Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Amélie de Montchalin says EU 27 countries are not putting pressure on Britain over Brexit
France’s minister for European affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, has said it is up to the UK to decide the next step on Brexit and no single European Union country was pressuring London, least of all France.
On Iran, Mr Johnson said: “We need to very vigilant about Iran and that government.
“They are bent on all sorts of mischief in the region. One of the areas that Donald Trump talks sense, and there are many areas, it is right to work with the Americans and Europeans friends to constrain Iran in the region.
Boris Johnson said that stamp duty land tax in London was causing “huge problems” amid reports he is pondering abolishing the levy on homes worth less than £500,000 and reversing the stamp duty increases on more expensive homes.
On reports that he called the French “turds” in a BBC documentary aired last year that was cut, he responded “I have no recollection of this comment”.
PSA Group’s decision is boost to British car industry and workers at Ellesmere Port plant
PSA Group said it will build its new Vauxhall Astra car at its Ellesmere Port plant but only on the condition the government secures a good Brexit deal.
The decision is a major boost for the embattled British car industry and the 1,100 employees at the plant, whose future had been thought to be dependent on winning the Astra contract.
Boris Johnson’s claims about the prospects of rewriting the Brexit deal have been compared by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator to the “false promises, pseudo-patriotism and foreigner-bashing” he is said to have used to win the EU referendum.
The suggestion from the Conservative leadership frontrunner that he will be able to dump Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, withhold the UK’s £39bn divorce bill and still negotiate a free-trade deal in Brussels was savaged by Guy Verhofstadt.
Tory leadership frontrunner’s claim comes one day after he said UK will leave EU ‘come what may, do or die’
Boris Johnson has said the chances of a no-deal Brexit are a “million-to-one against”, despite promising to leave on 31 October whether or not he has managed to strike a new agreement with the European Union.
Johnson, the frontrunner to be prime minister, told a hustings that the chances of a no-deal Brexit were vanishingly small, as he believed there was a mood in the EU and among MPs to pass a new Brexit deal.
Development minister fears impact of no-deal Brexit on UK role in reducing global poverty
Rory Stewart has said it would be “heartbreaking” to leave his job as international development secretary were Boris Johnson to become the next prime minister.
Stewart, an anti no-deal candidate who was knocked out of the Tory leadership contest after last week after a television debate, has vowed not to serve in a Johnson cabinet.
Jeremy Hunt has suggested there is “no trust” in Boris Johnson to fulfil his promises on Brexit, telling the BBC he believes he has the better personality to be prime minister.
Speaking after a war of words with his Conservative leadership rival, whom Hunt branded a coward for turning down a debate with him on Sky News on Tuesday night, Hunt said 31 October was a “fake deadline” and could lead to a snap general election.
The interim report by a non-government organisation calling itself the Alternative Arrangements Commission will be unveiled at a special conference on the Irish border in London on Monday.
Conservative voters regard the favourite as better at making decisions and negotiation
Boris Johnson is more trusted by Tory members to make big decisions and negotiate with the EU than Jeremy Hunt – as well as being regarded as more competent than the current foreign secretary – according to the latest Opinium poll for The Observer.
The findings reinforce Johnson’s position as the strong favourite to succeed Theresa May when Tory party members vote on who should be the next prime minister in the coming weeks. Last week Conservative MPs voted to send Johnson and Hunt into the final round of the contest.
Deputy leader fears ‘catastrophic’ vote loss to Lib Dems and Greens
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has warned MPs and peers that an analysis of the party’s losses in recent local and European elections that was presented to the shadow cabinet last week dangerously underestimated the crisis it will face if it fails to back another Brexit referendum.
In a briefing document circulated to more than 100 Labour MPs and peers yesterday, Watson says sections of the analysis leaked to the media have “skewed” understanding of the party’s plight. He warns that if Labour does not face the actual lessons and become a Remain party, it risks electoral disaster.
Leaked letter from EU shows UK promised to act after polling mistakes in 2014
Problems that denied EU citizens their vote in last month’s European elections were evident five years ago, according to a leaked letter from the European commission.
Many EU nationals were unable to vote in the European elections on 23 May, through a series of bureaucratic muddles and mistakes that experts decried as a fiasco that a democracy should not tolerate.
Bank of England governor says UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to EU
The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, has said that the UK would be hit automatically by tariffs on exports to the EU in a no-deal Brexit, rejecting a claim made by Boris Johnson that this could be avoided.
Tory leadership candidate Johnson said this week that tariffs would not necessarily have to be paid if the UK left the EU without a deal because the UK could rely on article 24 of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt).
Here is more on Nicola Sturgeon from my colleague Severin Carrell.
@NicolaSturgeon says @BorisJohnson asked her recently (paraphrasing) “So Nicola: full fiscal autonomy. Does that buy you guys off?” “I’m going to make that the starting point of our negotiations should he become prime minister” @reformscotland#devo20
Nicola Sturgeon has said that Boris Johnson’s “almost certain” election as the next Conservative leader has proven how sharply Scotland is now diverging from the rest of the UK, increasing the case for independence.
In a speech to mark 20 years since devolution, the first minister said Johnson’s apparent relish for a no-deal Brexit, and his “gratuitously offensive” opinions about women and minorities are in stark contrast to Scotland’s open, diverse and tolerant politics.
It is surely deeply concerning that the Conservative party is even contemplating putting into the office of prime minister someone whose tenure as foreign secretary was risible, lacking in any seriousness of purpose or basic competence and who, over the years, has gratuitously offended so many, from gay people, to Africans, Muslim women and many others.
But while that, for now, is a matter for the Tories it does further illustrate the different political trajectories of Scotland and other parts of the UK. And it raises the more fundamental question of whether the UK and therefore devolution, in its current form is capable of accommodating those differences.
Eurosceptic backer warns that hardliners want frontrunner to rip up May’s deal
Boris Johnson has been accused of giving MPs contradictory promises on Brexit to win their votes, as one of his highly Eurosceptic backers warned that hardliners want to see him effectively tear up Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
The Conservative leadership frontrunner will face questions on his Brexit stance in a television grilling for the first time in the campaign on Tuesday, amid frustration among his rivals that he is getting away with pledging to be “all things to all MPs” on issues from Brexit to HS2 in one-on-one meetings with them.
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Tory leadership candidates take part in the press gallery hustings
And here’s another story from the hustings, filed by the Press Association.
Tory leadership hopefuls Rory Stewart and Sajid Javid believe they have the required number of supporters to survive Tuesday’s second round of voting.
Stewart managed to secure just 19 votes in the first ballot and Javid had 23 - both short of the 33 required to stay in the race after the second vote.
Here is my colleague Peter Walker’s story about what the Tory election candidates had to say at the press gallery hustings about Donald Trump.
Jeremy Hunt has vigorously defended Donald Trump for quoting the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins in an attack on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, as Downing Street declined to condemn the US president’s words.
The foreign secretary said that while he would not have used the same words as Trump he would “150% agree” with the overall sentiment.
Foreign secretary says it is wrong to commit rigidly to leaving the EU by 31 October
Jeremy Hunt has said the Brexit deadline of 31 October should not be a “hard stop” and that Boris Johnson is posing a “stark choice”, between leaving the EU without a deal and a general election.
As the five remaining rivals to Boris Johnson prepare for a televised debate on Sunday evening, Hunt warned it would be wrong to commit now to leave the EU by Halloween, come what may.
Facing a Boris Johnson premiership, Labour shadow cabinet to debate its stance
Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet is set to debate Brexit on Monday, as the prospect of a Boris Johnson premiership accelerates Labour’s drift towards supporting a second referendum.
Corbyn is coming under renewed pressure to set out his backing for a fresh public vote more clearly, as the shockwaves from Labour’s catastrophic performance in the European elections continue to reverberate.
Frontrunner refuses invite, but will take part in a similar BBC-hosted event two days later
Boris Johnson will be represented by an empty podium in a television debate on Sunday night as his five remaining rivals to be Britain’s next prime minister fight it out for a place alongside him in the ballot of Conservative members.
The former foreign secretary declined an invitation to participate in the Channel 4 leadership debate, saying he feared it would be “cacophonous”.
Tracey Lindner says the scramble for Africa islargelyabout securing resources that are crucial for military and civilian digital technology. Terry McGinn shines a spotlight on the US
Foreign involvement in Africa is far from unique to Russia (Leaked documents reveal Russia’s efforts to exert influence in Africa, 12 June). The new scramble for Africa involves more powers than the first round over a century ago. This time it’s in part about securing resources such as oil, gas and rare earth metals crucial for military and civilian digital technology, and denying these resources to rival powers.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) now has 7,500 American troops active in all but one African country, up from 6,000 in 2017. Apart from its huge base in Djibouti, controlling the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a vital chokepoint through which all shipping using the Suez Canal has to pass – most importantly (for the Americans) Chinese shipping – the US has constructed small “lily pad” bases, whose presence gives the US a strong military capability.