Westministenders: Boris and his friends hand in their homework to be marked.

[RedToothBrush]

The last week has been depressing for a lot of people.

Even if you are happy about the vote in the Commons, there is a worrying lack of backbone in MPs of all shades.

Then there’s what is going on in the USA which I’m going to quietly ignore in this post except to say that cosying up to Trump still could backfire on all who do for numerous reasons.

It seems like its all over in someways, but there is still plenty going on.

The A50 Bill has only passed stage one. The Government’s deliberate publishing of the White Paper after the vote has left a lot of people with egg all over their face.

Plus its just crap. Actually its not crap. It’s a dog dinner of farcical proportions with no content, faulty data and incorrect details that an A-Level Student did the night before their assignment was due, masquerading as an official government document.

Now its amendment time, which is the serious bit. For an amendment to make it, it will need cross party support. After the government failed to produce a White Paper worth the paper it was written on, and insulted the intelligence of the House of Commons, that could get interesting.

For starters the White Paper says that EU citizens are one of our best bargaining chips. Trouble is a lot of Tory and Labour MPs don’t agree.

In short there is a fair old chance of a government defeat next week at some point. The government don’t want any. Especially not this early. I really think it will be very difficult for the government to provide the assurance MPs will want, even if they crack the whip. They have lost the trust of too many. In voting for the first vote, many MPs will feel they have shown their intent to support leaving and now will get busy on trying to hammer down the details.

Highlights include of the White Paper include the idea that we will still be subject to the ECJ except we won’t. This is ridiculous. We will be subject to ECJ rulings but not be subject to ECJ rulings directly. Eh? What? (Not that we didn’t see this coming). There’s Euroatom and the government doing an impression of Homer Simpson. With a by-election in Copeland on the cards. That story has some time to keep running. As Steve Peers points out, the Leprechauns are going to sort out Northern Ireland for us which is a great political strategy to employ.

Its full of lots of other utter bollocks but those particular points are the ones that are potentially the most problematic for the government. If you don’t think the White Paper screams we are going to get eaten alive by the EU and Trump, you need to get off the hallucinogenics pronto.

If that isn’t awe inspiring enough we also have:

The wonderful mental image of Paul Nuttall kipping on a mattress in a house in Stoke disparately pretending to be a Stokie, nervously hoping that letterbox rattling in the wind isn’t C4 letterbox again and that the coppers don’t pay him a visit in the near future. I confess that whilst my imagination has been kept busy with this, I am disappointed in the lack of video clips of him munching on an Oatcake in a Stoke City shirt, sitting on an Armitage Shanks throne, turning his plate over whilst listening to Robbie Williams and with a Titanic by his side. All at the same time. I think he’s missed a few tricks.

AND

Diane Abbott doing quite possibly even more damage to Labour than them merely rolling over and dying over a50 by pulling a sickie. Her ‘Brexit Flu’ damages the party’s image and Corbyn himself even more. If that’s even possible. Some Labour MPs have demanded an apology.

Labour is starting to look like it’s a ship with rats fleeing this week. MPs have defied a three line whip and quite the Shadow Cabinet (Again). Rumours are that over 7000 members have left. A councillor has defected to the Lib Dems. There was a council by election in Rotherham where Lab lost a seat to the LDs in an area where there has never been as many people vote LD. Nor were there as many remain voters as LD voters. The Parliamentary vote for Unite’s new leader has unsurprisingly selected the anti-Corbyn candidate Gerald Coyne over Len McCluskey. The bookies have dropped the odds on Corbyn leaving Labour before a GE from 6/1 to 2/1 overnight. Oh and Red Ed is being rumoured to be returning to the front bench…

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/06/theresa-may-will-refuse-offer-compromise-tory-mps-plan-wreck/
Writing in the Mail on Sunday Conservative MP Neil Carmichael argued that Parliament must be able to stop a so-called “cliff-edge” Brexit. He said: “Parliament must have a final say when we get to the end-game.

The question is will the Tory rebels have the guts to actually rebel?

Not mine, I got a reply to my letters with the usual Quisling reasoning on Saturday. She spent several sentences naming Labour MPs who had voted with the government. Apparently it's all their fault .

At least, reading between the lines, I got the impression she had had a lot of correspondence about this. I don't think she's in any doubt how pissed off her constituents are.

I wonder if she's overplaying her hand.Peregrina You can dance with the devil, but there are still parliamentarians who are loyal to the house's sovereignty. It is an icon, or was, of democracy, and many of the older members know it.

At this stage, it's not the winning of the amendments that counts,it's the taking part, and how it looks.

Agree with what BCF said about the perceptions of the conduct of the executive here, over there.

My Tory MP won't rebel either. I can't say whether she's pissed off or not, because she stopped answering letters back in August. She managed to make a faux pas the other day by announcing that the Government had awarded the County £200 million for building new sliproads to the A34, when it was just erm, something like £36 million.Oops - another one, like Theresa May, who isn't very good at arithmetic.

I'll maybe phone mine up again today, rattling......

MPPIg watch reporting for duty: Hunt's £175 charge for domestic violence survivors
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/05/jeremy-hunt-ban-gp-fees-domestic-violence-letters-legal-aid

A report from the Guardian about
British firms suffer Brexit impact as German factory orders soar.

The consultancy firm which produced the report says:
They should look to increase retention of current staff and be accessible: employing sectors of UK society that might be under-represented in the workforce - women, disabled, the long-term unemployed. They should also be investing heavily in automation where possible as well as improving employee productivity, through training and skills.”

Fine, nothing wrong with that, but what struck me is that most of those measures will cost money. It's much cheaper to 'let go' of disabled people than it is to make decent provision to enable them to work. Automation costs. Employing the long-term unemployed would require significant training costs. Training budgets are usually one of the first to suffer when a firm faces a downturn.

Elsewhere I read that Bournemouth language schools have already lost £60,000 million worth of business.

But hey, this is all talking down the economy - Theresa's UK is open for business, dontcha know?

£350m for Britain's brightest and best: Mr Hunt?

Play the game; put in your post code and see Mr Hunt's cuts

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38838852?ocid=socialflow_twitter&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=twitter

See no spoonerisms there

A more in depth analysis of voting patterns in the Referendum. Not had time to read it all, because I am just about to go out, but there is a strong correlation between age, educational pattern and ethnicity for England and Wales, which is what the data pertains to.

Why was Hunt in New York and not sorting out the NHS in the UK? Silly question, I know the answer.

Just came across this post about Danniel Hannon. I always thought that whatever jingoistic nonsense he was spouting he was at least sincere (if somewhat monomaniacal) about it, but actually he seems to be routinely mendacious.

justwriting.eu/?p=1012

Peregrina interesting in those stats, was Cambridgeshire had both very high leave and very high remain in different areas. It's class and education conflated. I haven't got the stats but 30-40 years ago, I guess that degree course students were at least much more highly represented by council housing, single parents, BME. Now a degree is purely based on ability to pay.
And I'd have voted leave if I had understood it to be a vote against the class system, as Farage presented it, and Labour colluded with.

Peregrina,
A lot of families are relying on the weekly extra income they get from being hosting families to those kids going to language schools.
I know of three English teachers in the Dieppe area who used to take their 13 year old pupils yearly to Birningham cheaper than London) for the English language and experience. The host families were relying on the money as a little extra. The teachers have decided not to go this year because they are worried on attacks on the children.
Also, on a bus in Central London, two 12 French year old girls from the Lycee were harangued by a guy for speaking French on the bus. A Scot guy intervened but the girls were traumatised. I was with my daughter so was a witness and was prepared to go to the police.

Lico.

45 years ago at least, very few women went to university. Many were pushed into teacher training and gained a certificate rather than a degree. Colleges had only just started to offer teaching degrees. Nursing and midwifery were firmly non-graduate professions then.

I suppose that you can't entirely compare the two age groups - the better comparison would be post A level education then with degree level now, and I think you would be comparing similar cohorts.

Anyway, Dominic Cummings is desperately trying to explain the correlation away. with little success.

We have a lot of language students near us, living near to Oxford. They usually start coming at Easter, so it will be interesting to see what happens this year.

Also, on a bus in Central London, two 12 French year old girls from the Lycee were harangued by a guy for speaking French on the bus. A Scot guy intervened but the girls were traumatised.

I am not surprised. I have stopped talking in German with my DC outside of our home. I am German born and have lived here since I was 18 years so about 19 years now. DH is British and dc are bilingual.

In the current climate I am worried that somebody who feels emboldened by the British mainstream media's and British politician's negative obsession with foreigners would hassle us or worse assault us.

..if they heard us speak in Germain forrin.

gah! German.

Last time NS made a massive lot of comments, I think just after the first article 50 judgement, a Scottish guy was shouted at in my local supermarket. He had asked an employee where something was. His crime was his accent too. The worker just pretty much dragged the poor guy away from the conflict. The abusers weren't brave enough to follow when the security guard came over.

It was bad round this way for a while after the vote. It's mainly calmed down though people are a lot more emboldened to use lazy racism now. Recent examples were dismay at the large amount of coloured people about but saying they're just about ok if they can speak English

Really interesting, Peregrina, on the further breakdown of the vote. The correlation with education is quite startling, albeit hard to disentangle from age.

Don't you just love the way Dominic Cummings says that "the educated are more prone to holding irrational political opinions" while writing reams, with obvious pride, on how advanced Leave's techniques were for targeting and manipulating voters. For "irrational" I think we can safely read "resistant".

Being reported that Trump is pissed.

Why?

Apparently he signed the National Security Council Executive order with out reading it.

Why does this bother him so much?

No one informed of the contents. Or more importantly the fact it gave Bannon a seat.

Will link to who is reporting shortly.

If true, why is Trump signing EO without knowing their contents and who is running the show.

If not true, someone is trying to really press President Father Jack Bannon.

I've also seen a tweet this morning saying if the election was about the economically left behind why is there a Nazi on the cover of Time magazine? ( Bannon)

Maybe the whole Trump Can't Read thing is true

The earlier FT article quoted by Bored was being very selective with it's analysis. It had managed to find two firms whose analysts judged that the pound had now absorbed the shocks of a soft Brexit but failed to quote all the others that have a different analysis. One of the two with the viewpoint was actually a hedge fund manager kept on by a company that had bought up his fund, rather than an analyst that advises investors more generally. Hedge funds are of course by their nature risky, they can yield huge rewards but also huge losses, and their managers would also welcome deregulation because it would allow thenpm them to indulge in even more risky behaviours. They also have to differentiate themselves for the purposes of competing with other hedge funds for investors so taking a non conformist view might well be one that attracts Asian investment. In any case good hedge funds have all sorts of complicated instruments and risk management processes that minimise the damage of what is effectively backing the wrong horse in their investment decisions.

To dismiss the analysts at Deutschebank and UBS by not even quoting their reasoning whilst quoting the Bank of America Merril Lynch and a random hedge fund manager needs context Both are much bigger global players, particularly UBS, which is a global leader in just about every financial services sector and region, including both institutional banking and private wealth management. As such they are not going to adopt a controversial attention seeking analysis, their brand relies on more robust analysis, and having built up a long term reputation for solid judgement on investment decisions.