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Downing Street has sought to deflect the blame for the Brexit impasse on to Britain’s EU counterparts, as Boris Johnson’s plans continued to meet a frosty reception.
After the French president, Emmanuel Macron, set a deadline of Friday for progress towards a deal, the prime minister’s official No 10 spokesman repeatedly said Johnson was still waiting for the EU27 to engage with Britain’s plan.
Exclusive: Leaked papers obtained by the Guardian show extent of fundamental objections Brussels has raised
The European Union’s full devastating point-by-point rejection of Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals for the Irish border has been revealed in documents obtained by the Guardian.
Leaked documents lay bare the scale of the multiple faults highlighted to David Frost, the prime minister’s chief negotiator, during the recent talks.
Reciprocal scheme in which NHS reimburses cost of treatment will cease under a no-deal Brexit
Britons with serious, sometimes terminal, illnesses who live in the EU say they have no certainty about how or even whether their healthcare costs will be covered after a no-deal Brexit and are suffering a “living nightmare” of anxiety and despair.
“It’s like a death sentence,” said Denise Abel, who moved to Italy in 2012. “It’s all you think about. I feel abandoned, betrayed and furious. There are no words for the rage I feel. We’re the collateral damage in the government’s war with the EU.”
The French president has given Boris Johnson until the end of the week to fundamentally revise his Brexit plan, in a move that increases the chances of the negotiations imploding within days.
The UK proposals tabled last week are not regarded in Brussels as being a basis for a deal and Emmanuel Macron emphasised it was up to the UK to think again before an upcoming EU summit.
Stephen Barclay also says government willing to discuss detail of customs proposals
The Brexit secretary has hinted that the government could amend its proposal to give the Democratic Unionist party an effective veto over its plan for an alternative to the Irish backstop
With EU leaders not willing to accept the UK’s ideas and talks between the two sides suspended over the weekend when Boris Johnson had been hoping to intensify them, Stephen Barclay said on Sunday that the government would be willing to discuss changes to the mechanism designed to ensure the new arrangements receive political approval in Northern Ireland.
Sources say PM’s insistence on Ireland customs border means there is no basis for discussions
Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans look to be falling apart as the European commission said there are no grounds to accept a request from the UK for intensive weekend negotiations two weeks before an EU summit.
EU sources said there was no basis for such discussions, given the British prime minister’s insistence on there being a customs border on the island of Ireland.
The prime minister tweeted that there must be “new deal or no deal – but no delay”, echoing the words he used in his party conference speech in Manchester on Wednesday.
Charities say 30,000 people will lose support and vital services in event of no deal
Thousands of vulnerable refugees living in the UK are at risk of losing access to vital services including housing, healthcare and school places for children after it emerged millions of pounds of funding will come to a halt in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The asylum, migration and integration fund (AMIF), which the EU set up in 2014, is a pot of billions of pounds to be used by EU member states to support integration of non-EU nationals, including newly recognised refugees.
Ireland’s Leo Varadkar says PM’s pledge of no hard border contradicts written proposal
Jean-Claude Juncker has called on the British government to publish its Brexit plan in full after Boris Johnson was accused by Ireland’s prime minister of misleading parliament over the impact on the Irish border.
The move came on a dramatic day during which Johnson’s hopes of securing a deal by the time of a crunch summit appeared to unravel:
The European parliament has told Boris Johnson that his proposals for the Irish border do not “even remotely” amount to an acceptable deal for the EU, in comments echoed by Ireland’s prime minister.
The committee of MEPs representing the parliament’s views on Brexit said the prime minister’s proposals could not form the basis for an agreement, describing them as a “last-minute” effort. The European parliament will have a veto on any withdrawal agreement.
Boris Johnson appears to be fighting a losing battle to avoid Britain staying in the European Union beyond 31 October after Michel Barnier privately gave a scathing analysis of the prime minister’s new plan for the Irish border, describing it as a trap.
The European commission also refused to go into the secretive and intensive “tunnel” talks with the UK’s negotiators before a crunch summit on 17 October from which the UK had hoped to deliver a breakthrough deal.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border.
Downing Street had briefed before the address in Manchester that Johnson would use his platform to make a “final offer” to Brussels, but the rhetoric appeared in the end far more conciliatory than billed.
Boris Johnson agrees pact with Northern Irish party as details emerge of ‘two borders’ plan
Boris Johnson has struck a secret deal with the Democratic Unionist party involving radical proposals for a Belfast-Dublin “bilateral lock” on post-Brexit arrangements on the island of Ireland.
Details have emerged of the prime minister’s final Brexit offer that he will lay out on Wednesday, with Northern Ireland staying under EU single market regulations for agri-food and manufactured goods until at least 2025, at which point its assembly in Stormont will decide whether to continue alignment with EU or UK standards.
Boris Johnson’s hopes of entering into intensive negotiations next week over his Irish backstop plans are likely to be dashed if he continues to back the return of a customs border with checks and controls on the island of Ireland.
With just over two weeks to go before a crunch EU leaders’ summit at which Johnson hopes to sign off on a deal, Downing Street is banking on entering secretive “tunnel” negotiations to hammer out the details of an agreement.
Boris Johnson has denied the UK government was proposing to install customs clearance zones several miles away from the Irish border after Brexit to get around the controversial backstop arrangement.
The leaked plan, which appeared in the Irish media and has heightened concerns over a return to a hard border, was described as “not quite right” by the prime minister. But in a series of media interviews on Tuesday he would not explain what kind of Brexit plan he would be delivering to Brussels in the coming days, describing it only as “very good”.
The Guardian’s just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.
The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.
The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.
I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.
And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.
It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.
Exhibition at Bonn’s House of History documents ‘unrequited love’ of all things British
The strategy that Germany’s diplomatic corps proposed to keep Britain in the European community was unconventional and bold.
In November 1974, the then German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was desperately searching for the right words to convince British Eurosceptics to vote to remain a member of the European Economic Community.
I tell you what I really think is going on. I really think that people can feel this country is approaching an important moment of choice, and we have to get on and we have to deliver Brexit, and I think that there is a large constituency, in parliament and elsewhere, who do want to frustrate that objective. And, rightly or wrongly, they see me as the person most likely to deliver that objective. And I’m going to get on and do it.
I think you’ve got to be realistic if you’re in my position. You’ve got to expect a lot of shot and shell.
Here is a summary of what Boris Johnson said about his use of language in the interview.
The sort of language I’m afraid we’ve seen more and more of coming out from Number 10 does incite violence ... The casual approach to safety of MPs and their staff is immoral.
I think you will find that the speeches of most politicians for centuries have been studded with the use of military metaphor.
Labour claims that PM is aiming to invoke emergency powers using the Civil Contingencies Act
Boris Johnson is deliberately whipping up fears of riots and deaths so he can try to invoke emergency powers and avoid extending the UK’s EU membership beyond 31 October, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, claimed on Saturday.
After a week in which the prime minister was accused by MPs from all the main parties, including senior Tories, of inciting violence by accusing Remainers of Brexit “surrender” and “betrayal”, Starmer said it was part of an orchestrated plan to stoke a sense of outrage among Leave voters and create civil unrest, so an extension might be avoided.