AS many a pupil and teacher have found, end of term ain’t what it used to be this year. Gone are the cheery final assemblies, the sports days, the promises to meet again after summer.
It was the same on the BBC’s Sunday politics shows. There were “we’ll meet again” pledges – The Andrew Marr Show and Politics Scotland will return in September – but the atmosphere in general was subdued.
Little wonder, perhaps. Overnight, the number of new Covid-19 cases globally had risen by a record 260,000. In addition to worries about the worsening international picture, people are concerned about jobs, their children’s education, and whether there could be a second wave in the autumn.
All of which might make you wonder if the BBC’s Sunday shows, and politics programmes in general, should be staying on air throughout the summer. Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday is on next week. Should the rest do likewise?
Traditionally the Sunday shows have taken their cue from politics. When parliaments rise, the Sunday shows follow, though they do return earlier in autumn to catch the party conferences.
As both Marr and Ridge on Sunday demonstrated, the world does not stop turning in the meantime.
Marr went full throttle on the international front, interviewing not one but two ambassadors to the UK. At times it felt like television’s equivalent of the fabled ambassador’s reception, albeit without the tower of Ferrero Rocher.
First to arrive was Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to the UK. There was much to discuss, including the new national security law being imposed on Hong Kong, and the exclusion of Huawei from the UK’s 5G network.
The most extraordinary moment came when Marr raised the treatment of the Uighur in Xinjiang province. On the screen appeared images of people kneeling and blindfolded before being led to trains.
The ambassador questioned where the video had come from, and denied a claim that the population of the province had plummeted. On the contrary, he said, it had doubled.
The ambassador had a message for Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was due on the show later and who will be making a statement to the Commons today on Hong Kong. Should there be any move to sanction Chinese officials over the Uighur people, said the ambassador, Beijing would make a “resolute response”.
“You have seen what happened between China (and) the United States. They sanctioned Chinese officials, we sanctioned their senators, their officials. I do not want to see this tit-for-tat between China-US happen in China-UK relations.”
It was wrong to say China had changed and become more aggressive in its foreign policy, he told Marr. It was the United States, he insisted, that had started this “new Cold War”.
“I think UK should have its own independent foreign policy rather than dance to the tune of the Americans like what happened to Huawei.”
Later, Mr Raab said it was clear that “gross, egregious human rights abuses” were being perpetrated against the Uighur people, and the UK was determined to “call out” such behaviour.
The morning’s other fascinating diplomatic encounter actually took place last Friday, when Marr visited the Russian embassy to interview Andrei Kelin, the country’s new ambassador to the UK.
The Commons’ Intelligence and Security Committee is expected to publish its long-awaited report into alleged Russian interference in UK politics by Wednesday. Among the subjects to be covered is the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.
“Are you as a government interested in the cause of Scottish nationalism?” asked Marr.
“Our interest in Scotland is only one – we are open for business,” came the reply.
“The reason I ask,” pressed Marr, “is that there are many people in this Government, and the Conservative Party at least, who feel that Russia is enthusiastic about breaking up the UK.”
“Interesting idea,” said Mr Kelin, laughing. “Very frankly I do not believe that Scotland will withdraw from [the] United Kingdom.”
Marr took an odd way in to the subject of the Salisbury poisonings when he asked if the ambassador had seen the three-part BBC1 drama about the real-life novichok attack in 2018.
The ambassador said he started watching, but the programme was “so dull” he could not make it to the end of the first episode. Colleagues had watched it and told him about it, though.
As for interfering in British politics, Russia had no interest in such things.
“We do not see any point in interference because for us, whether it will be (the) Conservative Party or Labour’s party at the head of this country, we will try to settle relations and to establish better relations than now.”
Spoken like a true diplomat.
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