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…

Jay Rosen ‏***@jayrosen*_nyu
17/ I need to add a coda to my Twitter thread arguing that if the White House keeps refusing to send guests to CNN this could benefit CNN.
18/ What @NPRinskeep points out is important. CNN will continue to hear from "both sides," the D's and the R's. BUT—
19/ If the White House keeps "icing out" CNN, it will simply go to Congress for its quotient of Republican voices, strengthening their hand.
20/ Which calls to mind @SteveSchmidtSES's analysis. He has said we almost have three parties in Washington now: the Ds, the Rs, and the Ts.
21/ But "balance" requirements on TV news shows tend to lag behind the reality of a more three-sided system. Two will continue to be enough.
22/ By freezing out CNN the White House is thus inviting CNN to balance its programming with Congressional Republicans instead of Trumpists.
23/ A smarter White House communications shop would be pushing for a new three-sided model of balance: D, R and T voices in proportion. END

byJV ‏**@VinceValence**

@jayrosen_nyu On that last point: Could serve to separate Trump from GOP & support, as Rs may not feel obligated to defend Ts if not R vs D

Jay Rosen ‏***@jayrosen_nyu
@VinceValence* Precisely.

But who watches CNN? Like here, people will be reliant on partial, partisan or unprofessional news sources. Trump's supporters will want to or are re fighting the civil war and they are on the side of the heroic 'real America'. It's like another referendum but one on a fight finished in 1865 and with better guns.
Trumpists could want this.

@DavidLammy
Just voted for @UKLabour Parliamentary scrutiny amendment. Weird that Brexiteers only wanted parliamentary sovereignty before last June 23

The strange thing about Lady Nugee is that it was completely irrelevant in that context. If she'd been Lady Putin it might have been different or the discussion had been social mobility. No it would still have been irrelevant but less of an embarrassing non sequitur.

woman1245, it depends. CNN can focus on following the money. If they find something big enough and aren't distracted by Trump's tricks other media will report.

Plus Trump wants to be the centre of attention. On his terms. He craves the attention and can't cope when he doesn't get it.

But Bannon, operating from behind, I think it could play well for them.
What is taking root, among young people too is a perception that Trump is being victimised by the mean press. Lord knows!

The economy is not the priority but people feeling that that their sovereignty has been reduced not that it actually has is.

Feelingz rool

Britain(England, sorry ) seems to have regressed into a sort of dreadful mawkishness which has replaced rational thinking. agree prettybird

TM's government are willing to do things about what people feel to be a problem as long as the problem is someone else - EU/Foreigners/Health Tourism. But not when the problem is themselves - NHS underfunding (lets cut a further £22bn out).

Gish Gallop alert, (talking shit to block debate)
@OwenThompson
One individual Tory has now spoken (in two sessions) for over an hour today on #BrexitBill
It's Mark Harper while immigration minister who won support from the Tory right for being in charge of the Home Office's controversial "Go Home" vans,

Another contestant for a special award?

Hello again! Sorry for the delay. So there is the defence of insanity, which is where you did the crime but because of mental illness didn't know you were doing something wrong or were hallucinating so badly you didn't know what you were doing or something, then there is lack of mens rea, whichmeans that you didn't have the necessary mental state, e.g. If you don't intend permanently to deprive someone of their object when you take it you haven't committed theft. Does that make sense? Basically you were right :)

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/06/brexit-opportunity-reverse-tragic-decline-marriage-britain/
Brexit is an opportunity to reverse the tragic decline of marriage in Britain

Yay for trapping women and children in servitude to husbands. What an opportunity.

Seriously.

I think the government might rue the day that they managed to vote down the amendment to give updates on negotiations: it will just cause a news vacuum waiting to be filled by rumours and leaks which they will find difficult to confirm or deny without giving away the information they are so desperate to conceal. Idiots.

Yes, plus the EU27 will leak everything anyway...

The only thing I try to comfort myself with is that since Theresa May wants to have as little to do with Parliament as possible, when it all goes wrong, she will find it hard to spread the blame around.

"Brexit is an opportunity to reverse the tragic decline of marriage in Britain"

Just when you had fully persuaded yourself that it was unfair to characterise Brexiteers as deluded nostalgists who voted in the vague heady hope of resurrecting their lost past, this comes along.

And meanwhile... www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/06/european-commission-escalates-action-uk-breaching-air-pollution-limits

Cecil

Insanity shows lack of mens rea but is rarely used as a defence against murder because there is very little chance of ever being released.

Diminished responsibility also shows lack of mens rea (in this case due to MH but could be other things) but tends to be subject to a Home Office treatment order rather than prison. This means in effect that the length of sentance depends on how long it takes to get a person well again. You have to report back to court on progress, but there tends not to be a fixed length of sentence because the crime is seen as a health issue rather than purely criminal.

Like a pp said, there's a huge difference between someone killing when they are floridly psychotic, and when they're depressed.

I think that psychosis, plus isolation, plus an interest in the right wing, converged in the case of the perpetrator of the Jo Cox murder. I don't think that makes the guy a terrorist in the true sense.

Totally agree with RTB that the IRA, ETA, Christian Fundamentalists etc are terrorists, but their actions seem minimised compared to acts perpetrated by ISIS followers.

Apologies for derail

Sorry, one more thing

Sure the statistics say that people with MH issues are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators, but it also does people with MH problems a disservice if we deny that sometimes their illness can lead to terrible outcomes. Some patients get really distressed that voices are telling them to harm themselves and others. But as MH services are crying out for funding, such extreme behaviour, albeit rare, should be considered when deciding to fund new medication etc. That helps all people with MH issues, though the vast majority would never, ever hurt anyone else and are more likely to hurt themselves.

Thanks Penelope (although insanity is still a defence used after mens rea has been found to exit, but that is a bit of a theoretical nicety).

How would you define a terrorist "in the true sense"? I don't want to have any aggression about it but I would say the essence of terrorism is an attempt to use legal violence to forward a cause as opposed to civil methods, peaceful process or reasoned argument. The IRA were very much terrorists (although I wasn't alive for much of the time they were active). I used to work in the Gherkin, built on top of the site of an IRA bomb. To me, that is terrorism. If you go out and do anything violent with the intention of achieveing something or advancing your ideals, you are a terrorist. Some terrorism is more destructive or effective or scary, but there is a line and it is where you use violence to achieve something political or ideological.

And I really object to terrorism being used as a justification for medicating people with MH issues, particularly forcibly. Definitely something for another thread but I have a lot of objections to that.

Oh Christ everyone

We've tried I suppose. Why would MPs vote to diminish their own power?

Cecil - fair point. I hated having to forcibly medicate, but only ever did it when I absolutely thought it was in the persons best interests e.g. Someone hysterical with fear and running away from hallucinations.

In those cases, I would without hesitation. there's loads of stuff to try first though.

Arguably, if Jo Cox's murderer had been medicated forcibly, would she be still here?

Ethics re public, the family and the person's own safety, can sometimes have to override individual preference. That's why it's written into the mental health act that some patients (very few) need to be under compulsory treatment orders. But agree, it's for another thread.

MPs are certainly having an unusual view of "Parliamentary Sovereignty" that they so strongly espoused pre referendum.