we'll bring you that launch live from manchester in the next hour. now on bbc news it's time for brexitcast. it all feels a bit different somehow. where has the jeopardy gone? it's left the building. i haven't run anywhere this week yet, apart from around the park. that exercise that never quite happened in 2019, or 18 or 17! it's still brexitcast but there's other stuff happening this week. should it be megxit—cast? sorry. should we not say any words like exit any more, are they all banned? what will we be called? bleep—cast, beep—cast? outcast? i like outcast! we have been there many a time, for many a year, even if that's not the official title. welcome, for now, to...

all: brexitcast. brexitcast. .. brexitcast... from the bbc. danny dyer: no-one's got a (bleep) clue what brexit is! donald trump: brexit is, errr... dominic raab: i hadn't quite understood the full extent of this. we are particularly reliant on the dover—calais crossing. keir starmer: this election blew away the argument for a second referendum. boris johnson: i urge everyone to find closure. let the healing begin. ursula von der leyen: i am sorry. we will miss you. yanis varoufakis: a process which i can only describe as a dog's brexit. this is katya adler in brussels. adam fleming in brussels. laura in westminster. chris in westminster. happy new year, everybody. 2020 is already pretty different. it's really funny, here in westminster, the difference. i know it was obvious there would be a difference because the conservatives won a big majority but the actual feel of it, walking around parliament.

there is the excitement of new mps who are currently still working off their smartphones in corridors because they don't have an office, excited to be in the building and finding their way around. there will be discussions to come about what brexit will look like butjeopardy has completely gone and it just feels. .. it couldn't feel more different. it couldn't. a lot of people i have spoken to this week, remember 2005, 2006 when the things that were of issue, were important, but the kind of drive of things were, will there be a rebellion? if there is a rebellion, how big will it be? that's the point, politics never has more jeopardy than when you can't be certain whether the prime minister will survive the week, the government will survive the month and whether the fundamental reason for their existence — delivering brexit — will even happen. and more than anything else, with barely a whisper of argument, the brexit bill we have talked about so many times, today passed by 99 votes. here it is. order.

the ayes to the right, 330. the noes to the left, 231. we heard one mp there say, "wow." for lots of tories, brexiteers, it's the ultimate vindication of borisjohnson‘s strategy. he ran an election saying, get brexit done, that was the slogan. we know it's the first bit, the departure, it's not the long term relationship, but the vote today means it's finished in the commons, off it goes to the lords and he will be able to stick to the timetable he promised the country. i think on the brussels side, it's always a slow start at the beginning of the year. speak for yourself. a lot of focus, even in the uk for those who felt the issue of brexit was too close focus, are now standing back and thinking about the environment, obviously because of the fires in australia, they are thinking about geopolitics with iran. on iran, it brings you back to brexit because you can see the uk in the diplomatic sphere

with germany and france still working together. i wouldn't say... people are saying, this is the way to go and this is the way forward, but it's a reminder that, boris johnson likes to talk about his friends and partners in the european union. just in the last 24 hours we have had michel barnier and ursula von der leyen, the new commission president lavishing praise and respect on the uk. but of course, this is before the gloves are taken off ahead of start of trade talks after brexit. we should be clear, the momentous thing that happened this evening with the withdrawal bill in the commons, it's passing the third reading, the final stage in the house of commons, so it now goes to the house of lords so we don't expect the lordships to kick up much of a fuss. a few days after that, when it goes through the house of lords, it will get royal assent when the queen rubber stamps it symbolically and it will be the law. how will theresa may be feeling today? probably quite relieved.

i think people can mischievously say, she will secretly be bitter and furious, but i think probably quite relieved because it's hard to understate, as chris was suggesting, for the tories, my goodness, this is a majority of a scale they never dreamt they could achieve. less than six months after they had a government that was completely falling apart. for them as a party, you can see it in their body language and you can feel it in the chatter around the place. labour is in on itself, and we will talk about that a bit more later. but maybe in the recesses of theresa may's mind, she's said to have a dark sense of humour, so you never know. on the technical details of the legislation, the government has added a few things that were not there in the version that existed before the election. a few people have tried to add things to it themselves, but haven't succeeded. bring us up—to—date on what has gone in and what has not. with a thumping majority, the government can — they can't do what they like, but they can't be troubled

by the amendments and changes of policy the opposition might want to make. today the lib dems tried to put down an amendment on erasmus. a lot of people are interested in this, the european exchange programme for students, and the lib dems tried to get the government to put into legislation that erasmus would continue and prosper and they will have to do it legally. that amendment, no surprise, was defeated. but to be clear, that doesn't mean that erasmus is somehow over and brits will forever be excluded. it doesn't mean that at all. it basically means the government is sticking to the policy, of course it can continue, and we will work it out in the future. that's not good enough for some people, but if you are listening to this or watching this and you are worried about erasmus, what happened today doesn't mean it's over, kaput, will never take place again. also an amendment from the scottish national party who were arguing that elements of the withdrawal agreement bill are in contravention of what should be a power the scottish government

would oversee and the snp all voted for it and the conservatives and others voted against it. you had the row, the discussion and debate, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion. never in doubt. in such a different atmosphere. it was interesting to hear the new commission president yesterday in london, she had her first face—to—face meeting with the prime minister. what is the proper pronunciation, as a german native? ursula von der leyen. i think i said ursh—ula. she gave a speech at the lse where she studied in the late 1970s. she said for her the withdrawal agreement, all the leaving bit is done and dusted. i thought again, that feeling today again,

i'm going to say wow... even though it's sailed through today, you are just like, blimey. when the commission president says, done and dusted, goodbye, let's move on. you do feel like, wow, that was three years, three tortuous, big years, and now that door is closing and everyone is moving on and by the end of this month... they still have to work out how to actually implement the northern ireland bit. but that will be done in parallel to trade talks. that's what will make this year so complicated. but the essential question that has been hovering over this for three years that we have so enjoyed chewing over on brexitcast — will this happen or not? it is happening, that bit is done. with ursula von der leyen — not as good a pronunciation is katya — i am most impressed by her astonishingly, hyper fabulous clinton—esque hairdo,

i don't want to be flippant but it is astonishing. it's fantastic. it's like a hairspray advert on german tv in the 1990s. it was great, a woman who gets out of an aeroplane with the wind blowing... is it her? no, but it could have been. ..in high heels and bouffant hair and the wind blows. everything else moves but her hair doesn't. and it has the slogan for the hairspray. i need some of that. we really do need that. i'm also interested in her punk... the politics has changed drastically since we were last here. she said she had been a punk in soho at some point, so i wondered if she had a full mohican orjust crazy hair. let's listen to the serious business she was talking about. ursula von der leyen is a self—confessed anglophile

and she loves the uk. she waxed lyrical yesterday about how much she loved living in london and how much it taught her. anyone who thinks this kind of anglophilia will make her softer when it comes to trade talks is mistaken, i feel. so it makes for an avalanche of lovebombing in her speech yesterday but there were clear warnings as well. without the free movement of people, you cannot have the free movement of capital, goods and services. without a level playing field on environment, labour, taxation and state aid, you cannot have the highest quality access to the world's largest single market. the more divergent it is, the more distant the partnership will be. i guess that's the essence of it, isn't it? talk of trade—offs might not be

as sexy as the jeopardy of the last 12 months, but trade—offs, the compromises around the negotiations to come, is where this story is going. yeah, sure. the big question politically is whether borisjohnson will be able to stick to his timetable. remember, he said he wants it all done and dusted in a year. but i think there are a lot of clues from her and also clues on the british side, on how this is likely to play out. this is the expectation from whitehall, and i don't know what you are hearing in brussels as well, but there is likely to be what ursula von der leyen described as priorities, different layers of agreement. i know already that different whitehall officials have been talking about, how to get something by the end of the year. so they can say they have met the promise. right, so you have met the promise and some bits of the deal are done, but there will be layers of agreement. how do you sequence different layers of agreement, how do you choreograph it so the political promise can be kept, the deal can be done, but with other bits to be tied up?

would it matter if the political promise wasn't kept given the size of his majority? i suppose it would be tricky and embarrassing, but will it bring the government down? no. quite. but it's notjust about keeping your promise, or having brexit two months later than you promised. in this case it would mean paying into the eu budget for longer. so it's notjust a date change. i think the eu believe borisjohnson when he says he does not want to extend this standstill transition period that will start as soon as the end of this month basically, and last until the end of this year. but even, laura, when you say the word prioritise, that's something we are hearing from ursula von der leyen, as we have heard from michel barnier, but this will be where the difficulty starts. whose priorities? the eu is hell—bent on prioritising its main issues of interest first. first, goods, because it sells more to the uk

than the uk sells to the eu. security and defence cooperation. these are things that the eu will want to prioritise first. and of course, fish. and that will be difficult for borisjohnson. it will be massively complex. even if you take the one issue of fishing, it's not just complicated because of all the different national and supranational, if we can use that word, interest. if you take that as an example, economically, it's actually — and no offence to anyone in that industry listening — economically to the uk, it is tiny, but politically it's enormous. and all these different issues, there are so many. it's like a patchwork of different little things that might explode on their own. but the signs from the uk side are that they don't want to do a "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" approach. they want to do this piece by piece. maybe that's the only way they can really get it done, because can you ever get it all agreed?

michel barnier, staying on as a chief negotiator, had a speech in stockholm today where he said a lot of similar stuff to ursula von der leyen but went into more detail and i got the impression from him that he was saying that the deal on all the other stuff will be conditional on two other deals being done first. one, the fisheries deal, which they want to have done and dusted by the summer. and also an arrangement and agreement on the so—called level playing field, how you manage economic competition between the two sides. i got the impression from him that it's only when those two things are agreed that he will be prepared to move on to the other stuff. doesn't that sound very familiar? like the withdrawal agreement phase one, sort out citizens' rights and the irish border, before we get onto the other big and juicy stuff. parallelism versus sequentialism! indeed. i have that written on my pad! that could be the new name of the podcast. parallel—cast and sequential—cast. we could head off into

even more niche areas. there is an even more interesting thing about the balance of power now. one of the officials involved on the uk side said to me the other day that the fascinating thing about the next set of negotiations is, yes they will be complicated, tough, the eu will not play softball, but the balance of power has changed here because previously there was always a block of about a0 or 50 mps in parliament who the eu were sure would stop the government leaving without a deal. now, with a majority of 80 and a government that, as katya has said, believes borisjohnson is serious about his timetable, the balance of power is different. they can't be sure that 0liver letwin, david gauke, yvette cooper, hilary benn, whoever it was, they can't pull strings any more. the government don't care and off we go. the question in brussels, how does brussels now look at the british government in a way that it didn't before the election,

given how the numbers have so radically changed? i think whether it's a massive majority or whatever you want to call it, that does not impress the eu. the eu still thinks that it holds most of the cards, it still thinks that if there is no deal come the end of the year the uk would be worse off than the eu. it believes the uk needs this deal more than the eu does. what the government does have is a very clear mandate. think of all of that time under theresa may when the eu was saying you've got to be sure about what you want, you have to be sure about what you want. boris johnson wants divergence and he's got to have this big clash. but the eu is hell—bent on getting is tying the uk to competition rules if you like on tax, environment and labour regulations

because they're worried about deregulated uk. being too much of a competition to do that. is going to be big to that is sort of that alignment versus divergence. another thing that came out of his speech today was borisjohnson has very clearly said the uk will not align or sign up to eu rules in perpetuity, they're going to have to look at it in a different way. my hunch is that the deal will be less about upfront alignment setting up to follow eu rules potentially forever as they develop, and more about what tools does the eu have at its disposal to manage that diversion so if the uk, for example, decides to bung a load of money to a company in a region to say that because it's in trouble, that state aid to, what with the eu do as not retaliation but manage the flow of product affected? would you put a tariff or quota or ban on something on that product? i just get the sense they're

moving away from this idea of getting the uk to commit to following the rules. and it's more about manufacturing a process. that will be how you manage the potential divergence about incentives and disincentives for the uk to pursue a different path. at this early stage where they haven't even agreed to this mandate. brexitcasters will know how much the mandate matters. adam is going to print it out and put it in his binder. how big is your mandate? there is the title. stonking mandate cast. mandates being waved around. it's very early and it sounds like for the conversations collectively maybe this is going to be a sort of evolving piecemeal kind of thing that will be a sort of living breathing arrangement. rather than a tone that is definitive forever. i think you will get something at the end of this year

so borisjohnson can say, see, i got it. they will find a way to continue the conversations in 2021 and 22. and however long it takes. that living, breathing three—dimensional thing will play out in the uk priorities as it looks around the world. we see in this interview that our colleagues have done, tom has done with the environment secretary on our old friend chlorinated chicken and if the uk would ever be up for chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef and even though we had conservatives saying they were not too keen on said poultry, others are saying definitively it's not can happen. to stick with the eu ban is interesting. exactly. that will have consequences for the us trade deal. all the personal and political relationships will matter as well.

if we go back her with four sets of this week was quite interesting. seeing him withjean—claude was very different to seeing tusk and may and may and what did you make of seeing them alongside each other? first thing that me was watching many hours of him doing speeches and 0&as he was not a details person. whereas ursula very is. all of these boffins in the audience making a subparagraph and citizens' rights and there is the answer were straightaway and she did not have one. she's varied across the details. he did a stage invasion, it was hilarious. the new year's challenge was can you deliver a sentence without quoting or mentioning barnier. fairenough. that heat storm the stage

orjust walk up to it? my favourite bit of the whole royal visit was when she went into downing street and borisjohnson showed her into the room and headed for the armchairs for the slightly awkward chat these people have to do and showing they are friendly and we have this conversation about how they quote unquote went to school together. so one of those moments where,

with he telling a lie orjust wanted it to be true so that showed they were good friends? a fresh new start? introduced that marvellous playground export of british bulldog or someone arm got broken. he saw him charging down that japanese school kid in the rugby match. a fiend. does anyone have any old film of the playground of the international school committee brussels international school circa 1972? if the biographical curiosity that he or two people who are the offspring of bureaucrats. which is why they were at the same school at different times in brussels. here they are on opposite sides of this negotiation. politics is ever like its own little world and perhaps peoples offspring get involved in it.

this event in stockholm, he did his speech about the future relationship and at the end, they surprised him with a tiny cake. with one candle on it. and then he told this story about... he is well known for being about... he is well known for being a very healthy eater so i bet he won't have even eaten that cake. a very healthy eater so i bet he won't have even eaten that cakelj thought you always bumped into him in the bakery? i bumped into him in the street and i had a quiche and he said, that is a very unhealthy lunch. anyway, the reason i wanted to bring this up is it get us

talking about how you mark the momentous moments like your 69th birthday or leaving the eu after more than 40 years of being in it. we want people to get in touch with us we want people to get in touch with us about how they are planning to mark the moment, whether they are celebrating it or being sad about it. if your planning something drop us an it. if your planning something drop us an e—mail about it. or get in touch with us on social media. we promise not to gate—crash it. it is just to get an idea of what people are actually doing. storyboard your ideas for us. and just to prove that some things about this whole process haven't changed in the big political change of the last few weeks, we thought we would get a player of this before we finish which is mark francois, the conservative mp, big

figure of the er the letters we used so figure of the er the letters we used so often in 2019, with the polite request in the commons early on. we will leave the european union at 11pm gmt on the 31st ofjanuary. as we leave out a precise, specified time, those who wish to celebrate will need to look two o'clock to mark the moment. it seems inconceivable to me and many colleagues that that clock should not be the most iconic timepiece in the world, big ben. will he make representations to the house of commons commission whose decision this is that big ben should bong for brexit? that was a question targeted at the brexit secretary who basically said, not my call, because it is thejob basically said, not my call, because it is the job or responsibility of the house of commons authorities. this is the big ben brexit done

being bong, ding dong. that is what that was. don't get me to say that again. the question is whether big ben will bong for brexit. time is up. ben will bong for brexit. time is i ben will bong for brexit. time is up. goodbye! goodbye! todayis today is a taster of what we can expect as we head through the coming week. it is wet and it is windy. we have seen strong winds and rain through northern ireland about here, it is going to be an improving story through the rest of the day. not only is it wet and windy but temperatures are above average for the time of year and that is because we are drawing up this mild air on

strong south—westerly winds. the strongest of the winds in the warm sector. the winds for northern ireland and far north of scotland. to ease as this band of rain continues to clear south and east woods. still some heavy burst over the hills of cumbria and snowdonia. head of the rain, a lot of cloud but essentially dry. behind it, fresher conditions. widely for much of the uk we are looking at double digit temperatures. this evening and our band of rain continues its journey south and east woods. behind it the win start to ease a little, if you showwas will feed in and because temperatures will drop closer to freezing, there is the chance of some icy stretches first thing on sunday. where we keep the wind, cloud and rain, temperatures not dropping away as far. through sunday it isa dropping away as far. through sunday it is a clearing update. the strong winds and rain clear out with the south and east. we then have another band of rain stretching through wales, the midlands and out through lincolnshire as a day goes on. if you showers lincolnshire as a day goes on. if you showers across lincolnshire as a day goes on. if you showers across scotland which

could be wintry but there will be a good deal of sunshine. starting to feel pressure from the north as we head through the day and hit temperatures will be pegged back into me to single figures at best. fairly mild it was the south and east. next week, all eyes on this area of low pressure which does look as though it will bring some disruption. monday starts off on a fine, dry note, good spells of sunshine. particularly the further east you are but then this rain sta rts east you are but then this rain starts to edge its way in. some heavy bus, something wintry over the hills of scotland and accompanied by strong winds. gale is perhaps severe gales for some western spots. making the evening commute fairly tricky. temperature wise, they are still above average, particularly down towards the south and east where we are still in double digits. the week ahead does look unsettled at times it will be stormy with strong winds. spells of rain which could be heavy, leading to some disruption on the roads and ferries.

this is bbc news. the headlines... prime minister borisjohnson says it's an ‘important first step', as iran admits shooting down the ukranian passenger plane — killing all 176 people on board. they say they mistook it for a cruise missile. in ukraine, questions over why the plane was allowed to take off from tehran, anger over iran's initial denials. the iran representative instructed our crew in clear words to take off and the crew followed the orders. in the current climate it would be stupid to try to hide something. back to business in stormont. the northern ireland assembly has resumed for the first time