton pennsylvania boy he seems to have very solid polling there but i've spoken to republicans who think that they will still get pennsylvania and if they get pennsylvania and a couple of other swing states they don't necessarily need florida ah that's how interesting it works yes i mean the one thing that would seem to be clear is that uh mr biden wins the popular vote he i mean he'll like hillary clinton in 2016 he will get more votes nationwide than mr trump but he still has uh has a it is still not quite clear that that translates into enough electoral college votes to give him victory well exactly and i think what's very interesting is that i mean given that the democrats have never really accepted the 2016 result what happens if the same thing happens again what happens if trump loses the popular vote which he almost certainly will but wins the electoral college how berserked the democrats go do they contest it to death in one recent game play scenario some senior democrats suggested that they would they would propose that california succeeds from the union if they win the popular vote but lose the electoral college again so i mean i i know this sounds hyperbolic but i think we could be talking about serious constitutional questions serious civil unrest if trump wins again in that way so it sounds like there's at least regardless of who's ahead america between polling day and christmas or close to christmas could be heading for a serious constitutional crisis i think i think that's how i think that's not unless somebody wins by a landslide yes unless someone who ends up by a landslide and then everyone will say it's a fix anyway so we're all waiting for the first debate freddie on september the 29th it's in cleveland that's going to be great car crash television i guarantee you we better see if we can get it on to spectacular tv then at the moment would it still not be fair to say freddie that this is biden mr biden's election to lose uh i think yes i think given uh that this book this is pretty much in most americans minds there seems to be a referendum on trump uh but biden's great problem is that he's more successful when he's invisible from the electorate and it's impossible for him to be invisible from the electorate as we approach an election but as voters are actually confronted with the choice between two candidates they start to realize it's a biden versus trump vote rather than the trump versus i don't like trump vote and if it becomes a biden versus trump vote then a lot of voters might start to realize that they're not that keen on biden and they're not that keen on an obama era restoration which is what biden's proposing right freddie we'll leave it there but we'll be right back to that too it's the most fascinating run-up i can remember to a u.s election and of course we'll all be watching that first debate on the 29th not long to uh to to go for that uh we've got about 15 minutes to go here on uh the week in 60 minutes it's time now for your questions we are going to take some that been sent in but i can also see some of you have your digital hands waving let me try a digital hand we had a little trouble with these last week but we got it in the end let me try magnus burt magnus i wanted to ask um about essentially the covid treatments which uh cyanogen i heard had developed treatment which in the phase ii trial has uh reduced the number of cases uh not cases i mean the ultimate severe disease by about eighty percent in a phase two trial this is very good and reduces covert death rates there have been some treatments with with some success as this culvert crisis has gone on is that right doctor yes absolutely um the most important one has been dexamethasone which is a the very cheap drug that is already used in the clinic that has been shown to very much reduce the mortality for the most severe patients so the ones that are already in in hospital and that has been a fantastic news that came out of actually of the uk run trial the the recovery trial there has been a separate data about another steroid which is another and heavily and easily used which is hydrocortisone a little bit more more mixed data when it comes to an antiviral which is called the rendezvous and that accent not on the on the hormones of the human body but acts directly on the virus but unfortunately and the data is not as strong as the other one so lots of progress nothing yet specifically a major game changer but certainly a couple of drugs that are going to be helping the most severe cases uh the ones that are being uh hospitalized all right thank you for that simon albury has written in with what is ofcom's beef with you meaning the program so i mean it was just a joke don't take it seriously i'm sure ofcom loves us uh there let's go to lars fravert i think is how you pronounce it it's an interesting question james for you what is there to stop the government from breaching other parts of the withdrawal agreement for example the withdrawal agreement includes the provisions protecting european citizens rights i'm sure dr griffely would be very interested in the answer to that question that's the problem isn't it when you try to claim you're just a little bit pregnant yeah i think you can see the risk of opening pandora's books which is that there have been some there are some amendments coming from the european research group that kind of really hardline spartan tory brexiteers trying to override more of the world's law agreement not not the sections on systems rights i should stress but more bits of the withdrawal agreement now the government's defense is look this is the proof but we're not ripping up withdrawal agreement we're only taking this very targeted action but the problem is once you say that you're entitled to overrule one part of it it becomes very hard to explain why you won't overrule other bits of it and so i think the danger for the government is that it ends up under far from two sides of its own party in the commons next week you know one group of erg rebels saying we want more of the withdrawal agreement uh um disapplied uh and then uh we've already seen an amendment put down from bob neal uh and the former deputy prime minister damian green saying you know you shouldn't be able to trigger these northern ireland provisions without another vote in parliament because of the risk it would pose to the uk's international reputation right exactly now here's another uh question that's uh come in with an instant one it's a written question and this again i think is for you uh doctor um if if britain does if the oxford astrazeneca vaccine becomes the the front runner in this does that mean that we in britain get it first right well the really important thing is that the uk government has already bought a substantial number of doses and has ordered more and the manufacturing process is obviously at the unlinked uh compared to the trial so there is a manufacturing going on already before we know if the vaccine is safe and effective and the idea is very much that as soon as uh there is the data and the licensing then we can start vaccinating so it seems like the uk is essentially in good place to get it when it's ready and there are however other doses that are being manufactured for other countries and i think it's about uh it's definitely important that uk will have access to at least a few vaccines as soon as they are ready uh that question was from ken pelton here's an anonymous one i'll stick with you doctor for the moment could the government make any vaccine like this could it make it mandatory that we have to have it right uh that would be it's i would say unlikely by the realities that it is virtually impossible in a in a modern western democracy and as much as a virologist i would absolutely love to see everybody who can have a vaccine also take take it the reality is that we're not just virus hosts we are human beings with a thinking brain and therefore we need to be doing it willingly so if someone has concerns about a vaccine and doesn't want to take it i would invite a conversations to be had discussions and yes from my point of view convincing that vaccines are not only safe but effective and they are also in this particular case extremely useful to actually get us back to to real life so not mandatory uh but certainly any doubt please let's let's talk about this because it's very important and they do work right let's go to terry portman uh who's got a question uh with a little blue hand up terry over to you your question hi can you hear me yes we can great um so i'm curious about what we can do to stop um more virus in the community um here in plymouth we had a group come back from zanti uh and 11 of them proved positive but if you go and look at footage instagram accounts etc you can see that there's very little social distancing going on over there clubs are open etc so why is it taken three weeks for us to react to uh put this on a watch list and so you can't travel there anymore when it should have been obvious that there are countries that have got similar restrictions to us that are taking it very seriously and then other countries that aren't why we why are we not looking at um at these things in a broad way rather than waiting for data okay terry thank you for that can you let me go to you on this it it does seem that the government uh i'm going to katie bowles here it can seem the government has struggled particularly among young people as the universities are going back or even in august when they got a chance to have some holidays and party social distancing pretty much fell by the wayside among that particular demographic didn't it the government just couldn't enforce it yes and i think that if you look at all the restrictions the government are currently talking about so you know the rule of six and when you speak to cabinet ministers about this it goes back to young people i think on xanthe and certain holiday locations um the government has actually been quite worried about the fact that in certain places it's younger groups people relax more when they go abroad and that has been a factor um but i think if we're looking ahead to what this means for uh the young going forward um we do have a situation where looking ahead to university i think that part of the reason we're getting these restrictions is because they're really worried about young people having all these late night gatherings but the question is i mean i had one minister put it to me probably young people as they drink a lot and they have lots of sleepovers adult sleepovers potentially and they see that as a an issue in this but it's hard to know exactly how to play it because we're talking about enforcement how do we actually enforce this even though the government is talking about higher fines i think there is an issue in putting that in practice and they're probably going to try and uh make a big scene of letting go of a few people of you know finding people arresting people to try and put others off because there's only so much they can do particle brian asks how seriously should we take the comments by nancy pelosi that there will be no uk us trade deal of the government goes ahead with his internal market plans i mean freddie i think it's a it's a bit more than that what nancy pelosi has been saying is that if if anything the british government does undermines the good friday peace agreement that will make it much harder to get a free trade deal through and i think whatever way we look at the election it's pretty clear that the democrats nancy pelosi being the leader in the house there uh they're going to hold on to the house so it it it is a serious threat it is a serious threat and it's also i mean the irish question in america is still very very interesting think about the fact that joe biden is an irish catholic american i mean how does that reflect on how he'll treat a brexit deal in light of in light of ireland i i mean my impression is that the boris johnson administration for a while was very keen on uh on the trump administration there was lots of high hopes about what could be done together on a trade deal my impression is that that those hopes have sort of dwindled a bit in recent months and that if you talk to people in westminster they seem to be keen on the idea of a biden administration and that we could join a multilateral trading deal after biden becomes president so i i think there is a there's also cooling off between the johnson administration and uh the trump administration a question from sandeep fazu uh again for our doctor he wants to know what your thoughts are on mass testing which the government has been digging up recently is it realistic to be able i mean one stage is talking about kind of testing everybody regularly is that when it's called a moonshot it sounds to me it might be as far away as the moon doctor yes i mean in principle uh it makes sense you know we want to know where the virus is let's test everybody and because the testing we have at the moment they only tell us if someone is so is infected at the time that we take the test and so and that can change 24 hours later so mass testing as frequent as as one once a day uh yes logically but uh in the whole hardcore reality of actually this planet it's very um unrealistic and not just particularly ambitious and so and also it actually hits a point which has been quite challenging for the uk which is has been not only testing in terms of increasing capacity but also making the test available and also making the results available to those who are actually needed so there's quite a lot of groundwork that needs to be done again when it comes to delivering the testing as we know about it before we can start thinking about you know massive mass testing that it actually it looks pretty much unrealistic and unfortunately it would require actually validation and delivery of some technological platforms like the rapid tests which are not available at the moment and it's unlikely that will be available at any time soon so a little bit of realism possibly good idea but let's stick to what we know works and do that at the best of our abilities thank you thank you for that doctor james let me come back to you in our final few minutes and inevitably come back to uh brexit we we've know what's happened this week we we know the talks have continued doesn't seem to they didn't break up but there's not been much of a breakthrough we've had this business with the british government in legality we've had the eu now saying it's going to take us to court look ahead for us we're not what in the second week of september what now happens within with brexit over the next month or so i think the big question with brexit now is whether the principles get involved by which i mean does macron merkel the other eu national leaders get involved because i don't think the answer to these questions is going to come out of the barnyard frost discussions it's got to be there's got to be the political will to get a deal now i mean there's an interesting question here emmanuel macron is the most obvious person i think to have a conversation with boris johnson that perhaps replicates some of that leo variable conversation last time around the french are the most hard line but also boris johnson has no better interpersonal relation with an eu leader than emmanuel macron you know they enjoy having dinner together they get on they speak french together indeed i think one of the problems here is fish because there is no good answer for emmanuel macron on fish because the the the nature of the uk becoming a coastal state so cuts back on what french fishermen can catch and i think one theory that is doing the rounds at the moment is that macron doesn't want to step in because if he steps in and helps broker a deal he will have dipped his hands in the fish cuts and french fishermen will say our catch is falling dramatically because of this deal that you broken mr president one as if macron sits back waits for no deal and then negotiate and then steps in you know in the second half of 2021 say to try and work on a deal french fishermen will go from having lost all of their quota in uk waters to then getting some back from the macron deal so i mean there is a worry that the macron isn't going to step in because of his whole fishing question the other big issue is angela merkel right now the germans hold the presidency of the european union she is very reluctant to step in too early but as we saw again last time around when things were looked like they were heading for no deal she is very worried about the geopolitical implications not the economic ones but the geopolitical implications of a no deal brexit and the question is does she step in towards the last to try and broker a kind of compromise and she did do that last time round albeit in a limited way does she try and do that again and i think the reminder today is that you saw the e3 the uk france and germany again taking the same position on iran you had the poisoning of russia's opposition leader the other week there are a whole bunch of geostrategic issues where the uk's alignment with uh the eu is very important does that prompt angela merkel to step in and try and find a way through this situation james thank you for that we're going to leave it there thanks to everybody uh for joining us from the spectator team and a special thanks to dr grappelli for being with us tonight and talking us through these complicated matters that is it for the week in 60 minutes it was actually 63 minutes we overran just a little bit we'd like to know what you thought about it how we could improve it we're always out for improvement so send your thoughts to spectator tv at spectator dot co dot uk thanks to all of our guests to you for watching and once again to our supportive sponsors at that west group and the work they're doing to help businesses during the covert crisis you can watch again or recommend the show to your friends it'll shortly be ready for viewing on the spectator website and on the spectators youtube channel we hope you'll join us again next thursday at 6 p.m london time for another week in 60 minutes until then goodbye [Music] you