all the news, all the background and everything. i we nt news, all the background and everything. i want her to be happy. and so nervous wait to see if those who protect this country are really closing in on the man who brought horror to new year's eve. mark lowen, bbc news, istanbul. that's a summary of the news. newsday is coming up at midnight. now on bbc news, it's time for newsnight. happy new year. or is it? as we all head back to school after the christmas holiday, we've assembled a class of the very brightest students. and we're giving them a first—day test. the class quiz of 2017. the big questions for the year ahead. on trump and the shifting structure of super—power politics. when do you see the united nations solving problems? they don't. they cause problems. on britain, brexit and politics here. we have set ourselves on a new direction. and on the european project: is it populism and retreat this year, or business as usual?

a0 minutes to answer as many questions as you can. time starts now. hello, we haven't put them in school uniforms, but we have borrowed the chairs and desks to get into the right mood for the new term, and to start the year with some difficult questions. now i remember when i was at school, each new term felt like a fresh start — neatly ironed clothes, clean, new exercise books. and then, very quickly you found that the new term carried on where the last one left off. and so it is for 2017. it's the year with the honour — or dubious honour — of following 2016. picking up the pieces. filling in the gaps. so with our brainy panel of the able, gifted and talented, we'll be trying to predict

what will be happening this year. it's only 17 days now, until president trump. so, let's start with some questions about him, the us and the world beyond. we've seen a lot of the man already. but frankly, we really don't know much about what he thinks he'll achieve or how he'll go about it. he's already disowned some of his own campaign lines, like locking up hillary clinton. no, it's ok. forget it. that plays great before the election. no, we don't care, right? his style is obviously erratic presidential proclamation by twitter, leading his fight against the elite from his expensive new york apartment, with his oddball team of rivals. it'll be interesting to see how they all get on. so, question one, what kind of president will president trump turn out to be? it's a question everyone is asking. from president putin, who hopes he's found a new best friend, to china, which fears it may have found a new worst enemy. the truth is there are two populist foreign policies, and he could go either way. he could take the us back to its pre—world war ii

policy of isolation. america first, who cares about the rest of the world? or he could be more internationally assertive, aggressive, even. putin style. or could he surprise us by being consensual? so the question, what will the new world order look like? there is a specific issue facing us all as we wake up to news of atrocities, month after month. the fate of so—called islamic state. we know little of trump's stance. i have a substantial chance of winning. if i win, i don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is. but we do know that he puts less weight on fighting assad and more on beating is. so a specific question for this year, will the west win the war against is? well, some of the questions are essays, some of them a bit shorter. but there are no right answers at the moment — all of them are predictions.

the marking comes later. but to answer some of these us—led questions, i'm with: let's start on trump. there are two visions, stable, pragmatic trump who bases himself in washington and another trump, the twitter trump, erratic, unpredictable and perhaps sometimes reckless. jan harper—hayes, you're from republicans abroad. overseas. republicans overseas. which trump is it going to be? it's not a which trump. he's a person of duality. and of contradictions, but both can exist. if you think about it, he's very pragmatic. he's very action oriented. he's very much like ronald reagan. reagan said, mr gorbachev tear down that wall. trump is, i'm going to build the wall. he is going to be a president likejfk, like lbj and even bill clinton. you wouldn't have asked franklin roosevelt to get

off the radio. you would not have asked jfk to get off the tv. we don't ask trump to get off twitter. tamsin, you're looking less optimistic. you're a writer, environmentalist, political activist. it's not the fact that trump is on twitter that we mind. it's what he says. judging by what he says and who he appoints, and there we have his twitter new york self and washington appointing self, what we have in the white house is a racist, sexist, climate change denier. do you accept that you might be wrong — hey, it doesn't matter. you say 2017 might be the year when he is sort of within normal parameters. i think the language he has legitimised, the hate crimes we're seeing across america, can't be just washed way in saying,

hey, it doesn't matter. what you incite when you say things as misogynyst as he has said, when you say we're going to build a wall, when you exclude people from the vision of the united states of america, when you exclude people from your country, the language you're using, then what that provokes is really scary. to be honest, the only thing that i see good about the trump era is the resistance that it will create. i'm excited to see that. matthew parris. you're bigging him up too much. he's just an idiot. the conventional wisdom has been, oh, he's actually very wise. he'll deal, get sensible people around him. he won't. he's an idiot. america has had a lot of idiots as presidents. bush was an idiot and look what he did. the american system will move to contain him. he will carry on being ridiculous. the state department will resist him and congress. the earth will continue in its orbit. ted malloch, you're flying over there tomorrow and hoping to perhaps get a job in the trump team.

you're based here. do you accept that there are idiot—like features in donald trump? no, we had an election and we won that election. the american public has spoken. trump is not any of the things that have been described. he's a fabulously successful business person, who plays chess frankly two moves ahead of everybody else on the board. and i think we're likely to have a near american nirvana in the next 100 days. it won't even take a year. his approval ratings in a year's time, let's make a prediction, you think they'll be... 60%. running very high. perhaps the real test is in his foreign policy, between these two trumps i describe, the erratic one and the more stable one. what are you hoping for from a trump foreign policy? are you hoping he will go out...

i'm actually not so worried on the foreign policy side. i think it's looking at the domestic. if you look at what makes us a strong power, it has been our military, our economic and our soft power, the diplomacy. we have 60 consulates, embassies, missions. china only has a few. i think that he really wants to concentrate on america because we have been spending so much money since the marshall plan building other countries up, taking care of other people. we have a lot of people to take care of at home. so you're answering one of the questions i hinted at in that video — isolation versus assertiveness internationally. you think he'll, it's going to be more — the world should expect more isolation? no, again, it's like everyone took trump literally instead of seriously. when you take him literally you take phrases out of context and misinterpret him.

it is not isolationism. he wants to do bilateral agreements. it makes so much sense in this changing world today that when you're doing bilateral, if things aren't working between the two of you, you don't worry about 15 other countries. you can renegotiate and make things work. that's the direction he's taking, not isolationism. right. one big issue, paris agreement, climate change, which has, let's face it, it's taken quite a lot of painful negotiations. it's taken years of people's lives. what are you expecting over the next year? i don't know what to expect. i fear that he will take the united states out of the paris agreement. and if he does that, it lays waste to the relentless work of an international community who are set on protecting our future against climate change. that's why they meet and that's what they've come up with,

is their best effort to do that. it took decades to get there. now we have a president who is just treating it like it's children's home work that he can tear up and throw away. as a generation who is moving into a climate change world, we are going to have to take positions of power in a world that will look so dramatically different from the one we have today and to have the most powerful person in the world appointing climate change sceptics... ted, can you give any assurance? no, it's quite likely that america will be first again. that america will be more unilateral. it will be more bilateral and it will be much less multilateral in a trump administration. which means things like that treaty and other multilateral accords and certainly your comments on the united nations, i would agree are likely to take the back seat. dia chakravarty, i know you're a brexiteer here. you're on the right of politics. are you hopeful or fearful

for the next year in trump terms? the way i describe myself would be a liberal really. i do believe in liberal economic policy. that's where i was when it came to acce pt that's where i was when it came to accept as well. —— brexit. i've not seen much liberalism from trump at all. he does talk about cutting taxes, but in the same breath, he talks about increasing spending. that's debt going up. when it comes to opening the country for them to trade in, we've seen what happened with both ford and general motors just today. none of that is particularly liberal. so i don't really know what i'm meant to be excited about here at all. right, so in many respects we've admitted we don't know what to expect from trump. he's all over the place. one last question, the one i put at the end there. could we begin to win the war against is? i mean, jan, ted, speaking for trump, do you think this is going to be a turning point, matthew perhaps? we can't win the war against is, but we can't lose the war against is either.

there's no danger of that. in the end, i imagine that is will disappear and be replaced by something else. remember there was al-qaeda before them. the taliban before them. there'll be something else that follow them. the thing willjust smoulder on. jan, come on, put in a last. from a foreign policy stand point what he really cares about is attempting to defeat isis. working with all of our allies and working with the middle east. he would rather have the middle eastern countries set up camps for the people to stay there, to help out financially, but not go over and deal with it. and cyber security is going to be top on his list, both in relation to isis and hacking and everything else. cyber security is going to be on donald trump's list. i thought he was quite relaxed about this. you know what? i guess, i don't know how to respond at this point now that he's president—elect,

when people make fun of him or when people make him a dichotomy or an either—or. the fact of the matter is cyber security is something that impacts all countries. so he wants to work with our allies to share information, to share intelligence, to get around the data protection aspects in europe. because the more we share information, the more we can keep all the countries safe. interesting take. let's move on. right, well let's move on to the next section of the test. this one is about the uk. and i suppose it combines politics and a bit of geography, given that the big issue is how close to the european continent we'll remain. only nerds had heard of article 50 a year ago. now it's all the talk of the playground. the living may be easy, but more likely, yes,

—— in my opinion, the only alternative to a hard brexit is no brexit. yes, more likely brexit will be challenging. the tendency is to think the pm will call the shots, but the interesting debate will be among the remaining eu members as to how hard to make it for us. so the question for britain in 2017 is this one. what kind of brexit will begin to emerge? of disrupted the usual course of politics. stuck in a dilemma, labour has for leave, but can't afford to leave the votes of the remaining 48%. ukip and tory, even the lib dems, have been taking labour votes in some disastrous recent by—elections. we're going to be campaigning

on economicjustice issues from now on. we're going to be calling out this government for increasing inequality and injustice. i think that message will get across. but is corbyn enough of a vote winner? so as we look at 2017, the big political question is will labour recover? we of course had a general election two years ago, seems like two decades now. is it time for another, for may to get a mandate. probably in may. so a specific question for the year ahead, will we be going to the polls again? lets pick up on the brexit side. i will speak to all members of the class, but i want to get some brexit views and talk about the politics in a minute. we had you in this very studio during the referendum campaign. do you have any fears about the kind of deal we will get?

you are on the brexit side. were there any concerns or any nervousness about it at all?|j there any concerns or any nervousness about it at all? i think we are done with the fear quota. we've overdone that if anything. the way we need to look but it is we have to make this work. it has to work. the constant letting down of the country, how people voted, from certain quarters is acting getting really tiresome. sir ivan rogers, our most senior ambassador in brussels who resigned today, the bbc obtained his resignation note to his colleagues and he said ministers need to hear uncomfortable truth, serious negotiating experience is in short supply in whitehall, the commission of the council are well prepared and he said to colleagues, i hope you will continue to challenge ill founded arguments and muddled thinking and never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.

is hejust some kind of complainer? it sounds familiar, we heard all this gloom and doom story before the referendum then we have the referendum and nothing happened to completely destroyed the world as we know it. but we kept hearing it was going to get worse. then another economic quarter came and things were still not as bad as predicted. so at this stage i have no reason to believe him over any of the others constantly trying to warn us before we actually went through the vote. you were amongst those warning before we went to the vote, but it would be a bad thing to me. —— to leave. are you any more optimistic now? yes, i did think it would be pretty quickly a disaster. i now think we mayjust bump along, not growing quite as much as we might have. not exporting, not being the tiger economy bounding out into the world that was promised. we mayjust bump along.

but there is one thing that is going to happen in the coming year and that is the issue everyone is trying to avoid. the question once we have triggered article 50, can we change our minds and that is going to be the big question during 2017. because i think probably we can. i do not think we have to leave. you're not thinking that we might change our minds? as soon as we realised the uk does not have to do leave the eu if we do not like the deal we get then parliament will become interested again. matthew goodwin, you are an expert on the politics of populism, the parties of the right, outside parties. do you think there is any going back now? is 2017 the year we begin to have second thoughts and maybe patch something together that is more in than out. there is no evidence of any

significant changing of minds amongst the electorate, it is simply not there. let me suggest one possible scenario. there is an assumption at the moment that the british electorate when they experience some kind of economic turbulence that they will rush back to the centre and said we have made a terrible mistake, cancel the whole thing and go back to the eu. there is a possibility that they would go the other way and say actually, the eu is not playing ball with us, fi because it will be an unfriendly brexit that would cause the difficult economic times and that is the one that makes you not want to go back in. that is nobody‘s interests, we want what is good for us but also do not want to be unfriendly to our neighbours. you heard donald tusk saying that the choice is a hard brexit board no brexit. maybe that is for liberals like you, that is the difficult truth. it is absolutely true.

soft brexit is presumably norway, where we keep a lot of what we have but we are not actually in the eu. who made the best argument against that, it was the remainders. we said it would be ridiculous and worse thanjust being in the eu. well we have heard claims about public opinion, will all do you agree with that assessment? the i must put my hand up, i have asked a lot, surely now the focus groups are showing that people now that they know what is happening, they regret it and if we ran the referendum again they would vote differently. the answer is no and if anything, i think the other way around. there is some evidence suggesting people who voted remain nowjust want to see the thing through.

and it relates back to the trump argument as well, there is this sense of the ordinary people against the elite. one guy said to me in a focus group, when i woke up the next morning and found we had gone brexit, i felt england had won the world cup. he felt it was his team against the others and he had won. it is a powerful and emotive thing. moving on to british politics. brexit will play into that i want to bring you in. someone who knows about the odds. can the labour party recover? we have an early test in the copeland by—election. it is difficult to see how the labour party can move on from its current situation. their leader is the only leader in the history of labour who has

never had positive ratings on any poll ever. that is a very serious situation. and the polling just gets worse and worse. you remember you only get one chance to make a first impression and he made a bad one. people will be saying that the polls have been wrong, the experts have been defied. there is an argument that says if brexit gus bradley the public will vote for someone other than the incumbent government and jeremy corbyn would be an antiestablishment candidate on the other side and a place they feel they may go. he does not come over as a credible figure, that is the big problem that labour face. they have a leader who is seen as being all over the place, a leader who is tainted with ira and other terrorist links. just remember what the tories did to ed miliband because he ate a sandwich awkwardly. it is interesting what you say

about the sandwich, the media went for him and so public opinion followed and we are seeing something similar with jeremy corbyn. the polls are following, there is blanket bad news coverage and now no news coverage really of him. i really hope that people will get behind him. i'm not thinking you have much confidence. the green party have gone to him and said we need to form progressive alliances. he needs to explore more interesting ways and more modern ways

of doing government. that is through alliances. thinking about ed miliband for a moment, in the last parliament he was scoring 12, 15% higher thanjeremy corbyn is now and we know what happened after that. on the subject of the polls, as you know, when they get it wrong they tend to understate labour and not overstated. if they are wrong they are likely to be wrong the other way round. i think it is worse than you are saying forjeremy corbyn because in focus groups it is not that people do not like him, but he is literally irrelevant and has nothing to say to them. i did some focus groups a few weeks ago and i showed a photograph at half the people they did not know who he was. that is a big leap of the imagination. forget the leaders, the labour party, this is a crisis

facing social democracy, they have run out of ideas. the rules of politics have changed and the labour party and socialists have nothing to say to that. it is not about jeremy corbyn or labour, it is social democracy running out of ideas. just a show of hands, how many feel they will probably be a general election this year in the uk. and how many do not think there will be. that was interesting. the rule for exams, if you do not finish a question it does not matter as long as you said something clever. and on that note, we have to move on. we've talked about brexit, but europe has other issues to worry about as well. if trump made the us the country of global attention in 2016,

it is the continent of europe which may dominate 2017. happy new yearfrom marine le pen. she and her national front are the ones to watch. she is running at about 25% in the polls, for the french presidential election in the spring. when the vote comes, given the size and importance of france, whether she wins or loses answers the big european question for 2017. which is, will populism advance or retreat on the european continent? it's been a rough few years for the eu. the migrant crisis has exposed the fragility of european integration. schengen for example removed borders, but some of them went up again very quickly when large numbers of people came in. europe's been trapped between retreating and reinstating national boundaries and advancing by having a proper

common immigration policy. it's been an unholy muddle. so now we wait for the answer to this. will the european project move further into reverse? oh, and then of course the biggest problem of all is the euro. the combination in some countries of uncompetitiveness, low growth, banks in trouble and big government debts. yes, that's italy, a country too big to be ignored. so a final quickie, will the euro survive the year? let's go straight in on some of those questions. you are a betting man, what does the current odds on marine le pen winning the french presidency? about 22% chance. that is what trump was given. yes, indeed. that is what is happening at the moment. people do not bet to provide an alternative prediction

but to try to make money. i suppose the 20% chance, people have now seen trump and perhaps they are more cautious. and again i love the french system, they have all the candidates standing and then the final to stand a fortnight later. i think marine le pen has got a problem getting into the second round. but in the polls she is getting into the second round. at the moment but they might be a level of coalescing around the first round, and on someone who could actually squeeze her out. matthew goodwin, the big question and you hinted at this at the end of the last section, populism on the rampage around the world. to use that as a shorthand. the continent of europe, this could be the year that it stops

comment marine le pen does not win france, angela merkel hangs on in germany and then it is game overfor populism. we had a strange moment during the rerun of the austrian presidential elections when liberals or all of social media saying it is great, celebrate the radical right only got 46% of the national vote as if this was somehow acceptable outcome for the european union whereas in 2002 there was a global meltdown when jean—marie le pen achieved some victory. that is how quickly the tide has come up the beach of european politics. populists have recognised that cultural protectionism matters as much as economic protectionism to the voters and that has enabled them to move into both working—class stronghold and that is why social democracy has collapsed at just about the same time as the populist right has entered into a new phase of strength. it does not matter if marine le pen does not win or the afp do not

overturn angela merkel. because these parties are here to stay. let's have a bit of perspective from oui’ let's have a bit of perspective from our us friends. the eu is like a lorry going down a superhighway at high speed with all four tyres coming off. this year you'll find at least three of those falling off. if there's one thing that i want to predict it's your last question, what would you do around the euro? i'd be shorting the euro. do you really think the... if merkel wins and marine le pen doesn't win, in the two biggest countries, you basically have business as usual. you will have a right—wing president in france, even if le pen loses. that's an anomaly. things change completely in france. italy is the first one to turn,

the netherlands has its election. it looks like a vast number of parties competing, but it looks like the right—wing party will win. so there's enormous change on the european front. it's basically the end of the european project. how many of you, i want to do a show of hands, i liked the last one — how many think the euro will go out of business basically implode or disintegrate this year or shortly after it? how many of you would bet on that actually out of interest? just you, ted. matthew, i saw you trying to come in. the problem with populism, the problem that matthew goodwin identifies with social democracy, it doesn't really have a viable manifesto. so it can make a lot of noise when it's in opposition, but when it gets into government, it fails.

i think matthew's right, it's a tide. populism has reached high tide. i don't think marine le pen is going to win. in austria things seem to have been held back. i have a feeling that this is the year in which populism peaks in europe. matthew, go on. i'm not as convinced, given that, you know, the old left and right division in politics now is making way for what academics call a new cultural divide between those who essentially are at ease with the pace of ethnic change and those that feel profoundly anxious about it. that's going to be with us for another generation, two generations, three generations. that's not going anywhere. at the same time, that's coinciding with rising economic inequality. which is making the same groups of voters feel even more neglected and disaffected. so until we deal with the underlying currents, the parties will continue.

i have a board member who works for facebook in government affairs, she said of the 1.6 billion users, over 60% around the globe are posting insurgent political issues. so it is not unique to the us, the uk, austria, france. it's a fashion. we've looked at the us, we've looked at the uk and we've had a brief look at europe. one last question, which is has the world become harder to predict? last year was the one nearly every expert got wrong. last year was the one nearly every expert got wrong, but there were a handful of diviners and soothsayers who called it right in 2016. so we've invited them to share their prognostications for the coming 12 months, with our own gypsy rose, stephen smith. oh, hello there. and a happy new year from everyone at newsnight. shall we see what lies ahead for us all? come with me.

# as it's witchcraft... # wicked witchcraft. .. i don't know about you, but nothing beats those back to work blues like a mock exam. for my part, i'm falling back on tried and tested pre—truth methods. and trying to contact the few clairvoyants who were spot on about 2016 to get their tips for the new year. i should add that i'm not a real medium. on a bad day, i'm an xl. ah, someone's coming through. oh, it's ofcom. no, it isn't, no, it isn't. it's a scottish professor based at an american university. well, i'm three for three just now, so i've got brexit, then i've got trump, then i've got the italian referendum. what about 2017? for all of the sturm und drang about brexit, and whether britain should have left, it might actually be the case that the eu ceases to exist.

think about it this way. you have an election coming up in france. it's entirely plausible the national front will win the first round. at that point, everyone in france is meant to organise a giant blocking coalition to stop them being elected. that would mean everyone on the french left has to vote for someone who basically wants to bring thatcher's economic policy menu to france, and that's after eight years of stagnation. that's going to be a very hard sell. now i'm getting an economic policy adviser, i wonder if this is a wrong number. probably meant for evan. pippa malgren. hi, pippa. happy new year. i think inflation is going to be the story. i've written a lot about shrinkflation which is a precursor, which i think everybody has experienced. that's when you open a box of cereal and it's the same size or bigger than it ever was, and it costs the same, but there is only half as much inside. that was the signal that price pressures were in the economy and i think now they'll bubble up and we'll actually

see outright inflation. champions leicester city began their title defence against a hull side seemingly in disarray... omg, now i'm picking up grindr on this thing! no, i'm not, it's gary lineker! losing his shirt, and his trousers, after leicester city won the title last season. others called it right, and backed their hunch at the bookies. they did it, and they won the league and i wonjust over £20,000 for a £5 bet. i think they're going to end up mid—table this year. i can't see them winning it because there's another team which is doing really well, and they're getting the results. and that team is chelsea. so things might look black for the foxes, and also for another big winner of last year, according to a man who's been predicting us elections correctly for 30 odd years, including the last one. my crystal ball sees some very dark

things ahead for mr trump. even before the election i predicted that mr trump was likely to be impeached or maybe resign in the course of an impeachment. this isn't a scientific prediction, it's from the gut. we all know about the machinations of trump university and we all know 12 women have accused him of sexual assault, a crime. and he actually gave us all a blueprint of how he did it. if you're president, as harry truman once said, the buck stops here. you're riding the tiger on your own, and i'm not sure he even wants any of that. oh, here we go. it's clearing again. our final seer isn't celebrated for predicting anything, so much as for being the unpredicted winner of the booker prize last year. paul beatty, the first american to win after his book was rejected by 18 publishers. he thinks trump could be good for creative business. i think people are charged, you know, as opposed to feeling enervated, which i think

is often the case. so yeah, sometimes it's nice to have something to write against or to scream against or rant. i don't know if that necessarily produces, you know, valuable art. but i think the more stuff that's out there, the more stuff that's going to be good, you know. so people are charged to create, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. # will i be rich? # i tell them tenderly. # que sera, sera... well, that was fun. just a couple of other things i noticed in there. it's going to be a great year for librans, redheads, and people from coventry. and that carries the full imprimatur and majesty of newsnight behind it. have a good one. steve smith with people who got something right in 2016. i had a serious question which was is the world getting harder to forecast. mike? i think it is. are betting odds getting longer on average? we've had two

extraordinary situations. we had the brexit vote, at 11pm onjune 23, it was rated — remain was rated at 94% chance. what happened within a two, three hours, it had completely complapsed. it wasn't that hard to predict brexit. the whole premise is it was amazing, like leicester city winning the premier league. it wasn't that hard. if you looked at the polls you would have said it was 60—40. almost 50/50. there were more polls in the final month that predicted a leave victory than predicted remain. it was the media's coverage of the polls and the ones which had the big remain leads which created the atmosphere. that brings us to polls. you do this stuff. it feels like those have been getting more wrong over the years. i don't think that's right. in fact, in the us, the national

polls were actually right. where they got it wrong was in the detailed state polls. the brexit polls actually as you've just said, they were mainly right. huffington post are putting a 99% chance on trump losing. it's not that the polls were wrong, i don't think it'sjust the media. i think the experts were wrong. i think the evidence was there and they weren't hearing it. they weren't listening to it. so inside the beltway in the us, in the westminster bubble, people were, it was confirmation bias, they were talking to their mates. everybody agreed with everybody. actually, they weren't hearing what the people, the sorts of people that matthew's been talking about, were actually saying. so there was a world where lots of people were unhappy about the effects of globalisation and nobody was listening to them. thanks all. the papers leading tomorrow on ivan rogers resignation. that's about it for us tonight.

well, predictions — as you have seen — are not for telling you what is going to happen, butjust to make you think about the year ahead and some of the forces driving it. top marks to our class of 2017 — thank you to them for playing along. behind the silly desks. and it is a happyjournalistic tradition to never ever hold people to their predictions, it's just to get you along to give them. newsnight will, of course, be with you for the whole of 2017 — let's hope it is a good one. see you tomorrow, goodnight. forecasting is easy! temperatures are flip—flopping around quite a bit. one day is relatively mild, the next freezing cold. for the next 24 hours this high pressure tends to be further westwards, tightly packed isobars coming from the north. that

means we've got cold air across scotla nd means we've got cold air across scotland and northern england. a cold day across scotland and northern england than it has been today. looking at the picture through the night, this is pushing southwards. it is the dividing line. relatively mildly sharing the south, compared to colder conditions in the north. on wednesday morning in most of england and wales we have a cloudy start. this front is very wea k cloudy start. this front is very weak and will bring patterns of rain southwards through wales, the midlands, south—east england. because it is patchy some areas will dodge the rain altogether. dampers for a time. this guy is already clearing in parts of northern england and scotland. a chilly start of the day, a touch of frost in the highlands. wintry showers feeding in across shetland, that is clipping aberdeenshire. no great amount of snow. perhaps a bit in the air from time to time. the breaks up in england and wales. sunshine comes out. colder in scotland and northern

england, 3— five degrees. milder air holding on in southern england and wales. different story wednesday night, because with clear skies and light winds in case it will be a freezing cold night, unlike the night. temperatures dive away. —3 in manchester. into the countryside we could have loads of —6, minus seven. frost is possible. watch out for icy stretches to take us into thursday. thursday should be glorious. vegie of winter sunshine. a cold and crisp day. —— 20 of winter sunshine. milder in the west, with the breeze picking up. all changed towards friday. the end of the week sees this rain coming in the atlantic, southwards. less cold air are mixed in with it. the breeze picking up, coming from and atlantic, rather than paula, region. by the end of the week temperatures are in double

figures. 10—11widely. 8—9 for the rest of england and wales under the cloud and rain. there will be a bit of rain over the weekend, but not much. the occasional brighter spells on the cards as well. welcome to newsday. drama on capitol hill as the us congress reconvenes. a public bust up with donald trump leads to an about turn on it exchanges. playing the trump card. ford and general motors come under the spotlight for car manufacturing in mexico. we have special report inside the istanbul nightclub where 39 people died in the new year's eve attack. and there is double trouble for young twins in america. we will bring you the full story of robert lee heroism. —— brotherly. light from our studios in singapore

and london. this is bbc world news.