A confidential (and perhaps strategically leaked) report by the Irish government on the UK government's management of the Brexit process, based on recent meetings with officials in various European capitals, painted a damning picture. The unflattering verdicts on David Davis, Boris Johnson and their colleagues and staff, as well as on the British approach in general, included "unimpressive", "surprising", "chaotic", "incoherent" and "very negative". The commission also ruffled British feathers by confirming that no UK city could be European capital of culture in 2023 after Brexit. Dundee, Leeds, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and (jointly) Belfast, Derry and Strabane were bidding, but only countries in the EU or EEA, or in the process of joining, are deemed eligible. Meanwhile, back in Westminster The political week in Westminster was dominated by one event: Wednesday's budget, and the central question of whether the chancellor, Philip Hammond, could survive in the job if anything went wrong. After April's budget – because of timetabling changes, 2017 has been blessed with two budgets – Hammond's key policy, an increase to national insurance contributions for self-employed people, was reversed within a week, causing significant damage to the chancellor. With Hammond already under pressure from hardline Brexiters for his perceived caution, any mistake was seen as likely to be fatal. But as it turned out, last week's budget was largely viewed as a low-key success, even if the most notable change, on stamp duty, looks a touch economically incoherent. Hammond cheered Tory Brexiters with an additional £3bn in funding to prepare for departure from the EU. This is not officially earmarked as a contingency for a no-deal Brexit, but many view it in this light. In an attempt to shift along at least some non-Brexit policy, ministers on Monday published details of the government's new industrial strategy, the sort of dull, long-term but important initiative that in more normal political times is the bread and butter of running the country. Of course, what news there was about the strategy was soon removed from the media agenda by the announcement of the royal engagement. If you were conspiracy-minded, you might see this as almost deliberate. You should also know ... Read these: In the Observer, Fintan O'Toole argued that the hard-won kinship between Britain and Ireland was threatened by Brexit idiocy, reckless British arrogance and an utter lack of progress over the post-separation border: It is quite a feat for the Brexiters to turn their most sympathetic ally into the scapegoat for their own most egregious failures. They've pulled it off by utilising their most remarkable skill: sheer incompetence. They have known since 29 April, when the European commission issued its negotiating guidelines, that credible proposals on the Irish border were a basic condition that had to be satisfied before trade talks could start ... Behind it all is an assumption that Ireland is an eccentric little offshoot of Britain that must shut its gob and stop asking awkward questions. It is, in fact, a sovereign country with the full backing of 26 other EU member states – and how strange it is that we have reached a point where this comes as an unpleasant surprise to so many people in London. Prospect magazine has the full text of a fascinating speech at Hertford College, Oxford, by Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain's former ambassador to the EU, looking back on how David Cameron ended up driving Britain to Brexit. It's very long, but as an analysis of British exceptionalism and its consequences, a remarkable read – and not optimistic for the future: Cameron got the vast bulk of what he sought. And it was, in a world in which we had stayed in, seriously worth having. We indeed seem to be arguing for many of the same things now. But we will find, outside the single market – which we simply have to be if we cannot accept free movement, and of which there is no such thing as partial membership, and with a huge financial centre which cannot live as a rule-taker – that these protections are simply not securable from outside. Tweet of the week An Oxford economic history professor spells out the Irish border problem: | 
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A anti-Brexit protest outside Stormont. Dublin has EU27 backing for its position that Ireland will not accept a hard border with Northern Ireland. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty 
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